"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... negroes to cultivate their crops, and give them a chance to manufacture mats for beds, bark-ropes, wicker- chairs and baskets, earthen jars, pans, and that kind of thing. The huts themselves were primitive to a degree, the floor being earth, the roof, of palm-thatch or the leaves of the cocoa-nut tree, the sides hard-posts driven in the ground and interlaced with wattle and plaster, and inside scarcely high enough for its owner to walk upright. The furniture was scant—a quatre, or bed, made of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... songs of praise. Along both banks of these two little valleys grow trees, and canebrakes, and banana groves, and all manner of bushes and most pleasant grass; and in among the bushes and trees, here and there, are little huts of wattled golden cane overlaid with a thatch of brown. And it was in one of these jacals, standing a stone's throw below the causeway that crosses the arroyo of the ojo de agua, upon the point of land that juts out between the two valleys before they become one, that Pancha was born, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... humble thatch Required a master's care; The wicket, opening with a latch, Received ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... he stared at a rough, whitewashed hovel, thatched, and covered with hazel rods tied down to keep the thatch from blowing off. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... He has button'd-up one-half of him in a pair of short knee-enders. Now, Punch, on your oath, did you ever hear the likes o' that? But oh, houly Paul, if you only seen his big cock'd hat, Stuck up on the top of his jazy;—a mighty illegant thatch, With hair like young Deaf Burke's, all rushing up to the scratch, You must have been divarted; and, Jewil, then he wore A thund'ring big Taglioni-cut purple velvet roquelore. And who but Misther Dan cut it fat in all his pride, Cover'd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... overgrown with grass, and seeming a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and there windows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments. Altogether a sinister and repellent ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cried. "Who could help it? Jolly good, isn't it? Like the young bounder to a T—the same nose, the same coarse wiry thatch, the same eyebrows running away from the forehead into the middle ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... and the improvers of horticulture are indirectly improving their own race by furnishing finer and more healthful materials to be built into man's body. Marble, cedar, rosewood, gold, and gems make a finer edifice than thatch and ordinary timber and stones. So South-Down mutton and Devonian beef fattened on the blue-grass pastures of the West, and the magnificent prize vegetables and rich appetizing fruits, equal to anything grown in the famed gardens of Alcinoues or the Hesperides, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... servant of the inn following with a great hamper of wine and provisions. He was glad to see that a bright fire burned on an earthen hearth in the middle of the boat; the smoke finding its way out, partly through a hole cut in the thatch above it, partly by the opening at the fore end of the boat. He brought with him his horse cloth as well as his other belongings. The men, who were clearly in a hurry to be away, pushed the boat off from the shore as soon as he had taken ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... thatch on the roof was as golden, Though dusty the straw was and old, The wind had a peal as of trumpets, Though blowing and barren and cold, The mother's hair was a glory Though loosened and torn, For under the eaves in the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... then, faith, sure enough, As the pig was desaiced, 'twas high time to be off. So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch, Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch, Then tuk laave of each other's sweet lips in the dark, And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark; The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone! And poor I wid myself, left ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... half-forgotten fragrance came floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent of the peat. Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke a house—any one, that is to say, who did not save the smoke for his thatch. And who was so particular as Sheila had been about having the clothes come in from the washing dried so that they should not retain this very odor that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... thought it was made of gold from the value put upon it by its owner. Fifteen francs was asked for a bundle of straw that some boys made a bed of, and some of our Australian horses did not know any better than to eat the thatch off one old lady's bedroom, which not only cost us the price of the thatch when it was new but also damages for fright. There was a gap in the hedge that I had noticed when we entered the town, but it cost us ten francs all the same. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... had disappeared, leaving him bland, benign of countenance, although the same imperishable wrinkles lined his pinched cheeks. He was just as careless about his sparse hair as in the days of old. It was never by any chance sleek and orderly. The habit of running his fingers through his thatch still clung to him, significant reminder of the perplexities that filled his daily life over the ledgers and day- books. In all other respects, however, he was a ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... institution if one might judge by its patronage. It was housed in a recess in the wall of the traveling trench, and was open to the sky. There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque that I had to invent an excuse for laughing. ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... of their overhanging thatch with a puzzled, thoughtful expression, as if there must be a solution to ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... exact sense, was Nikky, but tall and straight, with a thatch of bright hair not unlike that of the Crown Prince, and as unruly. Tall and straight, and occasionally truculent, with a narrow rapier scar on his left cheek to tell the story of wild student days, and with two clear young eyes that had looked out humorously at the world until ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... shelter for the night. The owner cordially answered, "Como no? senores," (Why not? sirs). He explained, however, that there was nought to eat. After eating elsewhere, we made our way back to our lodging-place, a typical Zapotec hut, a single room, with dirt-floor, walls of canes or poles, and thatch of grass. The house contained a hammock and two beds of poles, comforts we had not known for days. I threw myself into the hammock; Ernst lay down upon one of the beds; the man and woman, squatting, were husking corn for our horses; a little girl was feeding ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... structure upon which he was perched sat Wolfgang himself, whilst the man beside him was busily engaged in removing the thatch ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the broom with such energy that the coffeepot flew up in the air and he tumbled over head foremost. His small boy sent up a wail of terror; and Billy Buster, the monkey, who was discussing a chicken bone, fled up to the thatch, where he remained all day until coaxed down by the tinkle of a spoon in a toddy glass. Tomas was out of breath, but not so much so that he could not ejaculate, "Sus! Maria Santisima, Senorita!" in ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the reader to ask whether any sort of evidence was ruled out or objected to. On this point we have but slight knowledge. In reporting the trial of Elizabeth Sawyer of Edmonton in 1621 the Reverend Henry Goodcole wrote that a piece of thatch from the accused woman's house was plucked and burned, whereupon the woman presently came upon the scene.[33] Goodcole characterized this method as an "old ridiculous custome" and we may guess that he spoke for the judge too. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... father, the mother and the child receiving the same treatment. The friends and relations are then anointed, the turmeric being applied, however, to their left feet. The bow, arrows, da, and u star are carefully placed inside the inner surface of the thatch on the roof, and the ceremony is over. Rice flour is then distributed to all who are present, and the male adults are given liquor to drink. After two or three months the ears of the child are bored and ear-rings are inserted. These ear-rings ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... middle of the down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... there was no public executioner; and there are many records of the flight of guilty persons, though an intention to make "the punishment fit the crime" is evident. No one was allowed to build a house close to the walls, and thatch was forbidden. A blasphemer was pilloried for a day (a list of illegal words and phrases is attached to this section). Workmen were forbidden to receive more than the wage prescribed, butchers had to accept the price fixed for meat by the justices, and the times and places for fishing were specified. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow; The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, He ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... a large number of houses covered with thatch and many people were seen. The Portuguese sailors were now brought from the zambuk, and the blacks, rewarded with pieces of white stuff, were sent to their own vessel. The blacks having gone on shore and reported how well ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... captain, hardly articulating from under his thick, sandy-coloured moustache, which, growing downwards from his nose, looked like a heavy thatch put on to protect his mouth from the inclemency of the clouds above. 'A doosed ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... red thatch wrinkled in thought. "He said he seen him come in here or next door, an' he came up the steps. But nobody could have got in without some of youse seein' him. That's a lead pipe." The officer pushed any doubt that remained from his mind. "Only ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... flowers o'er the thatch, And the swallow chirps sweet from her nest in the wall; All trembling with transport he raises the latch, And the voices of loved ones reply to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... marina; used in Sweden and Holland for manuring land. At Yarmouth it is thrown on shore in such abundance that mounds are made with it to arrest the encroachments of the sea. It is also used as thatch. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the beginning of 1853, and who used to ask many questions about Europe, seemed able to apprehend almost everything except the possibility of existence in a country without bamboos! "When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that posts and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch, and the withes that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact, it might almost be said that among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a bamboo! Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and rude as its situation and exterior foreboded. There was no appearance of a floor of any kind; the roof seemed rent in several places; the walls were composed of loose stones and turf, and the thatch of branches of trees. The fire was in the centre, and filled the whole wigwam with smoke, which escaped as much through the door as by means of a circular aperture in the roof. An old Highland sibyl, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... who had been on the waggon—by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... there was a thatch-palm, stunted, and looking like the head-dress of some savage African warrior. Inland, the creek, all white sand and golden sunny water at its opening, spread out far and near into noisome swamps overgrown with mangroves. Those strangest ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Baba. "Let us fight, then, with Abbas Mahommed, and plunder his harem instead! It is simple. We come on his village before dawn when those sons of Egyptian mothers* are asleep. We set fire to the thatch, and thereafter act as seems fit, slaying some and letting ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... time he stretched out one hand in a feeble way, to find that he was touching straw, and that beneath the straw there were boards. But there was straw everywhere; even the ceiling seemed to be straw, coarse straw, till he realised that it was reed thatch, and by degrees that he must be in the upper part of a stable—the loft, for he could smell hay; and as he satisfied himself that he was right so far, he discovered something more—that there were horses somewhere below, for there ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... collection of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church dedicated to St. Theresa, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... hand bristled with a thatch of heavy black hair. He brought it carefully sliding along the cushion. Babs was barely the length of one of its finger joints. She climbed ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... have never exhibited any tendency to depart from the primitive simplicity so strongly enjoined by their founder; and, down to the present time, the homes of the Buddhist priesthood are modest and humble structures generally reared of mud and thatch, with no pretension to external beauty and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... went to sleep, and at dead of night She heard at the door a low scratch; And presently Reynard, with all his might, Attempted to jump on the thatch. ...
— The Fox and the Geese; and The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny • Anonymous
... gay," said Eleanor, who began to lose her temper. "All Mr. Henley's sketches are gay. The thatch on the house reminds me of the 'ends' of Berlin wool that are kept, after a big piece of work, for kettle-holders. The yellow tree and the blue tree are very pretty: there always is a yellow tree and a blue tree in Mr. Henley's sketches. I don't know what ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... old farm-house, nestling warmly 'Neath its overhanging thatch of snow, Out into the moonlight troop the children, Filling all the air with music as they go, Gliding, sliding, Down the hill, Never minding Cold nor chill, O'er the silvered Moon-lit snow, Swift as arrow From the bow, With a rush Of mad delight Through the crisp air Of the night, Speeding ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... swiftly moving camels of the Tuareg who escorted us. Behind, followed the women of the tribe, my mother among them, two by two, the yoke upon their necks. There were not many men. Almost all lay with their throats cut under the ruins of the thatch of Gao beside my father, brave Sonni-Azkia. Once again Gao had been razed by a band of Awellimiden, who had come to massacre ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Shalmovo. The sun is already kissing the earth on the horizon; it has turned crimson and will soon disappear. In Semyon's pothouse, which has lately changed its name and become a restaurant—a title quite out of keeping with the wretched little hut with its thatch torn off its roof, and its couple of dingy windows—two peasant sportsmen are sitting. One of them is called Filimon Slyunka; he is an old man of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to the Counts Zavalin, by trade a carpenter. He has at one time ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... admittance. He was a tall, powerful man, tawny- bearded and deep-chested, clad in a loose-fitting suit of tweed, cut for comfort rather than elegance. As he stood in the shimmering sunlight, I took in every feature of his face. The large, fleshy nose; the steady blue eyes, with their thick thatch of overhanging brows; the broad forehead, all knitted and lined with furrows, which were strangely at variance with his youthful bearing. In spite of his weather-stained felt hat, and the coloured handkerchief slung round his muscular brown neck, I could see at a glance he was ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would not shrink, that had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... turned to Crane. "And as for their being bald, this was one time, Mart, when those two phenomenal heads of hair our two little girl-friends are so proud of didn't make any kind of hit at all. They probably regard that black thatch of Peg's and Dot's auburn mop as relics of a barbarous and prehistoric age—about as we would regard the hirsute hide of ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... richly-carved stone, and Ord, one of the historians of Cleveland, says: 'I have beheld with sorrow, and shame, and indignation, the richly ornamented columns and carved architraves of God's temple supporting the thatch of a pig-house.' ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Not so you would notice it. He goes on grinnin' and teeterin', like he was on exhibition in a museum and I was the audience. Then he gets a view of himself in the glass over the safe there, and begins to pat down his astrakhan thatch, and punch up his puff tie, and dust off his collar. Ever see one of these peroxide cloak models doin' a march past the show windows on her day off? Well, the Baron had all those motions and a few of his own. He was ornamental, all ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... fellow-creatures, and, in the hope of obtaining pardon for his crimes, he had climbed this mountain on his knees, and become a hermit, and lived there till his death, at the foot of this cross, only sheltered by a roof of thatch, now long since swept away by the wind. The sun is still sinking. The sky becomes darker. The luminous lines on the horizon grow fainter and fainter, like heated bars of iron that gradually grow cool. Suddenly, on the eastern side of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Clarissa perceived, when he took off his hat, and hung it up above him; rather a handsome face, with a long straight nose, dark blue eyes with thick brown eyebrows, a well cut mouth and chin, and a thick thatch of crisp dark brown hair waving round a broad, intelligent-looking forehead. The firm, full upper lip was half-hidden by a carefully trained moustache; and in his dress and bearing the stranger had altogether a military air: one could ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... rough shanty stood out in the sunlight. It was a crazy affair constructed of logs laterally laid and held in place by uprights, with walls that looked to be just able to hold together while suffering under the constant threat of collapse. The place was roofed with a thatch of reeds taken from the adjacent stream-bed, and its doorway was protected by a sheet of tattered sacking. There was also a window covered with cotton, and a length of iron stove-pipe protruding through the thatch ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... room also had no fireplace, and great patches of plaster had been brought down by the rain on the south-west side. Just underneath the window was the pigstye. Outside nothing had been done to the house for years. It was not brick built, and here and there the laths and timber were bare, and the thatch had almost gone. Houses were very scarce on the farms in that part, and landlords would not build. The labourers consequently were driven into Abchurch, and had to walk, many of them, a couple of miles each way daily. Miss Diana Eaton, eldest daughter of the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the ears of my heart. It does not matter whether it means thatched cottage or manor-house, home is home; be it ever so homely, there is no place on earth like it. Green grows the house-leek on the roof forever, and let the moss flourish on the thatch. Sweetly the sparrows chirrup and the swallows twitter around the chosen spot which is my joy and rest. Every bird loves its own nest; the owls think the old ruins the fairest spot under the moon, and the fox is of opinion that ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... 90 Now faster—now slower. At last they have reached it— The village 'Stripped-Naked,' It's not much to look at: Each hut is propped up Like a beggar on crutches; The thatch from the roofs Has made food for the cattle; The huts are like feeble Old skeletons standing, 100 Like desolate rooks' nests When young birds forsake them. When wild Autumn winds Have dismantled the birch-trees. The people are all In the fields; they are working. ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... filled with water led from the Zambesi, stood the village of the Bambatse Makalanga, a collection of seventy or eighty wretched huts, round, like those of their forefathers, but built of mud and thatch. About them lay the gardens, or square fields, that were well cultivated, and at this season rich with ripening corn. Benita, however, could see no cattle, and concluded, therefore, that these must be kept on the hill for safety, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... the supper, I prepared our bed, by breaking a quantity of fine hemlock-brush to thatch the bottom of the camp, to keep us from the damp ground, which it did quite effectually. I have camped out, I dare say, hundreds of times, both in winter and summer; and I never caught cold yet. I recommend, from experience, a hemlock- bed, and hemlock-tea, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... but it wasn't all gone, as you might have expected. You see, it had been out of use for some time, sir, and there was mostly nothing but old broken ploughs and lumber there; and what's more, there was a deal of rain early in the week, as you may remember, sir, so the thatch was pretty sodden, being out o' repair and all—and so was the timber, for the matter o' that, for there's no telling when it was last painted. So the fire didn't go quite so fierce as it might, you see; else I should expect ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... communicated, at length descended from before the altar, to administer the water to such as desired to receive it. Among these, Toussaint bent his head lowest—so low, that the first slanting sunbeam that entered beneath the thatch seemed to rest upon his head, while every other head remained in the shadow of the roof. In after days, the negroes then present recalled this appearance. Jean Francais, observing that General Hermona was ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... demise of Blakeville's leading apothecary. She ordered a life-size portrait of her husband, to be hung in the store, and they wept together over the prescription—that is to say, over the colour of the cravat and the shade of the sparse thatch that covered the head of the departed. Mrs. Davis never was to forget his sympathetic attitude. She never quite got over explaining the oversight that had deprived him of the distinction of being one of the pall-bearers, but she made up for it in a measure by insisting ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... favorite painter to the Jupiter of Lucian, who, tired of listening to the lamentable cries of mankind, rose from table and exclaimed: 'Let it hail in Thrace!' and the trees were immediately stripped of their leaves, the heaviest cut to pieces, and the thatch of the houses scattered before the wind: then he said, "Let the plague fall on Asia!" and the doors of the houses were immediately closed, the streets were deserted, and men shunned one another; ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of the clearing toward the stream stood a hut, built of cocoa-palm logs. Its roof of palm-thatch had been scattered by storms. Nearer the stream on a bench were an old decaying wash-tub and a board. A broken frying-pan and a rusty axe-head ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... with brushwood, fire was set to the hut, and we heard the crackling of the palm thatch, while thick stifling wreaths of white smoke burst in upon us through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... At a distance it could scarcely have been distinguished from the cliff itself. Its walls were composed of large blocks of unhewn serpentine, masses of clay filling up the interstices, while it was roofed with a thick dark thatch, tightly fastened down with ropes, and still further secured by slabs of stone to prevent its being carried away by the fierce blasts which are wont to sweep up and down the ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... of the cave with a thatch of willows and aspens, so that not even a bird or a rat could get in to the sacks of grain. And this work was in order with the precaution habitually observed by him. He might not be able to get out of Utah, and have to return ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Vidrik Verlandson, Strike me not cruelly dead! And I will lead thee straight to my house, That's thatch'd with ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... said Henry; "how could they spend such lives? I would much rather live with John Trueman, and help to thatch, than have ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... convolvulus festooned the opening, hardy hart's-tongue and tufts of parsley fern sprang from every crevice in the stones, while the top was covered with a tangle of briars, nettles, and matted grass. These combined to form a species of thatch which perfectly protected the interior from both wind ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... village is but a very small place indeed, now-a-days,—yet it possesses a church, grey and ancient, whose massive Norman tower looks down upon gable and chimney, upon roof of thatch and roof of tile, like some benignant giant keeping watch above them all. Near-by, of course, is the inn, a great, rambling, comfortable place, with time-worn settles beside the door, and with a mighty sign a-swinging before it, upon which, plainly to be seen (when ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... gladdened by the sudden outburst of a nightingale in a thicket close at hand. Careful watching was rewarded by a sight, not only of the singer but of a nest with three little ones in it. While she yet peeped at the nestlings, a man appeared with an ax. He was looking for boughs with which to thatch his booth and his eye was on the nightingale's home. Taking the nest from its hiding-place Mary tucked it under her veil, wrapped her lily stems in wet leaves and started away. A moment later a stroke of the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... house has two doors, one of which is used only by women in this condition. During her impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family, and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.[213] The Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women at such seasons in the outer verandah of the house for eight days, and will not let them enter the kitchen ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... extemporaneous lanai such as is used to shelter that al fresco entertainment, the luau. But in the old times of strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to lift his hand and the entire population of a district ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles, beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of the hula, such as La'a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... three other things that we had had out, the rifle included; after which, as we watched him, he patted us both on the chest to call our attention to what he was going to do, and, picking up his spear, he thrust it down into the ground close up to the doorway, its point standing up above the thatch. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... This colossal gramen looks like the donax of Italy. This, the arundinaria of the Mississippi, (ludolfia, Willd., miegia of Persoon,) and the bamboos, are the highest gramens of the New Continent. Its seed has been carried to St. Domingo, where its stalk is employed to thatch the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... in sight of the cottage. Description of it is needless; the civilized universe knows it already. It was the typical cottage of the drawing-master's early lessons in neat shading and the broad pencil touch—with the trim thatch, the luxuriant creepers, the modest lattice-windows, the rustic porch, and the wicker bird-cage, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... mossy thatch, and the meadows so green, Are covered all over with white; The snowdrop and crocus no more can be seen, The thick snow ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... thickness of his wrist and the greatness of his fingers made authentic the mighty frame of him hidden under loose dungaree pants and cotton shirt, buttonless, open from midriff to Adam's apple, exposing a chest matted with a thatch of hair as white as that of his head and face. The depth and breadth of that chest, its resilience, and its relaxed and plastic muscles, tokened the knotty strength that still resided in him. Further, no bronze and beat of sun and wind availed to hide the testimony of his ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... camp, and old Sru and the women and children at once set to work to build a "house" to protect us in case it rained during the nights. Very quickly was the house built. The "devil" was sent up the cocos to lop off branches, which, as they fell, were woven into thatch by the deft, eager hands of the women, who were supervised by Sivi, Nalik's handsome wife, amid much chatter and laughter, each one trying to outvie the other in speed, and all anxious to follow Nalik and myself to ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... painted in a terrific pattern what seemed meant for lightning and serpent. It was armor and plume and banner to him. I thought of our own devices, comforting or discomforting kinships! He had black, lustrous hair, no beard—they pluck out all body hair save the head thatch—high features, a studied look of settled and cold fierceness. Such was this Carib ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... 1666, was a long way ahead of the first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims—farther than most of us realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish. Small in stature, fiery in spirit, a terror to the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... houses in their lonely crossway, we were startled by the appearance of a gutted house; the walls alone having remained to present to us, on the higher ground, the semblance of a white cottage. The old thatch, fallen in, and timber, were still smouldering visibly, though the house was fired about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... for a stout leather hat, and ran down the street. Out came all the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same thing once before, on being scolded. There is no water but ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... careful look on all sides. Nothing is stirring in the sultry, penetrating heat; the palmetto thatch of clustering huts away beyond the opposite bank might contain no life for all of it they show. Hardly a bird twittering in the reeds but does so half heartedly. The man's face softens again, taking on the expression it wore ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... squire, I don't vally that; squire's back is broad enough to bear the load, but I'm a poor man.' That's how a' goes on, ye know. Poverty is always in his mouth, but the old chap have got a hatful of money hid away in the thatch or some're, only he haan't a got the heart ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... It looked very easy to throw a line with a worm on it towards the shore, and then draw it back, but the chub showed such little eagerness to be caught by me that I generally preferred to steer and watch my companion pulling them out as he stood in the prow, his face nearly hidden under the thatch of his straw hat. When the fish were in a biting humour, he had one on his hook every time ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the end of the lane it stands, Where the sumac grows in a crimson thatch, Down where the sweet wild berry patch, Holds out a lure for eager hands. Down at the end of the lane, who knows The ghosts that sit at the well-scarred seats, When the moon is dark, and the gray sky meets With the dawn time light, and a chill ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... who built the church for this monastery of stone, and after the Roman fashion; for till that time stone buildings were very rare in Britain, even the church of Lindisfarne was of wood, and covered over with a thatch of straw and reeds, till bishop Eadbert procured both the roof and the walls to be covered with sheets of lead, as Bede mentions.[2] St. Bennet also brought over glaziers from France, for the art of making glass was then unknown in Britain. In a fifth journey to Rome, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... her through an open tract of the forest, full of brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her; and, beyond that again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining overhead the thatch of its long branches. At that hour the place was breathless; a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of the wood; and she went groping, knocking against the boles - her ear, betweenwhiles, strained to ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And makes contentment and joy agree With the coarsest boarding and bedding: Love, that no golden ties can attach, But nestles under the humblest thatch, And will fly away from an Emperor's match To ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... miles or more before we reach Georgetown, and the sides of the road are lined for most of the distance with huts and hovels of East Indian coolies and native Guiana negroes. Some are made of boxes, others of bark, more of thatch or rough-hewn boards and barrel staves, and some of split bamboo. But they resemble one another in several respects—all are ramshackle, all lean with the grace of Pisa, all have shutters and doors, so that at night ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... I had but mony, Or any friend to bring me from this bondage, I would Thresh, set up a Cobler's shop, keep Hogs, And feed with 'em, sell Tinder-boxes, And Knights of Ginger-bread, Thatch for three Half pence a day, and think it Lordly, From this base Stallion trade: why does he eye ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... (although my uncle Gervase groaned over the accounts) would an abatement of rent be denied, the appeal having been weighed and found to be reasonable. The rain—which falls alike upon the just and the unjust—beat through his own roof, but never through the labourer's thatch; and Mrs. Nance, the cook, who hated beggars, might not without art and secrecy dismiss a single beggar unfed. His religion he told to no man, but believed the practice of worship to be good for all men, and regularly encouraged it by attending church on Sundays and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Four minutes gone. "Jones," said he, "you patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It's a big one—all brothers." Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... last setting sun that Shakspeare saw reddened the windows here, and struck warmly on the faces of the hinds coming home from the fields. The mighty storm that raged while Cromwell lay a-dying made all the oak-woods groan round about here, and tore the thatch from the very roofs I gaze upon. When I think of this, I can almost, so to speak, lay my hand on Shakspeare and on Cromwell. These poor walls were contemporaries of both, and I find something affecting in the thought. The mere ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... returned Barbudo, "do not deceive yourself; they are not for the cow, but for the fool that lassoed the cow. And I promise you, Epifanio, that if it is not restored to me, this thatch over our heads will not be broad enough ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... thatch, and with sliding lights before it, the Admiral's favorite Munich glass, mounted by an old ship's carpenter (who had followed the fortunes of his captain) on a stand which would have puzzled anybody but the maker, with the added security of a lanyard from the roof. The gear, though rough, was very ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of their prowess, would turn out to great advantage, it being resolved to convey him to the coast, and sell him to the Europeans. While some persons proposed one plan, and some another, an old man offered a scheme. This was, to strip the roof of a house of its thatch, and to carry the bamboo frame, (the pieces of which are well secured together by thongs,) and throw it over the lion. If, in approaching him, he should attempt to spring upon them, they had nothing to do ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... of reed and thatch work standing in shallow water on bamboo stalks, highly inflammable and subject to alterations by a blunt pocket-knife. So a favorite device for holding a man prisoner is a hole in the ground too deep and sheer for him to ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... here in this strange place? No, that I shall not, I can tell you. I never slept from under the thatch of my father's cottage in my life, but once, and that was at the wedding of my dear, obliging Rovena. But perhaps," added she, "my father and mother will come to me here. So I will even try and be compilable, for I never was obstinate. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... had to be cleared; the huts, of which there were six, had to be cleaned out, fitted up with new parchment in the windows—for there was no glass in those days—and new thatch on the roofs, besides being generally repaired; additional huts had to be built for the people, pens for the sheep, and stabling for the cattle, all of which implied felling and squaring timber, while the smaller articles of household furniture and fittings kept the people generally in full occupation. ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... when he saw a pair of eyes, shining in the firelight, appear at the edge. At the same moment there was a sound of scraping and scratching at some of the other holes. The roof was constructed of rough poles laid at short distances apart, and above these were small branches, on which was a sort of thatch of reeds and rushes. Standing close under one of the holes Beric could see nothing, but from the sound of the scratching he could tell from which side the wolf was at work enlarging it. He carefully thrust the point of his spear through the branches and gave a sudden ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... forward poles stood Silan Petroff in a red shirt, open at the neck, showing his powerful throat and hairy chest, hard as an anvil. A thatch of gray hair fell over his forehead, under which laughed great black, warm eyes. His sleeves, turned up to the elbow, showed the veins standing out on his arms as they held the pole. Silan was leaning ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... pimentos, or round straight sticks, varying from half-an-inch to three inches in diameter, driven firmly into the ground, in an upright position, as close together as possible, and held in their places by pine-wood battens. The roof was composed of palm-leaves, or "fan-thatch." The ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... nineteen volcanoes that were let loose there at the touch of a finger that might have been a child's finger without the result being a whit less ruinous? Shakespeare may have seen a Stratford cottage struck by one of Jove's thunderbolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted thatch and clear away the bits of the broken chimney. What would he have said if he had seen Ypres as it is now, or returned to Stratford, as French peasants are returning to their homes to-day, to find the old familiar signpost inscribed "To Stratford, 1 mile," and at the end of the mile nothing but ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... is a marvel of industry. They first make with grass a sloping roof; giving it the form of a mushroom or an open umbrella, and they place it in such a way that it is supported by the trunk of a tree and one or two of the branches. (Fig. 29.) This thatch is prepared with so much care that it is absolutely impenetrable to water. Beneath this protecting shelter each couple constructs its private dwelling. All the individual nests have their openings below, and they are so closely pressed ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... their hard work and suffering in attaining the promised paradise, they found only additional labour awaiting them, as they had to wander several miles in search of long thatch-grass and timber to construct the new station, in which fatigue they were entirely ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... was not one building, but many—a great hall where the warriors ate, the women's large room where they worked, two houses of many bedrooms, treasure vaults, a bath, storehouses. Narrow passages led from room to room. Flat roofs of thatch and clay covered all. And there were open courts with porches about the sides. The floors of the court were of tinted concrete. Sometimes they were inlaid with colored stones. The walls of the great hall had a painted frieze running about them. And around the ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... forest to the house in which Susani and her people were living. It was situated on the verge of the shore, on the weather side of the narrow island, so as to be exposed to the cooling breath of the trade wind, and consisted merely of a roof of thatch with open sides, and the ground within covered with coarse mats, upon which we saw were lying ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... foal. If she does by chance approach these animals she must propitiate them by offerings of grain. Nor in some cases will she light a lamp, for fear the flame in some way may hurt the child. She should not finish any sowing, previously begun, during pregnancy, nor should her husband thatch the house or repair his axe. An eclipse is particularly dangerous to the unborn child and she must not leave the house during its continuance, but must sit still with a stone pestle in her lap and anoint her womb with cowdung. Under no circumstances must she touch any cutting instrument as it might ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... understood, had sprung from the rollicking Irish race, possessed a fine voice, as sweet as that of any girl; and many the time did he beguile an evening at the campfire with his songs and his clever dancing. Jimmy, by the way, happened to have a fiery thatch, a multitude of freckles, and upon occasions lapsed into the brogue of his ancestors, although he could talk as well as the others when ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... other hand, the village is really cool, healthy, and pretty; there are pleasant drives over dreadful roads, if one makes up one's mind to the volante, and delightful river-baths, shaded by roofs of palm-tree thatch. One of the best of these is at the foot of Mrs. L.'s inclosure, and its use is included in the privileges of the house. The water is nearly tepid, clear, and green, and the little fish float hither and thither in it,—though men of active minds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. They ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and worked till noon, but the filth was as bad as ever. Then the Giant's youngest daughter came, and bid him sleep, and she cleaned out the stable, so that a golden apple would run from end to end of it. Next day the Giant set him to thatch the byre with birds' down, and he had to go out on the moors to catch the birds; but at midday, he had caught only two blackbirds, and then the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and bid him sleep, and then she caught the birds, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... of this pretty little mouse that "it is most abundant in the south of India, where it frequents trees, and very commonly palm-trees, on which it is said to make its nest generally. It, however, occasionally places its nest in the thatch of houses, on beams, &c. It is very active, and from its habits difficult to procure" ('Mammals of India,' p. 202). According to Sykes it constructs its nest of oleraceous herbs in the fields, and Hodgson states it to tenant woods and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... insidiously up each side of my head. It is executing flank movements from the temples northward, and some day the two columns will meet and after that I'll be considerably more of a highbrow than I am now. At present I am craftily combing the remaining thatch in the middle and smoothing it out nice and flat, so as to keep those bare spots covered—thinly perhaps, but nevertheless covered. It is my earnest desire to continue to keep them covered. I am not a professional beauty; I am not even what ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... of wood, deerskin, and clay. The house was of logs, the glassless windows were of deerskin parchment, the door-lock and the door-hinges were of wood, the latch string was of deerskin, the fireplace and the chimney were of clay, the roof thatch was of bark. The abode was clean, serviceable, and warm; and yet it was a house that could have been built thousands of years ago. But consider, for instance, Oo-koo-hoo's comfortable lodge; a similar dwelling, no ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... bid her clean the pots for supper She took that old book down out of the thatch; She has been doubled over it ever since. We should be deafened by her groans and moans Had she to work as some do, Father Hart; Get up at dawn like me and mend and scour; Or ride abroad in the boisterous night like you, The pyx and ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire • William Butler Yeats
... shot up in angry spirals. The wind at once beat them down again. The roof of the house took fire. And, in a few minutes, it was a violent flare, accompanied by the quick blaze of the rotten beams, the dry thatch, the trusses of hay and straw heaped up by the hundred in the barn and ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... hair, and the other without a white feather—can prevent him from carrying away, body and soul, the individual who called him up, accompanied by such terrors. In fact the night, independently of the terrible accessory of the fire, was indescribably awful. Thatch portions of the ribs and roofs of houses were whirled along through the air; and the sweeping blast, in addition to its own howlings, was burdened with the loud screamings of women and children, and the stronger shoutings of men, as they attempted to make each ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... snuff-brown shadows and half-veiled trunks. Would it please me to look at a chapel? It was all open to the hillside, most tenderly and devoutly done in rustic work with reedings of peeled branches and panels of moss and thatch—St. Hubert's own shrine. I saw the hunters who passed before it, going to the chase on the far side of the mountain where ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... to tell; there was a something that recalled the open sea, written in either countenance; courage and endurance; faith and self-reliance; the compass and the rudder; speaking plainly out under each little thatch of white hair. And indeed, as we found out afterwards, those young countenances told the truth; those fisher-boys were Red-Cap's only boat-crew. In all weathers, in all seasons, by night and by day, the three were ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... hunter of beasts and a fighter of men. I discovered fire and covered my nakedness with the skins of animals. I builded cunning traps, and wove branches and long grasses and rushes and reeds into the thatch and roof-tree. I fashioned arrows and spears of bone and flint. I drew iron from the earth, and broke the first ground, and planted the first seed. I gave law and order to the tribe and taught it to fight with craft and wisdom. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... pull the thatch from the roof of a little house beside the road, but as the plying ankus made his head ache he couldn't stay long enough to finish that job but scooted uproad again in full pursuit of a Ford car, while an angry man shoved his head through the hole in the roof ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy |
