"Mop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Durham's cellars. It was a "pickle room," where there was never a dry spot to stand upon, and so he had to take nearly the whole of his first week's earnings to buy him a pair of heavy-soled boots. He was a "squeedgie" man; his job was to go about all day with a long-handled mop, swabbing up the floor. Except that it was damp and dark, it was not ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and weary, as well he might, and sighed, and looked up every now and then to mop his brow and think. And as he gazed into the green and azure depths beyond the north window, his dark brown eyes quivered and vibrated from side to side through his spectacles with a queer quick tremolo, such as I have never seen in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... last weeks. I want to spare your feelin's all I can, for it ain't in me to be unkind to so much as a gooseberry, but I can't well see how you can keep from bein' some punched by remorse when you hear how I 've been cleanin' house with a heavy heart 'n' no new mop. That's what I 've been doin', Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' so help me Heaven, it's death or a new mop next year. The way that mop has skipped dirt 'n' dripped water!—well, seein' is the only believin' when it comes to mops, but all I can say is that you never looked ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... desire to know the business of every chance caller in the block. This caused a passing unpleasantness between one big white goat and the janitress of the tenement on the corner. Being crowded up against the wall by the animal, bent on exploring her pockets, she beat it off with her scrubbing-pail and mop. The goat, thus dismissed, joined a horse at the curb in apparently innocent meditation, but with one leering eye fixed back over its shoulder upon the housekeeper setting ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the broad hearth before the dispirited embers. One had wept so profusely that she had much ado to find a dry spot in her blue-checked apron, thrown over her head, wherewith to mop her tears. The other, much younger, her fair face reddened, her blue eyes swollen, her auburn curling hair all tangled on her shoulders, her voice half-choked with sobs, addressed herself to the narration ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... imaginary lady, the creation of the American humorist Shillaber, distinguished for her misuse of learned words; also another celebrity who attempted to sweep back the Atlantic with her mop, the type of those who think to stave back ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to stand too much over this up 'ere, you know, Sawkins. Just mop it over anyhow, and get away from it ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... ministers as takes airs," continued the housekeeper sitting up and giving her mop a final wring, "but they can't kind o' help it; it's born with 'em, you may say; it's their natur. It's a pity, but so it is. That's one thing. I'm sorry for 'em, for I think they must have a great load to carry. But when a man ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... knees gave tokens of prodigious strength. His face was dark and weather-beaten; a deep scar, as if from the slash of a cutlass, had almost divided his nose, and made a gash in his upper lip, through which his teeth shone like a bulldog's. A mop of iron-gray hair gave a grisly finish to this hard-favored visage. His dress was of an amphibious character. He wore an old hat edged with tarnished lace, and cocked in martial style on one side of his head; a rusty[1] blue military coat with brass buttons; and a wide pair of short petticoat ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin|, malkin|, handkerchief, towel, sudary[obs3]; doyley[obs3], doily, duster, sponge, mop, swab. cover, drugget[obs3]. wash, lotion, detergent, cathartic, purgative; purifier &c. v.; disinfectant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... with a wide rolling brim was perched on top of the yellow mop, and ornamented with feathers ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... an artful arrangement of lace and jewellery to give an air of lightness to her costume. She had a pretty little pale face, a minois chiffonne, with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... with? Look here, if you will come and live here you shall have a little Wednesday every week on the stairs, under license from me. Harold the Broomstick is apt to shirk cleaning the stairs, but as it happens, he is keeping company with an O-Cedar Mop in Kentish Town, and I've no doubt she would come over and do the stairs thoroughly every Tuesday night. Besides, we have overalls in stock at only ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... offer you? My clumsiness has made our little experiment impossible for to-day. Remind me to order some more to-morrow, Benjamin, and don't think of troubling yourself to put that mess to rights. I'll send the man here to mop it all up. Our Stout Friend is harmless enough now, my dear lady—in combination with a boarded floor and a coming mop! I'm so sorry; I really am so sorry to have disappointed you." With those soothing words, he offered his arm, and led Miss ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... mountains—on all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded, looking as though frozen. On the slopes and in the plains, endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, and looking exactly like mop-sticks. Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected. The trees are olives and mulberries—the bushes, vines.' This is a picture that will not impress an Englishman with the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... latter, alternately holding a stout plank up to the blaze and dabbling its hot surface with a dripping mop. His face was scorched, and he coughed as the resinous-scented smoke drifted about his head and floated in heavy, blue wisps half-way up the giant trunks behind him. A big sea canoe lay drawn up not far away, and one of its copper-skinned Siwash owners lounged on the shingle, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... ill-favoured; short, "stumpy," and very dark, or tinged with unclean yellow. Lepers and hideous cripples thrust their sores and stumps in the face of charity. There was no local colouring compared with the carregadores, or coolies, from the northeast, whose thrum-mop heads and single monkey skins for fig-leaves, spoke of the wold and the wild. The body-dress of both sexes is the tanga, pagne, or waist-cloth, unless the men can afford trousers and ragged shirts, and the women ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... decomposing and destructive powers, should be to prevent its finding fuel in the ascent. No connected timbers ought therefore to join an inferior floor with a superior, so that, if one floor were on fire, its feeble lateral combustion might easily be extinguished with a mop and a pail of water, provided no train of combustibles were extended to the floor above. Such is the language of philosophy, and such the slight process of reason, by attending to which the habitations of men may at all times be secured against the calamity ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... abroad on the small number of troops which the Government had conditionally undertaken to provide. And throughout the first sixteen months of the war, it was they who went on doling out contingents with Troy weights and measures like Mrs. Partington beating back the tidal waves with a mop. It was they, too, who were at extraordinary pains and risked their prestige, to throw away the splendid privileged position which, at the outset of the struggle, we chanced to occupy in South-Eastern Europe. Every blunder into which petty municipal minds could fall when confronted with a wild ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... this!" said Susan, when the worst of the storm was over a few moments later. She started the fire briskly, and tied an apron over her gown, to attack the disorder of the table. Betsey, breathing hard, but visibly cheered, ran to and fro on eager errands, fell upon the sink with a vigorous mop. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the one that didn't get killed," resumed Blenkinthrope, slowly lighting a cigarette. His diffidence had left him, and he was beginning to realise how safe and easy depravity can seem once one has the courage to begin. "The six dead birds were Minorcas; the seventh was a Houdan with a mop of feathers all over its eyes. It could hardly see the snake at all, so of course it wasn't mesmerised like the others. It just could see something wriggling on the ground, and went for it and pecked it ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... figure simpering in incomplete nakedness, with its head on one side, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese dress dropped before it; dusty rugs and skins kicking over the varnished floor; canvases faced to the mop-board; an open trunk overflowing with costumes: these features one might notice anywhere. But, besides, there was a bookcase with an unusual number of books in it, and there was an open colonial writing-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and scutcheoned, with foreign periodicals—French and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... busy, which was less often than he could wish, he tugged at his locks, so that they reared themselves on end, especially at the very top, where they leaned in various directions and displayed what appeared to be several cowlicks. At every quarter that shining mop was uneven, because badly cut by Big Tom Barber, his foster father, whose name belied ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... you'll be all right in a second. Stay quiet here in your Molly's lap and you will be well in just a few minutes," I said with a smile I hid in his yellow mop as I kissed the drake-tail kiss-spot. "Where's Mamie?" I thought to ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... undoubtedly would be consigned to the flames the moment her back was turned. The mop business, however, was too much for him, and before Miss Nancy had time to reply, he said, "For heaven's sake, mother, how many traps do you propose taking, and what do you imagine we can do with a mop? Why, I dare say not one of my servants would know how to use it, and it's a wonder if some of the little chaps didn't take it for a ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... sent word to the Captain, hurried forward to receive our distinguished guest, who climbed heavily on his Secretary's arm. Arriving thus at the sally-way, he nodded graciously in answer to the first lieutenant's salute, pulled out a handkerchief to mop his brow, and in the act of mopping it cast a glance across ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ought to have been. Something growing over a rockery. Here you are, fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you think you're made for is just to sit about and take your vittles. D'you think this world was made for old women to mop about in? Well, anyhow, you can't help yourselves ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... this one-round job a fight?" he said, as he rose to depart. "I call it the work of curs and cowards. Who can call these fellows fighting-men? They are merely mop-sticks. Men were ruffianly enough years ago in the country we have left, but they were men at any rate. Here, they seem to be merely a pack of bloodthirsty molly-coddles, crossed with calculating rogues. The mob outside was better than this. But, ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... is what Life does do for us," returned Hiram, thoughtfully, stopping at the end of the furrow to mop his brow and let the old horse breathe. "Yes, sir! Life plows all the experience under, and it ought to enrich our future existence, just as this stuff I'm plowing under here will decay and ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... he threw the Wash about On both sides of the way, Just like unto a trundling mop, Or a wild ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... "I shud think he had been here, wid his dommed old stove-pipe demolisher. Be jabbers! he got a good whack over the head wid me mop-stick to pay for his flabbergasted stubbornness. And I think he'll have to sell more nor wan of thim pesky wire flumadoodles before he can replace the ould plug hat, which yez'll foind layin' theer in ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... Rosemary," said the doctor instantly. "I honestly do. I had no right to speak like that. But you mustn't think of bobbing your curly mop, dear." ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Scattergood picked up his mop. "If you fellers really mean business, talk business. I've figgered my profits in this store, countin' in low prices, wouldn't be a cent under a couple of thousand the first year.... And you ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... says I must "keep up" my friends. They would be all very well if they were really true friends and respected my feelings and left me alone, just to sit quiet. But they come wearing shiny clothes, and mop and mow at me and expect me to answer their gibberings. Polite conversation always appears to me to be a wicked perversion of the blessed gift of speech, which, I take it, was given us to season our ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... he was in the full cry and ecstasy of his hunt after Sabre, the perspiration streamed down his face like running oil, and he'd flap his great red tongue around his jaws and mop his streaming face and chuck away his streaming mane; and all the time he'd be stooping down to Twyning, and while he was stooping and Twyning prompting him with the venom pricking and bursting in the corners ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... captain said in a voice that trembled with rage and nerves, "will you kindly step for'ard and stop that brat's mouth with a deck mop?" ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Goat withdraws his curling horns, And the cold Waterer twirls his circling mop: Swift sudden anguish darts through altering corns, And the spruce mercer ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the sleeper raised his head. Bob saw a little, middle-aged man, not over five feet six in height, slenderly built, yet with broad, hanging shoulders. His head was an almost exact inverted pyramid, the base formed by a mop of red-brown hair, and the apex represented by a very pointed chin. Two level, oblong patches of hair made eyebrows. His face was white and nervous. A strong, hooked nose separated a pair of red-brown eyes, small and twinkling, like a chipmunk's. Just now they were bloodshot ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... none of my doings," protested the salesgirl; though the result of the experiment was so funny she had not the heart to laugh. The doll with the beautiful blue buckles on her shoes had now a mop of darky wool, and a face as black ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the mop with an angry movement, and then dragging on a pair of great blue stockings he put on shoes and followed Will ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... down at the carriage house and give 'em five hundred lashes. He say they have salt and black pepper mixed up in er old bucket and put it all on flesh cut up with a rag tied on a stick (mop). Alex Rogers had a nigger to put it on the place they whooped. The Lord puts up wid such wrong doings and den he comes and rectifies it. He ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... thought might be successful. We had on board a small fire engine, mounted on wheels, with a hose and jet attached, and a tank capable of containing some fifty gallons. This engine I now ordered to be uncovered, and prepared for action by securely lashing a small loose mop-head of oakum round the nozzle of the hose, taking especial care that the aperture of the jet should be left perfectly free. Roberts, who seemed at once to divine and understand my plan even before I had explained it to him, undertook this part ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... cares, I had literally waited down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully in the atmosphere ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a remarkable contrast to the sedate upholstery. He had a mop of brown hair upon a large and well-shaped head, a broad face with rugged, striking features, very bright blue eyes, a dashing cavalier mustache, and a most engaging smile. His clothes were light of hue and very loose, his ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... the room sat Marshall Langham. He was huddled up in a splint-bottomed chair a deputy had placed for him at one end of the last row of benches. Absorbed and aloof, he spoke with no one, he rarely moved except to mop his face with his handkerchief. His eyes were fixed on the pale shrunken figure that bent above the judge's desk. His father's face with its weary dignity, its unsoftened pride, possessed a terrible fascination for him; the very memory of ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... porch and whipped off his wide sombrero to mop his warm forehead. "Well, Maw, did Poll tell you about Noddy? Ah tell you! Our Polly ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... their childish share of the world's excitements, gazed with a sort of awful relish. Only Johnnie, speeding down the room away from it all, was doing anything rational to avert the catastrophe. The child hung on the slowly moving belt, inert, a tiny rag of life, with her mop of tangled yellow curls, her white, little face, its blue eyes closed. When she reached the top, where the pulley was close against the ceiling, her brains would be dashed out and the small body dragged to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... as they were: he didn't see "what she wanted ob dat chile to support—he was sho' he wouldn't do it;" and as for adventuring his precious self among the Philistines again, he utterly declined the proposition. Then Vina's anger rose, and with her lifted mop she drove her liege lord from her cabin-door, which he ever after found barred against him. George soon consoled himself with another wife, and about a year later departed for parts unknown. The years that followed were hard and lonely ones for Vina, but she never wept for George: to use ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... found himself perspiring profusely, and was compelled to mop his brow, but Miss Hastings disdained to give any sign that anything unusual whatsoever had happened, except by walking with a limp, albeit a very slight one, as she returned to the glade. That limp comforted Mr. Turner somewhat, and, spying Miss Stevens in a little group near ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... at least a part of that wealth really came, and had refused to touch a penny of it. But Lushington felt as if he were being combed with red-hot needles from head to foot, and the perspiration stood on his forehead. It would have filled him with shame to mop it with his handkerchief and yet he felt that in another moment it would run down. The awful circumstances of his dream came vividly back to him, and he could positively hear Margaret telling him that he looked hot, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... the kind with Mrs. Tusser. On the other hand, hard work all round: "Sluts' corner" to be ridded; sweeping, dusting, mop-twirling, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... a will, and scrubbed himself to such an extent, that his skin must undoubtedly have been thinner after the operation. The washing, however, was easy compared with the combing. The boy's mop was such a tangled web, that the comb at first refused to pass through it; and when, encouraged by the Captain, the urchin did at last succeed in rending its masses apart various inextricable bunches came away bodily, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... as he remembered Gill Mace. The boy who had called Frank a thief was unable to repeat the vile accusation when he emerged from the puddle into which Frank had pushed him. His mouth was full of mud, his hair was a dripping mop, his clothes were plastered with it. Frank had waited to respond to any later move that Gill might decide on. The jeweler's nephew, however, made none. As he emerged from the puddle three schoolgirls, arms linked in friendly companionship, passed ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... the window, it caught the brown eyes of Mr. Pickwick considering him through a silvery, fringy thicket of hair. Mr. Pickwick was said to be royally descended; however that might have been, indubitably his pedigree harbored somewhere both a door-mat and a mop. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... showing the genealogical trees of illustrious families, tracing the descent of Washington, of Queen Victoria, and of other important personages. There was no covering on the floor except that which had accumulated by reason of the absence of broom and mop. A couple of tables, a few dilapidated chairs, a pitcher and a basin, were about all the ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... butter enough for their bread; and she haue a little helpe of the Mother, Epilepsie, or Cramp, to teach her role her eyes, wrie her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, holde her armes and hands stiffe, make anticke faces, grine, mow, and mop like an Ape, tumble like a Hedge-hogge, and can mutter out two or three words of gibridg, as obus, bobus: and then with-all old mother Nobs hath called her by chaunce, idle young huswife, or bid the deuill scratch her, then no doubt but mother Nobs is the Witch: the young girle is Owle-blasted, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... bareheaded and with the wind blowing his thick mop of wavy hair straight back from his forehead, glanced back with swift disfavor at ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... or flattery or the extreme crewelty of the law of this nation,) I doe hereby give and bequeth it as followeth.—First I give my son-in-law Doc'r. Hawkins and to his Wife, to them I give all my tytell and right of or in a part of a howse and mop in Pater-noster-rowe in London: which I hold by lease from the Lord Bishop of London for about 50 years to come and I doe also give to them all my right and tytell of or to a howse in Chansery-lane, London; where in M'rs. Greinwood now dwelleth, in which ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... Immediately her mind leapt to preparations—her sister was too big to sleep any more in the little bed at the foot of her own, she must have a new bed ... and suddenly Joanna thought of a new room, a project which would mop up all her overflowing energies ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... in the city, but it was far away now; he heard it with the back of his mind as he mounted the steps of the Temple. Those were mop-up operations, clearing the streets of the last of the priest-king forces; he was not needed there. He had, to all intents, controlled the city since the night before, and had slept in the palace itself. Now it ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... would never want to mop his face with his handkerchief. I do hate to see a man do ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... time they made traps, traveling-bags and satchels, mop-holders, and various other small articles, and put up preserved fruits in glass and tin. They began at Wallingford, in 1851, making match-boxes, and the manufacture of traveling-bags was begun in Brooklyn, and later transferred to Oneida. Trap-making was begun at Oneida in 1855; fruit-preserving ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... ever forward, sir, and there is a foot of water in the hold," was our first salutation on the morning of the 20th. But we have become accustomed to these things now; the cabin-floor is always wet, and one is obliged to mop up the water many times a day, giving some countenance to the native idea that Englishmen live in or on the water, and have no houses but ships. The cabin is now a favourite breeding-place for mosquitoes, and we have to support both the ship-bred and shore-bred ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... twenty-two are endowed at any rate with some share of the comeliness of youth, but to me even this was denied. Short, thick-set, and deep-chested almost to deformity, with long sinewy arms, heavy features, deep-set grey eyes, a low brow half overgrown with a mop of thick black hair, like a deserted clearing on which the forest had once more begun to encroach; such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a century ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day. Like Cain, I was branded—branded by Nature with the stamp of abnormal ugliness, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Mick, 'the villain, the thief of the world, the base unnatural deceiver,' but ourselves, and all to whom Mick had paid those farewell visits. Mick heard her with a grin, and when she had exhausted herself she suddenly clutched him by his mop-head, dragged him indoors, and banged ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... forgotten. "Fast volumes of vapour" &c. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling her mop and contemplating the whirling phenomenon thro' blurred optics; but to term her a poor outcast seems as much as to say that poor Susan was no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin Goodfellow ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... fellow stood, he saluted them with a full ladle of the hot boiling liquor; which, the poor creatures being half naked, made them roar out, and jump into the sea. Well done, Jack, says the carpenter, give them the other dose: and so stepping forward himself, takes a mop, and dipping it into the pitch-pot, he and his man so plentifully flung it among them, as that none escaped being scalded; upon which they all made the best of their way, crying and howling in such a frightful manner, that, in all my adventures, I never heard the like. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... carry it to great lengths. If a man chooses a particular tree for his god, the fruit o' that tree is tabued to him; and if he eats it, he is sure to be killed by his people, and eaten, of course, for killing means eating hereaway. Then, you see that great mop o' hair on the chief's head? Well, he has a lot o' barbers to keep it in order; and it's a law that whoever touches the head of a living chief or the body of a dead one, his hands are tabued; so in that way the barbers' hands are always tabued, and they daren't use them ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the west and much hay was ready for hauling, how it quickened our steps and our strokes! It was the sound of the guns of the approaching foe. In one hour we would do, or try to do, the work of two. How the wagon would rattle over the road, how the men would mop their faces and how I, while hurrying, would secretly exult that now I would have an hour to finish my crossbow or to work on my pond in ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... say, aunt," cried Lavender with a fine show of carelessness, "you mustn't go and spoil her hair. I think it is very pretty as it is, and that woman of yours would simply go and make a mop of it. You'd think the girls now-a-days dressed their hair by shoving their head into a furze bush and giving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... takes me by the brow of my pantaloons and throws me across Township 28, Range 18, West of the 5th Principal Meridian, I lose my mental reserve and become anxious and even taciturn. For thirty years I had yearned to see a grown up cyclone, of the ring-tail-puller variety, mop up the green earth with huge forest trees and make the landscape look tired. On the 9th day of September, A.D. 1884, my ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... impatience sounded from the gallery; it was taken up elsewhere. And suddenly Weiss came again upon the platform—this time with no affectation of suave entreaty. He was plainly much upset; his elegant waistcoat seemed to have assumed careworn creases, his mop of blonde hair was palpably rumpled as if he had been endeavouring to tear some of its wavy locks out by force. And when he spoke his fat voice shook with a ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make the best ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... said it would be possible to take Brian to Paris. I'd have made it possible if I'd had to sell my hair to do it; and you know my curly black mop of hair was always my pet vanity. Brian being a soldier, he could have the operation free, if Doctor Cuyler considered it wise to operate; but—as our man warned me—there were ninety-nine chances to one against success: and at ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... bar-room, whose litter of duffle-bags, guns, saddles, and camp utensils gave evidence of the presence of many hunters and fishermen. The slovenly landlord was poring over a newspaper, while a discouraged half-grown youth was sludging the floor with a mop; but a cheerful clamor from an open door at the back of the hall told that ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... scraped with its four paws, using its tail as well—it had a nice long tail in those days; the mouse crept out of his pocket and made channels with its little pointed toes; and the squirrel brushed and swept the water in with its bushy, mop-like tail. The rising sea poured down the ever- deepening hole. They worked with a will together; there was no complaining, though the rabbit wore its tail down till it was nothing but a stump, and the mouse stood ankle-deep in water, and the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... a living room means cleaning the floor and the rugs; dusting the walls, the pictures; cleaning, dusting, and sometimes polishing the furniture. Open the windows top and bottom, dust and brush them inside and out; use a soft brush or a dust mop to take the dust from the floor. Use a carpet sweeper for the rugs unless you have electricity and can use a vacuum cleaner; collect the sweepings ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... thin one!" said Pete Murphy. "She's a pippin, if you please. Quick as a cat! Graceful as they make them. And look at that mop of red hair! Isn't that a holocaust? I bet she's ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... at what time that pest would break in on me so I could always arrange to be out!" groaned Durtal. Now he ground his teeth, as Rateau, with a yell, grabbed up the mop and, skating around on one leg, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the arm, and then my own hand was grasped as in a grip of iron. Before we had time for resistance he had pushed us out before him into the entry, behind the outer door. This latter he slammed. He put his broad back against it; then he dropped his rake and began to mop his face, violently, with a filthy handkerchief he plucked from beneath ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... it was a mistake, and an odd one too," said Gussie, coming forward. "How could you mistake that mop of ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... despondently. He took his cue and said with a smile, "Well, perhaps it is a little rompy; a donkey's gallop and then twirl her like a mop." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in the door and bent an approving gaze on the big pinto as he swung out across the pasture lot. The boy's face was small and quizzical, a shaggy mop of tawny hair hanging so low upon his forehead that his mild blue eyes peered forth from under the fringe of it and gave him the air of a surprised terrier, which effect had gained him ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the fountain. Pa yelled and talked profane, and told 'em to bring a cannon and kill the elephant, which kept ducking him with his trunk, and swabbing out the bottom of the fountain basin with pa. It seemed as though he never would get through using pa for a mop, but finally the people got a rope around pa, and a keeper got an iron hook in the elephant's ear, and they pulled pa out on one side, and got the elephant away on the other side, and just then the callipoe, that ends the parade, came by us and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... wood, the stain would become almost indelible. Now, not to mention that our Scottish palaces were not particularly well washed in those days, and that there were no Patent Drops to assist the labours of the mop, I think it very probable that these dark relics might subsist for a long course of time, even if Mary had not desired or directed that they should be preserved, but screened by the traverse from public sight. I know several instances of similar bloodstains remaining ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the wealthy, who can afford the luxury of a turban, shave the head. More generally, each filament is duly picked out with the comb or a wooden scratcher like a knitting-needle, and the mass made to resemble a child's "pudding," an old bob-wig, a mop, a counsellor's peruke, or an old- fashioned coachman's wig,—there are a hundred ways of dressing the head. The Bedouins, true specimens of the "greasy African race," wear locks dripping with rancid butter, and accuse ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... warm, and his flight had heated him intolerably. He felt for his handkerchief to mop his brow, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mother's ash-gold hair, but where Julia's rose firm and winglike from her forehead, and was held in place by its own smooth, thick braids, the little girl's fell in rich, shining waves, sprayed in fine mist across her eyes, glittered, a golden mop in the sunlight, and even in the shade threw out an occasional gleam of gold. Anna's eyes were blue, with curled thick lashes like her mother's, but in the firm little mouth and the poise of her head, in the quick smile and quicker frown, Julia saw her father a hundred times ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... idea. Esop's fables, or any fables, are, after all, only good jokes in a narrative form, which owe their fame simply to their boundless capacity for application. Sidney Smith's story of Mrs. Partington, who tried to mop out the Atlantic, was a jest, and so too was Lady Macbeth's 'cat i' the adage,' who wanted fish, yet would not wet her paws, and let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' Something of our old enjoyment of a joke for the first time, always lingers around it, and we gladly laugh again—for, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... stature, was unable to see anything except coat-tails and petticoats, until of a sudden there was a breaking away of these obstacles and he found himself in close proximity to a gentleman of medium height, strongly built, with a mop of dark hair framing a handsome, pale, smiling face, the lower parts of which were concealed by a thick brown beard. It was Kossuth, and there was that in his countenance and expression which satisfied all the dreams of his admirer. He was chatting and shaking hands with the elder persons; and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... legend, "Apartments and Board, by the Day or Week." Was it possible that this narrow, creaking staircase had once seemed to him the broad steps of Fame and Fortune? On the first landing, a preoccupied Irish servant-girl, with a mop, directed him to a door at the end of the passage, at which he knocked. The door was opened by a grizzled negro servant, who was still holding a piece of oily chamois-leather in his hand; and the contents of a dueling-case, scattered upon a table in the centre of the room, showed what ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Papuans of the Great River deltas of western Papua differ widely from the lithe, active, brown-skinned, mop-headed natives of the eastern half of the southern coast; and Professors Haddon and Seligmann have decided that in eastern New Guinea many Proto-Polynesian, Melanesian and Malayan immigrants have mingled their blood with that of the more primitive Papuans. Thus ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the desk, and the ink at once flew up, covering the Colonel's face and shirt-front. Then it was a sight to see that senior clerk, as he seized a quite of blotting-paper, and rushed to the aid of his superior officer, striving to mop up the ink; and a sight also to see the Colonel, in his agony, hit right out through the blotting-paper at that senior clerk's unoffending stomach. At that moment there came in the Colonel's private secretary, with ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... in temper, disagreeable to contemplate, and distressing to be obliged to admire. One of the missions in society of Skye Terrier—who, when going before a high wind, bears no unapt resemblance to a mop or a wisp of tow—was to mop up Pug, and polish him off the hearth-rug of Fashion; a mission which he appears to have at least partially accomplished. For now the black muzzle of Pug is but seldom to be seen protruded from carriage-window, biding his time for a snap ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... chamber!"—she usually began in that way—"why don't you make these children put their playthings tidy? (Of course Dame Hilda did, at the end of the day; but how could we have playthings tidy while we were playing with them?) Meg, your hair is no better than a mop! Jack, how got you that rent in your sleeve? (I never knew Jack without a rent in some part of his clothes; I should not have thought it was Jack if he had come in whole garments.) Joan, how ungainly you sit! pluck yourself up this minute. Nym, take your elbows off the table. Maud, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... will be a sin and a shame," agreed "Red" Curry, he of the flaming mop, who was accustomed to play the "sun field" ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... blithely up the steps to the dance-hall. He was tall and outrageously thin, and pale with the pallor that comes from long confinement. His hands and feet seemed too big for the rest of him, and his blond hair stuck up in a bristly mop above his high forehead. But Sergeant Graham walked with the buoyant tread of one who has a good opinion not only of himself but ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... alone escapes the mop of the Dutch housewife but the clouds are kept busy posing for the ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... good pride. But I'd better be going and seeing after them girls and the house cleaning. They are both master hands, but if Buck Peavey was to happen to tie hisself up to the front gate, it would be good-by dust-pan and mop for Pattie. Not that I don't feel for her in the liking of that rampaging boy of Mis' Peavey's, and it's mighty hard not to kinder saunter into a little chat when the men folks call you. How are Miss Elinory to-day? Ain't ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess |
