"Plume" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and carried out to the cab. Olga followed him, wearing the red hat with the green plume which had so amused Janice when the Swedish girl had arrived. She drove away in the cab without even looking back at ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... lashing and the wriggling and the jumping,—had not gone on without much disturbance to the grass-tops. Timothy head and clover-bloom, oxeye and feathery plume-grass, they had bowed and swayed and shivered till the commotion, very conspicuous to one looking down upon the tranquil, flowery sea of green, caught the attention of the marsh-hawk, which at that ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... among the warriors, and, as soon as my wounds were healed, I went out to battle. In three fights I had gained five skulls, and when I returned they weighed me out gold. I then had a house and wives, and my father appointed me a Caboceer. I wore the plume of eagle and ostrich feathers, my dress was covered with fetishes, I pulled on the boots with bells, and with my bow and arrows slung on my back, my spear and blunderbuss, my knives and my double-handed sword, I led the men to battle and brought back skulls and slaves. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... fearless as the lion roused, but gentle as the lamb, Came, marching at his people's head, the brave and good Bonchamps. Charette, where honour was the prize, the hero sure to win; And there, with Henri Quatre's plume, the young Rochejaquelin. And there, in peasant speech and garb—the terror of the foe, A noble made by Heaven's own hand, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... sensible plaisir. Les nouvelles indirectes de votre sante qui me sont parvenues de temps en temps m'avaient excessivement preoccupe. J'ai su que le mois de janvier avait ete mauvais, et quoique j'eusse bien des fois l'envie de prendre la plume, elle m'est tombee des mains lorsque j'ai reflechi que j'ignorais malheureusement dans quel etat de corps et d'esprit ma lettre pourrait vous trouver. Pendant tout l'hiver j'ai recu par lettre et de bouche une infinite de demandes ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... once, Gavroche, pushing his cart in front of him, and at the very moment when he was about to turn into the Rue des Vielles-Haudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... cheek of childhood of its bloom; Where she, another Philomena, moved Like a fond Charity—the coming wife Ordained to crown his being: And he loved. The future rose before him, joy and gloom; For where the sunlight shone, there waved the sable plume. ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... singing when the orchards were in bloom, And the sweetness of his music made the peacock don his plume; Ay! I've heard cock-robin-redbreast chirping on a sunny day, And the skylark soaring skywards, merrily sing his festal lay; And the brown thrush and the bluebird thrill their little treble notes; ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... warnings by the standard of a decade of realities. The book is weak on anti-aircraft guns, for example, and still more negligent of submarines. Much, no doubt, will strike the reader as quaint and limited but upon much the writer may not unreasonably plume himself. The interpretation of the German spirit must have read as a caricature in 1908. Was it a caricature? Prince Karl seemed a fantasy then. Reality has since copied Prince Carl with an astonishing faithfulness. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... and every way well Equipt, they took their way, attended only by two Lacqueys, toward the Church di Santa Croce, before which they were to perform their Exercises of Chivalry. Hippolito wore upon his Helm a large Plume of Crimson Feathers, in the midst of which was artificially placed Leonora's Handkerchief. His Armour was gilt, and enammell'd with Green and Crimson. Aurelian was not so happy as to wear any token to recommend him to the notice of his Mistress, so had only a Plume of Sky- colour and White ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... feathers of the flamingo is craft, the brightest plume that graces the warrior's brow. Are not your people brave? Yet does the friendly tree shield them while the hatchet is thrown. Who doubts the courage of Powhatan? Yet has the eye of darkness seen Powhatan steal to the ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... was taking to her, and so kindly was his manner that I could readily believe him when he said he was loved wherever he went. He examined my own uniform with as much curiosity as a child, admiring the plume of my busby, and passing his fingers through the sable with which my dolman was trimmed. He drew my sword, too, and then when I told him how many men I had cut down with it, and set my finger on the notch made ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spots—had lost their half-indolent reserve and brimmed over quite frankly with the joy of life. She scooped up a handful of the dry, clean sand from either side of her, raised it aloft, and let it trickle slowly between her fingers. The wind snatched at the sand and sprayed it away in a beautiful plume. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... 16), a lady whose "piercing" beauty it was, apparently, that Steele described under the name of Chloe, in No. 4 of the Tatler. Jervas painted her as a country girl, "with a liveliness that shows she is conscious, but not affected, of her perfections." Coke was the Sir Plume of Pope's Rape of ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... detect in that rider with the flowing locks and gaudy tie, in his dress of velvet and of gold, the master spirit that he proved to be. That garb, fantastic as at first sight it appeared to be, was to be the distinguishing mark which, during all the remaining years of that war, like the white plume of Henry of Navarre, was to show us where, in the thickest of the fight, we were to seek our leader—for, where danger was, where swords were to cross, where Greek met Greek, there was he, always. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... its pearly plume A nod in the woodland's odorous gloom; By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade, That the myriad ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... re-awakenings in the riotous wine-glow that merged off into pale green to the north, there was also a touch of loneliness in the flat and far-flung sky-line. It seemed to recede so bewilderingly and so oppressively into a silence and into an emptiness which the lonely plume of smoke from one lonely shack-chimney both crowned and accentuated with a wordless touch ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... buildings which were observed on them. They could not help admiring at some distance ahead of their canoe, when the windings of the river would permit, a noble and solitary palm tree with its lofty branches bending over the water's edge; to them it was not unlike a majestical plume of feathers nodding over the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and convinced that he was very near her, she sought him amid the crowd of people who sat and knelt in front of her, blackening the dusk, a vague darkness in which she could at first distinguish nothing but an occasional white plume and a bald head. But her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and above the uninteresting backs of middle-aged men she recognised his thin sharp shoulders. She had been compelled to look up from her prayers, and she wondered if he had been thinking of her. If so, it was very wrong of him to interrupt ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... there is a lovely English girl, with eyes as shy as violets, and a voice as sweet! She has a sweet Gainsborough head, and a great Gainsborough hat, with a mighty plume in front of it, which makes a shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a sage-green robe, "mystic, wonderful," all embroidered with subtle devices and flowers, and birds of tender tint; very straight and tight in front, and adorned behind, along the spine, ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... Marchesa Fazzoleni upon them. She stood smiling, cigarette in hand, a tall woman, still young—though she was the mother of five robust children. Her closely-fitting black dress somehow resembled a riding-habit; her grey gauntletted gloves drawn to the elbow, her Amazon's hat with its plume, the alertness and grace of the whole attitude, the brilliancy of her clear black eye—all these carried with them the same suggestions of open-air life, of health of body and mind—of a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and danger by seeking a partly-fallen, leaning tree-trunk, or a thick branch, fifteen or twenty feet above the ground. This was well above the zone of perpetual torment, for the obnoxious insects formed a stratum that hugged the earth. Among the branches the squirrels frolicked, whisking their plume-like tails and keeping at a respectable distance from every other animal that was not of their own family. Some of them were of extraordinary size, with red backs and white under parts; others belonged to the extreme lower end of the scale and were scarcely ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... legion of hunters and huntresses did not fail to start on my heels with renewed ardor and stupid mirth. I still recognized at their head the lady with the waving blue plume, who distinguished herself by her peculiar animosity, and upon whom I invoked with all my heart the most serious accidents to which equestrianism may be subject. It was she who encouraged her odious accomplices, when ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... out a plume of smoke. "You know, John Henry," he said, "you might have made a good FBI man yourself. You've ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... carelessness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part indeed have been trod under foot, and are forgotten; but yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quivers of my enemies, of them that unprovoked have lain in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... yet lightened by the coming breeze. When we reached the inner bay, we mounted a rock, from which, with the lessened interval between us, I could distinctly see the boat. One of the occupants—a lady—wore a dark hat with a scarlet plume drooping from it. She leaned over the gunwale, dipping her hands in the blazing water and holding them up against the light, as if playing rainbows in the sunset. The other figure was busy in fastening up the sail, ready to catch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... like a plume: antennae that have long ciliated processes on each side of each joint: ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... last eight days bright buckles; on occasions of 'Half Gala' gold or silver embroidered trousers of the color of the uniform and in the one as in the other case gold or silver embroidered hat with white plume; with the 'small' uniform, however, black trousers (or knee-breeches, black silk stockings, shoes with black bows and the 'three-cornered' hat with black plume). During the first fourteen days gentlemen wear black woolen vests ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... of myself and of mankind," Mr. Rossitur repeated, "when I see what mere weakness can do, and how proudly valueless strength is contended to be. You are looking, Captain Rossitur; but, after all, a cap and plume really makes a man taller only ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... is a very fine group. Philip is represented dressed in a suit of black armour, elaborately chased in gold, standing on a throne covered with a crimson carpet. Near him is his dwarf, dressed in black, holding the helmet, adorned with a magnificent plume of feathers, and turning towards his master (the fountain of honour) a most expressive and intelligent face. "That dwarf," said Mr. Beckford, "was a man of great ability and exercised over his master a vast influence." Lower down you discover the head of a Mexican ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... then became general, and for nearly a year Lorenzo Bezan and his followers were in the battle field. Victory seemed to have marked him for a favorite, and his sword seemed invincible; wherever he led, he infused his own daring and impetuous spirit into the hearts of his followers, and where his plume waved in the ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... part of their thought, since what emboldened them to deny the poor world's faith was that they were too impatient to understand it. Indeed, the enlightenment common to young wits and worm-eaten old satirists, who plume themselves on detecting the scientific ineptitude of religion—something which the blindest half see—is not nearly enlightened enough: it points to notorious facts incompatible with religious tenets literally taken, but it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... stubborn mind of the Gods, and of mortals, and with thee he of varied plume, that darts about on swiftest wing; and flies over the earth and over the loud-resounding briny ocean; and Love charms to subjection, on whose maddened heart the winged urchin come gleaming with gold, the race of the mountain whelps, and of those that ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Probably, if he had considered every combination of words in the language, he could not have found a better one. To-day we recognize it as the greatest nom de plume ever chosen, and, somehow, we cannot believe that the writer of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn" and "Roughing It" could have selected any ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace! While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume, And the bride-maidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay. If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity. Just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heart is not covered with medals, nor does he wear the gorgeous white plume parade helmet nowadays, when going out for a horse-back ride or a drive. I saw him come from a motor run late in the afternoon—four touring cars full of staff officers and personal entourage—and was struck ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... was a marvel of beauty and richness; and just as he was about to put on the linen corslet of his native land, Pantheia came, bringing him a golden breastplate and a helmet of gold, and armlets and broad bracelets for his wrists, and a full flowing purple tunic, and a hyacinth-coloured helmet-plume. All these she had made for him in secret, taking the measure of his armour without his knowledge. [3] And when he saw them, he ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... girls did not seem to be thinking of the possible war, or of the men who earned their bread thwarting it by preparation. One would suppose them to be just two beautifully cared for, careless-of-life girls, thinking of what some man had said at the dance the night before, or of the texture of the plume on some one's hat, or, to get down to the really serious issues of life, whether or not they could afford that ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... took a turn in the great square of Siena—the vast piazza, shaped like a horse-shoe, where the market is held beneath the windows of that crenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the bonnet of a captain. Here he strolled about, watching a brown contadino disembarrass his donkey, noting the progress of half an hour's chaffer over a bundle of carrots, wishing a young girl with eyes like animated agates would ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... fields, or peered out of embowering orchards. Their casements were open to catch the balmy air, while in not a few the sound of clattering hoofs on the hard road drew fair faces to the window or door, to look inquisitively after the officer wearing the white plume in his military chapeau, as he dashed by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... walked forward one species of trees caught their attention. They were palm-trees, but of a sort they had not yet met with. They were very tall, with a thick, globe-shaped head of pinnate, plume-like leaves. But what rendered these trees peculiar was the stem. It was slender in proportion to the height of the tree, and was thickly covered with long needle-shaped spines, not growing irregularly, but set in bands, or rings, around the tree. This new palm ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... singled out, as his probable captor, one peculiarly unattractive-looking horseman, whose crimson sheepskin coat and long horsetail plume were streaming in the wind, and just as he had braced himself to meet the onset against the great "loess," or dirt-cliff, he felt a twitch at his black upper robe, and a low voice—a girl's, he ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... loss—then, when I felt my energies at their lowest, when mind and bodily frame alike flapped loose, like a flag of smut upon the bars of a grate, I was living most intensely, and the soul's wings grew fast, unfolding plume and feather. It was then that life burnt with its fiercest heat, when it withdrew me, faintly struggling, away from all that pleased and caressed the mind and the body, into the silent glow of the furnace. Strange ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bordering the roads, thatching grass, or rather strong upright waving grass, with a beautiful feathery plume, is planted. This is used to make the walls of the houses, and these are then plastered outside and in with clay and cowdung. The tall hedge of dense grass keeps what little breeze there may be away from the traveller. The road is something like an Irish 'Boreen,' ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Hainault. His armour was blue and white, beautifully wrought and inlaid with silver. His steed was black, having the suit and furniture of the war-horse complete. The crouptiere and estival, together with the chanfron, were of the most costly description. A plume of white feathers decorated his casque, extending his athletic form into almost ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... beds of bloom, Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose. 'T is reckless prodigality which throws Into the night these wafts of rich perfume Which sweep across the garden like a plume. Over the trees a single bright star glows. Dear garden of my childhood, here my years Have run away like little grains of sand; The moments of my life, its hopes and fears Have all found utterance here, where now I stand; My eyes ache with the weight of unshed ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... Way, lady, my lady, Walking on the King's Way, will you go in blue? With an ermine border, and a plume of peacock feathers, And a silver circlet, and a sapphire on your shoe? Neither blue nor sapphire I'll wear upon the King's Way; I will go in duffle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... more fortunate destiny than Count Larinski. She did not plume herself on having invented a new gun, nor did she depend upon her ingenuity for a livelihood; she had inherited from her mother a yearly income of about a hundred thousand livres, which enabled her to enjoy life and make others happy, for she was very ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... up the steep hillside, Against the western wind, While the cockerel plume that decked his ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... old battle-ship; the trig crew and marines lined up for inspection; the revelries of the foreign ports; the great manoeuvres; the target practice. Never would his old heart swell again under the full-dress uniform nor his eyes sparkle under the plume of his rank. He was retired on half-pay. Only a few close friends knew how his half-pay was invested. There remained perhaps ten of the old war-crew, and among them every Christmas the admiral's half-pay was divided. This and his daughter were the two unalloyed joys ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... had yielded to his prying gaze, and, but too well, he knew the truth of Tom Moore's trite remark, "False the light on glory's plume!" ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... descended some broken ground, so steep that it was almost impossible to keep the saddle. Looking at Edwards, I observed that the ears of his horse appeared between his feet, while its tail waved over his head like a dragoon's plume. At last we were compelled to dismount and lead our animals, our minds being sometimes divided between the danger of missing our footing in front, and being tumbled on ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the Deschars have seized upon, the folly of a man of letters, a charming villa upon which he lavished one hundred thousand francs and which has been sold at auction for eleven thousand. Caroline has a new dress to air, or a hat with a weeping willow plume—things which a tilbury will set off to a charm. Little Charles is left with his grandmother. The servants have a holiday. The youthful pair start beneath the smile of a blue sky, flecked with milk-while clouds merely to heighten the effect. They breathe the pure air, through which trots ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... fainting away plaintively, the window was raised. Drennen saw Ygerne Bellaire, half in light, half in shadow. She leaned out. She was laughing softly. Garcia, his bow carrying to the ground his hat which in the dim light appeared to Drennen's fancy to wear the black plume which would not have been misplaced there, came closer to the window. Upon the girl's face was a gaiety Drennen had not seen there until now; her lips curved to it, her eyes danced with it. She had a little meadow flower in her hand; Drennen wondered if she had been eagerly selecting it from ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... lay ships great and small, ships with stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray spirals wreathing upward from their stacks. Was one of these the Rufus Smith, and would I reach her—or him—before the thin gray feather became a thick black plume? I thought of my aunt at the mercy of these unknown adventurers with whom she had set forth, helpless as a little fat pigeon among hawks, and I felt, desperately, that I must reach her, must save her from them and bring her safe back to shore. How I ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... madness, especially as we had no weapons capable of supporting such a demonstration. We therefore submitted to our fate; and with great roughness on the part of those who assisted at our toilette, were in the act of being reduced to as unsophisticated a state (to use King Lear's phrase) as the plume-less biped Andrew Fairservice, who stood shivering between fear and cold at a few yards' distance. Good chance, however, saved us from this extremity of wretchedness; for, just as I had yielded up my cravat (a ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... camels go first. Each has its head adorned with a red embroidered headstall, studded with shining plates of metal and red and yellow pompons, and a plume waves above its forehead. Round the chest is a row of brass sleigh-bells, and one large bell hangs round the neck. Two of these bells are like small church bells; they are so big that the camels would knock their knees against them if they ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... It being February and chill with glittering snow on the ground, she had chosen a dark-green broadcloth gown, quite new, with lapis-lazuli buttons that worked a "Y" pattern across her bosom, a seal turban with an emerald plume which complemented a sealskin jacket with immense wrought silver buttons, and bronze shoes. To perfect it all, Aileen had fastened lapis-lazuli ear-rings of a small flower-form in her ears, and wore a plain, heavy gold bracelet. Lynde came ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... go to the temple of Diana and to the temple of Venus. In the last-named place they get married. These worshippers of the deities of old are dressed as follows. Here is the description of a man's costume: "Then changed he his armour taking one of azure colour, his plume crimson, and one fall of blew in it; the furniture to his horse being of those colours, and his device onely a cipher, which was made of all the letters of his misstrisses name, delicately composed within the compasse of one." Here is ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... was a pleasant street in spite of its improvements; in spite, too, of a long, gray smoke-plume crossing the summer sky and dropping an occasional atomy of coal upon Mr. Corliss's white coat. The green continuous masses of tree-foliage, lawn, and shrubbery were splendidly asserted; there was a faint wholesome odour from the fine block ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... which has a stock of sheep within its borders to preserve that stock most scrupulously. It is said that in Colorado, where sheep have long been protected, they are noticeably increasing, and growing tamer. I have been told of one stock and mining camp, near Silver Plume, where there is a bunch of sheep absolutely protected by public sentiment, in which the miners, and in fact the whole community, take ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... bud folding it about, like the leaves of a Cabbage. Which leaves smell rarely sweet, and look of a lovely yellow colour like gold. This bud blowes into divers bunches of Flowers, spreading it self open like a Plume of Feathers, each Flower whitish, but very small. The Roots of this shrub they use for Ropes, splitting them into Thongs, and then making ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... a garden that slopes to the south and the sun, A garden in Kerry I know, Where the poppy 's a-bloom, and the red roses run O'er the wall, and the pampas-plume's streamers seem spun Of the floss of the moon in the dusk watches won, And the lake ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... the early breeze, and darkness in the sky, When, with sable plume, and cloak, and pall, a funeral train swept by; Methought—St. Mary, shield us well!—that other forms moved there, Than those of mortal brotherhood, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, Lords, and Attendants. This is the first appearance of Hamlet.—Here, then, we must suppose a clapping of hands, and a cry of hats off—down—down—you will therefore fancy to yourself a young gentleman, arrayed in black velvet, with a plume of sable feathers in his bonnet, big enough for the fore-horse of Ophelia's hearse. But as in a certain assembly, if a member, however elevated in rank, rise to speak late in the evening, he sets his hearers coughing, there being no pectoral lozenge equal to an ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... a swan, that, after living six weeks in a nasty pool upon a common, is got back into its own Thames. I do nothing but plume and clean myself, and enjoy the verdure and silent waves. Neatness and greenth are so essential in my opinion to the country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk and dirty peasants, I seem in a terrestrial purgatory that is neither ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... blue, with gilt epaulets upon the shoulders, and a stiff collar that reached above his ears. Atop his long painted hair there was settled, to the coat collar, a stove-pipe hat, with a silver-braid band and a red wool plume two feet high. His feet were squeezed into high-heeled military boots, of shiny leather. Around his neck was a tight black stock, or collar. Around his waist was a red sash. Upon his hands were loose white cotton gloves. Upon his ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... ambiguous homage which encroaches too closely on the severe dignity of woman. Love requires inviolable secrecy till a lawful union permits it to be publicly declared. This secrecy secures it from the poisonous intermixture of vanity, which might plume itself with pretensions or boasts of a confessed preference; it gives it the appearance of a vow, which from its mystery is the more sacredly observed. This morality does not, it is true, condemn cunning and dissimulation if employed in the cause of love, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... waiting for you to ask that, Bunny; it's a long time since I did anything upon which I plume myself more. Of course, in the first place, I spotted you at once by these prison articles; they were not signed, but the fist was the ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... swept him onward. Manoeuvering cautiously, jockeying the great machine with that consummate skill he had acquired from long practice, he soon beheld the dim outlines of the vast cliff, the long walls, the dull reflections of the fire-plume, the slanting ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the priests are honoured. They plume themselves on not having certain vices, for which ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... among our officers. When his regiment wavered and commenced to fall back, he halted until he was left alone; then at a slow walk, rode to the pike, and with his hat off rode slowly out of fire. He was splendidly mounted, wore in his hat a long black plume, was himself a large and striking figure, and I have often thought that it was the handsomest picture of cool and desperate courage I saw in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... hunters looked anxiously at each other. One of the fires was more clearly seen, and they could even distinguish an Indian sentinel in his frightful battle-costume. The long mane of a bison covered his head, and above that waved a plume of feathers. Bois-Rose pointed him out to Pepe, but luckily the fog was so thick that the Indian, rendered himself visible by the fire, near which he stood, could not yet see the island. However, as if an instinct had warned him to be watchful, he raised his head and shook ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... whenever a genius is born in its midst by causes acting in the invisible and molecular cycle. But if Mr. Allen means by 'physical conditions' the whole of nature, his assertion, though true, forms but the vague Asiatic {238} profession of belief in an all-enveloping fate, which certainly need not plume itself on any specially advanced or ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... lady with him just asked him whether he wrote under his own name or a nom-de-plume, and you know how ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... species is not rare in undisturbed woods, especially on fallen willows. The expanded capillitia are very soft and plume-like, waving and nodding, very lightly attached below to the centre of the peridial cup. The capillitium threads are rough, with irregular spines and sharp-edged transverse plates, occasionally extending to form rings. Resembles the first species somewhat in habit, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... with points and knots. His shirt was of the same hue, with a short taffeta cloak over, bound at the neck by a monstrous ruff, out of which his face looked like a calf's head from a dish of trimmings. To crown all, a white plume waved in his hat, while the rapier at his waist was caught up jauntily behind him, so that the point and the hilt lay on a level at either hip. His face was both cheerful and weak; and, as he strutted up to ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... head passing and passing across the black window space. To her sharp, waiting soul Barrow Farm took on a sudden poignant and foreign beauty. The house was yellow where the rain had soaked it, gold yellow like a sun-struck southern house, under the black plume of the firs, a yellow that made the sky's blue solid and thick. The grass, bright green after the rain, stretched with the tight smoothness of velvet over the slopes and ridges of the field. A stripe of darker green, where their feet had trodden down the blades, led straight ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... instead of being disagreeably juvenile, really added to the pleasant dreaminess that hung like a haze over his mild young features. He was slender, he carried himself rather quaintly; but his gait was buoyant and spirited. At that season the lilacs were in bloom, and Silverthorn held a glorious plume of the pale blossoms in his hand. What the first touch of fire is to the woods in autumn, the blooming of the lilac is to the new summer—a mystery, a beauty, too exquisite to last long intact; evanescent as human breath, yet, like that, fraught with incalculable values. All this Silverthorn ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... countenance we had ever beheld. This man's lips were as thick as a Negro's, the nose was flat, he had but one gleaming black eye, for the other was represented by a hollow in the face, and his whole expression was cruel and sensual to a degree. From the large head rose a magnificent plume of white ostrich feathers, his body was clad in a shirt of shining chain armour, whilst round the waist and right knee were the usual garnishes of white ox-tail. In his right hand was a huge spear, about the neck a thick torque of gold, and bound on the forehead shone dully ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... round the lawn and go away. At last our turn comes. A pleasant-looking man, all in white, with a red sash and sword, and a wonderful bunch of tassels and plaits in gold, called an aiguillette, on his breast, greets us as cordially as if we were old friends. Notice the plume of rose-pink feathers on his helmet! He seems to know all about us without our saying a word, and as he leads the way across the short grass lawn to where our host and hostess stand ready to greet their guests, he tells ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... you harbour that great cheval-glass Filling up your narrow room? You never preen or plume, Or look in a week at your full-length figure ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... nightingale, Who with her joyous tale Doth make thy heart rejoice, Whether a singing plume she be, or viewless ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... a brown-study of her own. She was dressed with her usual perfection in a gray cloth, just suggesting the change of season. Her felt hat with its plume of feathers lay on her lap, and her hair, slightly loosened by the journey, captured the eye by its abundance and beauty. The violets on her breast perfumed the room, and the rings upon her hands flashed just as much as is permitted to an unmarried girl, and no more. As Mrs. Fotheringham looked ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... below! Never was thy Romagna without war In her proud tyrants' bosoms, nor is now: But open war there left I none. The state, Ravenna hath maintain'd this many a year, Is steadfast. There Polenta's eagle broods, And in his broad circumference of plume O'ershadows Cervia. The green talons grasp The land, that stood erewhile the proof so long, And pil'd in bloody heap the host of France. "The' old mastiff of Verruchio and the young, That tore Montagna in their wrath, still make, Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs. "Lamone's city and Santerno's ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... gray wall of the castle. Certain of his course, whether in light or shadow, he still hurries on. Winding among orange trees and fountains, he enters the vaulted archway which leads to the castle. Ascending with every step, he stands at last upon a level with its pillared portico. Taking the long plume from his cap, he glides from beneath the vault of the archway. No one is near. Songs and shouts are on his left; there then must be the hall of festival. Silence reigns on his right, and the long ranges of windows glitter only with the light of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wake of white fire. The air was balm; the islands were enchanted places, abandoned by Spaniard and Indian, overgrown, serpent-haunted. The reef, the still water, pink or gold, the gleaming beach, the green plume of the palm, the scarlet birds, the cataracts of bloom,—the senses swooned with the color, the steaming incense, the warmth, the wonder of that fantastic world. Sometimes, in the crystal waters near the land, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... some of his most notable adherents in Sulaco was drawing to an end. On one side, General Montero, his bald head covered now by a plumed cocked hat, remained motionless on a skylight seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded on the hilt of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The white plume, the coppery tint of his broad face, the blue-black of the moustaches under the curved beak, the mass of gold on sleeves and breast, the high shining boots with enormous spurs, the working nostrils, the imbecile and domineering ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... this arrogant stare, though he was doing Valerie important services, and had hoped to plume himself on the fact, was at once reduced ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sapphire mail, a white plume above his casque. Or a cathedral window with shafts of chrysophras, new powdered by a snow-storm. Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli; or a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its branches, and a foliage ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... (the raiser of the devils) "was much resorted to by the friends of parties mentally deranged, many of whom he cured. Whenever he assumed to practise the 'black art,' he put on a most grotesque dress, a cap of sheepskin with a high crown, bearing a plume of pigeons' feathers, and a coat of unusual pattern, with broad hems, and covered with talismanic characters. In his hand he had a whip, the thong of which was made of the skin of an eel, and the handle of bone. With this he drew a circle around him, outside of which, at ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... slipped onward to the falling gloom; Then came a soldier gallant in her stead, Swinging a beaver with a swaling plume, A ribboned love-lock rippling ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... two haughty maidens used to be, In pride of plume, where plumy Death had trod, Trailing their gorgeous velvets wantonly, Most unmeet pall, over the holy sod; There, gentle stranger, thou may'st only see Two sombre Peacocks. Age, with sapient nod Marking the spot, still tarries to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... but he had made his last trip as a pilot. It is rather curious that his final brief note-book entry should begin with his future nom de plume—a memorandum of soundings—"mark twain," and should end ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... head was encircled with a bandeau of otters' or beavers' fur, to which were attached short wires standing out in all directions, with glass or shell beads strung on them, and at the tips little feather flags and quail plumes. Surmounting all was a pyramidal plume of feathers, black, gray, and scarlet, the top generally being a bright scarlet bunch, waving and tossing very beautifully. All these combined gave their heads a very ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... cast down their straw-hats from the tree, shouting for her to make soldiers of them, each one clamoring for a red plume. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... impressed themselves on my mind, and I saw more distinctly than I had ever done before the old church with red-brown roofs and square dogmatic tower, the forlorn village, the grey undulations of the dreary hills, whose ring of trees showed aloft like a plume. In the church the faces of the girls were discomposed with grief, and they wept hysterically in each other's arms. The querulous voice of the organ, the hideous hymn, and the grating voice of the aged parson ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... monarch Montezuma, was of a tall build and melancholy countenance, having a very pale face for one of his nation, and thin black hair. He was dressed in a white robe of the purest cotton, and wore a golden belt and sandals set with pearls, and on his head a plume of feathers of the royal green. Behind him were a band of beautiful girls somewhat slightly clothed, some of whom played on lutes and other instruments of music, and on either side stood four ancient counsellors, all of them barefooted and clad ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... deception, and the deception is cowardly, for it is based on fear; and, secondly, it argues self-condemnation, because it means that a man is trying to appear what he is not, and therefore something which he things better than he actually is. To affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is just to confess that you have not got it. Whether it is courage, or learning, or intellect, or wit, or success with women, or riches, or social position, or whatever else it may be that a man boasts of, you may conclude by his boasting about it that ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Santarem, and his bodily activity was impaired by long and copious infusions of generous old port. So, as he could neither walk nor ride, he deposited his portly and withal somewhat gouty person in a coach-and-six, and set forth upon his fraternal quest. He had little reason to plume himself upon the pomp and circumstance of his equipage. The six hired coach-horses, albeit of the strong Flanders breed, were in a few hours engulfed in a black pool; his coach, or rather his travelling mansion, was inextricably sunk in the same slimy hollow; and the merchant himself, whose journeys ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... hushed the clamour and the stir Of the tumultuous streets. The cloudless moon Roofs the whole city as with tiles of silver; The dim mysterious sea in silence sleeps; And straight into the air Vesuvius lifts His plume of smoke." ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... I told thee so!" The young man who spoke raised his hat to me, and I saw that it had a scarlet plume, such as Marwood de Wichehalse gloried in. "In with thee, and stretch him that he may die straight. I am off to Southmolton for Cutcliffe Lane, who can make a furze-fagot bloom again. My filly can give a land-yard in a mile to Tom Faggus and his Winnie. ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... said not that these men were pinched by poverty, but that they plume themselves on their inexhaustible wealth. For to be ever adding money to money, and never to curb the passion for it, but insatiably to covet more and more, betokeneth the extreme of poverty. But those who despise the present for love of ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... picturesque effect; she wore a large hat, with a drooping plume of feathers; her dress was very rich and dark; her fair face shone in the midst of these surroundings ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... tinged with the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in their reputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity the figure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does not resemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that they are dying ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... plume of the horseman was dancing, Never to shadow his cold brow again; Proudly at morning the war steed was prancing, Reeking and panting he droops on the rein; Pale is the lip of scorn, Voiceless the trumpet horn, Torn is the silken-fringed red cross on high; Many a belted breast Low ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... plume did not originate in that way. Capt. Sellers used the signature, "Mark Twain," himself, when he used to write up the antiquities in the way of river reminiscences for the New Orleans Picayune. He hated me for burlesquing them in an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Mr Cameron, pleasantly. "Now for the question. On what good qualities do we plume ourselves? Well, I think, on steadiness, independence, loyalty, truthfulness, firmness, honesty, and love of fair play. How far we are justified in doing so, perhaps other nations are the better judges. They, I believe, generally regard us as a proud ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... grow on a stalk as if they had nothing to do with anything else; but the young botanist who may grasp this plume of leaves will find that the root leads along under-ground, till suddenly up comes another plant—a tall stem with panicles of purplish flowers. All these freaks or peculiarities become delightful to the ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... blouse and a forlorn, green Tyrolese hat, the cock's plume of which had been all too often rained upon, passed close beside them. Von Ibn, nothing daunted, seized her gloved hand and pressed it to his lips; she freed it quickly and swept all their environage with one swift ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... now about thirty companies—every man from this region who owns or can beg, borrow, or steal a horse is coming in. I got at Staunton the plume for my hat you sent. It is beautifully long, black, and curling! Imagine me under it, riding through Maryland! Forty thousand of us, and the bands playing "Dixie"! Old Jack may stand like a stone wall, but by the Lord, he moves like a thunderbolt! ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... they stopped. As they lay on his dressing-table Selma caught sight of the return address, Williams & Van Horne, printed on the uppermost envelope. The reminder aroused a host of associations. Flossy had not been much in her thoughts lately, yet she had not failed to plume herself occasionally with the reflection that she could afford now to snap her fingers at her. She had wondered more than once what Flossy would think when she heard that she was ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Palm tribe: where others would perish, or assume a dwarfed or stunted form, the wax-palm raises its stem, in the form of an elegantly-wrought column, a hundred and fifty feet high, with a splendid leafy plume. From the leaves and trunk exudes a grey and acrid matter, which on drying assumes the nature of wax as pure as that of bees, but rather more brittle. I have seen tallow-candles surrounded by a thin coating of this wax, which, not melting as rapidly as the tallow, prevents the candle ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... myself with silks and jewelry, I plume myself like any mated dove: They praise my rustling show, and never see My heart is breaking for a little love. While sprouts green lavender With rosemary and myrrh, For in quick spring ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... with richest odor filled, Like sweet frankincense daintily distilled; On roses fair, in great variety Of scent and color; and the peony, Or scented violet, which scarce shows its head, Yet does its odor o'er the garden shed; On prince's feather, wearing stately plume, With much of show, but nothing of perfume; Loved tulips, lilies, pinks and gilliflowers, With woodbines trained o'er lovely garden bowers, That give forth sweetness and their charms display, While, in rich robes, they stand in full array; The foxglove, daisy, and demure monk's-hood, With lilacs, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... as it were, look at him with the eyes of a wolf or fox,—must look up from that low level, and discern, so far above, this skilled and wondrous creature, who by ingenuity and self-schooling has converted his helplessness into power, and made himself the plume and crown of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... to plume himself on his aristocratic and familiar acquaintance. His associates are themselves flattered. Corkey is to take the telegraph editor to call on Mrs. Lockwin. The night editor is jealously regarded ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... make sure, colonel, that this is really Terence O'Connor, whom I have cuffed many a time when he was a bit of a spalpeen, with no respect for rank; as you yourself discovered, colonel, in the matter of that bird he fastened in the plume of your shako. He looks like him, and yet I ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... you are sufficiently inclined to allow for the fundamental fact, that mankind is very, very slow in dropping an old habit. We are now, thank goodness, witnessing the slow death agony of Christianity. These people here are among those who plume themselves on having abandoned Christian dogma. But deep down in their natures, there is not the inkling of the supernatural of which you speak, but simply the religious habit,—the habit of believing in something vague and indemonstrable, the habit of services and congregational ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... head of his troop gaily attired; for fine dress was one of the weaknesses of the Camisard chiefs. He wore a tight-fitting doeskin coat ornamented with gold lace, scarlet breeches, a muslin cravat, and a large beaver with a white plume; his long fair hair hanging over his shoulders. Catinat rode by his side on a high-mettled charger, attracting all eyes by his fine figure, his martial air, and his magnificent costume. Cavalier's faithful friend, Daniel Billard, rode on ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... had seen the end of all perfection in the apparently great of this world. He could not bear that such should flaunt a false plume before their fellows:— ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Articles, Barneveld's teeth, Arminian forts, flowery orations of Grotius, tavern talk of van Ostrum, city immunities, States' rights, provincial laws, Waartgelders and all—the martial Stadholder, with the orange plume in his hat and the sword of Nieuwpoort on his thigh, strode through them as easily as through the whirligigs and mountebanks, the wades and fritters, encumbering the streets of Utrecht on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... you have made arctic explorations to the stable, the chicken-yard and the pig-pen; you have dug your way energetically to the front gate, stopping every few minutes to beat your arms around your shoulders and watch the white plume of your breath in the still air—and you have rushed in gladly to the warmth of the dining-room and the lamp-lit supper. After such a day how sharp your appetite, how good the taste of food! Harriet's brown bread (moist, with thick, sweet, dark crusts) was never quite so delicious, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... rigid scale of cause and effect, and at the same time of exhibiting their acumen by threading the mazes of events up to remote circumstances, pretend to trace the design of the partition of Poland for more than a century back. Rulhiere seems to plume himself on the idea. "The projects executed in our days against Poland," he observes, "were proposed more than a hundred years ago. I have discovered this important and hitherto unknown circumstance in the archives of foreign affairs of France." This point had been canvassed under ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... portrait of a lady, which, in the catalogue, is designated as "the White Plume," which had the reputation of being the most admired in the collection, and the artist, Mr. Ingham, is said to rank highest among the portrait-painters of America. This picture is of very high finish, particularly the drapery, which is most elaborately ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope |
