"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ornamental candidate," he said, "but he is particularly sound and a man with any amount of common-sense. You should ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over a foot in width, in the side of the cupboard and in the thickness of the wall can be opened. This again reveals a narrow passage, or staircase, leading up to the joists above the ceiling, and thence to a recess situated immediately behind the carved ornamental facing over the entrance door of the summer-house. In this there is a narrow chink or peep-hole, from which the fugitive could keep on the look-out either for danger or for the friendly Royalist agent of ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... and every thing ornamental, first revived in Italy, is well known; but I was never aware till now, though we talk of Italian book-keeping, that the little cant words employed in compting-houses, took their original from the Lombard language, unless perhaps that of Ditto, which every moment ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... is afraid of giving, and incapable of taking offence, he entrenches himself in the unstudied reserve which he finds by experience renders his individuality least assailable, exactly as he surrounds his ornamental woods, his shrubberies, and his parterres with fences, not the less strong ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... "And being ornamental," interrupted Cass. But this feeble and un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... an ornamental color, should be below all others, for artistic effect. An artistic dressmaker places the dark or black plaids or stripes beneath the others. This natural correspondence is almost universally recognized among enlightened nations in clothing for the feet. They not only look smaller and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wrapped about them.—But the women have their arms, to their very shoulders, and their necks and faces, adorned with flowers, stars, and various sorts of figures impressed by gunpowder; a considerable addition to their natural deformity; which is, however, esteemed very ornamental amongst them; and I believe they suffer a good deal of ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... of the stage, a 'Pegasus', by M. Lequesne, rising at either end of the roof, and a bronze group by M. Millet, representing 'Apollo lifting his golden lyre', commanding the apex. Apollo, it may here be mentioned, is useful as well as ornamental, for his lyre is tipped with a metal point which does duty as a lightning-rod, and conducts the fluid to the body and down the ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... desert the royal cause. No words can exaggerate the self-abnegation of those men. I have seen a supper party under my father's roof where our guests were two fencing-masters, three professors of language, one ornamental gardener, and one translator of books, who held his hand in the front of his coat to conceal a rent in the lapel. But these eight men were of the highest nobility of France, who might have had what they chose to ask if they would only consent to forget the ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will have also the privileges of attending the lectures of Mr. Hallowell on Astronomy and Chemistry. And in addition to all the ordinary branches of a solid education, they are prepared to teach and do teach, the more ornamental ones of ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... consideration even in town-planning. A more definite, more symmetrical, often more rigidly 'chess-board' pattern was introduced for the towns which now began to be founded in many countries round and east of the Aegean. Ornamental edifices and broad streets were still indeed included, but in the house-blocks round them due space and place were left for the dwellings of common men. For a while the Greeks turned their minds to those details ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... Virginia State Audubon Society was organized at Falls Church, September 29, 1903. The objects of the society are to protect our native birds, to discourage the buying and wearing for ornamental purposes of the feathers of all birds other than the ostrich and domesticated fowls, and to promote a popular interest in bird study. The present officers are: President, John B. Henderson; 1st Vice President, ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... onion, turnip and carrot, and cut the two latter into very neat or ornamental pieces, cut the celery very small, place altogether in a stewpan with the water and salt, and simmer gently for two and a half hours. Stew the tomatoes according to No. 155 in a separate stewpan, using one ounce of butter. When the vegetables ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But remember, Sue, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... arrangement of all these houses was the same. In the midst was an open court, on to which opened the doors of the rooms of the priests and philosophers. On each side of the court was a shady, covered colonnade of wood, and in the midst a tank with ornamental plants. In the upper story were the apartments for the scholars, and instruction was usually given in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... avenues diverge from the square fronting St. George's Hall, opposite which is the fine station of the London and North-western Railway, which, as is the railroad custom in England, is also a large hotel. The suburbs of Liverpool are filled for a wide circuit with elegant rural homes and surrounding ornamental grounds, where the opulent merchants live. They are generally bordered with high stone walls, interfering with the view, and impressing the visitor strongly with the idea that an Englishman's house is ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful, characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" sex. She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent intelligence—or as a wife, mother, companion, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... see," Pierce's voice came apologetically after a pause in which some background noise sounding like a crash came over the televiewer speaker. "It started swinging around when I came in sight, so I just rammed it with that pretty ornamental nose spike. I'm backing off now with ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... from Spain, and which at this point offers to view the celebrated Isle of Pheasants, a little bushy strip of earth adorned with a decayed commemorative monument, on which, in the seventeenth century, the affairs of Louis XIV. and his brother monarch were discussed in ornamental conference; at Fuentarabia (glorious name), a mouldering relic of Spanish stateliness; at Hondaye, at Irun, at Renteria, and finally at San Sebastian. At all of these wayside towns the houses show marks of Alphonsist bullets (the region was strongly Carlist); but to be riddled and battered seems ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... where assemblies are held; then, the discourses delivered, or conversations held in such an assembly. The word is used here especially to denote a series of "discourses and conversations composed in a highly finished and ornamental style, and solely for the purpose of exhibiting various kinds of eloquence, and exemplifying the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and poetry." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... joiner's business which he had hoped to buy and work to good account with Robert's help. The present owner had made a fortune by it, and after thirty years of business he was thinking of retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city, a usual retreat for the frugal and successful workingman. Michael had not indeed the 2,000 francs which must be paid down; but perhaps he could have persuaded Master Benoit to wait. Robert's presence would have been a security ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Chelsea Bridge, the wanderer through London finds himself in pleasant Battersea. Rounding the Park, where the female of the species wanders with its young by the ornamental water where the wild-fowl are, he comes upon a vast road. One side of this is given up to Nature, the other to Intellect. On the right, green trees stretch into the middle distance; on the left, endless blocks ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... which crawled up the silent seated figure and took refuge on the very crown of its head. Sanctuary! So we turned aside to scrutinise the strange symbolical figures of the twenty-fourth cave and the stories of the chaste and unchaste wives which are hewn in the ornamental gateway of the third. ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... convocations; for three months, the agitation attendant upon successive assemblies kept France in suspense. Paris was still voting on the 28th of April, 1789, the mob thronged the streets; all at once the rumor ran that an attack was being made on the house of an ornamental paper-maker in the faubourg St. Antoine, named Reveillon. Starting as a simple journeyman, this man had honestly made his fortune; he was kind to those who worked in his shops: he was accused, nevertheless, amongst the populace, of having declared that a journeyman ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy with at that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to go on with it until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... heartily, then set about finding something to do. Her wish was to be a governess, that being the usual refuge for respectable girls who have a living to get. But Christie soon found her want of accomplishments a barrier to success in that line, for the mammas thought less of the solid than of the ornamental branches, and wished their little darlings to learn French before English, music before grammar, and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... more widely in the various kinds of monkeys than it does in the races of man; and we have some reason to believe that the red, blue, orange, almost white and black tints of their skin, even when common to both sexes, as well as the bright colours of their fur, and the ornamental tufts about the head, have all been acquired through sexual selection. As the order of development during growth, generally indicates the order in which the characters of a species have been developed and modified during previous generations; and as the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... It lifted readily, without tearing, its gum was wet and more abundant than usual—in fact, it felt confoundedly like library paste, a pot of which, in an ornamental holder, was among the fittings of the escritoire. On the desk pad of blotting paper, too, Victor detected marks of fresh paste defining ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... smallest number necessary to explain the story. This condensing of the interest, if I may use the expression, was borrowed originally from the Greeks, of whose sculptures the Romans availed themselves to a great degree. On the other hand, this looseness of arrangement, and what may be termed ornamental, not only spread through Germany, but infected the schools of Venice; witness the works of Tintoret and Paul Veronese, in which the expression of the countenance absolutely goes for nothing, and the ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... the shop-windows and chose three ornamental combs made of celluloid for the three sisters, a snuff-box for papa, made of dried bergamot skin smelling so as to scent the snuff, and a pair of braces for Gildo. It seemed a pity that the buffo ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... long, it being a kind of standing-dish for which the public have very little relish in this practical age. The 'swell' sweeper generally subsides in a week or two, and vanishes from the stage, on which, however ornamental, he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... beautiful building, the centre much higher than the rest, to be filled with climbing roses, vines, etc.; the sides sloped off until they were only high enough to allow free entrance at the doors. It was finished in a highly ornamental manner, and in the distance resembled a ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... former will gradually win your admiration, and continue to arouse pleasing reminiscences; the latter will finally lose its charm, and be regarded with something of the feeling with which one looks upon the ornamental paper of a room. We have had many exhibitions of single large pictures, such as DUBUFE'S 'Don Juan,' which have produced handsome returns to those who have purchased them for such speculating purposes. The parties have ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... covering all deficiencies. The poor things came up with pathetic innocence, many of them with nothing on but an old shirt, and cotton trousers rolled up to the knees. Some had red shirts and blue trousers, others considered that a shirt was an effective outer garment. Some wore highly ornamental, dandified shirts, and trousers tucked into high, rusty, mud-covered boots. A few young men were in white straw hats, white shirts, and white trousers, with crimson leis round their hats and throats. Some ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... grape shot, and saw shot; and there were bows and arrows, and swords and halberds, and spears and cutlasses, and every other kind of weapon. These arms were arranged on the walls in magnificent great stars, or were stacked up in various ornamental forms about pillars or under arches; and they were so numerous that Rollo could not stop to ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... ornamental work are only to be reached by a perpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline as attentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himself through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. The execution of the best ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... brought to the Chairman's notice that Mr. H. G. WELLS was missing. An anxious search revealed the fact that the ornamental sword and plumed casque of the Military Member of the Invasion Committee of the Thorpe-le-Soken Division of Essex had disappeared at the same time, and the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... are certainly not later than the twelfth century. Baptismal fonts, now used as holy-water stoups, are probably of anterior workmanship. Cut out of solid blocks of stone, their carving shows all the interlacing lines and exquisite finish of detail, purely ornamental, that marks the pre-Gothic period in the South of France, when the artistic spirit of Christianity was still confined to the close imitation of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... nothing comparable to it. The Bois de Boulogne and Hyde Park are, as far as natural beauty goes, tame and flat in comparison to it. The planning and the execution of it have been alike excellent. The whole of the space up which the road serpentines has been turned into ornamental gardens, and on either side of it, and among its lawns and shrubberies, a large number of villa-sites were reserved to be disposed of to purchasers. Of this singular opportunity Powers was one of the first to avail himself. He selected with admirable judgment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... believe, for splendid dejeune entertainments in the summer. This roof may be seen from several parts of the park. The entrance lodge is particularly chaste, the gates are in handsome park-like style; and the plantations and ornamental gardens in equally good taste. The establishment is, as we have said, the most extensive in the Regent's Park, and is in every respect in correspondent taste with the beautiful Italian fronted town residence of the noble marquess, opposite the Green ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... That love of approbation which now makes people so solicitous to be en regle would still exist—would still make them careful of their personal appearance—would still induce them to seek admiration by making themselves ornamental—would still cause them to respect the natural laws of good behaviour, as they now do the artificial ones. The change would simply be from a repulsive monotony to a picturesque variety. And if there be any regulations respecting which it is uncertain whether they are based on reality or ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... place is mine and wants to leave it. He has no real love for the priceless old spot. All that he asks is somewhere better to go to. So I am gladly doing my best to help him. I send him notices of forty-roomed Tudor mansions, which seem to abound in the market, mansions with timbered parks, ornamental waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, herds of graceful bounding gazebos, and immediate possession. I do more than this. I send him extravagant eulogies of lands across the seas, where the grapes grow larger, the pear-trees blossom all the year round and separate thrushes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... leading clubs of the city, and if my time had allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in the way of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the best advantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is no ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but a very busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter of introduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me an ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... people are not ashamed of feeling or of describing what they feel. 'Continue, my dear daughter'—he writes to Maria, who was then thirteen years old—'the desire which you feel of becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a character, with such an understanding as yours, necessarily ensue; but true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your behaviour, can be only had from reflection, and from being thoroughly convinced of what experience ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... squaring and facing a stone soon surpassed that of boys much older than himself. He was observed to have a strong propensity to do fancy stone-work. He obtained, as a boy, some local celebrity for his carved gate posts, and other ornamental objects in stone. So great was his skill and industry, that, by the time he was nineteen years of age, besides having maintained a large family for years, he had saved a sum ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... This is the best for cultivation in western and middle states, and in all cold regions. Very ornamental. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... produced by the higher degree of some attribute. However the selection takes place, the individual so selected will have an opportunity to transmit his character, in the higher degree in which he possesses it, to his descendants. In this way it was supposed by Darwin that a large proportion of the ornamental characters of living creatures were produced: the tail of the peacock, the mane of the lion, and even the gorgeous coloring of many insects and butterflies. In the early years of Darwinism, the theory of sexual selection was pushed to what now seems an unjustifiable extent. Experiment ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... "Not ornamental, but useful, John, in fact essential," said Mr. Grey, as John excused himself with the statement that he had to go to school. When he returned through the woods, about noon, to his relief he saw far down the avenue Mr. Grey and ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... was a development of the Doric, but was lighter and more graceful. The columns were more slender and had a greater number of flutes and the capitals formed of scrolls or volutes were more ornamental. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... account for my peculiarities; I often catch a look of wondering speculation in his eye when it turns upon me. It is all because I will not let him lay out flower-beds in the usual way, and make the bit of ground in front of the house really neat and ornamental. At first he put it down to meanness, but he knows by now that that cannot be the explanation. That I really prefer a garden so poor and plain that every cottager would be ashamed of it, he cannot bring himself to believe, and of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... china boxes, a china inkstand, 5 china cups and saucers, a china basket, 2 china jugs, a scent bottle, a boa ring, 20 shells, a boy's cap, a pair of snuffers and stand, a little basket, a pair of screen handles, 3 ornamental pens, 5 artificial flowers, 5 glass plates, 5 counter plates, 3 pairs of card racks, a comb, a pair of watch pockets, 12 table mats, 8 paintings, 4 drawings, 2 fans, a pair of garters, 3 pairs of gloves, 3 pairs of silk stockings, 3 veils, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... extremely important, vivid, masterful. She had been mistaking him for a nice, ornamental, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... imagine from ancient Greece. Indeed, the whole picture is like a copy of an antique bas-relief; and in the original cartoon there is, below the picture, a decorative border studied from antique sculpture, and below that still an ornamental edge which was ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... The shadow of a sensation of nervous pain or uneasiness never has been known in her family for generations, and her judgments of poor little Mrs. Evans are about as intelligent as those of a good stout Shanghai hen on a humming-bird. Most useful and comfortable, these Shanghai hens,—and very ornamental, and in a small way useful, these humming-birds; but let them not regulate each other's diet, or lay down schemes for each other's housekeeping. Has not one as much right to its nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... soul without education like marble in a quarry which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher sketches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of the Eskimo women are of the useful rather than the ornamental kind. The handling of the native lamp, for instance, requires great skill. If the lamp is well trimmed, it is as clear and smokeless as our own lamps; if it is neglected, it smokes and smells vilely. As the Eskimos ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... memory being amply supplied with them previously. Such simple instruction as this chapter directs may easily be given; but to attempt much more would be like endeavouring to build an elegant and ornamental structure before you had collected materials to ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... which the bundles are exposed and spread about now and then in the open air. This operation is called ventilating by the planters, and is continued until there is no apparent heat in the heaps. The plant is quite ornamental, and its blossoms form a pleasing feature in a ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... species being peculiar to that continent, all of which have been by later systematists separated from the genus Otis. India, too, has three peculiar species, the smaller of which are there known as floricans, and, like some of their African and one of their European cousins, are remarkable for the ornamental plumage they assume at the breeding-season. Neither in Madagascar nor in the Malay Archipelago is there any form of this family, but Australia possesses one large species already named. From Xenophon's days (Anab. i. 5) to our own the flesh ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... WATER MEADOW-GRASS.—This is quite an aquatic, but is eaten when young by cattle, and is very useful in fenny countries: it is highly ornamental, and might be introduced into ponds for the same purpose as Arundo Phragmites: it might also be planted with Festuca elatior and Phalaris arundinacea, in wet dug out places, where it would be useful as fodder, and ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... will sink and be nothing more than an ordinary pudding; when done take it out, sprinkle powdered sugar over and send the souflee to table in the dish in which it was baked, either with a napkin pinned around or inclosed in a more ornamental dish; serve with wine, ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... puzzled for a minute, and then the direction of their glances, and their remarks explained it all. At the rear of the lower part of the cavalry jacket, about where the upper ornamental buttons are on the tail of a frock coat, are two funny tabs, about the size of small pin-cushions. They are fastened by the edge, and stick out straight behind. Their use is to support the heavy belt in the rear, as ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the Great, Julius Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick the Great, Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough; also of two wild beasts. The order was "filled" by sending him a group showing Aeneas bearing his father from Troy, two groups with two statues of Bacchus and Flora, two ornamental vases and ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... ornamental FOREIGN PLANTS, cultivated in the Open Ground, the Green-House, and the Stove, are accurately represented ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... castors. It was necessary, of course, that the houses should be made very light in order to be managed in this way. They were, in fact, still tents rather than houses, being made of the same materials, only they were put together in a more substantial and ornamental manner. The frame was made of very light poles, though these poles were fitted together in permanent joinings. The covering was, like that of the tents, made of felt, but the sheets were joined together by close and strong seams, and the whole was coated with a species of paint, ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... been born in the Prue and I period in Gramercy Park near what is now The Players' Club, and the old colonial house with its white trimmings and ornamental ironwork had been the scene of many a modest gayety at a time when Emerson, Lowell, and George William Curtis were viewed less as citizens than as high priests of Culture, sharing equally in sanctity with the goddess thereof. She could just remember those ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... patient, and so thoroughly upright in word and deed, and your knowledge of the Scriptures equal to that of many students of Divinity, so should you ever become a teacher you have nothing to fear. You will be able to undertake both the useful and the ornamental branches of education—French, Italian, and Music you thoroughly understand. I feel conscious that you will succeed. Please to remember me to your excellent mother, and with love to Miss Spence and my darling ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... path was there, or a grassy glade, more or less wide, leading through a beautiful growth of firs and larches. No roses, nor any other ornamental shrubs only the soft well-kept footway through the woodland. Fleda went gently on and on, admiring where the trees sometimes swept back, leaving an opening, and at other places stretched their graceful branches over her head. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was said of the democrat; that he was the son of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and repressed the ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got into fine company, and began to entertain a dislike to his father's narrow ways; and being a better man than the corrupters of his youth, he came to a mean, and led a life, not of lawless or slavish passion, but of regular and successive indulgence. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... crowd of "moleques" placed before him three black pots, one containing a savoury stew, the others beans and vegetables, which he transferred to a deep platter, and proved himself no mean trencherman. The earthenware is of native make, by no means ornamental, but useful because it retains the heat; it resembles the produce of the Gold Coast, and the "pepper-pot" platter of the West Indies. His cup was filled as fast as he drained the palm wine, and, at times, he passed a huge mouthful to a small ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... quality, occasioned by the same causes. The mulberry, fig, and guava, succeed better; they are both abundant and good, but there are not any plantains or bananas. On the higher lands, that is, above the general height of the vineyards, the walnut and chesnut grow most luxuriantly, and are both ornamental and useful. The chesnuts are so plentiful that, in the fruit season, they form a considerable article of food amongst the lower orders of the people. The fine old forest trees, the original occupiers of the soil, are disappearing rapidly, even ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... go now," he said, pointing with his stick towards an ornamental bridge; "that is the best way to the high-road. And, Mrs. Benker, if my brother should return ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... averse from danger, a munificent patron of arts and letters, and a cruel persecutor of Calvinists, presented a remarkable contrast to William, simple in tastes, ungracious in demeanour, indefatigable and intrepid in war, regardless of all the ornamental branches of knowledge, and firmly attached to the theology of Geneva. The enemies did not long observe those courtesies which men of their rank, even when opposed to each other at the head of armies, seldom neglect. William, indeed, went ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is paved with painted bricks—a tessellated pavement. A fountain, with jet and ornamental basin, occupies its centre; and several trees, well trimmed, stand in large vessels, so that their roots may not injure the pavement. Around this court you see the doors of the different apartments, some of them glazed and tastefully curtained. The doors of the "sala," the "cuarto," and the sleeping-rooms, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... disturbances at summer-resort hotels. One junior, during my time, aroused the envy of the whole college by painting the steeple of the First Baptist Church during vacation; and when he finished the job his class numerals were painted in big letters on top of the ornamental knob that tipped the spire. At least, so he announced, and no rival class had the ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... against decency and decorum, mind you, but there they are—essentials to civilisation and essentially 'suppressio veri.' And in the pockets of his clothes our citizen carries money. The pure savage has no money. To him a lump of metal is a lump of metal—possibly ornamental—no more. That's right. To any lucid-minded man it's the same or different only through the gross folly of his fellows. But to the common civilised man the universal exchangeability of this gold is a sacred and fundamental fact. Think of it! Why should it be? There isn't ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... here as opposing the erection of good, substantial, and even ornamental buildings by the Government wherever such buildings are needed. In fact, I approve of the Government owning its own buildings in all sections of the country, and hope the day is not far distant when it will not only possess them, but will erect in the capital suitable ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... unload, yourself; nor cut your cross to your own liking. Some people think it would be better for them to have it large; and many, that they could carry it much faster if it were small; and even those who like it largest are usually very particular about its being ornamental, and made of the best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it—above all, not to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of "virtue" is ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... our stories serve beyond the important one of pleasing the little listeners? How can we make them distinctly serviceable, filling the difficult and well-nigh impossible role of "useful as well as ornamental"? ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... equinoctial or complement of the latitude of your habitation, and so that the side a m may exactly face the south. A dial of this sort has been standing in my garden, more than 12 months, and is found to answer the purpose well, being both useful and ornamental. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... to some mischief or I'm much mistaken," said Jack, as he drew his companions back further into a patch of black shadow cast by some ornamental shrubs. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... younger days was thus of the broadest character. Into it there entered and were blended the shrewd practical understanding of the Italian provincial; the ornamental accomplishments of the upper classes; the inspiration of Rome's history, with the long line of heroic figures that appear in the twelfth Ode of the first book like a gallery of magnificent portraits; first-hand knowledge of prominent men of action and letters; unceasing discussion of questions ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... food. From of old, death has been the lot of all men; but if the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.' CHAP. VIII. 1. Chi Tsze-ch'ang said, 'In a superior man it is only the substantial qualities which are wanted;— why should we seek for ornamental accomplishments?' ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... kept a small stock of French goods—laces, ribbons, and other articles, useful and ornamental—and these they exchanged for the products of the forest. The young men, as a rule, sought business and pleasure in the great woods. Some of them became voyageurs, or boatmen, in the service of the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... knowledge is—unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans, indeed, the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is one and which is the other; they are inextricably mingled. I prefer the talk of the French ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... the tall stone gateposts and up the cement walk, Ruth had but little time to observe her surroundings; but her eyes were quick, and she saw that the house she was about to enter was set some twenty feet back in quiet roomy grounds bordered by an ornamental stone wall. Distinguishing the house from its neighbors was a narrow veranda extending for some distance across the front, its slender columns rising to such a height that the flat roof, lodged with stone, formed a balcony easily accessible from the second ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... who used to sit by it and make rhymes. It is wonderfully rejuvenated, and is a handsome piece of furniture. It was the desk of my great-grandfather, and seemed to me a wretched old wreck when thee took it to Portland. I did not suppose it could be made either useful or ornamental. I wrote my first pamphlet on slavery, 'Justice and Expediency,' upon it, as well as a great many rhymes which might as well have never been written. I am glad that it has got a new ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... A wedged mortise-and-tenon joint, Fig. 266, may also be made by driving the wedges into saw kerfs in the tenon instead of along its sides as in No. 34. It is used in ornamental joints as ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... next day, according to promise, to call at Cargill's office, which was on the fifth floor of a large six-story building on the main street. There were two ornamental ground-glass doors opening from the end of a narrow hall. One was marked, "Bergen & Cargill, Commission Merchants, Private," and Bradley entered. A man seated at a low table was operating a telegraphic machine. He was in his shirt sleeves, and ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... and lingeringly from the stalls, so slowly that the lights were already being turned down and great shroud-like dust-cloths were being swaythed over the ornamental gilt-work. The laughing, chattering, yawning throng had filtered out of the vestibule, and was melting away in final groups from the steps of the theatre. An impatient attendant gave him his coat and locked up the ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... the perspective you can get." Then he went and stood by the fire, while Landseer sat in his place. Seated then in Chantry's chair, Landseer called out in perfect imitation of his host: "Come, young man, you think yourself ornamental; now make yourself useful, and ring the bell." Chantry did so, and when the butler came in he was confused and amazed to hear his master's voice from where Landseer sat in Chantry's place at the table. The ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... fig-tree on the bank is worth looking at. The mass of its branches, once so high-reaching and ornamental, now lie on the ground in a confused huddle, shattered and covered with parasites and orchids, while millions of ants are in full activity destroying the last clusters of foliage. It is only a question of weeks, perhaps days, before some blast of wind will ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... part. The woman wears no hat as a general rule, but in lieu thereof adorns her head with a bamboo comb, at times inlaid with mother-of-pearl, at others covered with a lamina of beaten silver, but nearly always ornamented with decorative incisions. A pair of ear plugs with ornamental metal laminae are placed ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... building, with its tower crowned by an ornamental open-work iron pyramid for wireless, and the segregated group of theological dormitories through whose windows earnest ringing young voices were sometimes heard at the practice of sermon-delivery, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... past Overton College," Grace had requested Tom, and Mrs. Gray had exclaimed in admiration of stately Overton Hall, standing like a sentinel in the midst of the wide campus. The chapel, the library, Greek Hall, Science Hall, in fact, each one of the smaller, but equally ornamental, buildings were duly pointed out ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... scarcely imaginable in the later ages of a nation; but in Bede's day a people accepting the 'glad tidings' was glad; and, unambitious as his style is of the ornamental or the figurative, it is brightened by that which it so faithfully describes. His chronicle is often poetry, little as he intended it to be such; nay, it is poetry in her 'humanities' yet more than in her distinctively spiritual province, and better poetry than is to be found in the ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Villa San Giorgio, most of all in the society of its graceful chatelaine, I had my fill of poetry and the other ornamental arts. Wit, love, philosophy, literature, bric-a-brac, religion—each had its petit- maitre, and each its sparkling Muse. It was before the day of Arcadia and shepherdesses, those flowers of our more jaded ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Dutch Colonial type of building, of which so many fine specimens still remain. These old Dutch houses are a constant puzzle to me. In most new countries the original white settlers content themselves with the most primitive kind of dwelling, for where there is so much work to be done the ornamental yields place to the necessary; but here, at the very extremity of the African continent, the Dutch pioneers created for themselves elaborate houses with admirable architectural details, houses recalling in some ways the chateaux of the Low Countries. Where did they get the architects to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... was on that account that Ottilie liked so well to work with him; but for some time past he had not found himself able to exercise his peculiar talent with any pleasure to himself. Whatever concerned the fruit-gardening or kitchen-gardening, as well as whatever had in time past been required in the ornamental gardens, he understood perfectly. One man succeeds in one thing, another in another; he succeeded in these. In his management of the orangery, of the bulbous flowers, in budding shoots and growing cuttings from the carnations and auriculas, he might challenge nature herself. But the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... firm strokes and painted in broad, flat tints on canvas that has the texture of tapestry. Many of these works are made repulsive by their aspect of multicoloured crude and barbarous imagery. Yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamental qualities, the lovely values, the ornamental taste, and the impression of primitive animalism." Since that rather faint praise Gauguin is aloft with the Olympians. His art is essentially classic. Again his new themes puzzled critics. A decorative ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... shown a keen delight in the beautiful—in flowers, music, poetry, literature, embroidery, paintings, porcelain. They cultivated ornamental plants, almost every house, as we saw, having its garden, large or small, and tables were often decorated with flowers in vases or ornamental wire baskets or fruits or sweetmeats. Confucius made music an instrument of government. Paper bearing the written character was so respected that ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... have the satisfaction of sending you, by the Colossus, a case containing six fan-mounts, two boxes of perfumery, four large and two small of Naples soap, amounting to eighteen Spanish dollars and a half. I hope to collect from Sicily some ornamental figures for a table, which I will forward to you, by the first safe conveyance, with some Neapolitan shawls. I shall not draw upon your agent, as I expect, when I return to Naples, to receive nearly forty pounds as your ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering-plants, in which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... household goods of any variety. Most of the specimens are ornamental or have a ceremonial significance. A number of artifacts, specifically the tubular stone pipes, human hair cape, cane whistles, and the probable bull-roarer, were associated with shamans among the historic peoples of the peninsula. It is most likely that one of the burials was a shaman, who had ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... Cotton Factory has been erected on a portion of the site of the Refinery, Laboratory and Incorporating Mills, and so arranged that the Confederate obelisk stands conspicuously in front of the centre; the battlemented and ornamental architecture of the Powder Works was adopted in the construction of the Factory buildings, which give them a fine ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... proved long-styled. These grandchildren grew vigorously, and soon exceeded in height two other lots of illegitimate seedlings of different parentage and one lot of equal-styled seedlings presently to be described. Hence I expected that they would have turned out highly ornamental plants; but when they flowered, they seemed, as my gardener remarked, to have gone back to the wild state; for the petals were pale-coloured, narrow, sometimes not touching each other, flat, generally deeply notched in the middle, but not flexuous on the margin, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... Court orchard, and quantities had to be picked, for it was the custom from time immemorial for each of the guests to take a basket of cherries away with them, and the baskets themselves—long, low, broad, and ornamental—were filled now first with cherry-leaves, and then with fruit, by the excited and ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... there), Admiral Clutterbuck recently had a fine old stew pond in the picturesque old grounds of the Manor House cleaned out, and stocked it with rainbow trout. They did well and grew fast, and so far as I know, none died. The water was not suited for their breeding, but the fish were very ornamental, and rose ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... King himself, nobody ever approached his magnificence. His buildings, who could number them? At the same time, who was there who did not deplore the pride, the caprice, the bad taste seen in them? He built nothing useful or ornamental in Paris, except the Pont Royal, and that simply by necessity; so that despite its incomparable extent, Paris is inferior to many cities of Europe. Saint-Germain, a lovely spot, with a marvellous view, rich forest, terraces, gardens, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... increased the ability of both to purchase manufactures in the Eastern markets. Both sections had wants which they could not supply by their simple household industries. They had to import not only their farming implements, but most of those articles, useful or ornamental, which were thought indispensable to a higher civilization. "Spots in Tennessee, in Ohio, and Kentucky," comments an English traveler, "that within the lifetime of even young men, witnessed only the arrow and the scalping knife, now ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... The ornamental alum baskets, whose manufacture was once so favourite a pursuit of lady-chemistry, were made upon this principle; the forms of the baskets being determined by wire framework, to which the crystals ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... rises in a truly majestic manner above the surrounding mass of houses. Its symmetry is astonishing. The three domes, and the small cupolas on the minarets, are of white marble; all the other parts, even the large slates with which the fine court-yard is paved, are of red sandstone. The inlaid ornamental work and stripes on the mosque, are ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... as a sailor's, secured the prince. The single silken band did not suffice; other cords, diverted from the ornamental to a like practical purpose, were wound around and around his excellency's legs and arms, holding him so tightly to the chair he could scarcely move. Having completed this task, Mr. Heatherbloom next, with ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... had learned to judge better than Lawyers, to manage better than bred Bailiffs:—a talent shining out indisputable, on whatever side you took him. 'An eloquent man he was,' says Jocelin, 'both in French and Latin; but intent more on the substance and method of what was to be said, than on the ornamental way of saying it. He could read English Manuscripts very elegantly, elegantissime: he was wont to preach to the people in the English tongue, though according to the dialect of Norfolk, where he had been brought up; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... should be helpful to all who are interested in the ornamental arts. Indeed, the present book contains some of the best suggestions as to architectural ornamentation under modern circumstances known to me. Architects can not forever go on plastering buildings ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet Splendidus to Caesar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with a peculiar emphasis, due to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, and disinclined to the florid and ornamental, than that of Cicero. So far he would, in that condition of the Roman culture and feeling, have been less acceptable to the public; but, on the other hand, he would have compensated this disadvantage by much more ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... public relations, purely commercial ones, implied the reverse of any cordial understanding. The provisioning of the Piper household was entrusted to Del, with other practical odds and ends of housekeeping, not ornamental, and the following is said to be a truthful record of one of their ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... his black cut-away coat, snuff-coloured trousers, and high-crowned felt hat with its ornamental band. This receded to the back of his head as he grew hotter. The harp was slung from his shoulder, the gilding looking tawdry in the open day. Twice during the walk, once in a round clearing fringed with ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... poetry which employed them. And from his sojourn in the North he is said to have imported a certain number of local peculiarities which would seem unfamiliar and harsh in the South. His editor's apology for this use of "ancient solemn words," as both proper and as ornamental, is worth quoting; it is an early instance of what is supposed to be not yet common, a sense of pleasure in that wildness ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... vicinity of the graves were scattered the osseous remains of a number of horses which had been sacrificed no doubt during the funeral ceremonies. In one of the graves, said to contain the body of a chief, in addition to a number of articles useful and ornamental, were found parts of the skeleton of a boy, and tradition states that a captive boy was buried alive ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... entered the metropolis of the luxury and wealth of the North. Here we passed a jeweller's shop, the whole window aglow with the dull gleam of gold and ivory—the terrible nugget jewellery so much affected in these parts and the walrus ivory which is Alaska's other contribution of material for the ornamental arts. Here we passed a veritable department store, its ground-floor plate-glass window set as a drawing-room, with gilded, brocaded chairs, marquetry table, and ormolu clock, and I know not what costliness of rug and curtain. It ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... floor of this chapel there now stands an ornamental altar tomb, which was found lying in fragments near the Abbey by the Rev. Dr. Boog, one of the Abbey ministers, and who in 1817 had it brought within the chapel and erected again. It supports a recumbent figure, believed to be the effigy of Marjory Bruce, the daughter of Robert ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... and lays of chivalry contain many descriptions of the ornamental needle-work of those early days. In one of the ancient ballads, a knight, after describing a fair damsel whom he had rescued and carried to his castle, adds that she "knewe how to sewe and marke all manner of silken worke," and no doubt he made her repair many of his mantles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Norman choir was replaced by that which now exists. His successor, Abbot Snow, built the chapels on the south side of the choir. Abbot Newland, between 1481 and 1515, enriched the transepts with a groined roof and with ornamental work of the decorated Gothic style, and erected the central tower. Abbot Elliott, who followed Newland, removed the Norman nave and aisles, intending to rebuild them; but this was prevented by his death in 1526 and by the dissolution ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... she said, between laugh and sigh, "if only it could be kept out of the newspapers! I see it from here under the Fashionable Intelligence. 'The beautiful Princess Zobraska was observed in a boat on the ornamental water in Regent's Park with the well-known—tiens—what are you?—politician, say—with the well-known young politician, Mr. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... end—these, which taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage. What to put in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually re-arising. And the sphinx that patrols the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tenderness, even a Christian forgiveness. Or they inserted Christian endings, while they left the rest of the stories as pagan as before. Later on, while the stories were still learned by the bards and recited, they were written down, and somewhat spoiled by a luxurious use of ornamental adjectives, and by the weak, roving and uninventive fancy of men and monks aspiring to literature but ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the system of oil-painting known before the time of Van Eyck; but it remains a question in what kind of works and with what degree of refinement this system had been applied. The passages in Eraclius refer only to ornamental work, imitations of marble, etc.; and although, in the records of Ely cathedral, the words "pro ymaginibus super columnas depingendis" may perhaps be understood as referring to paintings of figures, the applications ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... boy in the form of cakes and "goody," for there were none of her letters among this set; but a whole collection of the rector's, to whom the Latin in his boy's letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse. I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an ornamental language, but not very useful, I think—at least to judge from the bits I remember out of the rector's letters. One was, "You have not got that town in your map of Ireland; but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, as the Proverbia say." Presently it became very evident that "poor Peter" ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... death, are silently built. The forty or fifty Japanese, and the few volunteers who are with them, have now been reinforced by all the Italians, who have been given a big strip of outer wall and a fortified hillock in Prince Su's ornamental garden—a hillock which commands a great stretch of territory, as territory goes in our wall split area. For here in the Su wang-fu the number of walls and buildings is terrible, and Heaven only knows how seventy or eighty men can even make a pretence of holding ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... were painting the outside of a house called 'Gothic Lodge'. At one corner it had a tower surmounted by a spire or steeple, and this steeple terminated with an ornamental wrought-iron pinnacle which had to be painted. The ladder they had was not quite long enough, and besides that, as it had to stand in a sort of a courtyard at the base of the tower, it was impossible to slant it sufficiently: ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Even Macaulay paled. Sharpe talked all the blessed afternoon, and grave men listened, enchanted; and, of all he said, nothing stuck. Where be now your Sharpiana? The learned may be compared to mines. These desultory charmers are more like the ornamental cottage near Staines, forty or fifty rooms, and the whole structure one story high. The mine teems with solid wealth; but you must grope and trouble to come to it: it is easier and pleasanter to run about the cottage with a lot of rooms. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in making verjuice, a delicious beverage in the meridian heats of a July sun. The natives were gentle and amiable, graceful in figure, agile in movement, and exhibited unusual taste, dressing their hair in a variety of twists and braids, intertwined with ornamental feathers. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... sitting, was the farthest of a suite of apartments opening into each other, on the second story. These apartments were somewhat lavishly furnished, but in the strictest good taste, and the eye was charmed by a profusion of choice plants blossoming in ornamental flower-vases, placed upon brackets on the wall; or of orchids floating in pendant luxuriance from baskets attached to the ceiling. Then, Madeleine had not forgotten the picturesque use so often made of the ivy in her native land, and had trained ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... a quiet, even pace, and presently reaching the end of the alley, came out on a soft stretch of greensward facing a small ornamental lake and fountain. Here grew tall rushes, bamboos and flag-flowers—here, too, on the quiet lake floated water-lilies, white and pink, opening their starry hearts to the glory of the morning sun. A quaintly shaped, rustic arbour covered with jasmine, faced the pool, and here sat the Queen ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... study of art than genius sends; the hope of profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the arts. The French have attained to a sort of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... understanding of Style as the living body of thought, and not its "dress," which might be more or less ornamental, the error I am noticing would not have spread so widely. But, naturally, when men regarded the grace of style as mere grace of manner, and not as the delicate precision giving form and relief to matter—as mere ornament, stuck on to arrest incurious eyes, and not as effective expression—their ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the students at Hope had remembered Nellie, and even Miss Harrow sent her a small water-color picture. From the boys of Brill came half a dozen presents— some useful and some ornamental. Even Tom's former enemy, Dan Baxter, who was now his friend, had not forgotten him, and sent a pair of napkin rings, suitably engraved. Tom's own present to his bride was a magnificent diamond brooch, ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... tree may be already nearly girdled, when the disease is first noticed. A tree taken in time, however, may have its life prolonged indefinitely though it may have the blight in some portion of it every year. More particularly does this apply to valuable ornamental and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... bananas, pineapples, coffee, melons, ornamental plants, sugar, corn, rice, beans, potatoes; ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the republic the Ten in fact destroyed its liberties, disposed of its finances, overruled the constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in public affairs, and finally reduced the nominal prince—the doge—to a mere puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... carriages were all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the seaside, some to the drives in the park, and all with the delightful consciousness that speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possessions of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach; the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of your wheels; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves; the stalking gamekeepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest—there ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... trade with the Loucheux Indians. It is their request and I hope it will be attended to. I would not venture to make the demand, were it not from conviction that without this favourite article these Indians look with indifference on the best of our goods. No other ornamental article is ever asked for or wanted ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... disturbing element on the border line of civilization that writers of that period depicted, nor the authors of the bloodcurdling drama portrayed. The average busy citizen paid little attention to them, considering them more ornamental than useful. But this was about the stripe that was wanted and could be secured for the work in hand. A good big bluff was considered sufficient for the end in view. This crowd was mounted, armed to the teeth, and all ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... institutions, opinion, manners, the habits of society, and of domestic life, happily combine to give the just proportion of all that is attractive, useful, ornamental, and amiable to the female character—in England, Count Altenberg had hopes of finding a woman who, to the noble simplicity of character that was once the charm of Switzerland, joined the polish, the elegance, that was once the pride of France; a woman possessing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... with palm leaves. Many of these edifices were large and commodious, containing several rooms. Their articles of household furniture were convenient, and some of them quite elegant. The dresses, especially those of the females, were artistic and often highly ornamental. Very beautiful shawls and mantillas were manufactured by them. Their finest fabrics were woven by the hand from the fibrous bark of the mulberry-tree and hemp, which grew wild and in abundance. The natives had ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... the gate. With an eye trained to recognize the value of details, she saw that the sitting-room was furnished with the same deplorable taste which had selected the golden-oak hatrack and the assortment of ornamental walking-sticks. The woodwork had been stained to match the oak of the barbarous writing-table, which held a distorted bronze lamp, with the base composed of a heavily draped feminine figure, a massive desk set, also of bronze, a pile of newspapers, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... them. He looked again. Alas! his incomparable nails were also gone, shorn off to the level of his finger-ends. For all their evidence he might be one who had passed his days in discreditable industry. Each moment a fresh point of degradation met his benumbed vision. His profuse and ornamental locks were reduced to a single roughly-plaited coil; his sandals were inelegant and harsh; in place of his many-coloured flowing robes a scanty blue gown clothed his form. He who had been a god was undistinguishable from the labourers ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... morning visitors, it is not necessary that the lady should lay aside the employment in which she may be engaged, particularly if it consists of light or ornamental needle-work. Politeness, however, requires that music, drawing, or any occupation which would completely engross the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... altogether. He took a lively interest in the selection. The house, he said, was in the wrong place, and he showed Mother where it ought to have been built. He suggested shifting it, and setting a hedge and ornamental trees in front and fruit trees at the back, and making a nice place of it. Little things like that pleased Mother. "Anyway," she would sometimes say to Sal, "he's a useful old man, and knows how to look after things about the place." Casey did. Whenever any watermelons were ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... at the palace of Hampton Court, stood King William III. leaning against a gilt railing, placed round some ornamental objects, near one of the windows. The famous Lord Keeper Somers stood beside him, while, at a little distance behind appeared Keppel, Lord Albemarle, and before him, a tall, fine-looking man, somewhat past the middle age, slight, but dignified in his person, and with an air of ease and grace in ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... a little fortune on that island, doing nothing for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. It often used to amuse me thinking over it while I was there. I did calculations of it—big—all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring." ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... answer, went out of the room and returned, bringing with him a most curious sword. It was long, and all the blade, which was very thick and heavy, was to within a quarter of an inch of the cutting edge worked into an ornamental pattern exactly as we work soft wood with a fret-saw, the steel, however, being invariably pierced in such a way as not to interfere with the strength of the sword. This in itself was sufficiently curious, but what was still more so was that all the edges of the hollow spaces cut through ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... Harford writes of the famous figures of Aurora and Twilight, Day and Night: "The four figures that adorn the tombs are allegorical; and they are specially worthy of notice, because they first set the example of connecting ornamental appendages of this description with funereal monuments. Introduced by so great an authority, this example was quickly followed throughout the whole of Europe." The carelessness of this assertion is curious. The custom of connecting allegorical figures ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various |
