"Horsehair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hall with bare walls, a noble enough apartment in its unadorned simplicity, in spite of the mean horsehair chairs that stood round it. Above the fire-place, instead of a mirror, was a Mater dolorosa that caught the eye by its dazzling whiteness. Big marble tears stood arrested in mid-career down the cheeks, while the features expressed the pious absorption of the Divine Mother's grief. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... of her nightgown, the very cream of silk, she might have been Andromache harnessing Hector. Only there was no baby for him to leave with her, no baby to shrink in fright from the horsehair crest of the helmet ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... forehead to the back of the head in two equal masses, and of being plaited or waved over the ears. Nets were again adopted, and head-dresses which, whilst permitting a display of masses of false hair, hid the horsehair or padded puffs. And, lastly, the escoffion appeared—a heavy roll, which, being placed on a cap also padded, produced the most clumsy, outrageons, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the corral toward the cabin. Starr, trained to light sleeping and instant waking, was up and standing back from the little window with his six-shooter in his hand before Rabbit had stopped to whirl and look for what had scared him. So Starr was in time to see a "big four" Stetson hat with a horsehair hatband sink from sight behind the high board fence at the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... funny little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa covered with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match: there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on the seat, because the springs were broken, a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... specially constructed for indoor play, being much larger and more elastic than those for outdoor play. This ball is generally composed of a core of packed leather strips, around which is placed curled horsehair tied on with string. The cover is of leather, preferably horsehide, somewhat softer in quality than that used on the outdoor baseball. The dimensions of the ball vary from 15 to 17 inches in circumference, or about 5 inches ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... fingers wonderfully deft, was plaiting horsehair about a stick of hardwood to form the handle of a quirt, Sandy overhauling his two Colts and Sam furnishing orchestra on his harmonica. Now he put it to his lips, unable to find a sufficiently crushing retort to ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Bridge the shotgun. Then he turned his attention to the woman. With the carving knife that was to have ended her life he cut her bonds. Removing the gag from her mouth he lifted her in his strong arms and carried her to the little horsehair sofa that stood in one corner of the parlor, laying her upon ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who has finished his breakfast and gone in to the room in which he receives rents and keeps his books and cash, known in the household as "the office." This chair, like the two occupied by Larry and Broadbent, has a mahogany frame and is upholstered in black horsehair. ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... neighbours. Mrs. Gerhardt thought that he "fancied" they would not like it. It was early in that spring that she took a deaf aunt to live with them, the wife of her mother's brother, no blood-relation, but the poor woman had nowhere else to go; so David was put to sleep on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room because she "couldn't refuse the poor thing." And then, of an April afternoon, while she was washing the household sheets, her neighbour, Mrs. Clirehugh, a little spare woman all ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... at once. To the end of a rod of rhinoceros horn about two feet long I affixed a knob of lead weighing two pounds. I covered the knob with a thickish layer of plaited horsehair, and over this fastened a covering of stout leather; and when I had fitted it with a wrist-strap it looked a really serviceable tool. Its purpose is obvious. It was an improved form of that very crude appliance, the sand-bag, which ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... his ill luck, the Spartan warrior seized his foe by the horsehair crest of his helmet, and began to drag him towards the Grecian lines; but at this point Venus came to the aid of her favorite. Standing unseen beside him, she broke the helmet strap under his chin, and thus released him from ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... hands.) The saddle has also small pommel bags in which are matches, compass, leather thongs, knife and a whistle (this last in case I get lost), and there are rings and strings in which other bundles such as lunch can be attached while on the march. A horsehair army saddle blanket saves the animal's back. Nimrod's saddle is exactly like mine, only with longer ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... and ridicule in the Spanish fashion of Miss Montenero's dress, especially her long veils—veils were not then in fashion, and Lady Anne of course pronounced them to be hideous. It was at this time, in England, the reign of high heads: a sort of triangular cushion or edifice of horsehair, suppose nine inches diagonal, three inches thick, by seven in height, called I believe a toque or a system, was fastened on the female head, I do not well know how, with black pins a quarter of a yard long; and upon and over this ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Strong's invitation with gratitude, indeed his kindness touched me. Leading me to his principal shop, we passed through it and down a passage to a sitting-room heavily furnished with solid horsehair-seated chairs and a sofa. In the exact centre of this sofa, reading by the light of a lamp with a pink shade which was placed on a table behind her, sat a prim grey-haired woman dressed in a black silk dress and apron and a lace cap with lappets. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... Venus of Milo; let her be done in terra-cotta, and have run, not much, but still something, in the baking; paint her pink, two oils, all over, and then varnish her—it will help to preserve the paint; glue a lot of horsehair on to her pate, half of which shall have come off, leaving the glue still showing; scrape her, not too thoroughly, get the village drawing-master to paint her again, and the drawing-master in the next provincial town to put a forest background behind her with the brightest ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... crochet-work antimacassar from the shiny horsehair sofa, stuffed it into his mouth, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... in his situation for a single day, he took him at his word, and Damocles found himself at a banquet with everything that could delight his senses, delicious food, costly wine, flowers, perfumes, music; but with a sword with the point almost touching his head, and hanging by a single horsehair! This was to show the condition in which a ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gulped Stalky, his head on the horsehair pillow. McTurk was eating the rag-carpet before the speckless hearth, and the sofa heaved to the emotions of Beetle. Through the thick glass the figures without showed blue, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... he took off his coat and laid it along with his hat on the great horsehair sofa at the other end of the room. Then both he and his employer plunged into figures, till the chimes of a distant clock sounded nine. "We must finish this the day after to-morrow, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce. "I won't keep ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... wiped, and the room smelt slightly of paraffin. The old window-curtains, whose harsh green age had not softened, were drawn. The mahogany sideboard, the threadbare carpet, the small horsehair sofa, the gilt mirror, standing on a white marble chimney-piece, said clearly, 'Furnished apartments in a house built about a hundred years ago.' There were piles of newspapers, there were books on the mahogany ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... imagined; the low whitewashed ceiling held up by a heavy beam, the smears of smoke and long usage, the cracks and fissures of the plaster. Old furniture, shabby, deplorable, battered, stood about the room; there was a horsehair sofa worn and tottering, and a dismal paper, patterned in a livid red, blackened and moldered near the floor, and peeled off and hung in strips from the dank walls. And there was that odor of decay, of the rank soil steaming, of rotting wood, a vapor that choked ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... three rooms—an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look of it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the grate a charred stick or two ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... But about lies, you have heard that one about my smoking big, black cigars! Well, the story is that the boys in the office used to steal my cigars, and so I got a cigarmaker to make me up a box that looked just like my favorite brand, only I had 'em filled with hemp, horsehair and a touch of asafetida. Then I just left the box where the boys would be sure to dip into it; but it seems the cigarman put them on, and so they just put that box into my own private stock and I smoked the fumigators and never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... into the domino and throwing the bundle on the table like a champion throwing down his glove. He is now seen to be a stout, tall man between forty and fifty, clean shaven, with a midnight oil pallor emphasized by stiff black hair, cropped short and oiled, and eyebrows like early Victorian horsehair upholstery. Physically and spiritually, a coarsened man: in cunning and logic, a ruthlessly sharpened one. His bearing as he enters is sufficiently imposing and disquieting; but when he speaks, his powerful, menacing voice, impressively articulated speech, strong inexorable manner, and ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... of haute ecole was to be followed by an exhibition of "transportation throughout the ages," headed by a Gaulish chariot driven by a trooper with a long horsehair moustache and mistletoe wreath, and ending in a motor of which the engine had been taken out and replaced by a large placid white horse. Unluckily a heavy rain began while this instructive "number" awaited its turn, and we had to leave before Vercingetorix had led his ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... needlepoint lace with the ground of double-twist thread in a semi-net effect. Is usually worked with horsehair on the edges to give firmness to the cordonnet. Called after the city in France where ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... on the slippery horsehair, and talked softly and quickly. Ticket—train—telegrams—the little money that was necessary—he advised her about them all. He called her "Nancy" to-day, for the first time. He remembered afterward that she had called him nothing. She went to get Mrs. Venable, after a while, ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... and bracelets, with strings of coral, pearl, and amber; while their hair was in little curls, adorned with jewels and flowers. But all this was concealed by the thick, muffling, outer veil; they also had horsehair visards through which they ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Street fancy my horror when, on looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated by them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the most horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair glove. He spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed through the arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a bristling top-knot, which gave ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a great pair of walnut folding-doors which cut off the room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of salon parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... custom, a large umbrella in hand, while her arm was loaded with an immense horsehair bag. She entered the little cabinet, where we were seated, like a shower of hail:—"Here you are at last," she exclaimed, "I have been into every room, in search of you, Do you know, my dear, that the chests of ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... we entered an old house of the past generation. As we passed through the wide hall, I noted the high ceilings, the old-fashioned marble mantels stained by time, the long, narrow rooms and dirty-white woodwork, and the threadbare furniture of black walnut and horsehair. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... exclaimed, in a private conference with the nurse; "never did I see such a friend as Mr. Fenting, sacrificing of himself as he do, day and night, to look after that poor creature in there, and taking no better rest than he can get on that old horsehair sofy, which brickbats or knife boards isn't harder, and never ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... children were now to be seen rolling in the dust; they were wondrously dirty, almost naked, with black skins and tangled locks as coarse as horsehair. There were also women in sordid skirts and with their loose jackets unhooked. Many stood talking together in yelping voices, whilst others, seated on old chairs with their hands on their knees, remained ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside lodging-houses. On a chair—a shiny leather chair, displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner—stood a black despatch case. This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a bottle of Eau-de Cologne. He had meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold Concessions' and the 'New Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was going up, for he never missed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... deepest lake is the old crater on top of the highest mountain. Sappy's eyes were not the sinister black beads of the wily Red-man, but a washed-out blue. His ragged, tow-coloured locks he could hide under wisps of horsehair, the paint itself redeemed his freckled skin, but there was no remedy for the white eyelashes and the pale, piggy, blue eyes. He kept his sorrow to himself, however, for he knew that if the others got an inkling of his feelings on the subject his name would have been promptly changed ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... he'll wear, Embroidered by his bride! Admire his burnished helmet's glare, O'ershadowed by the dark horsehair That waves in ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the tenders and set off to look up some old friends in the regiments near by. As I passed a group of Arabs that had just finished work on the roads, I noticed that they were playing a game that was new to me. A stake was driven into the ground, with a horsehair rope ten or twelve feet in length attached to it. An old man had hold of the end of the rope. About the stake were piled some clothes, and the Arabs were standing around in a circle just out of reach of the man with the ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... with one of the students who had been there in the theatre watching him operate and got him to tell me about it. They felt it was a historic occasion even at the time; cheered him at the end of it. And that sort of virtuosity does seem worthier of cheers than any scraping of horsehair over cat-gut could ever come to. I wonder how many lives there are to-day that owe themselves altogether to him just as my sister does.—How many children who never could have been born at all except for his skill and ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of mahogany, now dark with age, while chairs and sofas were covered with horsehair. Against the walls stood tall dark presses, and mirrors with the glass in two pieces, and having their gilded frames adorned with urns and garlands. The rooms were lit ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... humdrum, into something from which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape below—the family's most cherished heirloom—though long familiar, was not so bad; but the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which I have heard is the common olive-green weed called Chorda Filum; it looks like a whip-thong, and sometimes grows to a length of thirty or forty feet; when half-dried, the skin is taken off and twisted into fishing-lines, etc. Hay-bands; horsehair ropes, or even a few twisted hairs from the tail of a horse; the stems of numerous plants afford fibres that are more or less effective substitutes for hemp, those that are used by the natives of the country visited should be notices; "Indian grass" is an animal substance ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gaping neighbors sad stories of ...
— Options • O. Henry
... the directress of the ceremony. 'Do you not know how delicate is your mistress?—you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband—that's right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; saw you ever anything ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... no liking in his eye. At the gate he slowly, somewhat stiffly, dismounted, for it was evident he had ridden long and far. The roan with hanging head tripped eagerly, yet wearily, to his accustomed stall, and a swarthy Mexican unloosed at once the cincha and removed the horsehair bridle. Thus Sancho and the engineer were left by themselves, though inquisitive ranch folk sauntered to the gateway and peered after them into the corral. Over at the little clump of willows Blake's men were throwing their carbines across ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... There is a door at the top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy—a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit—German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by humpbacks, bulging paunches, cumbrous wigs, Scaramouches, Punches, shrivelled Pantaloons, curtsying women embankt by enormous hoops, and overcanopied with a yard of horsehair, powder, and pomatum, and by every disgusting shape that can be imagined, as if a nightmair had been unrolling her stores. They jumpt, and twirled, and tottered, and stumbled, and straddled, and strutted, and swaggered along the gallery, and then vanisht behind one of the doors. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... became familiar with a number of dining-rooms furnished in mahogany and horsehair and hung with opulent studies of still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith. The meal was usually served by the whiskered coachman, who wore, for the occasion, a waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... face scarlet with much sound, and his later state not yet apparent, in that his wampum, blanket, and horsehair wig lay at home, on the best-room bed, made answer ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... five years, and her father's house was a stately mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had rebelled ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... them out he lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring them again. The lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of the lumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlour on which he used to sit, smiling or serious, asking himself why he had come, displeased with her and with himself, confounded by the print of the Sacred Heart above the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach him in a lull ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... on to say that these Indians were well made, with very good countenances, but hair like horsehair, their colour yellow; and that they painted themselves. They neither carried arms, nor understood such things, for when he showed them swords, they took hold of them by the blade, and hurt themselves. Their darts were without iron; but some ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... "Horsehair coats have made their appearance," says The Outfitter. Surely this is nothing very new. We have often seen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... good ninepenny paper once, all covered over with green brakes. I declare if 'twa'n't sweet pretty! Well, whether I paper or whether I don't, I've got some thoughts of a magenta sofy. I'm tired to death o' that old horsehair lounge that sets in my clock-room. Sometimes I wish the moths would tackle it, but I guess they've got more sense. I've al'ays said to myself I'd have a magenta sofy when I could git round to it, and I dunno's I shall be any nearer to it ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... her sturdy shoulders, showed character and strength far above the ordinary. She was a man's woman, was Jerkline Jo Modock, and only a man among men might hope to become her mate. She wore a broad-brimmed Stetson with a horsehair band, a blue-flannel man's shirt, worn leather chaps for comfort, and riding boots. A holstered six-shooter hung close at hand, the ivory-handled butt of the big weapon ready to her grasp. Here was a wonderful woman, and Hiram Hooker knew it, and knew, too, that ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... could not be a long one. Godfrey was the first to relax its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her. Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... is accomplished by means of a halter of horsehair, which is passed round under the neck of the horse, and both ends braided into the mane, on the withers, thus forming a loop which hangs under the neck and against the breast. This being caught by the hand, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... circle is akin to the lariat made of horsehair, the ends sticking out roughly all around, with which the Indian used to encircle himself before going to sleep, as a protection from the rattlesnake, who could not cross it. But here we are at Los Angeles. Hear the bawling cabbies: "This way for ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... William W. Gull, Physician to her late Majesty Queen Victoria: "Having passed the period of the goldheaded cane and horsehair wig, we dare hope to have also passed the days of pompous emptiness; and furthermore, we can hope that nothing will be considered unworthy the attention of physicians which contributes to the saving ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... dresser full of china, and the peculiar smell of yeast and coffee and soft-soap that she had always hated, but that now seemed the very symbol of household order. She saw Mr. Royall's room, with the high-backed horsehair chair, the faded rag carpet, the row of books on a shelf, the engraving of "The Surrender of Burgoyne" over the stove, and the mat with a brown and white spaniel on a moss-green border. And then her mind travelled to Miss Hatchard's house, where all was freshness, purity ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... who danced holding up an enormous key. These stood on the right. On the left were priests in fustian, holding enormous flagons of Rhenish wine and dancing in a drunken measure with their arms round more drunken doxies dressed like German women. In the centre stood grave and reverend men wearing horsehair beards and the long gowns of English bishops and priests. Before these there knelt an angel in flame-coloured robes with wings like the rainbow. The angel supported a great volume on the back of which might be read in letters ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... were walnuts and, in a far Corner, cigars of a well-known brand and cigarettes from a famous tobacconist. Beyond that little oasis, however, were all the evidences of a hired abode. A hole in the closely drawn curtains was fastened together by a safety pin. The horsehair easy-chairs bore disfiguring antimacassars, the photographs which adorned the walls were grotesque but typical of village ideals, the carpet was threadbare, the closed door secured by a latch instead of the usual knob. One side of the room was littered with ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... resting-place and failed; the tiny chiffonnier, unenlightened by a looking-glass or any ornament save a vase, which had been one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... the kind he loved to supply. As Francesca turned to watch the fourth act of the play, her mind was singing a paean of thankfulness and exultation. It was as though some artificer sent by the Gods had reinforced with a substantial cord the horsehair thread that held up the sword of Damocles over her head. Her love for her home, for her treasured household possessions, and her pleasant social life was able to expand once more in present security, and feed on future hope. She was still young enough to count four ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... to the old horsehair sofa—the pride of all Spearhead and even of Fort Consolation—we sat down together, much closer than I had expected, as some of the springs were broken, thus forming a hollow in the centre of the affair, into which we both slid without ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... realised that he was cold and sitting cramped on an uncomfortable horsehair chair. He had dozed. He glanced for the yellow line between the folding doors. It was still there, but it seemed to quiver. He judged the candle must be flaring. He wondered why ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... shuffling step approach the door, it was unlocked, and a gray old woman, with a huge horsehair wig upon her head, peered ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... "No;" for Papa did not approve of the birds being disturbed. Then there was a beautifully-formed mossy little cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree, just inside the coppice, smooth, round, and soft-edged, with the horsehair and wool lining all plaited together, and made as even as possible. It was so low down that, by bending the branch, the boys could look at it, which they did, while the poor chaffinches, in the horse-chestnut tree close by, cried "pink-pink-pink" in a state of the greatest alarm ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... dingy little room with a round table covered by a soiled cloth in the middle. Two windows, discreetly blinded, let in a dim London light. An armchair stood at each side of the empty fireplace, and an uncomfortable, old-fashioned, horsehair sofa lined the opposite wall. There were pink vases upon the mantelpiece, and a portrait of Garibaldi ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... baptize her. It was such a small, poor house, but so very nice inside. Mother and grown daughters and little girl, with father and grown son, all sleep on a little brick platform, hardly big enough for me—one man. She and the grown daughter support the family by needlework—making horsehair women's head fittings, which the father sells, when he has nothing ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... now under notice, at the height of 2ft., developed a well branched panicle about the latter end of August; gradually the minute flowers expanded, when, in the middle of September, they became extremely fine, the smaller stems being as fine as horsehair, evenly disposed, and rigid; the head being globular, and supported ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... two, against the unwritten law of the house, had come downstairs. Mrs. Cortelyou, a thin little wisp of a widow, was in the rocker in the bay-window, Major Kinney, fifty, gray, dried-up, was on the horsehair sofa, watching the kitchen door over his paper. Georgia, having finished her telephoning, had come in to drop idly into her own chair, and play with her knives and forks. Miss Lydia Lord, a plain, brisk woman, her upper lip darkened with hair, her figure flat and square, like a boy's, had come down ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Jimmy ungrammatically. He threw his hat on to the horsehair sofa, which seemed to be the most important piece of furniture in the room, and dropped into a chair. "Got a ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... conscience was so painfully perplexed, that he desired me to come up with him to the now-deserted 'boudoir' of the departed Marks, that we might 'lay the matter before the Lord'. We did so, kneeling side by side, with our backs to the window and our foreheads pressed upon the horsehair cover of the small, coffin-like sofa. My Father prayed aloud, with great fervour, that it might be revealed to me, by the voice of God, whether it was or was not the Lord's will that I should attend the Browns' ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... making beads for paternosters, boles of tobacco pipes and other toys: and every small shop here has a great many of them to sell. At the top of these bastard coco-trees, among the branches, there grows a sort of long black thread-like horsehair, but much longer, which by the Portuguese is called tresabo. Of this they make cables which are very serviceable, strong and lasting; for they will not rot as cables made of hemp, though they lie exposed both ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... remained about the same as in the earlier presses. Two men were required to work it. One spread the ink on a wooden block, rolling over it with two leather-covered balls, about six inches in diameter, stuffed with wool or horsehair, and fastened to round wooden handles. Holding one of these inking balls in each hand, he then rolled one upon the other to distribute the ink evenly over both of them, and applied the ink to the face of the type by rocking the balls over it until the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... wide open communicated with an inner room (very low was its ceiling), in which the Bandit slept, if the severity of his persecutors permitted him to sleep. In the corner of the sitting-room, near that door, was a small horsehair sofa, which, by the aid of sheets and a needlework coverlid, did duty for a bed, and was consigned to the Bandit's child. Here the tenderness of the Cobbler's heart was visible, for over the coverlid were strewed sprigs of lavender and leaves of vervain; the last, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those on the mandibles of a musk duck. They feed only on minute organisms, and will not look at a bait, except it be the tiny worm which lives in the long celluroid tubes of the coral growing upon congewei. And then you must have a line as fine as horsehair, and a hook small enough—but strong enough to hold a three-pound ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... passed the spot where I had put the horse's packsaddle in the sandal-wood-tree, and where my first horse had given in. The saddle was now of no use, except that the two pads, being stuffed with horsehair, made cushions for seats of camels' riding-saddles; these we took, but left the frame in the tree again. That night we camped about five miles from Mount Finke, and I was glad to find that the two poisoned bulls ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... though an old maid lived in it. The furniture looks as good as new, but is subdued to a tone of sober maturity, and chimes in so well with the general effect that one scarcely notices it. The polished table is mounted in dark morocco; behind the horsehair-covered arm-chair is a gray marble mantel-piece, overshadowing an open grate with polished bars and fire-utensils in the English style. During the winter months a lump of cannel-coal is always burning there; but the flame, even on the coldest days, is too much on its good behavior ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the customary horsehair fly-whisk ran shouting before their master; servants surrounded the cortege, armed with sticks which they rattled with good effect upon the shins of the more venturesome among the spectators as the procession moved slowly, as move all things in ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... a large flag, was carried on a caisson, and his horse, led by an orderly, was covered with a large blanket of black cloth. Over this was the saddle, and on top of the saddle rested his helmet—the yellow horsehair plume and gold trimmings looking soiled by long service. His sabre was there, too, and strapped to the saddle on each side were his uniform boots, toes in stirrups—all reversed! This riderless horse, with its pall of black, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... trap on our list —I mean our boyhood's old favourite, the brick trap, or the sieve and string, both very well in their way in hard weather; but a notice may be required as to the uses to which the next simplest trap, or springe (the horsehair noose), may be applied. For the very few people who do not know how to set it, I will, in the manner of Col. Hawker, who did everything at the time which he wished to explain in writing, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Gables was a rather severe and gloomy apartment, with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle, except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people's buttons. Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, for Marilla would not permit any alterations. But it is ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a job we care for, and I am keeping up the delusion, but all the time I run my seams straight, pull the horsehair out to the last fine shred, turn in my corners as the corners of a leather book are turned, so that I may be kept at it, although out of cunning I appear to grumble and ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... instrument was the violin, a small and curiously shaped apparatus fitted with four strings, which, when rubbed or scraped with horsehair tightly stretched on a narrow wooden frame, were made to produce sounds imitating the cries of various animals, especially the mewing of a cat, to perfection. But as the timbre of the instrument did not lend itself to successful ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... horsehair rope dangling from a bell by the wall and rang it sharply. A soft-footed priest appeared,—Father Dominico. "Eddy Horncastle? Ah! yes. Eddy, dear ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... bunch of some fibre such as sponge or horsehair introduced into an opening, natural or artificial, to keep it open, or increase ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... pay, $6, for three days' work and, turning it into groceries, set out for the poor home that soon would be lost to him, and as he rode he did some hard and gloomy thinking. On his wrist there hung a wonderful Indian quirt of plaited rawhide and horsehair with beads on the shaft, and a band of Elk teeth on the butt. It was a pet of his, and "good medicine," for a flat piece of elkhorn let in the middle was perforated with a hole, through which the distant landscape was seen much ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... down the corridor and through the living-part of the house, and we passed several rooms, and one little parlour lined with shelves and musty books. The blinds were pulled, but let enough light in to show a high-backed horsehair chair that stood at the table. In front of it lay an open volume, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, that I had often seen on Maskew's nose; so I knew it was his study, and that nothing had been moved since last he sat there. Even now I trembled ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the passage of the bell-rope. They therefore slipped out of the church, and up into the belfry, where they hid. In a few moments a man appeared who began to work at something. They sprang on him and seized his wrists, and found in one of his hands a thin line of horsehair, to one end of which a hook was attached. The holder being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise into the air, it remained quite firm on the owner's head, to the no small ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... packed them up with his music and an old fiddle in his trunk; got out his clothes (they were not so many that they made his head ache); put them on the top of his books; and went into the workroom for his case of instruments. There was a ragged stool there, with the horsehair all sticking out of the top like a wig: a very Beast of a stool in itself; on which he had taken up his daily seat, year after year, during the whole period of his service. They had grown older and shabbier in company. Pupils had served their time; seasons had come and gone. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Greaves of beauteous fashioning he placed upon his legs, and fastened them with silver ankle-clasps. Over his shoulders he put his silver-studded sword of bronze and his great shield. On his head he placed a helmet with nodding crest of horsehair, and in his hand he grasped his strong spear. In like manner did ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... as a fresh spurt of the desert wind sweeps the dust away, displaying in clear light the line of marching horsemen. No question as to their character now. There they are, with their square-peaked corded caps, and plumes of horsehair; their pennoned spears sloped over their shoulders; their yellow cloaks folded and strapped over the cantles of their saddles; sabres lying along thighs, clinking against spurs and stirrups—all ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... ointments and garlands; perfumes were burned; tables provided with the most exquisite meats. Damocles thought himself very happy. In the midst of this apparatus, Dionysius ordered a bright sword to be let down from the ceiling, suspended by a single horsehair, so as to hang over the head of that happy man. After which he neither cast his eye on those handsome waiters, nor on the well wrought plate; nor touched any of the provisions: presently the garlands fell to pieces. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... seems to me twofold: First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?—Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... produced by chewing the herb soap-wort, used by dyers; but it brought him reverence and awe. The two had long ago manufactured and fitted up a serpent's head of linen; they had given it a more or less human expression, and painted it very like the real article; by a contrivance of horsehair, the mouth could be opened and shut, and a forked black serpent tongue protruded, working on the same system. The serpent from Pella was also kept ready in the house, to be produced at the right moment and take its part in the drama—the leading ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to silken thread or horsehair, and hold it suspended within a glass; then say the alphabet slowly; whenever ring strikes glass, begin over again and in this way spell ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... great insect destroyers; if more than one pair, there will be continual warfare as often as one encroaches on the domains of the other. Their nests are made of strips of vegetable fibre, weeds, etc., and lined with horsehair or catkins. They are sometimes quite bulky and generally very substantially made. The three to five eggs are laid the latter part of May, and are of a creamy ground color splashed with reddish brown and lilac. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... was sitting in front of her tent in the sun, watching the cowboys sitting around their camp, weaving horsehair bridles, cleaning their guns, mending their clothes, and doing other things that fall to the leisure of a ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a horsehair from the stuffing of the elbow of his chair; and there was a look over his face as near sullenness as ever came to his ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... products, which include frozen and chilled beef and mutton, hides, sheepskins, wool, and such things as horsehair, tallow, jerked beef, etc., represented a value of L19,549,231 ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... would you like to be back at Oak Hall?" cried Ben, while the sleigh sped along. "Wouldn't we have the dandy time snowballing each other, and snowballing old Horsehair?" ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... was continually flying against her windows, and as birds were not in the habit of doing so generally, she thought something serious was portended by it. My mother comforted her as well as she could, and I undertook to rid her of the annoyance, which I did by setting a horsehair- noose on one of the window-ledges which it frequented. I soon caught it, and by plucking out the under-tail coverts, with which I wanted to dress yellow duns, I effectually cured it of the propensity—whether, Narcissus-like, it was in ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... thin and hard. Over the fat pillows were "shams" embroidered in Turkey red, each with a flowering scroll—one with "Gute' Nacht," the other with "Guten Morgen." The dresser was so big that Thea wondered how it had ever been got into the house and up the narrow stairs. Besides an old horsehair armchair, there were two low plush "spring-rockers," against the massive pedestals of which one was always stumbling in the dark. Thea sat in the dark a good deal those first weeks, and sometimes a painful bump against one ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... other's society, for Dennis was now entirely occupied with the building of the jackdaws' house under Tuvvy's advice and direction. One afternoon the two little girls were sitting together in the play-room, threading beads on horsehair to make a collar ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... house and lighted two candles in the parlour. We had never entered the parlour before, and accordingly looked about with interest and curiosity. The furniture, which had belonged to Pap's father-in- law, a Spanish-Californian, was of mahogany and horsehair, very good and substantial. In a bookcase were some ancient tomes bound in musty leather. A strange-looking piano, with a high back, covered with faded rose-coloured silk, stood in a corner. Some half a dozen daguerreotypes, a case of stuffed humming-birds, and a wreath of flowers ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... a schoolboy's, furnished with the bed and fittings remaining from his bachelor days, as shabby and worn as he was, dusted perhaps once a week—that horrible room where everything was in a litter, with old socks hanging over the horsehair-seated chairs, the pattern outlined in dust, was that of a man to whom home is a matter of indifference, who lives out of doors, gambling in cafes ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... but, feeling a bit tired, lay down to rest on the sofa. And so powerful was the sea air, and the effect of a fair allowance of exercise, that she fell into a doze in spite of the intensely wakeful properties of Mrs. Lobjoit's horsehair sofa, which only a corrugated person could stop on without a maintained effort, so that sound sleep was impossible. She never became quite unconscious of the scratching pen and the moaning wind; so, as she did not sleep, yet did not want to wake, she remained hovering on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... protected wholly from the light, or had light admitted from above or on one side as the case might require, and were covered above by a large horizontal sheet of glass, and with another vertical sheet on one side. A glass filament, not thicker than a horsehair, and from a quarter to three-quarters of an inch in length, was affixed to the part to be observed by means of shellac dissolved in alcohol. The solution was allowed to evaporate until it became so thick that it ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... shut him out, left him standing on the verandah. After a lengthy absence, he returned, and with a "Well, come along in then!" opened the door of a parlour. This was a large room, well furnished in horsehair and rep. Wax-lights stood on the mantelpiece before a gilt-framed pierglass; coloured prints hung on ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... of a knight clothed in a mantle of black glossy bearskin, bordered with costly fur, but without any ornament of shining metal. His very helmet was covered with dark bearskin, and, instead of plumes, a mass of blood-red horsehair hung like a flowing mane profusely on every side. Well did Froda and Edwald remember that dark knight, for he was the uncourteous guest of the hostelry. He also seemed to remark the two knights, for he turned his unruly steed ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... rooms. Walls all decorated with horsehair bridles—scores of them—hundreds of them. They're no use to me, and they cost like Sam Scratch. But there's a lot of convicts making them, and I go on buying. Why, I've spent more money in a single night on whiskey than would ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... together till they took fire, and with great difficulty gathered as many other sticks as made a fire large enough to yield them some relief from the inclemency of the weather. They caught some fowls with springes made of an old horsehair wig, which were very tough and of a fishy taste, but after three or four days, they became acquainted with the springes and were never afterwards to be taken by that means. Their next resource for food was an animal ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Andromache with some famous passage from any of these writers. 'So spake glorious Hector and stretched out his arm to his boy. But the child shrunk crying to the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse, dismayed at the look of his dear father and in fear of the bronze and the horsehair crest that nodded fiercely from his helmet's top. Then his dear father and his lady mother laughed aloud: forthwith glorious Hector took the helmet from his head and laid it, all gleaming, on the earth; then kissed he his dear son and danced him in his arms, and spoke in prayer ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... meaningless battle-pieces, Algerian warfare and what not are characteristic of the "Citizen-King" whose fondness for red plush, green repp and horsehair sofas was notable. What he did at Versailles was almost as great a vandalism against art as that ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... "And the white horsehair stuff out of the fireplace," said Philip, pointing to the empty grate. "It made a good ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... on to the house with his own luggage, and Happy Jack followed to take charge of the team; but the remainder of the Happy Family unobtrusively took the measure of the foreign element. From his black-and-white horsehair hatband, with tassels that swept to the very edge of his gray hatbrim, to the crimson silk neckerchief draped over the pale blue bosom of his shirt; from the beautifully stamped leather cuffs, down to the exaggerated height of his tan boot-heels, their critical eyes swept in ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... he sipped his rather dire martini and listened to his mother talk. Not to the words especially, for she was one of those nearly-extinct well-bred women, brought up in the horsehair amenities of the late Victorian era, who could talk charmingly and vivaciously and at considerable length without saying anything. It was pleasant merely to sit and sip and let the ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... him. Taking them with him, he recrossed the river, and after a short but hearty meal, busied himself in the preparation of a sleeping place. In that heavenly region, nature has supplied the means for a simple, but delightful bed, in the tillandsea or Spanish moss, whose long, delicate, horsehair-like threads, compose the most luxurious couch. With this moss Hodges now filled the canoe, and carried it to the hiding-place where he had found it. This had been selected between two cedars, whose lower boughs served as rollers, upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... demanding water held all Jim's attention. And while Peter procured a cupful, he lifted her gently in his arms and carried her into the parlor, and laid her on an old horsehair settee, propping her carefully into a sitting position. When the water was brought she drank thirstily, and then, closing her eyes, sank back with something ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... with them," murmured Betteridge. "Their horsehair arm-chairs have stood the test of ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh |
