"Tortoise-shell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Poulton and Sanders[45] were made with 600 pupae of Vanessa urticae, the "tortoise-shell butterfly." The pupae were artificially attached to nettles, tree-trunks, fences, walls, and to the ground, some at Oxford, some at St. Helens in the Isle of Wight. In the course of a month 93% of the pupae at Oxford were killed, chiefly by small birds, while at St. Helens 68% perished. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... an old one, and, as clearly of considerable value, being inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl in delicate arabesques that must have cost its unknown maker many months, if not whole years, of patient labour. Its varnish, smooth and transparent as finest glass, belonged to the same date, and had been laid on, if not by the same hand, by ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... tortoise-shell He stretched some chords, and drew Music that made men's bosoms swell Fearless, or brimmed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the neat, shining, dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' and that great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing round his legs, and all the other cats followed after. I shut the door before these last ones got into the parlor." Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and various stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly black cat, which sat glaring at ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cultivators. Now the absorption of so much labour in the cultivation of this one product must necessarily have raised the price of food and other necessaries; and when it was abolished, more rice would be grown, more sago made, more fish caught, and more tortoise-shell, rattan, gum-dammer, and other valuable products of the seas and the forests would be obtained. I believe, therefore, that this abolition of the spice trade in the Moluccas was actually beneficial to the inhabitants, and that it was an act both wise ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... girl went to the closet and took from the top shelf an excessively ornamented accordion,—the opulent gift of a reckless admirer. It was so inordinately decorated, so gorgeous in the blaze of papier mache, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell on keys and keyboard, and so ostentatiously radiant in the pink silk of its bellows that it seemed to overawe the plainly furnished room with its splendors. "You ought to keep it on the table in a glass vase, Phemie," said her ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... he was a Californian and did not hold the members of this race in a tithe of the esteem he accorded other Orientals. This Japanese was rather shorter and thinner than the majority of his race. He wore large, round tortoise-shell spectacles, and clothes that proclaimed the attention of the very best tailors; a gold-band ring, set with one blue-white diamond and two exquisite sapphires, adorned the pudgy finger of his right hand. Farrel judged that his gray beaver hat must ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... truth, think a great deal of that old tortoise-shell harlot; but I haven't a doubt that in order to impress Susy I was pretending agonies of solicitude which I didn't honestly feel. Sour Mash never gave me any real anxiety; she was always able to take care of herself, and she was ostentatiously vain of the fact; vain of it to a degree which ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... before dinner, being rather tired with my day's work, I was lying on the couch with a book in my hand, when gazing upwards I saw a large mass of something overhead which I had not noticed before. Looking more carefully I could see yellow and black marks, and thought it must be a tortoise-shell put up there out of the way between the ridge-pole and the roof Continuing to gaze, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot; and I could detect his head and his bright eyes in the very centre of the folds. The noise of the evening ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sometimes felt as if I were a larger sort of helpless mouse in these moments, but sometimes Polly would be more friendly, and even jump into our laps, when it was a pleasure to pat her hard little head with its exquisitely soft, dark tortoise-shell fur. No matter if she almost always turned and caught the caressing hand with teeth and claws, when she was tired of its touch, you would always be ready to pat her next time; there was such a fascination about her that any attention on her ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... no response. She knocked again while Hermia waited, a question on her lips. There was a sound of heavy footsteps and the door was flung open wide and a big man with rumpled hair, a well-smeared painting-smock and wearing a huge pair of tortoise-shell goggles peered out into the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... for sovereigns and other great men to keep and to caress them, we shall see camels as variegated as cats, which in the woods are all of the uniformly-streaked tabby—the males inclining to the brown shade—the females to blue among them;—but being bred down, become tortoise-shell, and red, and every variety of colour, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... many strings Hermes had on his tortoise-shell instrument is a much disputed question. Some say there were but three and that they represented the three seasons—spring, summer, and winter—into which it was the custom of the Greeks to divide their ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... that of the Philippines, and resembles that of the Marianas Islands. Their manner of pronouncing words is something like that of the Arabs. The woman who appears to be of highest station has many rings and necklaces of tortoise-shell, that are called here carey; and others of a material that is unknown to us. This material, which somewhat resembles ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... given by the waiter was pretty explicit: a tall man, with a slight stoop, wearing a reddish-brown beard cut into a point, a tortoise-shell eyeglass with a black silk ribbon, and an ebony walking-stick with a handle shaped like ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the head, and fastened with a silver bodkin or pin. In the other mode, which is more general, they give the hair a single twist as it hangs behind, and then doubling it up they pass it crosswise under a few hairs separated from the rest on the back of the head for that purpose. A comb, often of tortoise-shell and sometimes filigreed, helps to prevent it from falling down. The hair of the front and of all parts of the head is of the same length, and when loose hangs together behind, with most of the women, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... attire, within the bounds of its subservience to Paris, was certainly unique. It was wonderful the amount of decoration she could carry without being the worse for it. Her head alone, over and above its bronze hair, coil on coil and curl on curl, sustained several large tortoise-shell pins, a gold lace fillet, and a rose over each ear. It was no more to her than a bit of black ribbon to a young girl. Old rose and young rose mingled delicately in the silks and gauzes of her gown; here and there a topaz flashed rose from her bodice and from the dusk of her bared ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... reading a paper on the wide porch—a young man then, with a big frame and a habit of looking out very solemn from under his eyebrows and over big tortoise-shell glasses. But he had boyish, joking ways of speech, as you know. He came down the walk between the plats of grass that looked like two peaceful, green rugs spread in the midst of all the noise and bustle of the town, and his long hands pulled up the latch and he smiled at the woman as if he ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-looking ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... pretty confidently from hearsay. It grows occasionally to a great size; those smaller ones which the citizens prize weighing generally about 600 lb. Here too are the turtle of the Mediterranean, and the hawksbill turtle of Arabia, to which ladies are indebted for the choicest of their tortoise-shell combs. Having sufficiently dwelt upon the interesting histories of the tortoises, the visitor's way lies forward in the direction of the two cases next in order of succession, which are devoted to ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... could properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss Barrace—which was the lady's name—looked at them with convex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle. Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely contradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a clever head without powder—why Miss Barrace should have been in particular the note of a "trap" Strether ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... down, upon the mats, her high headdress and tortoise-shell pins standing out boldly from the rest of the horizontal figure. The train of her tunic appeared to prolong her delicate little body, like the tail of a bird; her arms were stretched crosswise, the sleeves spread out like wings, and her long guitar ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... If they had protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, unfit ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... cats, black, white, gray, yellow, striped, spotted, Maltese, tortoise-shell, calico, and tiger cats! Cats of all sizes and all kinds, cats of all ages, from tiny furry babies wheeled in perambulators by their mamas to gray old grandpas hobbling along by the aid of canes or crutches—all the cats of Catnip Island ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... venturesome, and they all sat down on the floor to make a selection. Reba chose a quaint, silver buckle, Reliance selected a mother-of-pearl card-case, Edna decided upon a tortoise-shell comb. ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... with a little laugh. "I'd imagined you a horrid elderly person with a white cravat and tortoise-shell spectacles. It is such ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... church, They caught nothing but weeds, and perhaps a few perch. The Humane Society Tried a variety Of methods, and brought down, to drag for the wreck, tackles But they only fished up the clerk's tortoise-shell spectacles. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the wind is fair. Considerable nicety is also shown in the making of fishing lines and hooks. The former are made from the fibres of a species of climber very neatly twisted. The fish-hooks are made of tortoise-shell, or nails procured from wreck timber. They are without barbs, and our fish-hooks are eagerly sought for in ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... of the East Indies would be attracted to its shores. For some time previously small vessels from New South Wales had traded regularly with certain islands of the Indian Archipelago chiefly in pearls, tortoise-shell and beche-de-mer. ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... She wore a purple merino dress buttoned down the front with dark black buttons, and a great breastpin of twisted gold. Her hair was looped down over her ears in two folds like shiny drab satin. It scarcely looked like hair, the surface was so smooth and unbroken; and a great tortoise-shell comb ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... room that had been set apart for cards, sat three men about a card-table. They were Count Samoval, the elderly Marquis of Minas, lean, bald and vulturine of aspect, with a deep-set eye that glared fiercely through a single eyeglass rimmed in tortoise-shell, and a gentleman still on the fair side of middle age, with a clear-cut face and iron-grey hair, who wore the dark green uniform of ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... floor of the atrium was of mosaic; the walls, faced partly with red marble and partly with wood, on which were painted fish, birds, and griffins, attracted the eye by the play of colors. From the door to the side chamber they were ornamented with tortoise-shell or even ivory; at the walls between the doors were statues of Aulus's ancestors. Everywhere calm plenty was evident, remote from ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... waiting about fifteen minutes. With perfect patience he stood in front of an Italian mirror in the drawing-room, smoking a cigarette through a long tortoise-shell holder. He regarded himself with keen and friendly interest, not in the least surprised that his wife's little friend from the country so evidently liked him. He found that he looked up to his best form, murmured a word of praise for the manner in which his evening ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... slice of cold sirloin from yesterday's roast. And then, let me see,— He had two,—perhaps three Cups, with sugar and cream, of strong gunpowder tea,— But no matter for that— He had called for his hat, With the brim that I've said was so broad and so flat, And his "specs" with the tortoise-shell rim, and his cane. With the crutch-handled top, which he used to sustain His steps in his walk, or to poke in the shrubs Or the grass, when unearthing his worms or his grubs; Thus armed he set out on a ramble—a-lack! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet." She died ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... wore a soft silk cravat artificially tied in a bow knot with wide and floating ends, and he purchased a French silk hat with a broad and curving brim. Having satisfied himself that the effect was good, he laid in a stock of similar articles, and further adorned his appearance with a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and a green umbrella. For possibly cool or rainy weather he provided himself with a coffee-coloured overcoat that had a velvet collar and tails ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... is a very fine animal. It is a drawing-room tiger. What suppleness, what extraordinary finesse! Here is this little yellow one pretending to sleep, in order that the tortoise-shell one may not notice it, but fall upon its brother; and this one, how it tears the other! See how it sticks its claws into its side! It would kill and eat it, I fully believe, if it were the stronger. It is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led to the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... rubies, and emeralds; cabinets of ivory, curiously wrought; mosaic tables, set with jasper, blood-stone, and lapis-lazuli, their feet carved into the claws of lions and eagles; screens of old raised Oriental Japan; massive musical clocks, richly chased with ormulu and tortoise-shell; ottomans superbly damasked; Persian and other carpets, with corresponding hearth-rugs bordered with ancient family crests and armorial ensigns in the centre, and rich hangings of English tapestry. The carved chimney-pieces were adorned with the choicest bronzes and models in wax ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... clean with the juice of the lime and the lather of the soap-nut; then it was combed and brushed until every hair glistened like ebony; next it was twisted up and stuck full of the quaint golden and tortoise-shell bodkins, with here and there a spray of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... mountains young girls did not wear them, save of the "circular" variety, designed to hold back "shingled" tresses. But from underneath a box of faded gum-drops and the store's one carton of cigars, came some of imitation tortoise-shell, gilt ornamented, of the sort old ladies sometimes stuck into their hirsute knots for mountain "doings" of great elegance, and the best of these Madge bought. Also she bought lace—great quantities of it, although, even after ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... to a lady in black who was examining the pictures through a tortoise-shell eye-glass adorned with diamonds and hanging from a long pearl chain. Undine was instantly struck by the opportunities which this toy presented for graceful wrist movements and supercilious turns of the head. It seemed suddenly ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the grape arbor, and Thea picked out a sunny place on the bench, where a tortoise-shell cat was stretched at full length. She sat down, bending over the cat and teasing his whiskers. "Because he had been awake all night, thinking about her, wasn't it? Maybe that was why he was up ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... that of tortoise-shell, i.e. black and yellow cats. The tortoise-shell with very rare exceptions is female, the corresponding male being yellow, without any black colour. Doncaster found that a yellow male mated to a black female produced black male offspring and tortoise-shell females. ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... head of hair in his window and leave it at that—he did, indeed, place there a smiling lady with a wonderful jewelled comb and a radiant row of teeth, but around this he built up a magnificent world of silver brushes, tortoise-shell combs, essences and perfumes and powders, jars and bottles and boxes. Manning was the finest artist in the town. Ponting, at the top of the street just at the corner of the Close, was an artist too, but in quite another fashion. Ponting was the best established, most ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... them, invariably turned out to be only portions of gorse bushes projecting through the snow. My optical delusions as to colour were perhaps the most remarkable; the protruding rocks invariably appeared of a strange orange yellow, with black lines along them, producing a short of tortoise-shell effect. I took these mysterious appearances at first for dead animals, ponies or sheep, and touched them to try to ascertain the fact. My hands, however, were so utterly devoid of sensation, that they were of no more use than my eyes in identifying objects. I was therefore ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... buttery fleurs-de-lis on the floor. She escaped the disastrous fire, not, like a dozen other fowls, by seeking refuge in the wind-break, but because she was in the coal-shed carrying on a hand-to-hand conflict with the tortoise-shell cat, who had ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... which comes up to us from the town with its population of a hundred thousand souls. As to the products of this locality, they are mostly figured porcelain, embroidered silks, japanned goods, ebony and tortoise-shell finely carved and manufactured into toy ornaments. Every small, low house has a shop in front quite open to the street; but small as these houses are, room is nearly always found in the rear or at the side for a little flower-garden, fifteen or twenty feet square, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... them merely a Fellowship of the Super-Mind, or what a Wimp wearing Tortoise-Shell ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... trousers up to his knees. These the hunt too adopted; and his 'particular,' Jack (Jack Spraggon), the man whom he mounted, and who was made much in his own mould, sported, like his patron, a pair of great broad-rimmed, tortoise-shell spectacles of considerable power. Jack was always at his lordship's elbow; and it was 'Jack' this, 'Jack' that, 'Jack' something, all day long. But we must return to Mr. Sponge, whom we left working his way through the intricate ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... rush of events, not too much bewildered to dress with care, and neither too old nor too wicked nor too ugly to find pleasure in it. She might have been a born lady just restored to the habits of her youth, to judge by her delight over the ivory brushes and tortoise-shell comb, and great mirror. In an hour or so she made her appearance—I can hardly say reappeared, she was so altered. She entered the room neither blushing nor smiling, but wiping the tears from her eyes like ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... have come out. They have preened And dried themselves After their blood bath. Old men seem a little younger, And tortoise-shell combs Are longer than ever; Earrings weigh down aged ears; And Golconda has ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... that fought poor Kitty," pursued George, for this had been a sore trouble to the children. Mrs. Wolfe had brought a fine handsome tortoise-shell cat from Ireland with her, thinking how delightful it would be to have her house quite free from vermin, only, unfortunately, they were so very numerous that poor "Lady Catherine," as the children named their pussy, though she did her best ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... man, about fifty, slightly stooped, with a bulging midriff, tortoise-shell glasses, graying hair, and a strange look in his eyes. I'd noticed him standing outside Shannon's Bar for about ten minutes, pacing back and forth. Then he came in and sat down next to me. It was late afternoon, ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... beautifully ornamented with small leaf-shaped spots of a delicate straw-colour. There are several other very pretty birds in this homely family; but the finest of all is Thripodectes flammulatus, the whole body being tortoise-shell colour, the wings and tail bright chesnut. The powerful tanager-like beak of this species seems also to show that it has diverged from its timid shade-loving congeners in another direction by becoming a ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... wonderful being lolling in a wing-chair, one leg over the chair-arm; a young young man, with broken brown teeth, always seen in his perpetual grin, but a godlike Grecian nose, a high forehead, and bristly yellow hair. The being wore large round tortoise-shell spectacles, a soft shirt with a gold-plated collar-pin, and delicately ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... student never ceases to be impressed by the extraordinary variety of the work of the 16th and 17th centuries, and very often of the 18th also. The basis of the cabinet has always been wood, carved, polished or inlaid; but lavish use has been made of ivory, tortoise-shell, and those cut and polished precious stones which the Italians call pietra dura. In the great Flemish period of the 17th century the doors and drawers of cabinets were often painted with classical or mythological scenes. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... smile; "and now, to reward your constancy to him, I tell you that whenever they're settled, or, at all events, out of their troubles, if you think me worth your while, I won't have any objection to become your wife; and—there—what are you about, Fergus? See this, now—you've almost broken the tortoise-shell crooked-comb that she made me ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of the men of Ceylon wear tortoise-shell combs in their hair. They are very proud of these combs, and some ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous
... in khaki, with the air of soldiers; Jamaica negroes with conical heads and brown Barbados negroes with Cockney accents; English engineers in lordly pugrees, and tourists from New England who seem servants of their own tortoise-shell spectacles; comfortable ebon mammies with silver bangles and kerchiefs of stabbing scarlet, dressed in starched pink-and-blue gingham, vending guavas and green Toboga Island pineapples. Carl gapes at Panamanian nuns ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... What can we do against them?" he cries at dinner, combing his mustache with the little tortoise-shell comb he carries in ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... supper in the visitor's refectory—soup, good bread and country wine, ham, a roast chicken with potatoes, a nice white cheese made of sheep's milk, and grapes for dessert. The kind Abbate sat by, and watched his four guests eat, tapping his tortoise-shell snuff-box, and telling us many interesting things about the past and present state of the convent. Our company was completed with Lupo, the pet cat, and Pirro, a woolly Corsican dog, very good friends, and both enormously voracious. Lupo ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of the soil, Could they but know their blessedness, for whom Far from the clash of arms all-equal earth Pours from the ground herself their easy fare! What though no lofty palace portal-proud From all its chambers vomits forth a tide Of morning courtiers, nor agape they gaze On pillars with fair tortoise-shell inwrought, Gold-purfled robes, and bronze from Ephyre; Nor is the whiteness of their wool distained With drugs Assyrian, nor clear olive's use With cassia tainted; yet untroubled calm, A life that knows no falsehood, rich enow With various treasures, yet broad-acred ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... visitor. The latter took a pinch of snuff from a tortoise-shell box, and flicked away a few wandering grains which settled upon the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... embellished by the unwonted addition of pound cake and sweet pickles, the dress-maker's sharp swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted sisters. Miss Mellins was a small woman with a glossy yellow face and a frizz of black hair bristling with imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her sleeves had a fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled on her wrists. Her voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a stream of anecdote and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... sustain the loud parts, then linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over her forehead, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... you are very kind," Donald replied. Miss Bascom had adjusted her tortoise-shell lorgnette, and was surveying Donald ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... shoulders like a bag, in which they carry their children. None of them came off to the ship, and they generally kept at a distance when we were on shore. Their ornaments are ear-rings, made of tortoise-shell and bracelets. A curious one of the latter, four or five inches broad, wrought with thread or cord, and studded with shells, is worn by them just above the elbow. Round the right wrist they wear hogs' tusks, bent circular, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... underwear, or blue stockings, and tawny garments drying upon lines; little windows, some with rows of oranges and ginger-beer bottles in them; little shops; little doors, at which cluster little children and many cats, the latter mostly tortoise-shell and white. Infants watch their elders playing marbles in the roadway, and the cats stretch lazy bodies on the mats, made of old fishing-net, which lie at every cottage door. Newlyn stands on slight elevations above the sea level, and at one point the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... snowed again, seeming as if the weather was determined on some kind of storm, but had not yet made up its mind for snow, rain, or hail. Now the wind roared in the chimney, and started out of her sleep a great tortoise-shell cat, that lay on the rug which Aunt Kindly had made for her. Tabby opened her yellow eyes suddenly, and erected her smellers, but finding it was only the wind and not a mouse that made the noise, she stretched out a great paw ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy, And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his Peers were ranged around ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... frosty weather the friction of a tortoise-shell comb will electrify the hair and make it cling to the teeth. Sometimes persons emit sparks in pulling off their flannels or silk stockings. The fur of a cat, or even of a garment, stroked in the dark with a warm dry hand will be seen to glow, and perhaps heard ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... the tortoise-shell diary With flowers pressed between the leaves Belonging to some languid grande dame Of ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare through the glasses, a strange ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thereupon, by leading him at once into an adjoining room: the door of which was open. It was a large room, with a great window. Behind a desk, sat two old gentleman with powdered heads: one of whom was reading the newspaper; while the other was perusing, with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small piece of parchment which lay before him. Mr. Limbkins was standing in front of the desk on one side; and Mr. Gamfield, with a partially washed face, on the other; while two or three bluff-looking men, in top-boots, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... put her handkerchief to her face, and her neck shake a minute convulsively. Duff Salter here sneezed loudly: "Jericho! Jerichew! Je-ry-cho-o!" He produced a tortoise-shell snuff-box, and Podge took a pinch, for fun, and sneezed until the tears came to her eyes and her hair was shaken down. She ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... coquetterie came over me for the first time in my life. I took out the two great tortoise-shell pins that held it up, and let my hair tumble down around me. It falls in heavy ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... particulars,' answered Lee, with an easy transition from a sentimental to a common-sense, business-like tone, and at the same time unscrewing the lid of a tortoise-shell tobacco-box, and taking a folded paper from it. 'I keep these matters generally here; for if I were to drop such an article—just now, especially—I might as well be hung out to dry ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... and distributed them throughout all the islands, traveling for nine months, and then returned to pay religiously even for the merchandise that the Chinamen did not remember to have given them. The products which they in exchange exported from the islands were crude wax, cotton, pearls, tortoise-shell, ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... hardly believe that for two years it had been tenantless. She might have gone from it ten minutes before. It was redolent of her presence. The little intimate details were as she had left them. A bowl of bronze chrysanthemums stood on the dressing table where lay the tortoise-shell toilet articles given her by Miss Craven. A tiny clock ticked companionably on the mantelpiece. The pain in his eyes deepened as they swept the room with hungry eagerness to take in every particular. Her room! The room from which his unworthiness had barred ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... bought what I wanted," said the Fairy Woman; and she took out of her pocket a little tiny piece of purple ribbon, with a gold-colored satin edge, and a very small tortoise-shell comb. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Brachionichthys hirsutus, Lacep., family Pediculati. The name is used in the northern hemisphere for a different fish, which is also called there the Frog-fish and Toad-fish. The name arises from a fancied resemblance of the profile of the fish to a human hand. It is also called Frog-fish and Tortoise-shell fish. Mrs. Meredith calls it Tortoise-shell Fish from its colour, when figuring it in 'Tasmanian Friends and Foes' under its former scientific name of Cheironectes Politus. The surface of its skin is hirsute with minute ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... in the evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... district showed me, that the two degrees of latitude which lay between me and the former scenes of my studies were not without their influence on both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The group of land-shells was different, in at least its proportions; and one well-marked mollusc—the large tortoise-shell helix (helix aspersa), very abundant in this neighbourhood—I had never seen in the north at all. I formed, too, my first acquaintance in this woody, bush-skirted walk, with the hedgehog in its wild state—an animal which does not occur to the north of the Moray ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... old friend Moreno, at Havana," said Captain Brand, as he sat down on the settee, and with a pretty tortoise-shell knife cut round the seals. "Ah! what says he? 'Happy to inform you,' is he? 'Packages of French silks seized by custom-house on account of informal invoice and clearance.' Why didn't the fool forge others, then? Well, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... magnificent chamber fitted up in antique style, with oak panelling, and heavily carved bedsteads, of Queen Elizabeth's time, or of the Stuarts, hung with rich tapestry curtains of similar date, and with beautiful old cabinets of carved wood, sculptured in relief, or tortoise-shell and ivory. The very pictures and realities, these rooms were, of stately comfort; and they were called by the name of kings,—King Edward's, King Charles II's, King Henry VII's chamber; and they were hung with beautiful pictures, many of them portraits ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wide hall that ran through the house was a large tortoise-shell cat. She had a prettily marked face, and she was waving her large tail like a flag, and mewing kindly to greet her mistress. But when she saw me what a face she made. She flew on the hall table, and putting up her back till it almost lifted her feet from the ground, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... pink little thing, laid down the pen he had snatched up as I entered the room, and began gazing at me quizzically through enormous tortoise-shell-rimmed goggles, after the fashion of a precocious infant who tries to look like daddy. What might he do ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... not long after Nannie's story a great tortoise-shell tomcat appeared in the Earnest home. No one thought of asking Mrs. Earnest if she had brought him there, and the others knew nothing about him. More curiously still, when Mr. Earnest began to grow sulky or ugly, Sir Tortoise Shell ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... an intimate visitor of the family. He talked little, but he sat long. He filled the father's pipe when it was empty, gathered up the mother's knitting-needle, or ball of worsted when it fell to the ground; stroked the sleek coat of the tortoise-shell cat, and replenished the teapot for the daughter from the bright copper kettle that sung before the fire. All these quiet little offices may seem of trifling import, but when true love is translated into Low Dutch, it is in this way that it eloquently ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... ripening tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house, and the jolly moon ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Justice. Why, I went there myself. You go through a swing door into a big place that, for cheerfulness, is no better than a monster coal cellar, and there you behold, laid out on a little black table, Mrs. Williams' woollen shawl, your Senorita's tortoise-shell comb, that had got entangled in it somehow, and my old cap that I lent you—you remember. I assure you, it gave me the horrors to see the confounded things spread out there in that dim religious light. Dash me, if I didn't go queer all over. And all the time ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... by this time, was holding high revel with a ball of yarn which the tortoise-shell cat had purloined ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... due to the same cause that some butterflies on small and exposed islands have their wings reduced in size, as is strikingly the case with the small tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa urticae) inhabiting the Isle of Man, which is only about half the size of the same species in England or Ireland; and Mr. Wollaston notes that Vanessa callirhoe—a closely allied South European form of our ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk. Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-shell pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the window and stood ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... saved from a party of savages on the coast of New Guinea. He belonged to a small trading vessel from Ceram, or one of the neighbouring islands, which are accustomed to visit that coast to barter fire-arms, calico, and ironwork, for slaves, nutmegs, trepang, tortoise-shell, and edible birds' nests. She had been driven out of her course by a gale, and found herself on a part of the coast with which no one on board was acquainted. Before she could make good her retreat, she was perceived by some of the inhabitants. The inhabitants ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... single glass of wine at the close of the repast, which he drank on bending his head to Lionel, with a certain knightly grace, and the prefatory words of "Welcome here to a Haughton." Mr. Fairthorn was less abstemious; tasted of every dish, after examining it long through a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, and drank leisurely through a bottle of port, holding up every glass to the light. Darrell talked with his usual cold but not uncourteous indifference. A remark of Lionel on the portraits in the room turned the conversation chiefly upon pictures, and the host ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!— ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... being that of "An-tun" Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, which reached China in A.D. 166. But because the tribute offered in this case contained no jewels, consisting merely of ivory, rhinoceros-horn, tortoise-shell, etc., which had been picked up in Annam, some have regarded it merely as a trading enterprise, and not really an embassy from the Roman Emperor; Chinese writers, on the other hand, suggest that the envoys sold the valuable jewels and bought a trumpery collection of tribute ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... fourth and last class of inhabitants are the Mahometans called Lauteas, consisting both of strangers who have conquered the country, and natives who have embraced that religion. The inhabitants of Guzerat are very ingenious mechanics in works of silk, gold, ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, crystal, ebony, and other articles. They follow the rules of Pythagoras, killing no creature; but rather buy all, though even venomous, from those who take them, on purpose to set them free. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... lay a large tortoise-shell paper knife. That, thrust under the door as a wedge, would be almost as good as a lock. At least she might count on it to protect her for those so necessary five minutes. But if she pushed it through to the other side Jim Logan would see the flat, brown blade stick out like a defiant ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... but a polished tortoise-shell, of which the living inhabitant has long since crumbled to dust; but it still gleams in the sun with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... plumped him into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened brown and polished as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and perfume, sunned themselves like white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old forest-trees,—the maple, scarred with the wounds that had drained away its sweet life-blood,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various |
