"Broom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though a woman might have pointed out wet corners and certain muddy splashes on the wall. He lost all count of the buckets of water that he carried from the spring, and it occurred to him that Mary Hope would need a new broom, for the one Belle had provided was worn down to a one-sided wisp that reminded him of the beard of a billy goat. He used two cans of condensed lye and all of the washing powder, and sneezed himself too weak too ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... sensibility, mettle and beauty, presented themselves by turns; and the cold, woodeny room, the neglected tavern, the autumn night wind coming down the chimney and starting the fire, all seemed instinctive, like him, with mischief, as if Patty Cannon's soul flew astraddle of a broom and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... we won't have to practice fighting no more with broom sticks and cans and etc. because Sargent James told us tonight that the rifles was comeing so I said to my boys that I hoped they was good shots so we could make a sucker out of the other squads and I told them if they was all ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... whose little game Wallingford were going to checkmate!" declared one man. "I've allus said 'at he were running a rare old risk. We know what t' old saying is about new brooms sweeping clean—all very well, is that, but ye can smash a new broom if ye use it over vigorously. Wallingford were going a bit too deeply into t' abuses o' this town—an' he's paid t' penalty. Put out o' t' way—that's ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... this. It takes off one of my great crimes. You know I have deprived the court of the privilege of living in the palace, and I have given them wherewith to find lodgings in the city. Here go the ladies with their bundles under their arms, and the lord high-steward has a broom sweeping after them as they go. This charming individual in the corner with a hunting-whip, is myself. And here is the pith of the joke. 'Rooms to let here. Inquire of the proprietor on the first floor.' [Footnote: Hubner, i., p. 190.] What ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... realized that there must be space beyond it, who had planned a way in, and thence to cut a tunnel to freedom. They had found, or stolen, or manufactured, tools, and had cut the sliding panel so cunningly that none of the Germans who used the broom-cupboard had suspected its existence. The space on the far side of the wall had given them room to begin their work. Gradually it had been filled with earth until there was barely space for them to move; then the earth as they dug it out had to be laboriously thrust ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... Finot fired at Macassar Oil that delightful joke which made people so merry at the Funambules, when Pierrot, taking an old hair-broom, anointed it with Macassar Oil, and the broom incontinently became a mop. This ironical scene excited universal laughter. Finot gaily related in after days that without the thousand crowns he earned through Cephalic Oil he should have died of misery and despair. To ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... sporran and marching to pipes—a fine spurn about him! Born to trouble, if I know anything, trying to sweep the sky with his little broom!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... became King of England. No one beholding the proud bearing of the new monarch would have supposed that his family emblem, the lowly broom-plant (Planta genista), from which came the name Plantagenet, had been adopted by an ancestor of Richard's in token of humility. For, in very truth, the Plantagenets were an arrogant race, and Richard was the proudest of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... broom-stick or her cats wafted you to Lynwood, where you suddenly stood in the midst of the mourners, borne into the hall on a howling blast! How I got there, I am sorry to say, the craven declared not, lest I should give him ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the distance. On the same side is situated Bir el Mabruka—"Well of the Mabruka," towards which we saw a party of Bedouins making their way. This plain is succeeded by hilly ground, distinguished as El Bassoul—"the onions," where white-blossomed broom with thin leaves is met with, and, in a slight declivity, a few bushes. From El Bassoul the road descends gently through a sandy tract, from which to the left we saw the great Lehochomu Melleha, with a mirage effect ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... these paid for their privilege before they got clear off. Their potent seignorships, in truth, soon found themselves exceedingly ill at ease here: jostled by lawless pirates, lassoed by wild Guachos, and plundered of their loose cash by irresistible broom and orange girls, they were fain to make an early retreat, with as good a grace as might be assumed, under circumstances so subversive ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... did what she had never done before—brought the broom with her, and put it up against ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Hassan-ben-Jussef, the servant of Allah, although I am miscalled Don Rodrigo de Acuna by the successors of the Christian dogs who, by force and in violation of solemn compact, baptized, with a broom of hyssop, my ill-fated ancestors, together with many other Islamites ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... the letters with broom-seed in the spring, and had since forgotten ever to look at them; but they were now green, and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... it dawned upon him that there were novel disproportions in the world. "Lord sakes," he cried, sitting up and looking animated for the first time, "but them's mortal great thissels growing out there on the bank by that broom. If so be they be thissels? Or 'ave I been forgetting?" But they were thistles, and what he took for tall bushes of broom was the new grass, and amidst these things a company of British soldiers—red-coated as ever—was ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... showing that her predecessor had been an artist in his way,—his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That was all, except an impalpable sense of dust and ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... first landing you run up against a pail and a broom, whereupon "mother" expatiates upon the unreliability of servant-girls, and bawls over the balusters for Sarah to come and take them away at once. When you get outside the rooms she pauses, with her hand upon the door, to explain to you that they are rather untidy just at present, as the ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... was stronger than my fear; for I could not remain where I was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering my head behind a bush of broom, I might command the road before our door. I was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along the road, and the man with the lantern some paces in front. Three men ran together, hand in hand; and I made out, even ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly; that too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... an old woman went up in a basket, Seventy times as high as the moon; What she did there I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither, so high?" "To sweep the cobwebs from the sky, And I shall be ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... channel he came on a pack of mangy coyotes. Before he had thought he had sicked the dogs on them. With a yell they were off out of sight amid the goose grass and reeds with the sleigh and his garments. Those reeds, remember, are sixteen feet high, stiff as broom corn and hard on moccasins as stubble would be on bare feet. To make matters worse, a heavy snowstorm came on. The wind was against the direction the dogs had taken and the man hallooed himself hoarse without an answering sound. It was two o'clock in the morning before the wind sank and the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... Firebrace was a new broom. It was quite permissible for him to do what he did, but, as I said before, I am doubtful if it was altogether wise. In a moment of rashness he decided to go round the trenches alone. As a matter of fact, at the moment of this resolve the Brigade-Major was out, the evening was ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... he's in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all the other cats, and they're nosing round, and I don't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can't think ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in Columbina," said Randy, with a grin. And then all set to work with a whisk broom and brushes ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... by herself to cover a thorough overhauling of the entire house—such tasks being her special aversion, and therefore to be discharged without mitigation on this first day of self-sacrifice—wandered disconsolately into the kitchen with broom and dust-pan, looking sadly weary. She gazed with envious eyes at her sister, flying about in a big apron, with sleeves rolled up, her cheeks like carnations, her ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... are hidden by great trees of white broom, while from north to south every wild piece of land is starred with the brilliant blue flowers of the lithospermum. There are also endless varieties of cistus, from the small yellow annual with rich brown heart ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... before the Columbia, on her homeward voyage, entered New York harbor. On the trip across she had once more had the big British greyhound of the seas for a rival. But this time there was a different tale to tell. The Columbia was coming home, as Billy Raynor put it, "with a broom ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a fat lot of good that's going to do me. So what's the use talking? In a year or so I suppose I'll be swinging a broom around my own little flat, coaxing a kitchen range to hump itself at 6:30 a.m., and hanging out a Monday wash ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... broom, and would liked to have broken it over the head of the brutal sailor, but ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... in the dry from the time of gathering the pods—one soaking rain always seriously damaging, and frequently destroying the merchantable value of so much of the harvest as happens to be on the ground. As in the case of broom corn, the hot, dry, and protracted late summer and fall months of that State, afford the Kansas farmer something like a monopoly of the castor bean crop. It is nevertheless giving ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... deceased duke. Two hopeful cubs of the clerk sprawled behind him in the desk, and the back-handers occasionally intended to reduce them to order were apt to resound against the impassive boards. During the sermon this zealous servant of the sanctuary would take up his broom and sweep out the middle alley, in order to save himself the fatigue of a weekday visit. Soon, however, the clerk and his broom followed Moses and Aaron, the fiddles and the bassoons into the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... coming for a while, but toward the close of the hour most of them departed, leaving behind three who were especially hostile to Goethe. "These," he says, "thought to torment, to mortify, and to drive me away. They left me a moment, and returned with rods taken from a broom which they had cut to pieces. I perceived their intention, and, supposing the expiration of the hour to be near, I immediately determined to make no resistance until the clock should strike. Unmercifully, thereupon, they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... great importance that you have a family Bible on the center-table in your parlor! Better have one pocket New Testament, the passages marked, the leaves turned down, the binding worn smooth with much usage, than fifty pictorial family Bibles too handsome to read! Oh, let us take a whisk-broom and brush the dust off our Bibles! Do you want poetry? Go and hear Job describe the war-horse, or David tell how the mountains skipped like lambs. Do you want logic? Go and hear Paul reason until your brain aches under the spell of his mighty intellect. ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... afraid she never found that best of bake-shops. I was going quietly along, when the sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as they ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... that a dummy so ridiculous as Pecksniff has reduced the number of hypocrites; and the domineering and unjust are not quite so popular since Dickens painted their picture with a broom. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... to-day is described as being through the most abominable country that can well be imagined, being a continuation of loose white sandy ranges, thickly covered with low bush from three to eight feet in height, broom, fern, grass-tree ('Xanthoraea'), pandanus, and "five-corner" bushes, being thickly matted together with prickly vine. Not a tree relieved the monotony of this waste, and what was worse, not a blade of grass was seen for miles. Several deep creeks were crossed, all running strongly ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... but yielding to Clover's eagerness, "I'll keep it shut." Her curiosity was excited. She took a book and tried to read, but the letters danced up and down before her eyes, and she couldn't help listening. Bridget was making a most ostentatious noise with her broom, but through it all, Katy seemed to hear other sounds—feet on the stairs, doors opening and shutting—once, a stifled giggle. How queer ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... sit here, if you don't mind," and the girl settled herself in an engulfing armchair with a sigh of satisfaction, her eyes following Miss Blake from place to place as she tripped briskly about, energetically wielding her dust cloth and whisk broom and humming contentedly as ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... spoke Uncle Wiggily out loud this time, sort of talking to the loaf of bread and the pound of sugar. "A lady, too," went on the bunny uncle. "A lady with a tall hat on, something like mine, only hers comes to a point on top. And she has a broom with her. I ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... chaise in which poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber-room: I wiped the dust from off the top, While molly mopp'd it with a mop, And brush'd it with a broom. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... been fast asleep, and was with difficulty roused up and directed to beat the cur away. She attempted to perform the duty, arming herself with the broom; but the moment she opened the door Snarleyyow dashed in between her legs, upsetting her on the brick pavement. Babette screamed, and her mistress came out in the passage to ascertain the cause; the dog not being ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... the gaping, crumbling masonry and the confusion of the twisted iron-work and leafless creepers. The sound of pattens came slowly across the chilly court, and the caretaker appeared, a solid woman, who, broom in hand and without opening the gate, said, 'You want the bookbinder; but he isn't here now.' Not here! Yes, Fage had gone, and left no address. In fact, she was just cleaning up the cottage for the man who was to ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Swartwout, of Hoboken, was an old personal friend of General Jackson, and when "the Hickory Broom" began to sweep out the old office-holders, in obedience to the maxim, "To the victors belong the spoils," the Colonel was an applicant for the then lucrative position of Collector of the Port of New York. Van Buren was against him, and used many arguments ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the tree at the mission comes on me as usual. The children, with the two Wickersham girls, were helping me until they got tired. Why don't you come and kiss father, Baby? She is going to sweep up the floor with her little broom so that father ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... relative of an office-holder, or of his bondsman. The deputy is commonly a beautiful young man, with a red necktie and an intricate system of cobwebs extending from his nose to his desk. When accidentally struck by the janitor's broom, he gives off a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... consulted and decided to beg Ivan's pardon and to submit to any punishment he might impose. Ivan consented to return to Moscow (p. 117) but on his own terms. This was accepted. After his arrival in the capital he established a special guard of one thousand men who had a dog's head and a broom hanging from their saddles, to show that they were ready to bite and ready to sweep the czar's enemies from off ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... a scaffold, dreadful to look on, was erected in the public square of Florence; two piles of large pieces of wood, mixed with fagots and broom, which should quickly take fire, extended each eighty feet long, four feet thick, and five feet high; they were separated by a narrow space of two feet, to serve as a passage by which the two priests were to enter and pass the whole length of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... is chipped here and there around its edges with those minute gaps so vexatious to a woman's soul; the handles fly hither and thither in the wild confusion of Biddy's washing-day hurry, when cook wants her to help hang out the clothes. Meanwhile, Bridget sweeps the parlor with a hard broom, and shakes out showers of ashes from the grate, forgetting to cover the damask lounges, and they directly look as rusty and time-worn as if they had come from an auction-store; and all together unite in making such havoc of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit and baby-layette, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... pocketed his card I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whether she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the little couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... finished dusting the dining room and was busy upstairs. I could hear the swish-swish of her broom overhead. I opened the door leading to Mother's bedroom and entered, closing the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had opened the door, and a colored servant, half dressed, with a broom in her hand, came slouching down the passage. Beatrice turned and fled out of the greasy, noisome atmosphere, down the wooden, uneven steps, out into the ugly street. She turned toward the nearest elevated as though by instinct, but when ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with whimper of rain And a wailing wind from the sea— Gray sea, gray dawn and scurrying clouds And scud of rain. The fisher boat, The sands, the headlands fringed with broom And tamarisk were blotted. Alone, Caged in the mist of earth That beat his torment back to himself, So that in vain he sought for the Gods, And lifted up hands in vain To witness this white wreck prone and still— Gnatho the Satyr blinkt ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... splendid nave, of immense height, the nave of a cathedral, with a shallow choir and transepts and some admirable old glass. I spent half an hour there one morning, listening to what the church had to say, in perfect solitude. Not a worshipper entered, not even an old man with a broom. I have always thought there be a sex in fine buildings; and Saint Julian, with its noble nave, is of the gender of the name ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... if God should send two angels down from heaven, and should tell one of them to sit on a throne and rule a kingdom, and the other to sweep the streets of a city, the latter would feel that he was serving God as acceptably in handling his broom as his brother angel was in holding his sceptre. And this is true. We see the same ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... astir, and they'll break the roads nicely with their heavy wheels. The bakers and butchers and milkmen will follow mighty soon. The boys that want a bit of money for Christmas will all be out with any sort of broom, or shovel, or even a stick, they can pick up. It'll give work for idle men, clearing the streets, and the liverymen will make a lot of money as soon as it settles a little. Oh! a rousing snow-storm is a good thing ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... transcontinental Siberian railway. When you take "The Flying Scotchman" from London to Edinburgh you ride in a Pullman car, with all the appurtenances, even to a Gould coupler, a Westinghouse air-brake, and a dusky George from North Carolina, who will hit you three times with the butt of a brush-broom and expect a bob as recompense. You ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... hospitals or asylums, as, for instance, at Ahmadabad[277]. Their ascetics take stringent precautions to avoid killing the smallest creature: they strain their drinking water, sweep the ground before them with a broom as they walk and wear a veil over their mouths. Even in the shops of the laity lamps are carefully screened to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... for what these men were up to was more than I could make out. When the wood was all burned down they brushed the coals and ashes away with an old broom, and two colored men came up from the shore, carrying a two-bushel basket full of little longish-round creatures, hard as stone, and with a long black sort of a knot hanging out of one end. They were dripping wet, and pieces of sea-weed ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... was no help to be got from her old servants, and that the best thing she could do was to mount on her broom and set off in pursuit of the children. And as the children ran they heard the sound of the broom sweeping the ground close behind them, so instantly they threw the handkerchief down over their shoulder, and in a moment a deep, broad river ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... broken panels of the abandoned corral that showed upon the weed-choked flat across the creek. Stepping to the door, she peered into the interior where Microby was industriously sweeping the musty hay from the bunk with the brand-new broom. Thumbed and torn magazines littered the floor, a few discarded garments hung dejectedly from nails driven into the wall, while from the sagging door of the rough board cupboard bulged a miscellaneous ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... me. That horse was a blind. They pottered round tryin' to find some trace of Foy—blind fools!—till I met up with 'em. I'd done gathered in that mizzable red-headed Joe Cowan on a give-out horse, claim-in' he'd been chousin' after broom-tails. He'd planted Foy's horse, I reckon. But it can't be proved, so I let him go. He'll have to walk in; ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Transmission of Sound.*—1. Vibrate a tuning fork and press the stem against a table or desk. The vibrations which are reenforced in this way will be heard in all parts of the room. Now press one end of a wooden rod, as a broom handle, against the table, and bring the stem of the vibrating fork against the other end. The vibrations now move down the stick to the table, from whence they are communicated to the air. Observe that the sound waves, to reach the ear, must pass through the rod, the table, and the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... hear such foolishness! I'll take the broom to this floor. You go along to bed now. Didn't I ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... in detail to four studies of bramble branches, leaves, and flowers and fruit, in the royal collection at Windsor, most wonderful for patient accuracy and delicate execution: also to drawings of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush, and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are as valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific character of each plant with greater ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and fainter, she turned again to the inn. A tall, awkward young countryman, with a cap set on one side of his head, was busying himself with sweeping the floor of the piazza, but in a very leisurely manner; and between every two strokes of his broom he was casting long looks at Ellen, evidently wondering who she was and what she could want there. Ellen saw it, and hoped he would ask her in words, for she could not answer his looks of curiosity, but she was disappointed. As he reached the end of the piazza, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... floor of his bedroom, stepping-stones amid a river of minor objects, such as collars and bits of india rubber and the day before yesterday's Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, indeterminate man in a green baize apron, who went about raising casual dust with a great feather broom, at first stowed the litter away daily, with jackdaw ingenuity of concealment, until Septimus gave them five francs each to desist; whereupon they desisted with alacrity, and the books became the stepping-stones aforesaid, stepping-stones to higher things. His only concern was the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... little before nine Jerry had a broom in his hand. His orders were to sweep off the front steps. He went at it in a very leisurely manner. The sooner he finished the sooner his mother might give him some other chore to do. Even though Laura, the pleasant three-times-a-week maid, did most of the ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... pleasure in life, for then we shall come to a right understanding. You were crossing the street, and a gentleman, a particular friend of mine, with a broom which he carries for his own amusement, did himself the honour to address you, whereupon of that same little stick of yours, you did him the honour to give him a ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... again to see if the spy had moved while she had been out of sight, and finding all serene, she threw herself with true feminine energy into her work. The beak-loads she brought to the door and flung out seemed so insufficient that I longed to lend her a broom; but I found she had a better helper than that, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... enough to take a keen pleasure in the novelty of the situation, and ran up-stairs and down with hammer and broom, laughing and joking over the settlement of every picture and piece of furniture with contagious good humour. Alec could not understand it. Even his Aunt Eunice was not as downcast as he had pictured her in the night, over the loss of her old home. ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... At this point the legend of the Saite and Greek period interpolates a whole chapter, telling how the chest was carried out to sea and cast upon the Phoenician coast near to Byblos. The acacia, a kind of heather or broom in this case, grew up enclosing the chest within its trunk. This addition to the primitive legend must date from the XVIIIth to the XXth dynasties, when Egypt had extensive relations with the peoples of Asia. No trace of it whatever has hitherto ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... may please to invite into your cabin, sir," answered Stowel, with a stiff bow, in the way of apology. "That's what I always tell Mrs. Stowel, sir;—that my cabin is my own, and even a wife has no right to shake a broom in it." ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... into the office. Inside the door Ed, who came behind, sprang forward and pinioned Sam's arms with his own. He was as powerful as a bear. His wife, the tall woman with the inexpressive eyes, came running into the room, her face drawn with hatred. In her hand she carried a broom and with the handle of this she struck Sam several swinging blows across the face, accompanying each blow with a half scream of rage and a volley of vile names. The sullen- faced boy, alive now and with eyes burning with zeal, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... he grumbled a good deal. When he got his pay he went over to Thompson's saloon, and he didn't leave it until all the money was spent. When his wife heard of it she was mad, and I expect she gave Joel a taste of the broom handle." ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... find the other, the lashing rain leaped down upon them as if they were all it had come for, and with words lost in a second thunder-clap the mate threw open the captain's room, pressed them in, and began to dry them with a whisk-broom. The captain, he said, was below. "Off watch didn't mean off watch ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... "we'll have it slick here in a minute. Let me take the broom. You've got it wrong side up. By Harry, we've got the deluge inside the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the road and found a little dell thick with underwoods, and in it a clear spring gurgling among the ferns and mosses. Around the opening grew wild gooseberries and golden broom and a few tall spires of purple foxglove. He drew off his dusty boots and socks and bathed his feet in a small pool, drying them with fern leaves. Then he took a slice of bread and a piece of cheese ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... to my nurse's account, 'must be a haggard old woman, living in a little rotten cottage under a hill by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning by the door; she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, and must be herself of so dry a nature, that if you fling her into a river she will not sink: so hard then is her fate, that, if she is to undergo the trial, if she does not drown she must be burnt, as many have been within the memory ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she gave him bits of broken meat, And scattered crusts, and crumbs, to eat; And kept him there for her commands To pare potatoes, and scour pans, To wash the kettles and sweep the room; And she beat him dreadfully with the broom; And he staid as long as he could stay, And again, ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... also taught him to hold a broom in his arms in imitation of a gun, and march up and down like a soldier. When this feat was performed by their shaggy friend, the children would shout with delight, at which the cub would loll out his tongue and seem greatly pleased. He appeared to understand clearly ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He was in my gang at the moor, and I know'd 'im. They put 'im in the soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent 'im botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor, and said a big lusty man same as 'im wasn't for sitting on a board all day. The flat didn't want to fetch a easy lagging, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... was supplied with bath-rooms, and the entire work of the various departments was performed by the appointed corps of inmates; the Sisters of the wash tub, and of the broom brigade, being selected for the work best adapted to their physical ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... parts delights in the chase like any bare-legged Paddy, and casts away flail and fork wildly, to run, shout, assist, and interfere in all possible ways, out of pure love. The descendant of many generations of broom-squires and deer-stealers, the instinct of sport is strong within him still, though no more of the king's deer are to be shot in the winter turnip-fields, or worse, caught by an apple-baited hook hung from an orchard ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... and will always give pleasure to the intelligent hearer. I have heard two young friends, who have attained great skill in scientific and elaborate compositions, execute the simple song of "Low down in the Broom," with an effect I shall not easily forget. Who that has heard the Countess of Essex, when Miss Stephens, sing "Auld Robin Gray," can ever lose the impression of her heart-touching notes? In the case of "Auld Robin Gray," the song composed by Lady Anne Lindsay, although very beautiful ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... of Mr. White, who had a job cleaning the streets. He was a friend of Mr. Blue, and the janitor gave him the hat. This is the way Mr. White looked in it: [Draw the face under the hat, A; this completes Fig. 101.] Mr. White had a little cart and a big shovel and an old broom, and he worked all day sweeping up and carting off the old paper, the stubs of cigars and everything else which, if allowed to accumulate, would soon make the streets look disgraceful and the ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... more comfortable with myself, my thoughts went in a flock to the face that looked over the garden-wall, to the man that watched me while I slept, the man that wrote that lovely letter. Inside was old Penny with her broom: she took advantage of every absence to sweep or scour or dust; outside was John Day, and the roses of the wilderness! He was waiting the hour to come to me, wondering how ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... storm-beaten bird. His own drenched condition he did not consider—did not feel, while he climbed with careful footsteps up the rugged path to Dinas, lighted only by the moon, whose beams were continually obscured by the flying clouds. Pushing his way between the furze and broom bushes, he was careful to let no stray branch catch Valmai's face or hair, and as he reached the farm-yard in the rear of the house, he was delighted to feel a strong and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... joists were thrown on top of them and gable ends of the same kind of boards that made the room. Bunks three or four feet wide made in two tiers were at rear end and sides bottomed with small poles, and broom-sedge and oak and pine leaves, with a blanket spread over. Four-legged slabs made good benches, but many split bottom chairs were obtained from country chair makers. With a good log fire three or four feet long in the fire ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... joke was borrowed. In a copy of verses, entitled the Time Poets, preserved in a miscellany called Choice Drollery, 1656, are these lines: Sent by Ben Jonson, as some authors say, Broom went before, and kindly swept the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... and drifted so terribly, that not only did many men perish, but likewise "most part of all the horse, nolt, and sheep of the kingdom." In the years 1633 and 1665 there were great storms, when vast numbers of sheep perished, and "the frost was severe enough to kill broom and whins." But greater than these, both in devastating effect and in duration, was the memorable storm of 1674. The early part of that year was marked by extraordinarily tempestuous weather. In ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... complaint. "What are you doing here?" he asked; "it is an unwholesome place for grief. Return to our mountains. Your native air will do you good. Come with me; I promise you that your unhappiness will not hold out against the perfume of broom and heather." Then he spoke with tender earnestness of my duties. He did not conceal from me the obligations my fortune and the position left me by my father, laid me under to the land where I was born; I had neglected it too long, and the time ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... temples; the orbits of the eyes were whitened, and thence triple streaks stretched up the nose and across the cheeks. Hung to the extensive necklace of beads and other matters were tassels of dry white fibre; her forearms carried yellow bunches of similar material, and she held a broom of blackened bamboo and the metal bell familiar to Unyamwezi. Whilst the juniors danced and sang the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... season trudged at the heel of season. The only difference it made to them was that now Ellaphine evicted weeds from the petunia-beds, and now swept snow from the porch and beat the broom out on the steps; now Eddie carried his umbrella up against the sun or rain and mopped his bald spot, and now he wore his galoshes through the slush and was afraid he had ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... presented itself as a green-gold ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions of different flowers. Through the tall, slender stems of the grass peeped light-blue, dark-blue, and lilac star-thistles; the yellow broom thrust up its pyramidal head; the parasol-shaped white flower of the false flax shimmered on high. A wheat-ear, brought God knows whence, was filling out to ripening. About their slender roots ran partridges with out-stretched necks. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... which must, of course, be abandoned. Nay, if no journey is to be taken, a visitor, perhaps, comes unexpectedly; the little naturalist's apartment must be vacated on a few minutes notice, and the labour of years falls a sacrifice, in an instant, to the housemaid's undistinguishing broom. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... tinder can be blown into a flame. [175] At the door of the house will be found a foot wiper (Fig. 5, No. 12) made of rice-straw drawn through an opening cut in a stick, or it may consist of coconut husks fastened together to make a crude mat, while near by is the broom made of rice-straw or grass. Rice-mortars, pestles, and similar objects are ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... collecting is neither expensive nor hard to prepare. It consists of (1) an insect net for catching the insects, made by sewing a bag of cheese-cloth to a stout ring one foot in diameter, which is fastened to a broom handle; (2) a cyanide bottle for killing the insects, prepared by pouring some soft plaster-paris over a few lumps of potassium cyanide (three pieces, each of the size of a pea) in a wide-mouthed bottle. When the plaster has set, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... marguerites, delicate pink campions, wheat and barley growing as weeds of former cultivation, and thickets of blue-flowered liquorice. There were many thorns, especially a squat shrub with white papery globes. A large and particularly fleshy broom-rape, recently flowering, festered ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... that "in Maya eb is the plural of e, which means 'points' or 'ends,' like those of pins or thorns, and plainly was intended to designate the broom by reference to its numerous points. From the same idea, rows of teeth received the same name. The Tzental and Quiche names e and euob—the latter a plural—were from the same radical and had the same ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... our stay, we chose this as the loveliest light in which to see the last of the hill. On that evening, I remember, the reds and saffrons in the sky were of an astonishing richness. The sea wall, the bastions, the faces of the great rocks, the yellow broom that sprang from the clefts therein, were dyed as in a carmine bath. In that mighty glow of color, all things took on something of their old, their stupendous splendor. The giant walls were paved with brightness. The town, climbing the hill, assumed the proportions of a mighty citadel; the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the Fifth of November," he said, nudging me with the elbow of the hand which held his pipe. "You know that, don't you? Everybody knows that. Well, I've been telling Old Joe that he ought to let me and Mr. Kight shove a couple o' broom-sticks under his Grandfer Chair and carry him out into the streets. He'd make a ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... brought the step ladder and set it up on the piazza. Then Billy climbed up, and Betty reached up the flag on the broom so Billy could hook it into place. It was done at last. The wind took it, and the Stars and Stripes blew out over the lawn just as they should ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... slaveholder, had one slave named Pincy, whom he as well as Mrs. Ruffner would often flog very severely. I frequently saw Mrs. Ruffner flog her with the broom, shovel, or any thing she could seize in her rage. She would knock her down and then kick and stamp her most unmercifully, until she would be apparently so lifeless, that I more than once thought she ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... at once he started up eagerly as [the one for whom he had been watching turned the corner.] This was his brother, a boy about ten years of age, a tired, miserable-looking little fellow, carrying in his hand a broom. He had been spending the day trying to earn a few pence by sweeping a crossing. His anxious face changed the instant he caught sight of his little brother, for these two were all ...
— Willie the Waif • Minie Herbert
... sympathy in her grievous strait. They walked on swiftly, the one staring straight forward, yet seeing nothing; the other, although thoughtful, losing not one feature of the landscape—the light-gray sky, the encircling forest, the yellow broom-straw clothing the hill-sides, the crooked fences, lined with purple brush, golden-rod, black-bearded alder and sumach, flaming with scarlet berry cones and motley leaves. It was her principle and habit to seize ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... if he want her. They lived on joint places. They slept together on Wednesday and Saturday nights. He stayed at Hood's place on Sunday. They was owned by different masters. They didn't never say 'bout stepping over no broom. He was a Prince. When he died she married a man named Russell. I never heard her say what his name was. My father was Mathew Prince. They was both field hands. I never knowed my father. I called my stepfather popper. I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... china and all the kitchen utensils. These Palko carried at once to the new kitchen cupboard. Some things he hung up near the stove. One of the table-cloths he spread over the table. After he had found the broom which his father had made from the branches that he had cut and brought, he swept the kitchen, for with the carrying in of so many things, much dirt had accumulated. He ran with the pitcher for ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... the hotel were creaky with age, and the accumulation of dust and dirt showed months without a broom. At the top of the stairs was what had once been quite a nice lobby. But now the rug was worn to strings and the wallpaper had acquired a glaze of dirt that made it look like ancient newspapers. Behind the scarred ruin of an oak counter stood a clerk so fat Rick wondered ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... seen from a safe distance, for, though Jean was only twelve years old, she was a fierce little housekeeper every day in the week, and on Saturday, when she was getting ready for the Sabbath, it was a bold person indeed who would venture to put himself in the path of her broom. To be sure, there was no one in the family to take such a risk except her twin brother Jock, her father, Robin Campbell, the Shepherd of Glen Easig, and True Tammas, the dog, for the Twins' mother ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
