"Sampler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incessant iteration, and a frontless impudence. He is a great 'scholar' too, to use the country phrase; his 'piece,' as our village schoolmaster terms a fine sheet of flourishing writing, something between a valentine and a sampler, enclosed within a border of little coloured prints—his last, I remember, was encircled by an engraved history of Moses, beginning at the finding in the bulrushes, with Pharaoh's daughter dressed in a rose-coloured gown and ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... old lady brought a maid-servant out of the country with her, who was daughter to her father's clerk, and had learned her letters and worked her first sampler under Miss Honeyman's own eye, whom she adored all through her life. No Indian begum rolling in wealth, no countess mistress of castles and townhouses, ever had such a faithful toady as Hannah Hicks was to her mistress. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cheeks of every grain will serve to ply The sampler, and to teaze the housewife's wool; What need a vermeil, tinctured lip for that, Love-darting eyes, and tresses like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us, O! is all forgot? All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles ccreated both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides; voices, and minds Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt Lisbeth sat facing her. An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a temperate light. Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the little spinner, while she knew her letters from having worked them into a sampler, and could make shift to write her name, could not read or write, and had never had the slightest instruction in any sort of book-learning. Thereupon the young officer good-naturedly proposed to be her ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... architecto, fuit semper cum illo, eritque semper. Mundus autem corporalis, quod secundum opus est Dei, decedit iam ab opifice ex parte una, quia non fuit semper: retinet alteram, quia sit semper futurus": "That representative, or the intentional world (say they) the sampler of this visible world, the first work of God, was equally ancient with the architect; for it was forever with him, and ever shall be. This material world, the second work or creature of God, doth differ from ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Fortunately we had a small collection of books, among which I found Shakespeare, and read it at every moment I could spare from my domestic duties. These occupied a great part of my time; besides, I had to shew (sew) my sampler, working the alphabet from A to Z, as well as ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... he was dead to become a ghost. You never saw such a boy as that in all your life. He had a great rusty cutlass hanging to a string at his waist, and he was tattooed all over in fine colours, so that even his face looked like a girl's sampler. He had a handkerchief in his hand full of foreign shells and old-fashioned pieces of small money, very curious, and he walked up to the well outside his mother's house and drew himself a drink as if he had ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... everything that a wife and mother should be. My father often referred to her as an example of the affection and love of a wife to her husband, and of a mother to her children. The only relic I possess of her handiwork is a sampler, dated 1743, the needlework of which is so delicate and neat, that to me it seems to excel everything of the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... parlor is nicely furnished; there is an elegant hair sofa, and over the mantel is the portrait of Major Johns; and then the goodman has insisted upon hanging under the looking-glass my old sampler in crewel, with a gilt frame around it; on the table is the illustrated 'Pilgrim's Progress' papa gave me, and a volume of 'Calmet's Dictionary' I have taken out of the study—it is full of such beautiful pictures,—and 'Mrs. Hannah More' in full gilt. The big Bible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... spirit counted no excuse too slight for a battle; and so valiant a lad was she of her hands, so well skilled in cudgel-play, that none ever wrested a victory from fighting Moll. While other girls were content to hem a kerchief or mark a sampler, Moll would escape to the Bear Garden, and there enjoy the sport of baiting, whose loyal patron she remained unto the end. That which most bitterly affronted her was the magpie talk of the wenches. 'Why,' ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... useful to keep by her a sampler with the most characteristic stitches placed upon it; a glance at this will be suggestive when she is in doubt as to which to use, for it is often difficult to recollect just the right and most suitable one ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... fireplace, a black horse-hair sofa alongside the wall on the right-hand side of the door, red curtains, a black horse-hair arm-chair, three other chairs to match, a little round table, two large shells, a framed sampler on the wall representing first the letters of the alphabet, then the figures 1, 2, 3, &c., and, finally, a very blue Jesus talking to a very red woman of Samaria on a very yellow well—underneath, the inscription and date, "Margaret Curtin, 10th ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... little proud of the achievement. I made a large copy to fasten upon the nursery wall; I wrote it in all my books; and Fatima, who could not be induced to attack the fat grammar with me, became equally absorbed on her part in the effort to reduce the inscription to cross-stitch for the benefit of her sampler. ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... stalk with languish't head. Beauty is natures brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities Where most may wonder at the workmanship; It is for homely features to keep home, They had their name thence; course complexions And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply 750 The sampler, and to teize the huswifes wooll. What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the Morn? There was another meaning in these gifts, Think what, and be adviz'd, you ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the book is the series of samplers designed to show not only what are the available stitches, but the groups into which they naturally gather themselves, as well as the use to which they may be put: and the back of the sampler is given too: the reader has only to turn the page to see the other side of the stitching—which to a needlewoman is often the more helpful. Lest that should not be enough, the stitches are described in the text, and a marginal ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... miss, being a very pretty little miss, being a very much-admired little miss, being a very good little miss, who always minded her book, and had passed through her sampler-doctrine with high applause; had even stitched out, in gaudy propriety of colors, an Abraham offering up Isaac, a Sampson and the Philistines; and flowers, and knots, and trees, and the sun and the moon, and the seven stars, all hung up in frames with glasses before them, for the admiration ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... image it is, there is no honour ascribed to the image as a passive object; but they who honour an image for this respect, and with this meaning, have it only for an active object which represents and calls to their mind the first sampler, as the Archbishop of Spalato also observeth.(704) Neither the Papists only, but some also of the very heathen idolaters, norunt in imaginibus nihil deitatis inesse, meras autem esse rerum absentium repraesentationes,(705) ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Lion, and all the flags of all the world in one frame; to say nothing of some rather woebegone Bible prints, doing full justice to the beards of Susannah's elders, and the biceps of Samson. On all these, and prominently on the sampler worked by Hephzibah Marrable, 1672, a ship-of-war in full sail, with cannons firing off wool in the same direction, and defeating the Dutch Fleet, presumably. Perhaps ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... I declare I'm perfectly confounded with all you have been telling me! I'm sure I never heard the like of it! It seems but the t'other day since you began your sampler; and it looks just like yesterday since your father and mother were married. And such a work as there was at your nursing! I'm sure your poor grandfather was out of all patience about it. And now to think that you are going to be married! not but what it's a thing ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the sitting room, where the bright sun shone in, on a picture of General Washington, and a sampler of Grandma Scott's, representing a woman crying over a tombstone shaded by a pea-green willow; and black profile likenesses of all the Scott family cut by a traveling artist, hanging in spots over the fire place; and an old-fashioned clock, standing guard in the corner, with the picture ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... unbutton quite easily; only I didn't like to do it until I'd consulted you. . . . And I don't want you to bother about the clothes, if you'll only show me how to cut out. I can sew quite nicely. Mamma taught me. I was making a sampler all through her illness—Corona Bonaday, Aged Six Years and Three Months; then the big and little ABC, and the numbers up to ten; after that the Lord's Prayer down to Forgive us our trespasses. When we got to that she died. . . . I want to begin with a suit of pajamas—no, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Polly became enamored of a wonderful sampler, and several very old silhouettes—the latter, very different from the kind we are familiar with. As these old relics were in the attic and were considered valueless, she got them ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Six sheets and pillow-cases, three tablecloths and half-a-dozen towels, and two blankets, one spun and woven by their own mother. The initials and date were marked on them in old-fashioned cross-stitch, which was a little more ornate than regular sampler-stitch. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... began spreading the sheets, without waiting to remove her bonnet, she thought proudly that Judy probably never stayed in so entirely respectable a chamber in her life. Even the pitcher and basin were elaborately ornamented with peonies, the colour of the sampler in crewel work over the washstand; and on the bureau, between two crocheted mats of an intricate pattern, there was a pincushion in the shape ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... had done the original work had done it lovingly and well, and Olive learned many a lesson while she was following the lines of the quaint houses, like those on old china, renewing the green of the feathery elms, or retracing and coloring the curious sampler trees that stood straight and stiff like sentinels in the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a sampler which will be found useful for learning to embroider letters for marking linen. The material used is cambric muslin or fine linen. Work the embroidery with white embroidery cotton, red cotton, or black silk. The thick parts of the letters are worked in slanting satin stitch and back stitch; the ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... all that nobody turned towards him; the lady kept dealing out the cards, the young girl continued working beads into her sampler, the governess went on reading, and the old spinster was still intent upon some delicate operation with her needle—just as if ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... collection, every variety of style may be easily understood, as they have been particularly selected to show each point of difference. Commencing with the earliest form of lacework—i.e., "cutworke"—nothing will better show this than the "Sampler" specimen, which, half way down, shows two rows entirely typical of this kind of early lace-making—for such it is. A little lower, examples of drawn threadwork are seen, while the upper portion illustrates satin stitch patterns, which more ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... pictures. One was a likeness of Mr. Weston, cut in paper over a black surface, with both hands behind him, and his right foot foremost; the other was a picture of the Shepherds in Pilgrim's Progress, gazing through a spy-glass at the Celestial city. Alice's first sampler, framed in a black frame, hung on one side of the room, and over it was a small sword which used to swing by Arthur's side, when receiving lessons in military science from Bacchus, who, in his own opinion, was another Bonaparte. Into this room Phillis's ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... 'appen on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking. Miss Nancy, indeed, had never been to any school higher than Dame Tedman's: her acquaintance with profane literature hardly went beyond the rhymes she had worked in her large sampler under the lamb and the shepherdess; and in order to balance an account, she was obliged to effect her subtraction by removing visible metallic shillings and sixpences from a visible metallic total. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... gave Priscilla a rosewood writing desk inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, and Priscilla gave Harriett a pocket- handkerchief case she had made herself of fine gray canvas embroidered with blue flowers like a sampler and lined with blue and white plaid silk. On the top part you read "Pocket handkerchiefs" in blue lettering, and on the bottom "Harriett Frean," and, tucked away in one ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... three corners of the room. There were several comfortable rocking-chairs, a big mahogany bureau and a sewing-machine. Over the double bed hung an ancient saber and over a low bookcase was a framed sampler. There were several good old-fashioned engravings and some framed lithographs with numerous books and piles of dilapidated magazines. Doug's father stood by the table with a book in ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... on the table as I write a sampler, worked in pink, green, blue, and dull purple-red silks, on which I read these wise sentences, "Order is the first law of Nature and of Nature's God," "The moon, stars, and tides vary not a moment," and "The sun knoweth the hour of its going ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... towards the faults of her neighbours. Her growing fame did not make her the less accessible and delightful to her nieces, who could consult their aunt and obtain a willing listener in any difficulty whatever, from a doubtful love affair to the working of a sampler. Indeed, she is a standing witness to the truth that eccentricity and self-consciousness are not essential parts ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... calendar to the wall. Whatever was the trade of the occupant, the tastes were above those of the ordinary dweller in the land. That was to be seen in a print of Raphael's "Madonna and Child" taking the place of the usual sampler upon the walls of Jersey homes; in the old clock nicely bestowed between a narrow cupboard and the tool shelves; in a few pieces of rare old china and a gold-handled sword hanging above a huge, well-carved oak chair. The chair relieved the room of anything like commonness, and somehow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... high-backed chair; for people did not lounge in those days, and children were taught at meals to keep their thumbs on the table to make them sit upright. Little Elsie sat by her on a smaller but equally stiff chair, stitching diligently at her sampler, and Dick stood before her glancing furtively over his shoulder. The blue sky outside was so great a distraction to him that Lady Eleanor had turned his back to the window, and set before him an old steel morion of the time of Queen Elizabeth; ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... ladies are made and not born," she said decidedly. "Don't ever let them fool you. Barbara may run around until she's tired talking about belonging to the Daughters of Southern Officers; she can stick a sampler up here, and lend a Copley portrait to a loan exhibition now and then; but you mark my words, Barbara had to learn things like any other girl. One sensible mother in this world is ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... art had Sally created, and it now hung, stately in a frame of curled maple, in the chilly parlor. It was a sampler, containing the alphabet, both large and small, the names and dates of birth of both her parents, a harp and willow-tree, the twigs whereof were represented by parallel rows of "herring-bone" stitch, a sharp zigzag spray ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... innocence can produce. Rebecca lay awake for a long, long time, thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which she was going, and of her chances of success there. The rushlight flickered in the basin. The mantelpiece cast up a great black shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler, which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a college gown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier. When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did not stay a whole year at school. In some things I had the advantage of the eldest girls, whilst in others I was more stupid and ignorant than the children in the lowest class. My knitting was always in confusion; I broke my needles in my impatience; I spoilt the silk and sampler if I had any marking to do; and, to make matters worse, if any one laughed at me for my awkwardness, or punished me for my carelessness, I flew into the most violent passion. I fought with the assistant-mistress, and boxed the ears of any girl who called me Major Frank—a girl from the ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... Come, bring your sampler, and with art Draw in't a wounded heart, And dropping here and there; Not that I think that any dart Can make your's bleed a tear, Or pierce it any where; Yet do it to this end,—that I May by This secret see, Though you ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... her, but knows her own place in heaven as perfectly as the pew she has a key to. She is so taken up with faith she has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear by my truly. She rails at other women by the names of Jezebel and Delilah; and calls her own daughters Rebecca and Abigail, and not Ann but Hannah. She suffers them not to learn ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... reverse of the first, that is, aslant from you toward the left hand. The needle is to be brought out at the corner of the stitch, nearest to that you are about to make. The shapes of the letters or figures can be learnt from an inspection of any common sampler. ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... tent-stitch and the sampler, She cleaned the tapestry, which was ampler; Joseph going down into the pit, And the Shunammite woman with ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless, Save the inevitable sampler hung Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Unkind Hermia, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. Have you forgot our schoolday friendship? How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted! Hermia, it is not friendly in you, it is not maidenly to join with men in scorning ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a thousand times at the bottom of her sampler, father, the one that is framed and hanging in her morning room—Rachel Mostyn, November, ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... of bodily suffering; everything was in spotless order; the sheets were white as the driven snow; a formidable phalanx of medicine-bottles stood on the small square table; there were no books, no pictures, no flowers; a sampler hung over the mantelpiece, that was all. I saw Mr. Hamilton glance disapprovingly ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is a good sampler too, and when the pig saw him they tried to sample each other. Faithful thought he was chasing the pig, and the pig thought he was chasing Faithful, and they did it in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... worthy couple were blessed with one daughter, who was brought up with great tenderness and care; uncommon pains had been taken with her education, so that she could stitch in every variety of way; make all kinds of pickles and preserves, and mark her own name on a sampler. The influence of her taste was seen also in the family garden, where the ornamental began to mingle with the useful; whole rows of fiery marigolds and splendid hollyhocks bordered the cabbage-beds; and gigantic sunflowers ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... replied Henriette earnestly. She showed the Countess her sampler, on which she was working ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... you, or Jenny either, presume to meddle with my private matters?" (Mr. Oldbuck hated puttting to rights as much as Dr. Orkborne, or any other professed student.) "Go, sew your sampler, you monkey, and do not let me find you here again, as you value your ears.I assure you, Mr. Lovel, that the last inroad of these pretended friends to cleanliness was almost as fatal to my collection as Hudibras's visit to that of Sidrophel; and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... with the names of Mrs. Patton's departed friends,—two worked in crewel to the memory of her father and mother, and two paper memorials, with the woman weeping under the willow at the side of a monument. They were all brown with age; and there was a sampler beside, worked by "Judith Beckett, aged ten," and all five were framed in slender black frames and hung very high on the walls. There was a rocking-chair which looked as if it felt too grand for use, and considered itself imposing. ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... supplied the mines carried almost everything—provisions, clothing, dry goods, and certainly wet goods. At every store there was found an open barrel of whiskey, with a convenient glass sampler that would yield through the bunghole a fair-sized drink to test the quality. One day I went into a store where a clever Chinaman was employed. He had printed numerous placards announcing the stock. I noticed a fresh one ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Scarr'd with ten thousand comely blisters, The marks remaining on the skin, To tell the quality within: Distinguish'd flashes deck the great, As each excels in birth or state; His oylet-holes are more and ampler; The king's own body was a sampler. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder at the workmanship. It is for homely features to keep home; They had their name thence: coarse complexions And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply The sampler, and to tease the huswife's wool. What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that, Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn? There was another meaning in these gifts; Think what, and be advised; you are but young yet. ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... bluer green, and the crags of the mountains made softer, the gaping scars of prospect holes less lonely and less mournful with their ever-present story of lost hopes. On a great boulder far at one side a chipmunk chattered. Far down the road an ore train clattered along on the way to the Sampler,—that great middleman institution which is a part of every mining camp, and which, like the creamery station at the cross roads, receives the products of the mines, assays them by its technically correct system of four samples and four assayers to every ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... in a bed of sand, and festoons of cobwebs clung to the upper sashes of the murky windows. The lower sash of one window had been raised, and in the yard without, nearly an acre in extent, lay a few bales of cotton, with jagged holes in their ends, just as the sampler had left them. Elder Brown had time to notice all these familiar points, for the figure at the desk kept serenely at its task, and deigned ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Belamour! Sir Jovian's brother! Ah! that is a sad story," replied Betty, "though I am not certain that I have it correctly, having only heard it discussed between my father and mother when I was a growing girl, sitting at my sampler. I think he was a barrister; I know he was a very fine gentleman and a man of parts, who had made the Grand Tour; for when he was staying at the Great House, he said my mother was the only person he met who could converse with him on the Old Masters, or any other subject of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... compendious expedient for the thickning of copp'ces which are too transparent, by laying of a sampler or pole of an hasel, ash, poplar, &c. of twenty or thirty foot in length (the head a little lopp'd) into the ground, giving it a chop near the foot, to make it succumb; this fastned to the earth with a hook or two, and cover'd with some fresh mould at a competent ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn |
