"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... related them to each other. But habitual metaphor prevents this process of relation; it is the intrusion of ready-made matter, with its own stale associations, into matter that should be new-made for its own particular purpose of expression. Phrases like—The lap of luxury, Part and parcel, A sea of troubles, Passing through the furnace, Beyond the pale, The battle of life, The death-warrant of, Parrot cries, The sex-war, Tottering thrones, A trail of glory, Bull-dog tenacity, Hats off to, The narrow way, A load of sorrow, ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... amazed to return her salutation. He stared at her, then he bowed his thick neck and stared at the flabby bag. He did not even offer her a seat, but she was in no way disconcerted by that. She chose a chair, drew it up in front of him, sat down, and crumpled the bag up in her lap. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... time before in his weak, half-starved state the poor boy could make them understand, for he had completely broken down: and it was not until he had swallowed a little biscuit soaked in wine, as he lay with his head in Mrs Beane's lap, that he at last told hysterically of how he had managed to crawl by the French outposts and ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... passed by Miss Warwick, he dropped his purse into her lap, and he was gone before she ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas—where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the child continued very ill—too ill to notice anything, or to attempt to talk; but one day, when she was lying on Mrs. Coomber's lap before the fire, the boys mutely looking at her as she lay, she suddenly put up her little hands, and said in a feeble whisper, "Dear faver Dod, tate tare o' daddy and mammy, and Tiny;" and then she seemed to drop off ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... sat contemplating the man near her, her hands lightly clasped on her lap, her slim feet crossed and at ease—little stocking-shod feet to which Raymond's eyes turned. She had never looked, to Raymond, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... genuinely spiritual and religious. Inspired by its truly American and "actuel" freedom, her muse does not fear to sing of such modern and mechanical phenomena as the railway train, which she loves to see "lap the miles and lick the valleys up," while she is fascinated by the contrast between its prodigious force and the way in which it stops, "docile and omnipotent, at its own stable door." But even she can hardly bring the smoking locomotive into such pathetic ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... Indian hostility to which the whites were incessantly subjected; and never perhaps lived three men better qualified by nature and habit, to resist that hostility, and preserve the settlers from captivity and death, than James Harrod, Daniel Boone, and Benjamin Logan. Reared in the lap of danger, and early inured to the hardships and sufferings of a wilderness life, they were habitually acquainted with those arts which were necessary to detect and defeat the one, and to lessen and alleviate the others. Intrepid and fearless, yet cautious and prudent, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... looked into her own with an expression which she found untranslatable—for two hours at least. Mrs. Burton saw her husband fairly on his way, and then she returned to the dining-room, led Toddie into the parlor, took him upon her lap, wound her arms tenderly about ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... third lap some of the gents from the private dinin'-room pokes their heads out to see what's happened to the guest of the evenin'. They saw, all right! They must have been suspicious, too; for they were lookin' anxious, and begun signaling ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... lettres de cachet were abolished, for handing the Marquis over to a Comite de Salut Public. Disappointed play-actors, like Collet d'Herbois; disappointed poets, like Fabre d'Olivet, were, they say, especially ferocious. Why not? Ingenious, sensitive spirits, used as lap-dogs and singing-birds by men and women whom they felt to be their own flesh and blood, they had, it may be, a juster appreciation of the actual worth of their patrons than had our own Pitt and Burke. ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... afternoon Ruth, Masten, Aunt Martha, and Uncle Jepson were sitting on the front porch of the Flying W ranchhouse. Ruth was reading and thinking—thinking most of the time, the book lying open in her lap. Masten was smoking a cigar—one of the many that he had brought with him—and which he selfishly kept exclusively for his own use. Masten seemed to be doing a great deal of thinking, too, for he was silent during long periods, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... at the tell-tale yellow telegrams in Mr. Bird's lap, and strove to catch his eye and indicate to his dull masculine intelligence the necessity of hiding them until they could devise a plan ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... I can even yet remember when I saw the stars for the first time. They may have seen me often before, but one evening it seemed as if it were cold. Although I lay in my mother's lap, I shivered and was chilly, or I was frightened. In short, something came over me which reminded me of my little Ego in no ordinary manner. Then my mother showed me the bright stars, and I wondered at them, and thought that she had ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... at the wheel did not reply. Dave, quick to act, seized a lap-robe that was handy and held it up in front of Roger, who did not dare to leave the wheel. Then came a jingle of glass, but the pieces fell at the feet of the boys in the front of the car. The automobile itself slid on another ten feet, dragging ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... lap, a king's ransom in my hand, 100 I will go down to this people, will stand face to face, will stand Where they curse king, queen, and princess of this ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... to this graphic description in silence. She was very pale, and held her handkerchief to her mouth with one trembling hand; the other beat nervously on her lap, and it was only by a strong effort of will that she managed to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... a copy of Latin Verses, and two in English. The Prologue is a Dialogue between Venus, Thetis, and Phoebus, sung by two Trebles, and a Base. Venus appearing at a Window above, as risen, calling to Sol, who lay in Thetis lap, at the East side of the Stage, canopy'd with an Azure Curtain. Our Author," continues Langbaine, "seems to be much of the Humour of Ben Johnson, whose greatest Weakness was, that he could not bear Censure, and has so great ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Karl Bitter The seated president, with a world of thought upon his face, has on his lap the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... cigar And scented handkerchief, I tiptoed near, But felt the exotic fragrance from afar; I thought of ARTHUR and Sir BEDIVERE: And it seemed best to leave it on the plate, So strode I back and told my curious spouse "I heard the high tide lap along the Eyot, And the wild water at the barge's bows." She said, "O treacherous! O heart of clay! Go back and throw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... was left alone in the house, holding the tearless mother's hand. She soon bowed her young head upon it, bedewing it with her tears. The poor woman's deep absorption began to pass away. The warm tears upon her hand, the head upon her lap, began to waken the instincts of womanhood to help and console another. She stroked the dark hair and murmured, "Poor child, poor child! Tilly was right. Trouble ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... trailing her rosy robes far behind her on the grass. The old cellarer, to whose care the birds fell except during those hours when the brethren were free for such indulgences, watched the scene in grinning delight; and Leonorine laughed gaily at them over the armful of tiny bobbing lap-dogs, whose valiant charges she was engaged in restraining. The only person who seemed out of tune with the chiming mirth was the Lady Elfgiva herself. Among the blooming bushes she was moving listlessly and yet restlessly, and each rose she plucked ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Between him an' his intended—all three settin' on the one seat—perches a preacher gent, who it's plain from the look in his eyes is held in a sort o' captivity that a-way. What nacherally bolsters up this theory is that the maiden's got a six-shooter in her lap. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... a lap ahead of the rest of civilization, and the funny thing is that the rest always thinks itself much more sane than the dreamer, ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... coal smuts; a French family at breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... proposed to take Dora up to bed, but though manifestly very weary, the child refused, and when her brother tried to order her, she ran between Harold's knees, and there tossed her head and glared at me. He lifted her on his lap, and she drew his arm round her in defence. Eustace said he spoilt her, but he still held her, and, as she dropped asleep against his breast, Eustace related, almost in a tone of complaint, that she had cared for no ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the letter lest it should be seen, but she knew it by heart. The young girl saw it all. Her lips quivered and she felt so utterly unworthy that she fell on her knees and buried her face in Aunt Susan's lap, sobbing bitterly. ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... hard is my happe To see my child that lay in my lap,— His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,— Be so nailed; they never did amisse." Now sing we with ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... man who has already several wives may be seen with an infant of two or three weeks on his lap, caressing and kissing it as his wife. Wives of four to six years we found occasionally (in China, Guzuate, Ceylon, and Brazil); from seven to nine years on they are no longer rare, and the years from ten to twelve are a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... hall-clock with the intentness of a man waiting to be hanged. "Still an hour left before closing time!" a speaker's friends would say. And the great orator, like a wearied horse, but a thoroughbred, would find new energy somewhere and start on another lap, round and round, repeating what he had already said a dozen times, summarizing the two ideas he had managed to produce in four hours of sonorous chatter. With duration as the test of quality, no one on the government had ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that a grown person could do wrong, and that person his dear Gilbert. As if the grave countenances were insupportable, he gave a long-drawn breath, hid his face on his mother's knee, and burst into an agony of weeping. He was lifted on her lap in a moment, father and mother both comforting him with assurances that he was a very good boy, and that papa was much pleased with him, Mr. Kendal even putting the cannon into his hand, as a tangible evidence of favour; but the child thrust aside the toy, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pause. Mrs. Sewall was tapping her bag with a rapid, nervous little motion. I was keeping my hands folded tightly in my lap. We were both making an effort to control our feelings. We sat opposite each other without saying anything for a moment. It was I who ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... not really matter how my mother felt, as she sat, with a protecting niece in her lap, at one end of a long table, with the hossen fidgeting at the other end. The marriage contract would be written anyway, no matter what she thought of the hossen. And the contract was duly written, in the presence ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... palm," Moro replied. "It grows in swamps, often near the sea. It looks like a gigantic fern. Its wide leaves we lap one over another, and tie them to the bamboo frame by withes ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... in the first lap of the ride? In the second? How was Mahommed Khan's advice shown to be true? What was the climax of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... there, hours afterwards, fast asleep, his wet clothes steaming in the hot afternoon sunlight. They put him into the wagon of the nearest rancher and jolted him home, his head in his father's lap and the great horse blankets thrown over him, making him dream that he was a loaf of bread ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... you to tumble to it," he whispered; "the neatest thing in revenge I ever knew, and another minute would have fixed it. I've been waiting for it twelve hours, watching the clock round, death at the end of the lap! Electric connection. Simple enough. Hour-hand ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the table. Sit firmly in your chair, without lolling, leaning back, drumming, or any other uncouth action. Unfold your napkin and lay it in your lap, eat soup delicately with a spoon, holding a piece of bread in your left hand. Be careful to make no noise in ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... was, besides the girl, another woman, very stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She was sitting near the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap. She took no notice whatever of ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... My lass, to speak my mind, In troth I needna swither, Ye 've bonnie e'en, and, gif ye 're kind, I needna court anither! He humm'd and haw'd, the lass cried "pheugh," And bade the coof no deave her, Syne crack'd her thumb, and lap and leugh, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the two small surface ships were shut off and every ear became alert, but no sound broke the stillness of the summer night, except the rumble of distant thunder and the gentle lap of the sea against the sides. Morse signals winked from one ship to the other and back again. When due precautions had been taken against a further surprise attack, the chivalry of the sea called for a search to be made for possible survivors. This was done ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... minute the entrance gate wuz reached and the orto stopped so abruptly, that Josiah who had got up agin, wuz precipitated into my lap. But he got out immegiately, and the minute he and I stepped onto terry firmy he turned and shook his fist at the man and sez he, "If it wuzn't for the crowd and Samantha's feelin's, I would whip you within ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... cruel pain I feel!—You do not know the world; it is malignantly spiteful. People will perhaps say that your husband sent you back to your parents. Children brought up as you were, on your mother's lap, remain artless; maidenly passion like yours for Wenceslas, unfortunately, makes no allowances; it acts on every impulse. The little heart is moved, the head follows suit. You would burn down Paris to be revenged, with no thought ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... hermit. He lay extended where he had fallen; his grey beard and thin scattered locks dabbled with blood that flowed from a gash in his forehead. Hilda kneeled at his side, and, raising his head, she laid it in her lap. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the mountain, pushing out now and then to blot a star from the purple. Now and then a white, ragged gash cut through, but no sound reached up to where we were camped on the high mesa that was the lap of Starvation Mountain. I will explain that Casey had come back to Starvation to see if there were not another good silver claim lying loose and needing a location monument. We faced Tippipah Range twelve miles away,—and to-night the fire on ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... and held it in her lap. "How is it," she smiled, "that you listen to what she tells you, but that you treat what I say, day after day, as so much wind blowing past your ears! How is it that you at once do what she bids you, with even greater alacrity than you would ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cloth in hot water, and wrap it round the mould for a few moments, to loosen the cream and make it come out easily; setting the mould on a glass or china dish. If a pyramid or obelisk mould, lift it carefully off the top. If the mould or form represents doves, dolphins, lap-dogs, fruit baskets, &c. it will open down the middle, and must be taken off in that manner. Serve it up immediately lest it begin to melt. Send round sponge-cake with it, and wine or ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... mischievous little boy, was always honest, confessed that he had been the one to open the old cupboard and take out the box. He seemed to feel rather uncomfortable about it, and after the things had been put away, he climbed upon Aunt Jane's lap and hid his head upon her shoulder. "Never mind, Peter, dear," she said, holding him very tight, "I always meant to show you my old toys some day. I dare say you children think it strange that I have kept such shabby things so long, but when I was a little girl I did not have such beautiful toys ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... servant devoted to Boyce, received implicit belief. He had faithfully carried out his master's orders: to conduct him from the road, across the field, and seat him on the boom of the lock gates, where he wanted to remain alone in order to enjoy the quiet of the night and listen to the lap of the water; to return and fetch him in a quarter of an hour. This he did, dreaming of no danger. When he came back he realised what had happened. His master had got up and fallen into the canal. What had really happened only a ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... it, and rising in her wrath soared down on the small boy like a hawk. She put him over the line, reversed him, ran him backwards, till he didn't know which end of him was front, and finally dropped him into the lap of the scared mother, with a benediction whereof the purport was that she'd be back in a moment ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... up to take leave of Marya, the rosebud dropped from Palla's lap, and Marya picked it up and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... bred up in the lap of luxury; whom the breath of heaven has never visited too roughly; whose minds from their earliest infancy have been guarded even with more care than their persons; who in the dangerous season of youth are surrounded by all that the solicitude ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... her custom to eat but little at midday, and spent part of the afternoon with a comfortable sense of improvement over one of John Fiske's volumes of colonial history; popular novels she abhorred as frivolities beneath her. And then she took upon her lap a large volume, weighing perhaps a dozen pounds, entitled "Historic Families in America," in which first place was given to an account of the glories of the De Peysters. Though premiership was no better than the family's due, she was secretly ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... myself, and I didn’t pretend to her. I saw I was clean gone; and if she was to make a fool of me, she must. And I suppose it was this that set her talking, for now she made sure that we were friends. A lot she told me, sitting in my lap and eating my dish, as I ate hers, from foolery—a lot about herself and her mother and Case, all which would be very tedious, and fill sheets if I set it down in Beach de Mar, but which I must give a hint of in plain English, and one thing ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than enough—he added mentally. The coils of fuel wire were ready to load, and the power slugs for the ship's reactor were already stored in the power plant building here at Olympus. Three more days and the old spacer would be as ready to fly as she would ever be. And after that, it was in the lap of fate. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... and listening in this lurking place, which she was not using for the first time, her heart began to beat more quickly; indeed, in her excitement she quite forgot some sweetmeats which she had brought to wile away the time and had poured into a large leaf in her lap. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... let me put this money in the blind man's cup." Kitty poured her coins into the receptacle. At the same time Hawksley laid the fiddle in the blind man's lap. Then he turned to Kitty and boomed a long Russian phrase at her. Her quick wit caught the intent. "You see, he doesn't understand that this cannot be done in New York. I ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... ascertain the degree of absorption of the other without turning round. What their silence was charged with therefore was not only a sense of the weather, but a sense, so to speak, of its own nature. Maud Blessingbourne, when she lowered her book into her lap, closed her eyes with a conscious patience that seemed to say she waited; but it was nevertheless she who at last made the movement representing a snap of their tension. She got up and stood by the fire, into which she looked a minute; then came round and approached ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... duties of hospitality, seems to be obeying an irksome necessity of his condition: he treats it as a duty imposed upon him by his situation, not as a pleasure. By the side of the hearth sits a woman with a baby on her lap: she nods to us without disturbing herself. Like the pioneer, this woman is in the prime of life; her appearance would seem superior to her condition, and her apparel even betrays a lingering taste for dress; but her ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... bow was turned northward again. In coming about they shipped so much water, that Marcia, though by no means a coward, screamed out, "We are lost!" She flung herself into the bottom of the boat and laid her head in Greenleaf's lap like a frightened child. He soothed her and denied that there was danger; he did not venture to tack again, however, for fear of being swamped, but determined to run northwardly along the coast in the hope of getting ashore on some sandy beach before the fury of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... talk was a memorable one for both Tunis Latham and the girl posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the sounds of insect life from the shore were accompaniments to their ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... idlers and wise men, who take their stations there for the important purpose of seeing company pass; but the sagest knot is generally at the blacksmith's, to whom the passing of the coach is an event fruitful of much speculation. The smith, with the horse's heel in his lap, pauses as the vehicle whirls by; the cyclops round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers and suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in brown paper cap laboring at the bellows leans on the handle for a moment, and permits ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... appearance his method of studying. 'He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.' He kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... plunder her house. At this she recovered some courage, and ran back into the house immediately, and knowing where her money lay, which was very considerable and all in gold, she put the bag in her lap and boldly rushing by Panton, who thought she was only running from them in a fright, carried it all off, and so made ...
— 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
... Reaching for his crutch, he slipped the end through the handle of the jug and drew it toward him. He raised it to his lap and the words of the succeeding line struck upon his brain like ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... in his cousin's lap, little Gilbert knelt beside her. "You needn't open it," he cried; "it will ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... air, and listened again to those blessed sounds which swelled her heart with rapture, and brought tears of joy to her eyes. Alas! she but grasped at empty air, and nothing was real but the tears that fell into her lap. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... her tea, which after all was not very cold. She was not really interested in the letter, now that she had got it. Had not a vagrant breeze tossed it, obtrusively, upon her lap, she would probably not have ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... at root of threads are also those for diameter of hole in nuts and diameter of lap drills. All bolts and studs 3/4 in. diameter and above, screwed into boilers, have 12 threads per inch, sharp thread, a taper of 1/16 in. per 1 inch; tap drill should be 9/64 in. less than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... A PATCH (fig. 52).—Tack in the new piece, so that its edges over-lap the edges of the hole. The back-stitching must be done on the article itself, as this renders it easier to do the corners neatly. The hem is turned down on to the patch. Make a little snip at the corners with your scissors to prevent puckering. The back-stitching ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... beautiful, Pagan mouth. Tall and slender, her rounded arms and fine hands with their short pointed fingers seemed to terminate naturally in anything she held, such as a fan or flower, or fell in graceful curves in her lap. Sylvia had not the chiffonnee restless charm of the contemporary pretty woman; she did not, like Felicity, arouse with stimulating intensity one's ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... excessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Steeles, and every thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer. She was seated in her mother's lap, covered with kisses, her wound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Steeles, who was on her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by the other. With such a reward for her tears, the child was too ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... who did not desire it should move faster. No word passed between her and Malcolm all their homeward way. Each was brooding over the night and its joy that enclosed them together, and hoping for that which was yet to be shaken from the lap ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... up in a moment," he remarked. "I haven't much to do just now. Perhaps you would like to stay awhile? Here is the key; you need not ring. But be careful of their shoes if you take them on your lap. Well, don't laugh; God knows if ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... elastic had rumpled it. Her grammar, lexicon and text-book occupied most of the table, but Robbie did not complain. She could manage very well by laying her books, one on the open face of another, in her lap. For once she was grateful that an ENGAGED sign shielded them from interruptions, for Latin was her shakiest subject, especially the rules of indirect discourse. The instructor had warned the class that this weak spot was ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... convenient country wherein to acquire Western knowledge. The new learning, the new learning—they must have the new learning! No high office is ever again likely to be given but to him who has more of Western knowledge than Chinese knowledge. And mere striplings, nursed in the lap of the mission schools, and there given a good grounding in Western education, these are the men far more likely to pass the new examinations. In Yuen-nan, where little chance exists for the scholars to advance, the new learning has brought with it a revolutionary ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... pointed to the open door and the white face in it, and in one moment more a pair of arms had closed upon Michael, and with a dreamy murmur, 'Mam-mam, mam-ma,' the curly head was on her bosom, the precious weight on her lap, her husband by her side, the door had closed on them, they ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... small altar-piece by Giotto (Florence, S. Croce), Christ and the Virgin are seated together on a throne. He places the jewelled crown on her head with both hands, while she bends forward with her hands crossed in her lap, and the softest expression in her beautiful face, as if she as meekly resigned herself to this honour, as heretofore to the angelic salutation which pronounced her "Blessed:" angels kneel before ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... your mastership. Remember that a dog needs much liberty and independence to develop his individuality, and an enterprising puppy learns more by observation and experience in a week than a pampered lap-dog does in his whole life; he learns self-reliance, but he will always run to his master or mistress in any real difficulty, and you who are his master or mistress must be wary not to misunderstand or disregard him, for he ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... her seat opposite him, folded her white hands in her lap, and looked into his eyes with such significant archness that he began ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... herself could not explain. But, somehow or other, her Teddy bear slipped from her lap and was about to fall out of the boat. That would never do, the little girl decided, and of course she made a quick motion to catch ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... pace. She simply shook her head, snorted, and swished her tail, as though protesting that the blow was unnecessary. She could not do the impossible, and that he was asking of her. But his forcible request was the nervous result of his knowledge that the last lap of the race had been entered upon and the home stretch was not far off. It must be now ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... things! And the holy women back to those strange springs Returned, that God had sent them when the day Dawned, on the upper heights; and washed away The stain of battle. And those girdling snakes Hissed out to lap the waterdrops from cheeks And hair and breast. Therefore I counsel thee O King, receive this Spirit, whoe'er he be, To Thebes in glory. Greatness manifold Is all about him; and the tale is told That this is he who first to man did give The ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... an upper room on one of the lath-backed, willow-bottomed 'shepherd's' chairs, made on the spot then as to this day, and as they were probably made there in the days of the Heptarchy. In her lap was an infant, which she had been suckling, though now it had fallen asleep; so had the young mother herself for a few minutes, under the drowsing effects of solitude. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she awoke, started up with a glad cry, and ran to the door, opening which she met her brother ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... as they are misunderstood. But thus the cunning Philistines are enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour of confidence, and in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in the lap of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn of his strength. Dr. JOHNSON appears often to have indulged this amusement, both in good and ill humour. Even such a calm philosopher as ADAM SMITH, as well as such a child of imagination as BURNS, were remarked ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... gathered a lot of pine gum, and brought it back to the camp. When they reached the camp the old man called to one of his wives to come and tease his hair, as his head ached, and that alone would relieve the pain. One of the women went over to him, took his head on her lap, and teased his hair until at last the old man was soothed and sleepy. In the meantime the other wife was melting the gum. The one with the old man gave her a secret sign to come near; then she asked the old man to lie on ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... far removed from life, so wrapped in cotton wool, so deep-sunk in the soft lap of civilization, that I cannot feel the cold splash of truth? It is a disquieting thought—for certainly piracy seems ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... book was a far heavier commodity than you would have cared to hold in your lap," smiled Mr. Cameron. "In fact, it was impossible to hold one of them; hence we find the old-time reading desk used as a support. ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... Turning back the lap of his coat Dyke Darrel revealed a glittering silver star, and below this a flaming eye ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... note. I saw the girl idly marking on the winecard with a small gold pencil, though her eyes were veiling an intense excitement; and when the waiter returned with a pile of change which the old man began to count, I saw her furtively slip the winecard to her lap. A moment later it fell to the floor as she ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... were filled with astonishment, and no one was more surprised than Jefferson himself. He had thought of buying New Orleans and West Florida for a small sum, and now a vast domain had been dumped into the lap of the nation. He was puzzled. On looking into the Constitution he found not a line authorizing the purchase of more territory and so he drafted an amendment declaring "Louisiana, as ceded by France,—a part of the United States." He had belabored the Federalists for piling ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... hae wished it had been the deil himself—be good to and preserve us!—rather than Christie o' the Clint-hill," said the matron of the mansion, "for the word runs rife in the country, that he is ane of the maist masterfu' thieves ever lap on horse." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... yards, both clews of her mainsail hauled up, and studding-sails set on both sides, her topsails occasionally collapsing and flapping to the masts for lack of wind to keep them "asleep." Miss Trevor was, as usual, on deck, seated in a deck-chair, with a book on her lap and the fingers of one hand playing abstractedly with an ear of the great dog that lay stretched contentedly upon the deck beside her. Leslie, also with a book in his hands, was seated right aft upon the taffrail, with his feet upon ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Naua was its sole occupant. He sat on the floor, holding the drum in his lap and touching the instrument lightly from time to time. His vacant gaze was fixed upon a small heap of dying embers, nearly in the centre of the room and beneath the hatchway. Occasionally he raised his head to glance at the wall opposite him. The interior of the estufa appeared ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... that, Roger," exclaimed Strong, "it would take us right into Coxine's lap! Do you think you can ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... it appeared, quite a novel phenomenon in the eyes of these good people, and so they came one and all and stared at me; the women and children were, in particular, most unpleasantly familiar; they felt my dress, and the little ones laid their dirty little countenances in my lap. Added to this, the confined atmosphere from the number of persons present, their lamentable want of cleanliness, and their filthy habit of spitting, &c., all combined to form a most dreadful whole. During these visits I did more penance than by the longest fasts; and fasting, too, was an exercise ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... like a wild cat when the missile hit him. Luckily he was flustered by the bouncing of the loaf on the table and off again clean into Margaret's lap, or the ready trigger would surely have been drawn in earnest. Then Margaret promptly took the edge off his anger by saying with menacing sweetness, "I'm sorry the fun has gone further than was desirable, but I will not have the girl blamed for what was in her a brave deed, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... The sense of relief that came when he found that the cook was not Ophelia, together with the widow's unexpected graciousness, had instantly disarmed his suspicions and, metaphorically speaking, hurled his heart into her lap. He had found the widow charming, interesting, very feminine, and already dreams had shaped themselves in his mind. The sudden revelation that Parker had made brought tremendous disappointment. Ophelia had not shown the ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... who was called my son and named Umslopogaas, but who was the son of Chaka, the king, and of the Baleka, and the grandson of Unandi. So it happened that very often one or the other of them would come into my hut, making pretence to visit my wives, and take the boy upon her lap and fondle it. In vain did I pray them to forbear. Love pulled at their heart-strings more heavily than my words, and still they came. This was the end of it—that Chaka saw the child sitting on the knee of ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... eventually realizing the tangible impalpable realm conjured up in the distance which time has veiled within its mists, and by the expectation of ultimately wresting some relics of antiquity every now and again from the lap ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... a little better. Luckily it was Saturday, so there was no worry about her school for her. She would not lie down, but sat in the rocking-chair with her needle-work in her lap. When any one came in, she took it up and sewed. Several of the neighbors had heard she was ill, and came to inquire. She told them, with a defiant air, that she was very well, and they looked shocked and nonplussed. Some of them beckoned her mother out into the entry when they took leave, ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... knew that his skill was equal to that of any fashionable practitioner in Hong-Kong. He wasn't quite hard enough to win worldly success; that was his fault. Anybody in pain had only to call to him. So, here he was, on the last lap of middle age, in China, having missed all the thrills in life except one—the war against Death. It rather astonished him. He hadn't followed this angle of thought in ten years: what he might have been, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... beauty, for nature always refuses to be seen by being stared at. Like Bonaparte, she discharges her face of all expression when she catches the eye of impertinent curiosity fixed on her. But he who has gone to sleep in childish ease on her lap, or leaned an aching brow upon her breast, seeking there comfort with full trust as from a mother, will see all a mother's beauty in the look she bends upon him. Later, I felt that I had really seen these regions, and ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... truce with all their raven croakings; they would overload mortality, and press our shoulders with too great a weight of dismal miseries. But come, my boys, we who have free souls, let us to the banquet, while yet Sol's fiery charioteer lies sleeping at his eastern palace in the lap of Thetis—let us chant carols of mirth to old Jove or bully Mars; and, like chaste votaries, perform our orgies at the shrine of Venus, ere yet Aurora tears aside the curtain that conceals our revels." ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... play with it as the whim takes me,—now take it on my lap, now touch it with my lips, now keep it by my side on ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... birds dotted in dusky specks against the vault, of transcendental green. It coalesced, drew out again, and dropped swiftly, and the air was filled with the rush of wings; then there was a harsh crying and splashing, and she heard the troubled water lap among the reeds until deep silence closed in upon ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... that life is not worth living, and thus proved it is. Gray spent thirteen years writing his "Elegy," and so made clear the point that the man who does good work does not at the last lay him down and rest his head upon the lap of earth, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown. Gray secured both fame and fortune. He was so successful that he declined the Laureateship, and had the felicity to die of gout. Gray's immortality is based upon the fact that his life gave the lie to his logic. The man who thinks out what he wants ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... where I was born, there used to be an old woman crouching all day long over the kitchen fire, with her elbows on her knees and her feet in the ashes. Once in a while she took a turn at the spit, and she never lacked a coarse gray stocking in her lap, the foot about half finished; it tapered away with her own waning life, and she knit the toe-stitch on the day of her death. She made it her serious business and sole amusement to tell me stories at any time from morning ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... drowsy god. There was the simpering boarding-school miss of sixteen; the fat wife of a citizen with a baby in her arms, and another in anticipation; the lady of fashion, attended by her maid; the buxom widow, attended by a lap-dog, musical with silver bells, and there, too, was the elderly dame, attended by a host of grandchildren, to the horror of an old maid, who declares she 'can't BEAR young ones,' ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... their joint endeavors. In these circumstances the author bids adieu to fame; writes for bread; and for that only imagination is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her lap." ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... contemporaries, whereas we have only tradition and the modern accent to guide us as to the exact pronunciation. "My Holly, it cannot be. Were I to show mercy to those wolves, your lives would not be safe among this people for a day. Thou knowest them not. They are tigers to lap blood, and even now they hunger for your lives. How thinkest thou that I rule this people? I have but a regiment of guards to do my bidding, therefore it is not by force. It is by terror. My empire is of the imagination. Once in ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... peace, the contentment, the hope he had enjoyed through the summer? The question suddenly took a more definite form in his mind: How could he give up Asenath? Yes,—the quiet, unsuspecting girl, sitting beside him, with her lap full of the September blooms he had gathered, was thenceforth a part of his inmost life. Pure and beautiful as she was, almost sacred in his regard, his heart dared to say.—"I need her and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the house appeared the dogs, then, in the storm, two or three turbaned negresses. Mammy, coifed and kerchiefed, came down the stairs and through the house. "O my Lawd! Hit's my baby! O glory be! Singin' jes' lak he uster sing, layin' in my lap—mammy singin' ter him, an' he singin' ter mammy! O Marse Jesus! ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... leaping wildly in welcome. And now he is with them; and as with smiles and warm hand-clasps he is welcomed, he feels that this is home. Vaura, who has been colouring some photographs, lets her hands fall idly to her lap, as she listens to the manly voice which, coming in and joining its music with their own, she feels ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... scarce knew how, and lay down completely exhausted; while my late companion seemed to me to be a lifeless corpse. In a moment, Neb, dripping like a black river god, and glistening like a wet bottle, placed himself in the bottom of the boat, took my head into his lap, and began to squeeze the water from my hair, and to dry my face with some one's handkerchief—I trust it ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to enter the shady garden of the villa Mon Repos. Old Caterina sat, sphinx-like, on the stones at the house entrance. There was some knitting-work on her lap, with brown wool and curiously shaped needles; one foot rested on the base of the cradle, which she rocked from time to time. At his approach she rose up, stark and hieratic, without a trace of a friendly ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... nothing it cannot pierce.... When men need to take it they bring a virgin maid to the place where they know that it has its abode. When the unicorn sees her and knows that she is a virgin, it lieth down to sleep in her lap, doing her no harm; then come the hunters and kill it.... Likewise, if she be not a pure maid the unicorn will not sleep, but killeth the damsel who is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the sanctuaries of the gods. Diorite statues of the prince are now in the Louvre, and inscriptions upon them state that the stone out of which they were made was brought from the land of Magan. On the lap of one of them is a plan of the royal palace, with the scale of measurement marked on the edge of a sort of drawing-board. Prof. Petrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented in it is the cubit of the pyramid-builders ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... it came a recollection of the sorrows of yesterday, and he suddenly thought "Where is Marten? Where can Marten be? Is he gone? Has he left Reuben?" The idea was not to be borne by the poor child in a state of quietness, he rose from his seat, dropped his toys from his lap, and without looking back he went to the door, which being ajar he opened wider and passed through into the gallery. His friends, he believed, had left him; they were at home. His mamma, too, he thought, might be there ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... back from being dead. Besides, the hair was burned half off his head, and he was streaked raw all down one side where the fire had bitten him. He stood blinking, trying to pick up their meaning with his eyes. His maiden looked up from her mother's lap where she wept for ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... time, some poor mother, who had been up with a crying babe all night, would sit down with it in her lap, in front of the fire, in the morning, and fall fast asleep, and when she awoke, she would find that Aiken-Drum had paid her a visit, for the floor would be washed, and the dishes too, and the fire made up, and the kettle put on to boil; but the little man would have slipped away, as if he were ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... rapped and heaved and slid about. A chair crawled to my lap and at last to the top of the table, apparently of its own motion. A little rocking-chair moved to and fro precisely as if some one were sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I look back upon it now, after years of ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... three-quarters of a yard wide, of heavy drilling. The dimensions are: Head, 5 feet; foot, 13 feet; foreleach, 10 feet; afterleach, 14-1/2 feet. Make these measurements on a floor, and mark the outlines with a chalk-line. Cut the after-breadth first, and the others to match. Lap the breadths 1 inch. Allow an inch all around for a hem. The breadths should be basted before stitching. Put two rows of stitching where the breadths lap. Look out for puckering. Put a narrow hem clear ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... reading—that is, his eyes were upon the book and he seemed apparently absorbed in its contents—but in reality his entire thought was focused upon Pearl, who sat opposite him in a low chair, her hands clasped idly in her lap, and he struggled desperately to maintain his attitude of friendly comradeship when ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... when Rollo was just going to bed, his father took him up in his lap, and told him he ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... dare say you have read—an officer bought from us a Smith and Wesson. He shot his wife's lover, and-would you believe it?-the bullet passed through him, pierced the bronze lamp, then the piano, and ricochetted back from the piano, killing the lap-dog and bruising the wife. A magnificent record redounding to the honour of our firm! The officer is now under arrest. He will no doubt be convicted and sent to penal servitude. In the first place, our penal code is quite ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Roma's apartment. From these steps a door opened into the studio. One panel of the door was glazed, and a light was shining from within. Going cautiously forward, Rossi looked into the room. Roma was seated on a stool with her hands clasped in her lap and her hair hanging loose. She was very pale. Her face ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Caenis. Vain of her beauty, she rejected all lovers, but was one day surprised by Neptune, who offered her violence, changed her sex, converted her name to Ceneus, and gave her (or rather him) the gift of being invulnerable. In the wars of the Lap'ithae, Ceneus offended Jupiter, and was overwhelmed under a pile of wood, but came forth converted into a yellow bird. AEneas found Ceneus in the infernal regions restored to the feminine sex. The order is inverted ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... radius of the firelight a girl leaned forward, her eyes fastened upon a drawing she held in her lap. One could see only vague outlines. The light danced over the figure of the girl, her bright, reddish-gold hair, cut short and held in place with an amber comb, her slender shoulders, the unconsciously ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... with indignation. She sat radiantly fair in the lamplight, her strong, well-shaped hands lying one on top of the other in her lap. . . "Odious creature," she thought. Her face coloured with sudden anger. "You have scared my maid out of her senses," she said ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and passed her fingers searchingly across her brow, as we sometimes instinctively try to brush away our cares. Then she sat looking down rather pitifully at her palms, as they lay in her lap. ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... let the cloth fall into her lap, and all the other women stopped their work to stare at the ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... have "No More at Evening." (As the gypsies sing, MASHA lies on her back across his lap, looking up into his face, which she draws down to her, and they kiss until the music begins to cease.) That's wonderful! Divine! If I could only lie this way forever, with my arms around the heart of joy, and sleep ... and die.... (He closes his eyes; his ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... house-keeper Elizabeth Clarke, and that forthwith the Devill appeared to them in the shape of a dogge; afterwards in the shape of two kitlyns; then in the shape of two dogges; and that the said familiars did doe homage in the first place to the said Elizabeth Clarke, and skipped up into her lap and kissed her; and then went and kissed all that were in the roome, except the said Rebecca: and the said Rebecca told this informant, that immediately one of the company asked the said Anne her mother, if shee had acquainted ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... such a sunshine of constant happiness as is good to look upon. She has given up her position in the school at Fohrensee; her place is with her husband and children; but she does not for all that sit with her hands in her lap; her orderly well-kept house, and her blooming well-behaved children bear witness to her faultless management as well as to her care and industry, and at the great annual Fair in the city, if any one inquires about some wonderfully fine and beautiful ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... doesn't mean anything," she said. "His cows are sure to drift. This first strip we've worked is the southernmost edge of our range and his north wagon works the strip right south of us. We're sure to find a number of his cows. As we double back on our next lap we'll not find the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... so obvious a possibility? She could not imagine. The difference between the actuality and her intense and angry conception of what it would be, benumbed her mind for an instant. She was completely confused. She sat still with the book of poems on her lap, and gazed at Lord Holme as he came towards her, taking long steps and straddling his legs as if he imagined he had a horse under him. The gay expression had abruptly died away from her face and she ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... starched person, and I remember that I sat on some one's silk lap, and slipped and slipped, and was hitched up and immediately slipped again until I wished I might fall off and be done with it. Near me sat a little old maiden lady, who had come in from her village shop to see "the show." She wore two small, sausage curls either side of her wrinkled ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris |
