"Mantel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantel-piece, and Poseidon won the Newmarket Cup ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Cresswell, rising to his feet and lounging up against the mantel-piece, in order to take a good survey of his visitor. "What does Mr Swinstead want; to know ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the lecture-hall together about half-past ten. He had a most comfortably and tastefully furnished parlor, with good pictures on the walls, Indian and Japanese ornaments on the mantel, and here and there, and books everywhere-largely mine; which made me proud. The light was brilliant, the easy chairs were deep-cushioned, the arrangements for brewing and smoking were all there. We brewed and lit up; then he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had two charming lattice windows, set in deep square bays. One window faced the fireplace, the other the door. The effect was slightly irregular, but for that very reason all the more charming. The walls of the room were painted light blue; there was a looking-glass over the mantel-piece set in a frame of the palest, most delicate blue. A picture-rail ran round the room about six feet from the ground, and the high frieze above had a scroll of wild roses painted on ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... she had left it. It seemed to her a warmer, lighter, cleaner place than she had ever thought it, and, in spite of the winter's closing, as sweet as spring. She went about opening cupboard doors and looking at her china as if each piece were friendly to her, from long association, and moving the mantel ornaments to occupy the old places more exactly. Certain eccentricities of the place had been faults; now they were beauties wherein she found no blemish. The worn hollows in the kitchen floor, so hard to wash on a Monday, seemed exactly to fit her feet. And ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... had backed toward the hearth, propping her arms against the mantel-piece while she stole a secret glance at the embers. Nothing ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... they now entered was of generous size, with soft gray wallpaper and white woodwork. Along one side ran low, well-filled book-shelves. In the middle of the opposite wall, with fire-making materials already piled in it, was a small open grate, surmounted by an attractive mantel of white woodwork. There were a writing-table, a comfortable couch, and easy chairs. And what was most unusual for a city house, the room possessed windows on three sides—two overlooking the street and one giving a ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... library was an old carved mantel which Clemens and his wife had bought in Scotland, salvage from a dismantled castle, and across the top of the fireplace a plate of brass with the motto, "The ornament of a house is the friends that frequent it," surely never ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... up and down stage long ornate Italian chest. 13. At either end of this chest Italian lamps, seven feet high, standing on floor. Below door down L., on flat, an antique clock. 14. Below door down L., arm-chair. 15. Left side of fireplace chair with cushion seat. On mantel two large antique vases. 16. Right side of fireplace, chair with cushion seat. 17. Large arm-chair. 18. Over right is a large library table sitting diagonally up and down stage. On table: book-rack with four books, desk-pad, ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... the strong mixture of perfumes which came from his hair, his moustache, his entire body. Various little jars from the dressing table were on the mantel. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... they could for her. He made his observations, and when Louise, after a moment, asked him about them, he said they affected him as severally typifying the Old South and the New South. They had a photograph over the mantel, thrown up large, of an officer in Confederate uniform. Otherwise the room had nothing personal in it; he suspected the apartment of having been taken furnished, like their own. Louise asked if he should say they were ladies, and he answered ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... going to his bedchamber, took from the mantel the two silver candlesticks, lighted the candles and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the mirror opposite the flowery window, and so made the room a very bower. They fixed a magnificent crucifix of ivory and gold over the mantel-piece, and they took away his hassock of rushes and substituted a prie-dieu of rich crimson velvet. All that remained was to put their blue cover, with its golden cross, on the table. To do this, however, they had to remove the priest's papers and things: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in a gloomy way. "The girls are wild over it; you can't hear anything else talked about at home. But," he broke off abruptly, "got a cigar, Jasper?" and he began to hunt the mantel among the few home-things spread around to ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... carpet, the mantel-piece were encumbered, almost buried under a heterogeneous mass of things. Muslin petticoats, tossed down haphazard, pieces of lace, a cardboard helmet covered with gilt paper, open jewel-cases, bows of ribbon; curling-tongs, half hidden in the ashes; and on every side ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... the power of utterance. Then both, as by a common impulse, arose and went up to the chamber where Miriam slept. Almost the first thing that met the eyes of Mrs. Darlington was a letter, partly concealed by a book on the mantel-piece. It was addressed to her. On breaking the seal, ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... pinned to the threshold, hypnotized: all the furniture had resumed its usual place! The little table was standing between the two windows, the chairs were on their legs and the clock in the middle of the mantel-piece. The shivers of the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... everywhere. Great bowls of roses, jars of pink carnations and occasionally a vase of pink orchids were on mantel, low bookcases or piano. And sometimes the odor of a cigarette or a burning pastille of Oriental fragrance, added to the Bohemian effect which is, oftener than not, discernible ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... very much the same breed of pup. At this point Mr. Tutt, having carefully committed his guest to an ethical standard as far removed as possible from one based upon self-interest, opened the window a few more inches, sauntered over to the mantel, lit a fresh stogy and spread his long legs in front of the sea-coal fire like an elongated Colossus of Rhodes. He commenced his dastardly countermining of his partner's advice by complimenting Payson on being a ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... softly struck a match, lighted her candle and tiptoed across the floor, first taking the key from its place on the mantel. For a moment a wild hope came to her that it might be a Christmas tree, a little one, behind that locked door, but that idea faded away for she remembered that Miss Dorothy had said, "I would like to set up a Christmas tree for you, dearie, but it ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... library. A man came in for orders; I had none to give. He saw that the shutters were fixed and the curtains down, examined my hand-lamp, and placed lamps on the reading-desk and mantel-piece. Bronze busts of sages became my solitary companions. The room was long, low and dusky, voluminously and richly hung with draperies at the farther end, where a table stood for the prince to jot down memoranda, and a sofa to incline him to the relaxation of romance-reading. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to Ray, eyeing him with such a look of contempt and scorn that it smarted like a whiplash in spite of the protecting mantel of his new-found triumph. "Oh, you depraved dogs!" he told them quietly and distinctly. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... sides of the walls, the smell of the cedar, and the swift movement of a tame red squirrel, which ran up the walls and over the floor and along the chimney-piece, for Denzil avoided the iron stove so common in these new cold lands, and remained faithful to a huge old-fashioned mantel. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... same of my cousin Beatrice. When she came into the room, my first thought was how like she was to a statuette of a Dresden shepherdess which had always stood at one end of our mantel-piece, coquetting with the shepherd lad on the other side of the clock. As a boy, the shepherdess had been my ideal of feminine loveliness. Since then my ideals had changed rapidly and often, but Beatrice reminded me that the shepherdess had once been my ideal. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... ruin, dismembered, torn apart, and heaped in a corner. The carpet has been pulled from its fastenings, and is rolled and tumbled into a mass in the middle of the floor. The pictures are torn from the walls; vases have been overturned; even the French clock, on the mantel, has been ruined in the awful search, and the very walls of the room are dented by the hammer which has pounded them in the effort to find a secret hiding place. You know only too well what has happened, and yet you do not realize it. You are dazed. You think that you will awake and find that it ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... pendant and clasped the chain around her neck. She glanced at the lustrous pearls and then the fingers of one hand softly closed over them. She went through the long, wide living-room, examining the chairs and mantel, stopping to touch and exclaim over its array of half-finished candlesticks. At the door of his room she paused. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... I'm going to buy a farm!" He sprang up, went to the mantel and struck it a startling blow with his fist, which appeared to calm him somewhat—for a moment. "I've been thinking of it for a long time. I ought never to have been in this business at all, and I'm going to live in the country. Oh, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... them home to my fine house," said Wee-Wun the gnome, "for they must be lonely lying here. They shall stand upon my mantel shelf, and every morning I shall say, 'Good-morning, little blue shoes,' and every night I shall say, 'Good-night,' and we shall all be ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... of his talk,—he sometimes spoke rather loud,—and was submissively silent. When they got into their own room,—which had gilt lambrequin frames, and a chandelier of three burners, and a marble mantel, and marble-topped table and washstand,—and Bartley turned up the flaring gas, she quite broke down, and cried on his breast, to make sure that she had got him all ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... seem so," Rachael said, looking at the life-size statues of Moorish and Neopolitan girls, the mantel clock representing a Dutch windmill, the mantel itself, of black marble, gilded and columned, with a mirror in a carved walnut frame stretching ten feet above it, the beaded fire screen, the voluminous window curtains of tasselled ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... silent; but I knew what answer she expected, and not being able to give it then, I went away sad and reproved. Years later I had my triumphant answer, but she was no longer there to receive it; and so her eyes look at me, from the picture on the mantel there, with a ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... with milk-white chalk through which shone a soft touch of blue; and this bright cleanliness contrasted soberly with the things that hung on the wall. The chairs and furniture stood placed with care, as though nailed to the floor; over the mantel hung the copper Christ, a thin, elongated figure of Our Lord, with its sharp projections which shone when the sun touched them: a little figure which, so long dead, hung there so firmly nailed and looked so calmly from ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... up wiping away the tears and began to look around. Perhaps this was the home of some friend of her missionary. She felt comforted about staying here now. She lifted her eyes to the wall above the mantel and lo, there smiled the face of her dear friend, the mother, who had just gone home to heaven, and beneath it—as if that were not enough to bring a throb of understanding and joy to her heart—beneath it hung her own little jewelled riding whip which she had left ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... sorrow is so sacred, that I am hardly willing to let strangers pity him, ever so tenderly. When he was a baby he sprang out of mamma's lap, one day, as she was reaching up to take something from the mantel piece. He fell on the andiron-head and injured his spine so that he could never walk. He is twenty years old now; his head and chest and arms are about as large as those of a boy of sixteen, but all the rest ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a careless hand, and beneath the beam of his electric torch showed the pale and dreadful features of a dead man—of a man, the center of whose forehead showed the small round hole where a bullet had entered in; of a man whose still-recognizable features were those of the photograph on the mantel-piece of the room downstairs, the ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... a row of them on the mantel-piece. They were all facing front, and it looked as if they had come out of the wall behind, and were on their little stage facing the audience. There was the bronze monk reading a book by the light of a candle, who had a private opening under his girdle, so that sometimes his head ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... workmen had moulded the doors and window-frames; the ceilings were imitated from the middle-ages or those of a Venetian palace; marble veneering abounded on the outer walls. Steinbock and Francois Souchet had designed the mantel-pieces and the panels above the doors; Schinner had painted the ceilings in his masterly manner. The beauties of the staircase, white as a woman's arm, defied those of the hotel Rothschild. On account of the riots and the unsettled times, the cost of this folly was only about eleven ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... and shading the candle lest it should betray their presence through the shutterless windows, they went first into the big dining-room. There was not a stick of furniture to be seen. Bare walls, ugly mantel-pieces and empty grates stared at them. Everything, they felt, resented their intrusion, watching them, as it were, with veiled eyes; whispers followed them; shadows flitted noiselessly to right and left; something seemed ever at their back, ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... lived, would have become a captain also; but he went to sea and died, and I never from that day to this heard any more of him," said she, wiping the corner of her eye with her apron, more from old habit than because there were any tears to dry up, for she certainly was not crying. "Those things on the mantel-piece there were some he brought me home years and years ago, when he was a gay young sailor; and I've kept them ever since, for his sake, though I've been hard pushed at times to find bread to put into my mouth, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... tension seemed relaxed by the warm common-sense atmosphere of this trim little room, and his brother's composure. His lips were beginning to tremble, and he half turned and gripped the mantel-shelf with his right hand. Ralph noticed with a kind of contemptuous pity how the heavy girded folds of the frock seemed to contain nothing, and that the wrist from which the sleeve had fallen back was slender as a reed. Ralph ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... across the floor could only be accounted for by some blind ferocity of destruction—a madman, for instance, let loose upon it, and striking at random with a stick. As the match burned low in my fingers I looked around hastily for a candle, scanning the dresser, the mantel-shelf, the hugger-mugger of linen, crockery, wall-ornaments, lying in a trail along the floor. But no candle could I discover; so I lit a second match from the first and turned towards the sacred cupboard in ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Reform Church at the foot of the high pulpit and dominie Bogardus told us the story of the Birthday of Our Lord in simple words which we could all understand. Early in the morning we ran down to the sitting room where our stockings were hanging from the mantel shelf filled by Santa Claus with Christmas gifts, with more piled on the table for our friends and for poor families. That was what an effusive writer once called the "halcyon and vociferous" ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... gives us when Peter gets his first glimpse of Mary, Duchess of Towers. Who else could convey his realization of her beauty, and the quality of reminiscence that lingers about her, of the rapt amaze as he stands by the mantel-piece looking through the door into the space where he sees her in the midst of dancers under a crystal chandelier somewhere not very distant? Or the moment when he finds her bouquet neglected on the table in the drawing-room, with her lace shawl not far from his hands? Or when ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... dress. The younger girl went away but Sister showed us the rooms and they are just what we'd like, I'm sure. There wasn't any messy wool stuff nor ugly vases,—I forgot to mention that in the other place there were eight pair of vases on the mantel, truly, for Roger counted them. These rooms were clean and rather bare, with painted floors and washable rugs and fresh curtains and flowers, just one vase in each room and a clear glass vase at that. The ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... which was considerable, Mary came in to find her uncle marching up and down the room vituperating Morris, who, with quite a new expression upon his face—a quiet, dogged kind of expression—was leaning upon the mantel-piece and watching him. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... in his agitation leaned his arm upon the mantel. Again his eyes dwelt upon her noble curves, her sumptuous figure, and the soul that shone from her eyes. Never before had he felt so utter a sense of powerlessness. Hitherto to desire a thing was with him merely the preliminary to getting ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... home, we may wish to deck a table or a mantel with a few of them. The lives of impressed blossoms can be, much prolonged by exercising a little care. Punch holes in a round of cardboard and put the stalks through these holes before placing the flowers in a vase. This prevents the stalks touching each other, and so ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... little thing strayed in, with her rather rigid attendant behind her, suddenly the laughing ceased and everybody involuntarily drew a half startled breath—everybody but the tall thin man, who quietly turned and set his coffee cup down on the mantel piece behind him. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his fate would, went direct to the private writing-room and opened the door. The lights were not turned on and in the dark he did not see Mason motionless by the mantel- shelf. He went quickly across the room to the writing-table, turned on one of the lights, and, taking the envelope from his pocket, tore it open. Then he bent down by the light to read the contents. As his eyes ran over the paper, his jaw ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... and, when spoken to by Mr. Bale, answered in the fewest possible words, in an even, mechanical voice. It had seemed to Bob that he had been entirely oblivious to his presence; and it did not appear to him now, as he sat with a book before him, waiting for the clock on the mantel to strike five, that existence at Mr. Medlin's promised to be a lively one. Still, as there were boys and girls, it must be more amusing than it would be at his uncle's and, at any rate, the clerk would not ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... of the Hashish Club. Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture, bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, holding the reclining figures of the members of the club; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... much choice, you must buy that which is cheapest; but hardly any one within the sound of my voice is so restricted as that; almost if not quite every one buys something every year for his pleasure, a curtain, a rug, a wall paper, a chair, or a table not certainly needed, a vase, a clock, a, mantel ornament, a piece of jewelry, a portrait, an etching, a picture. Now whenever you make such a purchase, to please your taste, to make your parlor or your chamber more attractive, choose that which shows good handiwork. Such a choice will last. You will not tire of it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... from the mantel, and going to the window tossed it to her cousin Wade Turrentine, who was shaping an axe helve at the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... hard choice hastened his end. Tradition tells that, on his deathbed, his emaciated hand clutched at a letter from Washington himself, but that just at the final moment his eyes turned toward the portrait of the King which still hung above his mantel shelf, and that his lips shaped reverent sentiments as ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... admirer. She swore eternal affection for me, but nothing here below can last forever," he went on, in his old cynical fashion. "I embarrass her manoeuvres, and 'twere well I were away and leave a fair field for my rival." As he spoke, the clock on the mantel chimed the hour ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... was enormous and his black velvet coat was embroidered all over with yellow silk designs, flowers, and patterns. It was like the silly mantel-borders and things that Mrs. Pont, the housekeeper, did in her leisure time. ("Cruel-work" she called it, and the boy ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... a passing glance to reveal to the boy that he was in the presence of no ordinary man. The articles scattered about the room, which apparently were part of his host's traveling outfit, confirmed this. Of three leather cases or trunks in front of the mantel and within Ned's view, one was open. On the extended top of this, still partly covered with the folds of a light Indian blanket, were several flat and dull plates or dishes of Indian design, more or less broken and chipped. From the case came a ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... pitch-pine doors of Gothic design in it; there were inlaid marble mantel-pieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wall-papers, and octagonal, medallioned Wedgwood what-nots, and black-and-gilt Austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that Art had achieved or wealth had bought between 1851 and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... cheerily before them, and the clock on the mantel ticked steadily as the two sat for some time in silence, gazing thoughtfully upon the ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and women sit on benches about a deal table, playing cards. They have a jug between them, from which they drink by turns. On the stump of a mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print of the Mother of God. No one pays any heed to the hand-organ man and his wife as they climb to their attic. There is a colony of them up there—three ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... pushing them inward, upward. And all the while the light is getting more and more golden, shimmery, radiant. Under this light, beneath this golden mantel of color, these creatures appear still more terrible. As they bend over, their faces tirelessly held downward on a level with their hands, they seem but gnomes; surely they are huge, undeveloped embryos of women, with neither head nor ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... not have told why she felt afraid to move, and so sat absolutely still. Her eyes roved from one object to another, first looking at the pictures on the wall, then the ornaments upon the mantel, then the lamp upon the table just ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... evidences to show that Beulah had modified at least her environment. An upright piano and a music-rack were the most conspicuous. Upon the piano was a padded-covered gift copy of "Aurora Leigh." A similar one of "In Memoriam" lay on the mantel next to a photograph of the girl's dead mother framed in small shells. These were mementoes of Beulah's childhood. A good copy of Del Sarto's John the Baptist hanging from the wall and two or three recent novels offered an intimation that she was ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... knew that, did he hand over to him all the money he made, it would be wasted in drink or at cards; consequently, he kept the table furnished as modestly as at first, and regularly placed after dinner on the corner of the mantel a few coins, which his father as regularly ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... this, gentlemen. One afternoon, about three weeks since, I had occasion to go to the library at an unusual hour. Crossing over to the mantel-piece for the purpose of procuring a penknife which I had carelessly left there in the morning, I heard a noise in the adjoining room. Knowing that Mr. Leavenworth was out, and supposing the ladies to be out also, I took the liberty of ascertaining who the intruder was; when what ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... Miss Mink in a tone that she did not recognize as her own, "the matches are in that little bisque figure on the parlor mantel. I'll get you to leave the front door open, if you don't mind. It's ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... the front room because of a gate-legged table that Alicia wanted to say her prayers beside, and because of the particularly fine portrait of a colonial gentleman above the mantel, a very handsome man in claret-colored satin, with a vest of flowered gold brocade, a gold-hilted sword upon which his fine fingers rested, and a pair of silk-stockinged legs of which ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... window, these ascended 90 In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100 Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... to walk up stairs?" said he, and led the way, while the others followed him. Ascending the stairs, they reached a large room at the back of the house, which was furnished in the same stiff and formal way as the hall below. Over the mantel-piece hung an engraving, somewhat faded out, and on the table were a Bible ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... thoroughly swept and dusted; this was given to her, and a morning's work pretty near she found it. Then she had to rub bright all the brass handles of the doors, and the big brass andirons in the parlour, and the brass candlesticks on the parlour mantel- piece. When at last she got through, and came to the fire to warm herself, she found her grandmother lamenting that her snuff-box was empty, and asking her daughter to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... seemed at length fully to satisfy him, for his countenance gradually cleared, and a triumphant smile passed across it. "A lie,—certainly a palpable and gross lie; lie it must and shall be. Never will I accept it as truth. Father" (looking full at the portrait over the mantel-shelf), "Father, fear not—never—never!" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... furniture conveys nothing, but the comfort was there and showed out in the odds and ends of family possessions which were in evidence everywhere—the grandfather's clock, the sewing-machine, the quaint old oil-lamps upon the mantel-board over the place where the fire should have been but was not; the soft hangings and curious old family pictures and discoloured engravings; the perfect femininity of the room. In all respects it was a Canadian farm ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... easy chair in the corner, where I can watch for the entrance. Five minutes by the clock on the mantel, and nothing happens. Ten minutes, and no Vee. Then I hears a smothered snicker off to the left. I'd got my face all set for the cheerful greetin' too, when I discovers two pairs of brown eyes inspectin' me roguish, through the ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my first acquaintance with my friend yonder," and he nodded towards the skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide mantel-shelf. "I had trekked from dawn till eleven o'clock—a long trek—but I wanted to get on, and had turned the oxen out to graze, sending the voorlooper to look after them, my intention being to inspan again about six o'clock, ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... turned away, threw himself on a rickety chair, and sat for some moments with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. "Work—work?" he said at last, looking up, "ah, if I could only begin!" He glanced round the room a moment and his eye encountered on the mantel-shelf the vivid physiognomy of Mr. Barnaby Striker. His smile vanished, and he stared at it with an air of concentrated enmity. "I want to begin," he cried, "and I can't make a better beginning than this! Good-by, Mr. Striker!" ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... curtains had been drawn to shut out the dreary scene, and only the fire-light lit up the room; Nea, sitting in her favorite low chair, with her feet on the white rug, was looking up at Maurice, who stood leaning against the mantel-piece talking ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bed, covered with a cheerful "log cabin" quilt made of scraps of calico of every known hue and pattern; at the white-washed walls adorned with pictures cut from old books and magazines; at the "shelf," as Mammy called the mantel-piece, with its lambrequin of scallopped strips of newspaper, and its china vases filled with hundred-leaf roses and pinks; at the spotless bare floor and homemade split-bottomed chairs; at the small, but bright, windows, with their rows of geraniums and verbenas, brilliantly blooming in boxes, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... position of his feet, which had hitherto rested upon the hearth, to a more comfortable and suggestive one upon the mantel, Hugh tried to find a spot in which he ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... the art-kitchen. Father bought a copper tea-kettle, and the sheet-iron man made the tin boiler. There was a wide, high, open fireplace in the dining-room; we had wondered what we should do with it in the winter. It had a soapstone mantel, with fluted pilasters, and a brown-stone hearth and jambs. Back a little, between these sloping jambs, we had a nice iron fire-board set, with an ornamental collar around the funnel-hole. The stove stood modestly sheltered, as it were, in its new position, its features ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... windows. In the room above he took a little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece. Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the writing-table was decorated with two ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... was small, nearly filled up by a dining table with a red cloth. On the mantel above the empty fireplace were candlesticks with dangling crystals that glittered red and yellow and purple in the lamplight, in front of a cracked mirror that seemed a window into another dingier room. The paper was peeling off the damp walls, giving a mortuary ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Brimberly alternately beat the tempo with a plump white finger and sipped his master's champagne until, having emptied his glass, he turned to the bottle on the table beside him, found that empty also, crossed to the two bottles on the mantel, found them likewise void and had tried the two upon the piano with no better success, when, the song being ended, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were as quiet as the shadowy lady of the Brice house, who would glide softly in at the hour of gloaming and, with her head on her hand, lean against the mantel, look sadly into the faces of the occupants of the room, and vanish without a sound—of course, it is undeniable that Annapolis would have only ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... who met us in the parlor, proved to be a stunning looking woman with brown hair and beautiful dark eyes. As far as we could see the old house plainly showed the change. The furniture and ornaments were of a period long past, but everything was scrupulously neat. Hanging over the old marble mantel was a painting which quite evidently was that of the long since deceased Mrs. Haswell, the mother of Grace. In spite of the hideous style of dress of the period after the war, she had evidently been a very beautiful woman with large masses ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... a corner by the fireless hearth. A sublime symbol met his eyes on the high mantel-shelf above him—a colored plaster cast of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. Bare earth made the flooring of the cottage. It had been beaten level in the first instance, but in course of time it had grown rough and uneven, so that though it was clean, its ruggedness was not unlike ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... carefully stored away in another apartment. Work of all kinds goes on in this large room, including the cookery, which is done in a fire-place on the long side, made by a projection at right angles with the wall, with a mantel-piece on which rests the base of the chimney. Another fire-place in a second room is from six to eight feet in width, and above this is a ledge shaped somewhat like a Chinese awning. A highly-polished slab, fifteen or twenty inches in size, is raised a foot above the hearth. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... wrote to his aunt to send it. She did so, with a request, however, that he was not to bring disturbance into the family by going to see the girl or her relations. Jude, a ridiculously affectionate fellow, promised nothing, put the photograph on the mantel-piece, kissed it—he did not know why—and felt more at home. She seemed to look down and preside over his tea. It was cheering—the one thing uniting him to the emotions of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... The apartment assigned him, the three windows of which opened on the public square and on the Semoy, was the typical tawdry bedroom of the provincial inn with its conventional furnishings: the chairs covered with crimson damask, the mahogany armoire a glace, and on the mantel the imitation bronze clock, flanked by a pair of conch shells and vases of artificial flowers under glass covers. On either side of the door was a little single bed, to one of which the wearied aide-de-camp betook ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... illustrate its style or fashion by drawings, and content ourself with the single remark, that it should, in all cases, be strong, plain, and durable—no sham, nor ostentation about it—and such as is made for use: mere trinkets stuck about the room, on center tables, in corners, or on the mantel-piece, are the foolishest things imaginable. They are costly; they require a world of care, to keep them in condition; and then, with all this care, they are good for nothing, in any sensible use. We have frequently been into a country house, where we anticipated better things, and, on ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... was sometimes entertained at Knebworth by Sir Rowland Lytton, whom she knighted; he was buried in the chancel of the little church in the park (see below) in 1582. The room in which Elizabeth slept on these occasions is still shown as "Queen Elizabeth's Chamber," and contains a finely carved over-mantel (oak) and an oaken bedstead of colossal proportions. Among the distinguished guests so often entertained here by Bulwer Lytton were Dickens, Forster ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a double rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of pedlars, in honour of George Barnwell, the Prodigal Son, the Sailor's Return, and the Death of Nelson, decorate the walls, and an illuminated Christmas carol is pasted over the mantel-piece: which, among other chattels and possessions, conspicuously bears its own burden of Albert and Victoria—two plaster heads, resplendently coloured, highly varnished, looking with arched eye-brows of astonishment on ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... silence, the ticks of the clock on the mantel-piece seemed like a hammer beating on her ears. Dolores thought of the morning's flat denial of all intercourse with Flinders! Then the word give occurred to her as a loophole, and her mind did not embrace all the consequences of the denial, she only saw ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he carefully selected a tie, at the strange request he had received at the telephone. He glanced at the French clock on the mantel. His father, he knew, had been at his desk these ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Its one window is so shaded by a huge willow that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. There are wonderful tidies on the chairs, and gay mats on the floor, and books and cards carefully arranged on a round table, and vases of dried grass on the mantel-piece. Between the vases is a cheerful decoration of preserved coffin plates—five in all, pertaining respectively to Janet's father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne, and a hired man who died here once! If I ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... frame of mind, and walked from room to room praising the excellence of everything, including a little gingerbread mantel in the dining-room, in which the fireplace had been set crooked,—from being done in the dark, perhaps,—the concrete backyard, with its clothesline pole, the decorated ceilings, the precipitous park opposite that was presently to shut off each day at two P.M. ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with a huge and imposing Lebkuchen, reposing in a box with frilled border, ornamented with quaint little red-and-green German figures in sugar, and labeled Nurnberg in stout letters, for it had come all the way from that kuchen-famous city. The Lebkuchen I placed on my mantel shelf as befitted so magnificent a work of art. It was quite too elaborate and imposing to be sent the way of ordinary food, although it had a certain tantalizingly spicy scent that tempted one to break off a corner here ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... removed all the religious images from my ambulance I should receive the necessary food. M. Herisson, the mayor, with some functionary holding an influential post, had been to inspect my ambulance. The important personage had requested me to have the beautiful white Virgins which were on the mantel-pieces and tables taken away, as well as the Divine Crucified—one hanging on the wall of each room in which there were any of the wounded. I refused in a somewhat insolent and very decided way to act in accordance with the wish of my ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... somewhat the appearance of brown silk. Only one such plant have I ever seen grown in Southside, and that, a bright golden brown, and nearly two feet in length, was carefully preserved for show on the parlor-mantel of the planter who ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... impatience at the lack of welcoming face or voice. In God's name, who was there to welcome me? None but my hounds, and the flying squirrel I had caught and tamed. Groping my way to the corner, I took from my store two torches, lit them, and stuck them into the holes pierced in the mantel shelf; then stood beneath the clear flame, and looked with a sudden sick distaste upon the disorder which the light betrayed. The fire was dead, and ashes and embers were scattered upon the hearth; fragments of my last meal littered the table, and upon the unwashed floor lay the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... risen and gone to the fireplace. The mantel came almost on a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it, and Barnet laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder. 'Lucy,' he said, 'better late than never. Will you ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... characteristic notice to guests requiring them to contribute a dollar to the Library Building Fund was later placed on the billiard-room mantel at Stormfield with good results.]—If those burglars that broke into my house recently had done that they would have been happier now, or if they'd have broken into this library they would have read a few books and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... restless eyes fell on an old chromo hanging over the mantel. It represented the death-bed of Washington. The dying figure on the bed recalled that other figure down-stairs. In an instant all the floating forms in his brain assumed one shape ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... entered, the room seemed to draw round and welcome her. It was deeply and happily familiar—that shallow, rounded window from which one could lean and touch the grass outside, that dark, old desk with its leather and brass, that blue bowl on the corner of the mantel-piece, the lazy, yet expectant, chairs; even the beech tree whose light fingers tapped upon the window glass! It was all part of her life, ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... was very clear to both of them on the present occasion that he did not like the presence of Captain De Baron. He looked very gloomy,—almost angry, and after speaking hardly more than a single word to his wife's guest, he stood silent and awkward, leaning against the mantel-piece. "What do you think Captain De Baron tells me?" Mary said, trying, but not very successfully, to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the room," I whispered back, as we went out together. "At least I know the type. Lots of horse-hair belongings. Square piano against the wall. Wax flowers under a glass case on the mantel. Steel engravings of Washington crossing the Delaware. Family album, huge Bible, and 'Famous Women of Two Centuries' on the centre table. Seashells, blue wedgwood and German china things mingled in delightful confusion on the what-not. If not ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... mantel, sick, sick, Thinking of my failure, looking into the abysm, Weak from the noon-day heat. A church bell sounded mournfully far away, I heard the cry of a baby, And the coughing of John Yarnell, Bed-ridden, feverish, feverish, dying, Then the violent voice of my wife: "Watch ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... backward glance, she mounted the path and inserted a key in the door. All was silence and gloom within, but she fumbled her way to a mantel in the small front room and found a box of matches. Lighting them one after the other as they burned out, she made her way from room to room on each of the two floors. They were bare of furniture, but the debris of a hasty exodus was visible everywhere, ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... I looked for "sea-urchin," but none fell in my way. I had often wished to get a good specimen of this curious shell, but without success. Some of them turned up now and then upon the beach near our village, but they were not allowed to lie long. As they made a pretty ornament for the mantel-shelf, and were rare upon our coast, it was natural they should be prized above the common kinds, and such was in reality the case. This reef being remote, and being seldom visited by any of the boatmen, I was in hopes I should find ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... mean?" he asked, rising suddenly from his seat as pale as ashes, and clinging to the mantel-shelf for ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the door against Martha's possible entrance, seriously and respectfully put the precious objects on a plate, to which he gave a place of honour on the mantel shelf, and after removing as far as possible all traces of beet from face and hands in his sacred office lavatory, he took Richard with him into the depths of the great chair and told the happy child his favourite rigmarole, all about the "three gentlemen ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... far." The young man took a turn about the room and came back to the fire. Standing by the mantel he lit another cigarette before going on with ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... tufted plush and imitation-leather chairs, side-tables and corner brackets, a couch and a "lady's desk." Green and red and yellow vases adorned with figures of youthful lovers crammed the top of the piano at the farther end of the room and the polished black-marble mantel of the fireplace. The glaring gas raced the hearth-fire for snap and glare and excitement. The profusion of furniture was like a tumult; the redness and oakness and polishedness of furniture was a dizzying activity; and it was all overwhelmingly ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... fireplace and saw reflected in the mirror over the mantel-piece, a very lovely, but a very white, face. She did not notice the loveliness, but she marked the pallor. ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... mantel of his study hung a portrait of an ancestor garbed in the blue and buff of the army of Independence. Until quite recently this portrait's features had been well-nigh extinguished under the accumulated soot ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... table, bearing a family Bible and a photograph album bound in morocco; on the engraving of the "Burial of Latane" between the long windows at the back of the room; on the cloudy, gilt-framed mirror above the mantel, with the two standing candelabra reflected in its surface—and all these familiar objects appeared to her as vividly as if she had not lived with them from her infancy. A new light had fallen over them, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and see nothing but the spectral shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws aslant the walls; and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the old nurse in the easy-chair, and the ticking of the clock upon the mantel! Then silence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily. But your thought is active. It shapes at your bedside the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up the whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys and weeks of study or of play group ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... instinctive dislike for anything but the best obtainable, he had bought the highest-priced glasses he could find in San Francisco,—and perhaps the smallest. He buckled them back into their case, slapped them into his pocket and closed the trunk lid with a bang. From the mantel in the living room he gleaned a box of cartridges for an extra six-shooter, which he cleaned and loaded carefully and tucked inside the waistband of his trousers, on the left side, following an instinct that brought him close to his grandfather, that ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... with bundles, and the mantel-piece adorned with letters, directed to Springfield, Hartford, New ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sound" floated through the room. It was the clock upon the mantel sending out tones of time-hours. I looked up. It was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over there when I seated myself in this chair. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... when the sharp, frosty air made the blood brisk and lively in the veins, little George, who was then about six years old, hung up his stocking on the mantel of the huge chimney, saying to himself as he did so, "Good Santa Claus, be kind to me while I am sleeping peacefully." Next morning, bright and early, just as a great Christmas log had begun to blaze and crackle on the hearth, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Katy had been there before her. The room had been freshly swept and dusted, the rugs had been relaid, the furniture rearranged skilfully, and the table stood at the best angle to be lighted either by day or night. On the table and the mantel stood big bowls of lovely fresh flowers. Linda was quite certain that anyone entering the room for the first time would have felt it completely furnished, and she doubted if even Marian would notice the missing pieces. Cheered in her heart, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to my room and sat down with my back against the door and my feet on the window-ledge, and I rested one elbow in the washpitcher and put one knee on the mantel and tried to read the newspapers. The first thing I struck was a Christmas poem, a sentimental Christmas poem, full of allusions to the family circle, and the old homestead, and the stockings hanging by the fireplace, and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the Cottage in a state of hurry and excitement; but the empty kitchen seemed to act on it like a sort of emotional cold douche. The varnished walls, the neatly set chairs, the clock ticking so loudly above the mantel-shelf, all seemed somehow unnatural, with the unnaturalness of empty houses where steps go echoing—echoing—though ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story—and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum puddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and handing over penny whistles to lame newsboys if ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry |
