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Riband   Listen
noun
Riband  n.  See Ribbon.
Riband jasper (Min.), a variety of jasper having stripes of different colors, as red and green.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Riband" Quotes from Famous Books



... beach, a riband around the flowing hair of the sea, Where gleam the foam-flowers garlanded in multitudinous nebulous rings: Here, on the frontier of many worlds and the billow-rocked cradle of eternal sleep, No sound, no music, no silence that a ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... so, when, upon observing him nearer, I found he was a prig. I bade him produce his cane in court, which he had left at the door. He did so, and I finding it to be very curiously clouded with a transparent amber head, and a blue riband to hang upon his wrist, I immediately ordered my clerk Lillie to lay it up, and deliver out to him a plain joint headed with walnut; and then, in order to wean him from it by degrees, permitted him to wear it three days in ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... of a bird to visit the sorcerer, she changed herself into an eagle, and circled about in the air till the bird for which she was waiting came in sight. She recognised him at once by the ring, which he carried on a riband round his neck. Then the eagle swooped upon the bird, and at the moment that she seized him in her claws she tore the ring from his neck with her beak, before he could do anything to prevent her. Then the eagle descended to the earth with her prey, and they both stood together in their former human ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a riband, glass, pomander, brooch, ... to keep my pack from fasting." (Winter's ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... that you can heare, Both of the rivers and the forrests greene, And of the sea that neighbours to her neare, All with gay girlands goodly wel beseene*. 40 And let them also with them bring in hand Another gay girland, For my fayre Love, of lillyes and of roses, Bound truelove wize with a blew silke riband. And let them make great store of bridale poses, 45 And let them eke bring store of other flowers, To deck the bridale bowers: And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread, For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong, Be strewd with fragrant flowers all along, 50 ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... storms wash away at one blow the corn harvests of years, and gather in the sheep from the hills, and take the life of the shepherd with the life of the flock. He had seen it claim lovers locked in each other's arms, and toss the fair curls of the first-born as it tossed the riband weeds of its deeps. And he had felt small pity; it had rather given him a certain sense of rejoicing and triumph to see the water laugh to scorn those who were so wise in their own conceit, and bind beneath its chains those who held themselves masters over ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... found himself in front of Marylebone Church. The silent roadway looked like a long riband of polished silver, flecked here and there by the dark arabesques of waving shadows. Far into the distance curved the line of flickering gas-lamps, and outside a little walled-in house stood a solitary hansom, the driver ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... again; and I would return the compliment if you did not wear such a flashy watch-riband (looks ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... footprints. They looked faithfully far up and down the stream, for they knew the Indian stratagem. Presently Calloway leaped up for joy. "God bless my child!" cried he; "they have gone this way." He had picked up a little piece of riband which one of his daughters had dropped, purposely to mark the trail. Now they were on the track. Travelling on as rapidly as they could, from time to time they picked up shreds of handkerchiefs, or fragments of their dresses, that ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip

... sleigh-load of birch branches, which he flung down before the shanty. Then, he turned the team towards Fremont ranch, and his face was grave as he stared over the horses' heads at the smear of trail that wound away, a blue-grey riband, before the ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... propter hoc or only post hoc I am quite unable to say, though no Ulster Unionist has any doubts on the subject."[15] But that was not quite the whole reason. That Lord Pirrie was an example of apostasy "just for a riband to stick in his coat," was the general belief; but it was also resented that a man who had amassed, not "a handful of silver," but an enormous fortune, through a trade created by an eminent Unionist firm, and ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... rock standeth an angel; in his left hand a sickle, his right hand pointing up towards the sun shining in his glory, with a label upon the lower rays of it, 'Sol Justitiae,' i.e., the Sun of Righteousness. On the right and left sides of this monument are instruments of husbandry hanging by a riband out of a death's head, as ploughs, whips, yokes, rakes, spades, flails, harrows, shepherds' crooks, scythes, etc., over which is writ, 'Vos estis Dei Agricultura,' i.e., ye are God's husbandry. On the outside of these, on the right and left, are ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... Tory, where's the jest To wear that riband on thy breast, When that same breast betraying shows The ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... groceries in. He had on a coat made of that cloth they call "thunder-and-lightning," which, though grown too short, was much too good to be thrown away. His waistcoat was of gosling green, and his sisters had tied his hair with a broad black riband. We all followed him several paces from the door, bawling after him, "Good luck! good luck!" till we could ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... heterogeneous enough to produce constraint, only to produce a little excitement—some commoners high in office, and the Treasury whip, several manufacturers who stood together in the room, and some metropolitan members. Georgina's husband, who was a lord-in-waiting, and a great swell, in a green riband, moved about with adroit condescension, and was bewitchingly affable. The manufacturing members whispered to each other that it was a wise thing to bring the two Houses together, but when Her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Keswick was announced, they exchanged glances of astounded ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... purposes. It consists of a rose, thistle and shamrock, issuing from a sceptre surrounded by three imperial crowns, enclosed within the ancient motto Tria juncta in uno. Of pure gold chased and pierced, it is worn by the knight elect pendant from a red riband across the right shoulder. The collar is also of gold, weighing thirty ounces troy, and is composed of nine imperial crowns, and eight roses, thistles, and shamrocks, issuing from a sceptre, enamelled in proper colours, tied or linked together with seventeen ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... scant use to one who hath a mind to wed the Church," she said, "but thou shalt have a riband for thyself, Anne, and a silk ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... commended the youth for keeping. Admiral Bluewater joining the company, at this instant, Sir Wycherly led Mrs. Dutton to the table. No alteration had taken place among the guests, except that Sir Gervaise wore the red riband; a change in his dress that his friend considered to be openly hoisting the standard of the house ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Thy Amoret, come hither to give end To these consumings; look up gentle Boy, I have forgot those Pains and dear annoy I suffer'd for thy sake, and am content To be thy love again; why hast thou rent Those curled locks, where I have often hung Riband and Damask-roses, and have flung Waters distil'd to make thee fresh and gay, Sweeter than the Nosegayes on a Bridal day? Why dost thou cross thine Arms, and hang thy face Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace From ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... by the individual fibres has been studied by H. Lange [Farberzeitung, 1898, 197-198], whose microphotographs of the cotton fibres, both in length and cross-section, are reproduced. In general terms, the change is from the flattened riband of the original fibre to a cylindrical tube with much diminished and rounded central canal. The effect of strain under mercerisation is chiefly seen in the contour of the surface, which is smooth, and the obliteration at intervals ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... cup of wine, which he handed across the table. She took it, and as soon as she had drunk it and seen the half ring lying at the bottom her heart beat rapidly, and she produced the other half, which she wore round her neck on a riband. She held them together, and they joined each other exactly, and the stranger said, "I am your bridegroom, whom you first saw as Bearskin; but through God's mercy I have regained my human form, and am myself once more." With these ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... dangerous in the teeth of the standing orders. But what do you say to a baronet? There's Sir Polloxfen Tremens. He got himself served the other day to a Nova Scotia baronetcy, with just as much title as you or I have; and he has sported the riband, and dined out on the strength of it ever since. He'll join us at once, for he has not a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... imaginable, may disappoint some people, when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the splendour of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in the blue riband. It does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition of your mace, at every instant, to keep the peace amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... such exquisite footing! In the upper story of the grand gallery at Versailles, hang several pictures representing these court ballets; Cupids in coatees of pink lustring, with silver lace and tinsel wings, wearing full-bottomed wigs and the riband of the St Esprit; or Venuses in hoops and powder, whose minauderies might afford a lesson to the divinities of our own day for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... twenty places, That by a tissue* hung his back behind; *riband His shield to-dashed was with swords and maces, In which men might many an arrow find, That thirled* had both horn, and nerve, and rind; *pierced And ay the people cried, "Here comes our joy, And, next his brother, holder up ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... but the same day, his gentleman came to me again, and with great ceremony and respect, delivered me a black box tied with a scarlet riband and sealed with a noble coat-of-arms, which, I suppose, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... than a background, a setting only for the ravishing colours of those leaves born with the spring, that perish with the autumn. The wonder of their dying spread over the hills and unrolled itself, an endless riband following the river, ever as beautiful, as rich in shades brilliant and soft, as enrapturing, when they pawed into the remoteness of far northern regions and were unseen ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... curious long sort of riband," thought the drummer to himself in his amazement. They were in a great hurry, too, to get him under the yoke, he thought; but they should find that a soldier on his way to the manoeuvres is not to be betrothed and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... another house,' the hostess answered, 'and should have been this three week.' She swung her keys on a black riband and gazed at him masterfully. 'Will your magistership eat capon ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small-clothes, white silk stockings and pumps fastened with silver buckles which covered at least half the foot from instep to toe. His small-clothes were tied at the knees with riband of the same color in double bows the ends reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well loaded with pomatum, frizzled or creped, and powdered; the ear locks had undergone the same process. Behind his natural hair was augmented ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... quarter of a pound of riband macaroni into a stew-pan, with a pint of boiling milk, or broth, or water; let it boil gently till it is tender, this will take about a quarter of an hour; then put in an ounce of grated cheese, and a tea-spoonful of salt; mix it well together, and put it on a dish, and stew over it two ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... having nothing more to do, and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the house she was soon to leave. In these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather's. The door was ajar, and a riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without. As Eustacia crossed the firebeams she appeared for an instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria—a creature of light surrounded by an area of darkness: the moment passed, and she ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... state in the odd detail, that he could not bear to write his romance on anything but the very finest paper with gilt edges; that the powder with which he dried the ink was of azure and sparkling silver; and that he tied up the quires with delicate blue riband.[264] The distance from all this to the state of nature is obviously very great indeed. It must not be supposed that he forgot his older part as Cato, Brutus, and the other Plutarchians. "My great embarrassment," he says honestly, "was that I should belie myself so ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... character of the face shows perfect self-confidence in its best sense, as well as self-control and determination. A scrap of drapery covers the outer edge of either shoulder, and round his neck is a riband, at the end of which hangs a large oval gem, Cupid in a chariot making his horses gallop. Thus the throat and breast are bare, and show exceptionally good rendering of those thin bones and thick tendons which must always be a severe ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... into his father's grounds. The first thing to see and recognise him was a graceful pet fawn of his sister's, which at his whistle came trotting to him with delight, jingling the little silver bell which was tied by a blue riband round its neck. Barely stopping to caress the beautiful little creature's head, he bounded through the orchard into the garden, and the next instant the delighted shout of his brothers and sisters welcomed him back, as they ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... addition of internal resistance and electro-motive power. The machines, on the other hand, which produce only a single light have a small internal resistance associated with a small electro-motive force. In such machines the wire of the rotating armature is comparatively short and thick, copper riband instead of wire being commonly employed. Such machines deliver a large quantity of electricity of low tension—in other words, of low leaping power. Hence, though competent when their power is converged upon ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... compass! and yet there Dwelt all that 's good, and all that 's fair; Give me but what this riband bound, Take all the rest the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... finished half the muffin, and drunk one cup of tea, when he was called into the shop by a customer of great importance—a prosy old lady, who always gave her orders with remarkable precision, and who valued herself on a character for affability, which she maintained by never buying a penny riband without asking the shopman how all his family were, and talking news about every other family in the place. At the time Mr. Morton left the parlour, Sidney and Master Tom were therein, seated on two stools, and casting up division sums on their respective slates—a point ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a young girl of twenty-eight—it is not so very long ago—I had my Diary bound in pale blue watered silk; it had three locks and a little silver key which I wore on a riband round my neck. I never took it off except to—I mean for the purposes of the toilette. There was a pocket at the end of the book, which would hold a faded flower or any little souvenir. I always wrote it in solitude and by night. Secresy has its ritual, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various

... and spread out the crushed, brittle spikes, so fondly won, so dearly held. She was sure Hector had not one leaf, riband, or ring which she had given him. Once when he was gayer than his wont, and plagued her with his jesting petting, she took up the scissors and cut off a lock of his hair. He did not notice the theft till it was accomplished, and then he stood half-thoughtful, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat— Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others, she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags—were they purple, his heart ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... found many things of especial sanctity to the faithful. On a column rests an exquisite little statuette of the Virgin, which was a gift from Pope Pius the Ninth, the finely chased and wrought crucifix and the riband attached to it having been worn around the neck of the High Pontiff himself. Directly opposite to it is a statue of St. Peter, a copy of that at Rome. Fifty days indulgence are granted to those who piously kiss this image. Under one altar rest the bones of St. Felix, ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway

... sadly onward I followed That Highway the Icen, Which trails its pale riband down Wessex O'er lynchet ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... of three women on board—a rough enough creature, Heaven knows! in common weather; but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful sight had stirred up all the woman within her. She had opened the bosom of the poor boy's shirt, and untying the riband that fastened a small gold crucifix round his neck, she placed it in his cold hand. The young midshipman was of a respectable family in Limerick, her native place, and a Catholic—another strand of the cord that bound her to him. When the Captain finished reading, he ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... horses, which were pawing the mud and snorting and smoking like steam engines, with nostrils like safety valves, and four of my footmen hanging behind the coach, like bees in a swarm. There had not been so much riband in my family since my poor father's failure at Coventry—and yet how often, over and over again, although he had been dead more than twenty years, did I, during that morning, in the midst of my splendour, think of him, and wish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... too, if the truth must be known. First there was a thick curl of the glossiest blackest hair you ever saw in your life, and next there was threepence: that is to say, the half of a silver sixpence hanging by a little necklace of blue riband. Ah, but I knew where the other half of the sixpence was, and envied ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... exquisitely embroidered. It is fastened just between the eyes, conceals all the other features, and reaches to the feet. She next envelopes herself in large cloak of rich black silk, tied round the head by a piece of narrow riband. Her costume is completed by trousers of silk gauze, and yellow morocco boots, which reach a considerable way up the legs. How any human being can bear such a heap of clothing, especially under the fiery sun and hot winds of Egypt, is to us inconceivable. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... the List of Probable Starters (who are all coming on well, and might therefore be called, in the quaint turf Italian, "comeystarters"), I cannot help feeling that this year the Blue Riband of the Turf will fall to the flower of the flock—as, indeed, it should. But if it does not, why, there are other really sound horses that are sure to give a good account of themselves. We may take ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various

... most satisfactorily demonstrated by the fact that her skysail-yards were aloft and crossed notwithstanding the circumstance that she had only just begun to receive her cargo. She was painted grey, with a broad white riband and painted ports, her top-sides being black. She carried a very handsome, well-executed carving of a woman, with long, streaming hair and fluttering drapery, under her bowsprit, by way of figurehead; and Ned noted with deep satisfaction, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that; The man of independent mind, He looks and ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... kept court at Cannons. He told Caesar anecdotes of Dr. Parr, with his preposterous wig, his clouds of tobacco, his sesquipedalian quotations, coming down from Stanmore; and also of the great Lord Abercorn, another Governor of the school, who used to go out shooting in the blue riband of the Garter, and who entertained Pitt and Sir Walter Scott at ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... against the pale silk hangings, Madame Bonanni saw a tremendous profile over a huge fair beard that was half grey, and one large and rather watery blue eye behind a single eyeglass with a broad black riband. Before the possessor of these features turned to look at her, she uttered a loud exclamation of amazement. Logotheti was ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... dressed in white, was led out by the town- officers, and in the midst of the magistrates from among the ladies, with her hands tied behind her with a black riband. At the first sight of her at the tolbooth stairhead, a universal sob rose from all the multitude, and the sternest e'e couldna refrain from shedding a tear. We marched slowly down the stair, and on to the ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... of the King's army. He is a dear fellow, and he has a dear wife. They are in deep sympathy with us. She put on a bonnet and riband that night. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... particular occasions, by their noms de guerre—"and when the tide is up the place cannot be forded. Of this the Arabs are probably aware; and having failed in their first attempt, they will probably retire to the beach as the water is rising, for they might not like to be left on the riband of rock that will remain in face of the force that would be likely to be found in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... building in the environs, and members are decorated with an order or badge of distinction, which is the figure of a gilded bird with outstretched wings, perching on a branch of laurel. This is worn on the left breast, and attached to a button-hole of the waistcoat by a green silk riband. On the breast are marked the letters "D.C." meaning "Danish Company." On one side of the branch is the date 1542, and on the other 1739.[2] In the month of August, when the amusement commences, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... him a band of harpers, dressed in green and gold, and when the harpers had saluted the prince they marched in front of the cavalcade, playing all the time, and it was not long until they came to a stream that ran like a blue riband around the foot of a green hill, on the top of which was a sparkling palace; the stream was crossed by a golden bridge, so narrow that the horsemen had to go two-by-two. The herald asked the prince to halt and to allow all the champions to go before him; and the cavalcade ascended the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... In the same county, I was also informed it was in many places customary for the maids to hang up in the kitchen a bunch of such flowers as were then in season, neatly suspended by a true lover's knot of blue riband. These innocent doings are prevalent in other parts of England, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... he seemed to be frequently engaged in mental prayer. The end came between seven and eight in the morning. When his remains were laid out, it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk riband. The lords in waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... merried, she made me a nightie. It was mos' too dressy fer a lady to wear, let alone a critter like me who'd allus slep' in his pants an' day shirt. 'Twas of fine linen, pleated, and fixed with ribands, yaller riband, I chose the colour. Lily was kinder stuck on pale blue, but I liked yaller best. Lily knew what I' do with that nightie, an' I done it. I put it away in the tissoo paper 'twas wrapped in, an' I hev it still. I've got more solid ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... interests when the happiness of millions is an obstacle to its gratification; but as a leaf before the eye will hide a universe, self-love limits the intellectual horizon to a compass inconceivably narrow; and the prosperity of nations, when placed in the balance with a riband or a pension, has too often kicked the beam. Professional business, and the love of detail, which is so deeply rooted in most English natures, tends also to contract the thoughts, to erect a false standard of merit, and to fill the mind with petty objects. As an instance of this, it may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... for quarreling: thou hast quarrel'd with a man for coffing in the street, because he hath wakened thy Dog that hath laine asleepe in the Sun. Did'st thou not fall out with a Tailor for wearing his new Doublet before Easter? with another, for tying his new shooes with old Riband, and yet thou wilt Tutor me from quarrelling? Ben. And I were so apt to quarell as thou art, any man should buy the Fee-simple of my life, for an houre ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold all my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a riband, glass, pomander, brooch, table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet, horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting;—they throng who should buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed, and brought a benediction to the buyer: by which means I saw whose purse was best in picture; ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... in which the sap from the maple trees was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring opened the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the fields of the little narrow farm running back from the St. Lawrence like a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with their riverine population ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... which multiply Until their very number makes men hard By the infinities of agony, Which meet the gaze whate'er it may regard— The groan, the roll in dust, the all-white eye Turn'd back within its socket,—these reward Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest May win perhaps a riband ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... one of those they sell at fairs. I had bought it about half a year before—put a nice green riband to it, and a twopenny key.—This it was that got me the silver seal, and I'll tell you how. The Sunday after I bought it, I stood in the aisle of the church, looked at the great clock, and pompously pulling out my pewter watch, and looking at it as proudly as it were a real one, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... to witness their manoeuvres. On casting my eye over this concourse of people, attired in their best clothes, I was particularly struck with the head dresses of the women: composed chiefly of broad-stiffened riband, of different colours, which is made to stick out behind in a flat manner—not to be described except by the pencil of my graphic companion. The figure, seen in the frontispiece of the third volume of this work, is that of the Fille de chambre at our hotel, who was habited in her Sunday ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... the Ligurian Republic, in fact, originated, notwithstanding the great and deep calculations of our profound politicians and political schemers, in nothing else but in the keeping of a wife, and in the refusal of a riband. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the messengers placed lamps on the tribune. The President made a sign, the door on the right opened, and there was seen to enter the hall, and rapidly ascend the tribune, a man still young, attired in black, having on his breast the badge and riband of the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... six Wednesdays and three Fridays successively, having understood that it was a sovereign charm to ensure being married to one's liking within the year. She carries about, also, a lock of her sweetheart's hair, and a riband he once gave her, being a mode of producing constancy in her lover. She even went so far as to try her fortune by the moon, which has always had much to do with lovers' dreams and fancies. For this purpose she went out in the night of the full moon, knelt on a stone ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... of the toes incredibly intricate. For the celebration of these rites her partner would array himself in morocco pumps with cunningly contrived buckles of silver, silk stockings, salmon-colored silk breeches tied with abundance of riband, exuberant frills, or "chitterlings," which puffed out at the neck and bosom not unlike the wattles of a he-turkey; and under his arms—as the fowl roasted might have carried its gizzard—our grandfather pressed ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... riband!" She ran forward, and, in pushing by the doll, threw it backward: Mrs. Puffit caught it in her arms, and Betty, stopping short, curtsied, and said to the doll—"Peg pardon, miss—peg pardon, miss—tit I hurt you?—peg pardon. Pless us! 'tis a toll, and no woman, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... splendid material, for the approaching procession. "Magnificent! Charming! Excellent!" resounded on all sides; and everyone was uncommonly gay. The Emperor shared in the general satisfaction; and presented the impostors with the riband of an order of knighthood, to be worn in their button-holes, and the title ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... sought the drawing-rooms, he found them filled with the customary snob of good society. In one corner he discovered Castruccio Cesarini, playing on a guitar, slung across his breast with a blue riband. The Italian sang well; many young ladies were grouped round him, amongst others Florence Lascelles. Maltravers, fond as he was of music, looked upon Castruccio's performance as a disagreeable exhibition. He had a Quixotic idea of the dignity of talent; and though himself of a musical science, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... on. Como was left behind. The thickly-wooded shores of the lake, dotted with many villas, the tall green mountains covered with chestnut trees, framed the long, winding riband of water which was the way to Casa Felice. There were not many other boats out. The steamer had already started for Bellagio, and was far away near the point where Torno nestles around its sheltered harbour. The black gondola was quickly left behind. Its load of luggage weighed it down. The brown ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... are quite reversed in their use in one age from another. Bags, when first in fashion in France, were only worn en deshabille; in visits of ceremony, the hair was tied by a riband and floated over the shoulders, which is exactly reversed in the present fashion. In the year 1735 the men had no hats but a little chapeau de bras; in 1745 they wore a very small hat; in 1755 they wore an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... bustling to see them, bevies of long-tongued belles, who ever, as they walk and meet their acquaintance, are announcing themselves in swift alternation "charmees," with a blank face, and "toutes desolees," with the best good-will! Here you learn to value a red riband at its "juste prix," which is just what it will fetch per ell; specimens of it in button-holes being as frequent as poppies amidst the corn. Pretending to hide themselves from remark, which they intend but to provoke, here public characters ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... and smiled, soothed into something resembling good-nature by the odd humour and appearance of his old companion, who was tricked out, with much precision, in a blue doublet and yellow hose, while a large bow of sad-coloured riband, with fringed ends, dangled from either knee. He then glanced a look of complacency on his ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... was actually addressed by Henry Saint Albans himself as "honest Ralph Rattlin, the brave boy who slept in the haunted room." There was a distinction for you! Of course, I cannot tell how an old gentleman, rising sixty-five, feels when his sovereign places the blue riband over his stooping shoulders, but if he enjoys half the rapture I then did, he must be a very, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... continued the directress of the ceremony. 'Do you not know how delicate is your mistress?—you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband—that's right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; saw you ever anything so lovely ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband. There is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over- dressing of the common people. There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... we seem to have slipped for one lawless little moment out of the iron rule of cause and effect; and so we revert at once to some of the pleasant old heresies of personification, always poetically orthodox, and attribute a sort of free will, an active and spontaneous life, to the white riband of road that lengthens out, and bends, and cunningly adapts itself to the inequalities of the land before our eyes. We remember, as we write, some miles of fine wide highway laid out with conscious aesthetic artifice through a broken and richly cultivated tract of country. It is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the air when with a rainbow grac'd, So smiles that riband 'bout my Julia's waist: Or like—nay 'tis that zonulet of love, Wherein all pleasures of ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... write that she must take a cab and drive out of the city on the Via Appia, and drive, and drive, until she meets two men—they will be you and me—one with a red handkerchief hanging out of his coat pocket, and the other with an old green riband for a band to his hat. I have an old green riband that will do. She must come alone in the cab. If we see any one with her, she shall not see us. She will not know how far out we shall be, so she cannot send the police to the place. It may be one mile from ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... was taken indifferently for shirt or chemise. And hence arose the term camisado for a night-attack, in which the assailants recognised each other in the dark by their white shirt-sleeves, sometimes further distinguished by a tight cincture of broad black riband. The last literal camisado, that I remember, was a nautical one—a cutting-out enterprise somewhere ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... Kepoochikawn, rudely carved, and about two feet long. He placed his god at the upper end of the sweating-house, with his face towards the door, and proceeded to tie round its neck his offerings, consisting of a cotton handkerchief, a looking-glass, a tin pan, a piece of riband, and a bit of tobacco, which he had procured the same day, at the expense of fifteen or twenty skins. Whilst he was thus occupied, several other Crees, who were encamped in the neighbourhood, having been ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... adventurer in the forest. But she refused to pledge her hand as the reward of the enterprise, because she still cherished, it might be, a hope of its being claimed by the returning knight; and no one would consent, for a glove, a riband, or even a kiss, to expose his life to bring back so very dangerous ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... to the footman, who had been loitering about, listening to the conversation,—'Peter, go and ask that tall boy with the blue neckerchief and the riband round his hat to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... fibres of linen and cotton threads, have shown that the former invariably present a cylindrical form, transparent, and articulated, or joined like a cane, while the latter offer the appearance of a flat riband, with a hem or border at each edge; so that there is no possibility of mistaking the fibres of either, except, perhaps, when the cotton is in an unripe state, and the flattened shape of the centre is less apparent. The results having been found similar ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... was past, seemed suspended throughout the school; and the boys, lately so mirthful and sprightly, were seen pacing their cloisters alone, or in sad groups standing about, few of them without some token, such as their slender means could provide, a black riband or something, to denote respect and a sense of their loss. The time itself was a time of anarchy, a time in which all authority (out of school hours) was abandoned. The ordinary restraints were for those ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... 363 above. Scott has the following note here: "The snood, or riband, with which as Scottish lass braided her hair, had an emblematical signification, and applied to her maiden character. It was exchanged for the curch, toy, or coif, when she passed, by marriage, into the matron state. But if the damsel was so unfortunate as to lose pretensions to the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... fellow], ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof [Footnote: fool (pronounce like German o or oe)] for a' that; For a' that, an' a' that, His riband, star, an' a' that; The man of independent mind, He looks an' laughs at ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country.' During the reply I had an opportunity of surveying the appearance of our new companion: his hat was pinched up with peculiar smartness; his looks were pale, thin, and sharp; round his neck he wore a broad black riband, and in his bosom a buckle studded with glass; his coat was trimmed with tarnished twist; he wore by his side a sword with a black hilt; and his stockings of silk, though newly washed, were grown yellow by long service. I was so much engaged with the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... his nymph, whom nothing could stop, had her knot of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his Amazon. Singular and sparkling, although lacking in intelligence, she carried herself this knot of riband to the top ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... it, reflecting its wan lustre, was the glazed high-road which stretched, hedgeless and ditchless, past a directing-post where another road joined it, and on to the less regular ground beyond, lying like a riband unrolled across the scene, till it vanished over the furthermost undulation. Beside the pools were occasional tall sheaves of flags and sedge, and about the plain a few bushes, these forming the only obstructions to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... he left them with a friendly farewell. He had brought them speedily a long distance on their way, but they must now trust to the compass and their own resources, while the loads they strapped on were unpleasantly heavy. Before this task was finished dogs and driver had vanished up the white riband of the stream, and they felt lonely as they stood in the bottom of the gorge with steep rocks and dark pines hemming them in. Blake glanced at the high bank with a ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... rose, fair daughter—well she was graced As a cloud her going, stept from her chair, As a summer-soft cloud, in her going paced, Down dropped her riband-band, and all her waving hair Shook like loosened music cadent to her waist;— Lapsing like music, wavery as water, Slid ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... reflection to touch any heart with sorrow. Her dress was of plain white; she wore no ornament—not even a riband. Her hair, which was beautifully long and thick, was disposed in a clubbed mass upon her head, very simply but with particular neatness; and, when all was done, concealing the weapon of death beneath ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... reward. But, see, it is dawn already. Draw back the curtains and open the windows wide. How cool the morning air is! Piccadilly lies at our feet like a long riband of silver. A faint purple mist hangs over the Park, and the shadows of the white houses are purple. It is too late to sleep. Let us go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses. Come! I am ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... yard of blue riband, poor Fingal, recall The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs? Or, has it not bound thee the fastest of all The slaves, who now hail their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof[3] for a' that; For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... turning in, he went forward and stood behind the powerful electric lamp fitted in the bows to illumine the narrow water-lane which joins East and West. The broad shaft of light lent a solemn beauty to the bleak wastes on either hand. In front, the canal's silvery riband shimmered in magic life. Its nearer ripples formed a glittering corsage for the ship's tapered stem, and merged into a witches' way of blackness beyond. The red signal of a distant gare, or station, or the white gleam of an approaching vessel's masthead light, shone from the void like low-pitched ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... Your Red Riband is certainly postponed. There was but one vacant, which was promised to General Draper, who, when he thought he felt the sword dubbing his shoulder, was told that my Lord Clive could not conquer the Indies ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... a magnificent defile shadowed by sheer cliffs that on the eastern side rose to a height of five hundred feet. Fluttering rock pigeons circled far up in the azure riband that spanned the opposing precipices. From many a towering pinnacle, carved by the ages into fantastic imageries of a castle, a pulpit, a lion, or a lance, came the loud, clear calling of innumerable jack-daws. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... the sisters entered the reception-room at the British Legation, Lord Skye rebuked them for not having come early to receive with him. His Lordship, with a huge riband across his breast, and a star on his coat, condescended to express himself vigorously on the subject of the "Dawn in June." Schneidekoupon, who was proud of his easy use of the latest artistic jargon, looked with respect at Mrs. Lee's silver-gray satin and its Venetian lace, the arrangement ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... of a piece of very fine Taffety-riband in the bigger magnifying Glass, which you see exhibits it like a very convenient substance to make Bed-matts, or Door-matts of, or to serve for Beehives, Corn-scuttles, Chairs, or Corn-tubs, it being ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... and well educated. Peter the Great, true to his generous system of rewarding merit wherever he found it, made Annibal Lieutenant-General and Director of the Russian Artillery. He was decorated with the riband of the order of St. Alexander Nenski. His son, a mulatto, was Lieutenant-General of Artillery, and said to be a man of talent. St. Pierre and La Harpe were acquainted ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... hope. When he came back with his spray of white heather he was so uplifted with the song that he ran up to her for once with no restraint and made to fasten it at her neck. She was surprised at his new freedom but noway displeased. A little less self-consciousness as he fumbled at the riband on her neck would have satisfied her more, but even that disappeared when he felt her breath upon his hair and an unconscious touch of her hand on his arm as he fastened the flower. She let her ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... caravan, or string of caravans, was under way. It was the same forest, admitting, on the narrow line which we threaded, but one man at a time. Its view was as limited. To our right and left the forest was dark and deep. Above was a riband of glassy sky flecked by the floating nimbus. We heard nothing save a few stray notes from a flying bird, or the din of the caravans as the men sang, or hummed, or conversed, or shouted, as the thought struck them that we were nearing water. One of my pagazis, wearied and sick, fell, and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... impetuous and chivalrous courage. He ever led the way upon the most dangerous and desperate ventures, and, like his uncle and his imperial grandfather, well knew how to reward the devotion of his readiest followers with a poniard, a feather, a riband, a jewel, taken with his own hands from his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Whig chief, therefore, rode through the capital of Toryism amidst general acclamation. Before him the drums beat Lillibullero. Behind him came a long stream of horse and foot. The whole High Street was gay with orange ribands. For already the orange riband had the double signification which, after the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, it still retains. Already it was the emblem to the Protestant Englishman of civil and religious freedom, to the Roman Catholic Celt of subjugation and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... bracelets, and jewels and gold in every shape; the Child, which is of a tawny marble, looked like some favourite little 'nigger,' so bedizened was he with finery. She is a much more popular Madonna than my friend of the Pantheon, to whom I went, as in honour bound, and hung up my horse-shoe by a purple riband (my racing colour) round one of the candlesticks on the altar, with ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... dearly enough at the price of having their age put down in every lexicon. A black tulle cap with flame-coloured ribands covered her head; round her neck she wore a string of large amber beads, a gold watch-chain, and a velvet riband from which her eyeglass was suspended. She was quiet, and retiring, spoke little, and passed the greater portion of the day in the cabin. Fru Nyberg was returning from Paris, and had with her a young lady of distinguished family, Emily Holmberg by name. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... if I saw him but yesterday: it was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie wig, a plain coat, waistcoat and breeches, of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... River Inn, which is seen as a silver thread, winding northward between its junction with the Salza and the Danube, and forming the boundaries of the two countries. The Danube shows itself as a crinkled satin riband, stretching from left to right in the far background of the picture, the Inn discharging its waters into the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... in the breeze like the strings of a harp. The road could be distinguished from the rest of the plain only by the clouds of fine dust which rose under the wheels of the tarantass. Had it not been for this white riband, which stretched away as far as the eye could reach, the travelers might have thought themselves in ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... to Dennison I cannot say; somebody said that he was going round the world or on to the Stock Exchange, but Lambert denied both these reports, and declared that he had reformed so violently that he had become a teetotaler and intended to wear a blue riband in his button-hole. I doubted the blue riband part of the story, and if Dennison ever wore one I think it would only be on Boat-race day, for it takes a tremendous lot of courage to wear a ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... horizon peeps, As pitying these lovers, downward creeps; So that in silence of the cloudy night, Though it was morning, did he take his flight. But what the secret trusty night conceal'd, Leander's amorous habit soon reveal'd: With Cupid's myrtle was his bonnet crown'd, About his arms the purple riband wound, Wherewith she wreath'd her largely-spreading hair; Nor could the youth abstain, but he must wear The sacred ring wherewith she was endow'd, When first religious chastity she vow'd; Which made his ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... at the same time easy and unembarrassed. Your chit-chat or 'entregent' with them neither can, nor ought to be very solid; but you should take care to turn and dress up your trifles prettily, and make them every now and then convey indirectly some little piece of flattery. A fan, a riband, or a head-dress, are great materials for gallant dissertations, to one who has got 'le ton leger et aimable de la bonne compagnie'. At all events, a man had better talk too much to women, than too little; they take silence for dullness, unless where ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... party went into camp near a shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry Mississippi. The river astonished the children beyond measure. Its mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight, and the vague riband of trees on the further shore, the verge of a continent which surely none but they had ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... attracted by a singularly-looking man. He was dressed in a green coat, brass-buttoned close up to the neck, light gray, approaching to blue, elastic pantaloons, white cotton stockings, dress shoes, with more riband employed to fasten them than was either useful or ornamental; a hat, smaller than those usually worn, placed rather on one side of a head of dark curly hair; fine black eyes, and what altogether would have been pronounced a handsome face, but for an overpowering ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... the columns belong to the lotiform type. The shaft is composed of eight triangular stalks rising from a bunch of leaves, symmetrically arranged, and bound together at the top by a riband, twisted thrice round the bundle; the capital is formed by the union of the eight lotus buds, surmounted by a square member on which rests the architrave. Other columns have Hathor-headed capitals, the heads being set back to back, and bearing the flat head-dress ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... by Grey, by Buyse, and by a few other friends, was flying from the field of battle. At Chedzoy he stopped a moment to mount a fresh horse and to hide his blue riband and his George. He then hastened towards the Bristol Channel. From the rising ground on the north of the field of battle he saw the flash and the smoke of the last volley fired by his deserted followers. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a sternness and a coarseness of structure which changes its stem into a stake, and its leaf into a spine; on the other, an utter flaccidity and ventosity of structure, which changes its stem into a riband, and its leaf into a bubble. And before we go farther—for we are not yet at the end of our study of these obnoxious things—we had better complete an examination of the parts of a plant in general, by ascertaining what a Stem proper is; and what makes it stiffer, or hollower, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... a stain, however, on the other side, which must be covered," replied the lady, changing the bow. "This riband was very cheap, Agnes," she added, showing it to her sister-in-law. "Only twenty cents a yard. I bought the whole piece, although I shall not want ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more leisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blue riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton—how could the Brewer ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... coldly received at Paris. "He is much inconvenienced by a sciatica," writes the advocate Barbier, "and cannot walk but with the assistance of two men. He comes back with grand decorations: prince of the empire, knight of the Golden Fleece, blue riband, marshal of France, and duke. He is held accountable, however, for all the misfortunes that have happened to us; it was spread about at Paris that he was disgraced and even exiled to his estate at Vernon, near Gisors. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Cassius states, on what authority we know not. Suetonius says that as Caesar was returning from the Latin festival some one placed a laurel crown on the statue, tied with a white riband. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... change. This contrivance is common to a multitude of machines, some of them very simple. In large shops for the retail of ribands, it is necessary at short intervals to 'take stock', that is, to measure and rewind every piece of riband, an operation which, even with this mode of shortening it, is sufficiently tiresome, but without it would be almost impossible from its expense. The small balls of sewing cotton, so cheap and so beautifully ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... side stands Mr. William Henry Cranstoun, with a rope round his neck, and crossing his body like a riband of knighthood; in his pocket is "Powder to Clean Pebbels" in his mouth a label, "Jammy will save me." Before him rises the ghost of Miss Mary Blandy, saying, "My Honour, Cra——s ruin'd me." The ghost ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... of the glacier a sheer unbroken wall of rock swept round in the segment of a circle, and this remained still dead black and the glacier at its foot dead white. At one point in the knife-like edge of this wall there was a depression, and from the depression a riband of ice ran, as it seemed from where they sat, perpendicularly down ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... the heads of people who have applied themselves during many years to a weary and laborious course of study; and which would have been sufficient, without the additional eye-glass which dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the forsenic ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... should remember that the names by which people classify their opinions are generally little more than arbitrary badges; and even in these days, when practice treads so closely on the heels of theory, some persons profess to know extreme radicals who could be converted very speedily by a bit of riband. Walpole has explained himself with unmistakable frankness, and his opinion was at least intelligible. He was not a republican after the fashion of Robespierre, or Jefferson, or M. Gambetta; but he had some meaning. When a duke in those days proposed annual parliaments and universal ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... was familiar, through newspaper paragraphs, with the name of his brother-in-law, the French duke who had won the Derby. The Duc d'Eglemont, that was the racing French duke who had carried off the blue riband of the British Turf—the other name was harder to remember—then it came to her. Count Paul de Virieu. How kind and courteous he had been to her and her friend in the Club. She remembered him very vividly. Yes, though not exactly good-looking, he had fine eyes, and a clever, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... walking towards me, swinging by its riband a garden hat, for the air was hot. The dog ran to her, with a bark that might have been of reassurance. She stopped, and, with a pretty shyness far short ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... is to have the red riband, which is comical enough. I will take particular care of what you mention about Fitzherbert; was he desirous of the riband? if he was, I should think we might manage it on another opportunity; though, if I was in his situation, I should certainly think myself better without it. Trevor is to have ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... and went over the contents. Among the various odds and ends was a leather purse. He opened it with trembling fingers. There was a sovereign, five one pound notes folded up, eight shillings in silver, and a small silver cross hanging on a black silk riband. He dropped the silver with a sigh of satisfaction into his trousers pocket, and the notes he stored in the lining of his hat. He took up the little cross and was about to thrust it into the thick grass, when he paused for a moment, and was ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... who was just behind The Panther. Many people thought The Panther unduly lucky that day. A very different course, too, at Newmarket from that at Epsom. Obviously Dominion must be remembered. Moreover he was being greatly fancied and some of the best judges looked to him to win the Blue Riband for Lord GLANELY. The fact that Lord GLANELY drew his own horse in the Baltic Sweep was not to be sneezed at either, said some one. That's an omen if there ever was one! And it knocked out Lord GLANELY'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... her knees close beside me, and I took both of her hands between my own. But presently I sought for a riband that was around my neck, and drew out a locket. Within it were pressed those lilies of the valley I had picked for her long years gone by on my birthday. And she smiled, though the tears shone like ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Corsica Boswell," round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and saying more than one pretentious inaptitude; all this unhappily is evident as the sun at noon. The very look of Boswell ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... sat for a while before the fire, it had somewhat the look of being excessively wet with perspiration. His boots were as shiny as his hair; his waistcoat was of a startling pattern; his pantaloons were very tightly strapped down; and at the end of a showy watch-riband hung some showy seals. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... dear Kitty; would not do the same? What's eau de Cologne to the sweet breath of fame? Yards of riband soon end—but the measures of rhyme, Dipt in hues of the rainbow, stretch out thro' all time. Gloves languish and fade away pair after pair, While couplets shine out, but the brighter for wear, And the dancing-shoe's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star and a' that. The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the man for a few minutes, as the train rattled along, and then, got softly down, picked up the hat, and placed it on the seat in front of the man, noticing as he did so, that it bore on the riband "H.M.S. Taurus." ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... of the session, the Portland party joined the ministerial ranks. The Duke of Portland received a blue riband, with the office of third secretary of state; Earl Spencer accepted the privy seal, which he soon laid aside to preside over the admiralty; and Mr. Windham, was made secretary at war. Before the close of the year, Lord Fitzwilliam was promoted to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... which abound in the neighbourhood of Beaucaire, as also a singular defile near the post-house of La Pin. The high gray rocks which inclose this spot appear as if seared to the quick with drought, and for some distance leave room only for the road and a narrow riband-shaped line of rich cultivated ground of a few yards in breadth; which is again succeeded by a small village, whose houses completely block up the defile. From this point you creep and wind gradually to the hill called La ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... ground with his stick; which was always understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand, he sat down; and, opening a double eye-glass, which he wore attached to a broad black riband, took a view of Oliver: who, seeing that he was the object of inspection, coloured, and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... scraped and varnished, while the running rigging, boat's falls, and other ropes about the deck were neatly coiled down and flemished. The decks themselves were as white as holystones, sand, and much elbow grease could make them, and, with her white hull with its encircling green riband and cherry-red waterline, her yellow lower masts and funnel, and a brand-new pendant flying from the main-truck and large White Ensign flapping lazily from its staff on the poop, the Puffin looked more like a yacht than a man-o'-war. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... eight or ten feet long, with one end fastened in the ground and the other made sharp. They are placed in juxtaposition and connected together by horizontal riband-pieces. This arrangement is frequently placed at the foot of the counterscarp. When the timbers are large and the work is intended as a part of a primary defence, it is called a stockade; when the stakes are placed at the foot of the scarp, either horizontally or inclined, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... a short time the propositions were read. 'Proposed that the committee be impeached, for not providing suitable pens.' 'Lost, a pencil, with a piece of India-rubber attached to it, by a blue riband,' &c. &c. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... being concerning gates,—that the western facade of the church is of two periods. Your Murray refers it all to the latest of these; —I forget when, and do not care;—in which the largest flanking columns, and the entire effective mass of the walls, with their riband mosaics and high pediment, were built in front of, and above, what the barbarian renaissance designer chose to leave of the pure old Dominican church. You may see his ungainly jointings at the pedestals of the great columns, running through the pretty, parti-coloured base, which, with the 'Strait' ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... was dug. His courage almost gave way as he prepared to place the body of his late companion—one whom he had known for so many years—in his last resting-place. While chafing Voules's chest he had observed a locket hanging to a riband. He undid it, that he might deliver it to his friends. On opening it he saw that it contained the miniature of ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... thrilling operation, as the work of death usually is. Into how grand an attitude was that young man thrown as he gave the final strokes round the root; and how wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparently powerless saw, bending like a riband, and yet overmastering that giant of the woods, conquering and overthrowing that thing of life! Now it has passed half through the trunk, and the woodman has begun to calculate which way the tree will fall; he drives a wedge to direct its course;—now a few more movements of the noiseless ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... with the official accounts of the victory. Immediately, as Walpole tells us, the Court was filled with "an extravagance of joy." The relief was so great that it was displayed with "the utmost ostentation." The king at once determined to send Howe "a red riband;" and Lord Mansfield, who had thrown the weight of his great legal abilities against America, was created an earl. The Mayor and Corporation of York voted an address to his Majesty "on the victory at Long Island;" at Leeds they rang the bells, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston



Words linked to "Riband" :   ribbon, ribband



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