"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... among the Turks is simply an extract of the same plant, and that, like opium, produces different effects on different individuals. Some view every thing as if looking in through the wide end of a telescope, and others, in passing over a straw, lift up their feet as if about to cross the trunk of a tree. The Portuguese in Angola have such a belief in its deleterious effects that the use of it by a slave is ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... blue with white handkerchiefs round their necks went about patting the horses, or pricking their nostrils with a straw to make them rear. When the farmers woke up and scolded, they laughed with delight, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in front of them, and a little to the left the various, coloured roofs of the farm buildings, some tiled with weather-beaten bricks, some thatched, some tarred, and the bright yellow straw ricks standing here and there. Between these buildings and the house was a narrow lane, generally ankle-deep in mud, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... rock, was all filled up with the large earthen pots, of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores of provision, especially my corn, some in the ear, cut off short from the straw, and the other rubbed out ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the food must be put only into such substances as would maintain its heat, not into such as might possibly increase it. 'Food to be kept warm for the Sabbath must not be put into oil-dregs, manure, salt, chalk, or sand, whether moist or dry, nor into straw, grape-skins, flock, or vegetables, if these are damp, though it may if they are dry. It may, however, be put into clothes, amidst fruits, pigeons' feathers, and flax tow. R. Jehudah declares flax tow unallowable and permits ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... which Sir George associated with the historic harvest, and with Ridley, an early Australian colonist, was hardly of the Scriptural pattern. It was a subtle machine, invented for a harvest where the wheat-ears were needed, not the straw. The former were chopped off, collected in a sort of trough; and the straw was burned for manure. Here was waste, only there was no avoiding it, and, moreover, the meaning of 'waste' is defined by circumstances. The South Australian soil ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... downstairs and found, in the middle of one of the dark landings, looking as though she had been left there by some one and completely forgotten, a little wisp of a woman with bright yellow hair and a straw coloured dress, and this was the Signora. This lady shook hands with him in a frightened tearful way and made choking noises all the way downstairs, and this distressed Peter very much until he discovered that she had a passion for cough drops, which she kept in her ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Thales of Miletus and Pliny who was killed while trying to study the eruption of Vesuvius of the year 79 when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried beneath the ashes) had noticed the strange antics of bits of straw and of feather which were held near a piece of amber which was being rubbed with a bit of wool. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages had not been interested in this mysterious "electric" power. But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the private physician of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... scene. The sun threw into relief the hard and hollow features of those faces; it burned the bare feet dusty with the soil; children were present with no clothing but a torn blouse, their blond hair tangled with straw and chips; some women brought their babes just able to walk, and left ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and caring for nothing. He told Walter with bitter exaggeration "that he must indeed thank him for giving up the scholarship, as he supposed that it had saved him from starvation. His guardian, who had a family of his own, didn't seem to care a straw for him; and he had no ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... his shoulders and a high collar concealing his closely cropped hair, his wife's skirt on, and a heavy veil covering a straw hat, he stepped boldly into a small vehicle standing waiting before his gate and drove through the streets of Pretoria. For the time at least he too belonged to the "Petticoat Commando." Mrs. Malan was in the cart, and had been sent by Mrs. Joubert to escort ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... it. But, on the other hand, the sun was hot and downright and freckling; Priscilla's tip-tilted little nose was already liberally besprinkled. If Laura hadn't such a wonderful skin, she would have been a sight long ago, despite the wide brim of her big straw hat. A mere farm hat, and Laura looked like a mere husky farm girl, as she guided her horses skilfully around the field. How strong her arms must be! But how could a girl with Laura's intelligence and high spirit and charm enjoy putting all this time into haying? With Priscilla, of course, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... mighty condemnation, "Ye have made my Father's house a den of thieves!" And the thong writhed and hissed and struck and stung and the coin-laden tables were overturned with the ease and fury of an enraged man brushing straw aside. Seeing the uproar about his table, Zador Ben Amon pushed his way through the confusion just in time to see two well filled money bags kicked open by a fellow money-changer trying to escape ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... They have taken a straw vote to find out how the sentiment stood, not with the hope of arriving at a decision but by way of trying out the matter. The result stands nine for the plaintiff and three for the defendant. They light their cigars, for they came well prepared for the tedious ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... to look at—a religious book, a book about the Duke of Wellington, a book about sporting, and a book about nothing in particular, beautifully illustrated with pictures. Down came papa with his nice white hair, and mamma with her nice lace cap; down came young mister with the pink face and straw-colored whiskers, and young miss with the plump cheeks and the large petticoats. Don't suppose there was the least unfriendliness on my side; I always began with them in the same way—I insisted on shaking ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... an exquisitely expressive economy of outlay. The plainest straw bonnet procurable, trimmed sparingly with the cheapest white ribbon, was on her head. Modest and tasteful poverty expressed itself in the speckless cleanliness and the modestly proportioned skirts of her light "print" ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... past a bit of open triangle which in the neighborhood was dignified by the name of park, a dreary place now, dirty straw stacked about the fountain, dry leaves and papers cluttering the brown earth and whipping against the iron palings of the fence. Dale, still whistling, turned its corner and ran, full-tilt, upon a bit of humanity clinging, like the paper and leaves, ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... to make things out of straw and toothpicks—kind of a play place to keep them off ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... aloud, stretching himself with a long, hypocritical yawn, "it is ridiculous for two fellows like you and me to wear masks in each other's presence. We don't care a straw for the whole Sieges business, do we, Fritz, except for the dollars and cents of it? I am deucedly sleepy, and I am ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... as the Duchess sat on deck, a great straw hat tied under her chin with pale-blue ribbons, like a child of twelve, she was startled by seeing the figure of a farmer-looking person with a shock of grey-red hair, a red face, and with great blue eyes, appear before her in the charge ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... campaign of education which was carried straight into the kitchen. Food demonstrators whose work ranged from showing the economy of cooking potatoes in their skins to making fire-less cookers out of a soap box and a bundle of straw, went up and down the Kingdom holding classes. In town halls, schools, village centres and drawing-rooms, mistress and maid sat side by side. "Waste ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... a close search, was found lurking in a corner, coiled up among some rotten straw, and brought to ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... settlement was a fortified town, known as the "Fort," to distinguish it from the dwellings scattered along the river-banks. The Fort stood on the western bank of the river and contained about a hundred small wood houses with bark or thatch-straw roofs. These primitive dwellings were packed closely together and surrounded and protected by a palisade about twenty-five feet high; at each corner was a wooden bastion, and a block-house was erected over each gateway. The only public buildings in the enclosure were a council-house, the barracks, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... enough. It was a little hut, of the length of perhaps the height of four men, and the breadth of the height of three—a man and a half high from floor to roof-beam. It was unoccupied, but there was straw at one end—dry straw, on which doubtless guards had slept. I left the men standing there and went and told ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... about, watched all the while by the somber, half-shut eyes. She moved the furniture, she dusted the bureau, she arranged the little row of photographs; and then she essayed to smooth Mrs. Maitland's hair—it was the last straw. The big, gray head began to lift slowly; a trembling finger pointed at the girl; there ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... raged to hear him. "He said that Dr. Ken hath read prayers over him, and told him that he need make no confession unless he willed; and that he willed not, and did not; but that Dr. Ken read an absolution over him which he values not at a straw." ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... fortnight ago, soon after your wedding. They quarrelled—she got through a window, and ran away home to her father. It seems she had never cared a straw for her husband, but had married him out of spite, liking some one else better all the time. His own ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... stage, which is the study, is a clutter of old books and pamphlets; in the corner is the usual straw mat, a cushion, and a sort of stool on which are ink and paper. This he clears, places the cushion upon it, and offers to Mrs. Gotfry; he himself sits down on the mat; and we are invited to arrange for ourselves some books. Indeed, the Sheikh is right; most of these tomes are ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... their town and state, are preserved with an exact care, and run backwards 1,760 years. From these it appears that their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now their houses are three stories high: the fronts of them are faced either with stone, plastering, or brick; and between the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat, and on them they lay a sort of plaster, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... just in time. As the cab turned and rolled off, a slim young man in a straw hat separated himself from a little group of men and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the body, not the most slim, when Nature has done her part. This Dutch prejudice often leads them to toil under the weight of some ten or a dozen petticoats, which, with an enormous basket, literally speaking, as a bonnet, or a straw hat of dimensions equally gigantic, almost completely conceal the human form as well as face divine, often worth showing; still they looked clean, and tripped along, as it were, before the wind, with a weight of tackle that I could scarcely have lifted. Many of ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... back along the Avenue to her aunt she became aware of a light-footed pursuer running. Teddy overtook her, a little out of breath, his innocent face flushed, his straw-colored hair disordered. He was out of breath, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Jew accompanied my father from the synagogue. Yakub the choreman partook of the festival with us. He slept on a bunk built over the entrance door, and reached by means of a rude flight of steps. There he liked to roll on his straw and rags, whenever he was not busy, or felt especially lazy. On Friday evenings he climbed to his roost very early, before the family assembled for supper, and waited for his cue, which was the breaking-out of table talk after the blessing of the bread. Then Yakub began to clear his throat ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... that if she were left to herself she'd eliminate the very things that make him the engaging animal he is, and remind her that a straw will show the way the wind's blowing, she asks me, "Did any big wind ever blow a straw ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... afther her, miss!" said Patsey, bending very low and whispering at close and tobacco-scented range. "He came last night to buy her; a jock he was, from the Curragh, and he said for me to be in the ring this morning. He's not come yet. He had a straw hat on him." ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... normal walnut-sized nest becomes a ball as large as a man's two fists. I have gathered on a pine-tree a nest of the Mason-bee of the Shrubs that weighed a kilogram (2.205 pounds avoirdupois.—Translator's Note.) and was the size of a child's head. A twig hardly thicker than a straw served as its support. The casual sight of that lump swinging over the spot on which I had sat down made me think of the mishap that befell Garo. (The hero of La Fontaine's fable, "Le Gland et la Citrouille," who wondered why ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... killed them all. Their comrades within sprang up in dismay. Three rushed out, and were shot: the others stood on their defence, fired from windows and loopholes, and killed six or seven of the French, who presently succeeded in setting fire to the house, which was thatched with straw. Young Francois de Bienville, one of the sons of Charles Le Moyne, rushed up to a window, shouted his name like an Indian warrior, fired on the savages within, and was instantly shot dead. The flames rose till surrounding objects were bright as day. The Iroquois, driven ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... doesn't care a straw about bricks, and hopes you won't spend much time talking about them. She's bound to have a stone house, whether or no, and wants you to give us your notions about inside fixings, especially the kitchen. (Between you and me, she wouldn't have said a word about the kitchen, if I ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... bread in his haversack before starting, and this was divided between us, and I made my supper on this and some wild plums I found growing there. Later the men went out to forage and found a farmhouse, where they got straw and milk, with a little sheep's-milk cheese. The proprietress, aroused by the invasion, came down on us in a veritable visitation, furious at our burning her wood. She abused the Prince and all the company in the most insulting terms, and was finally placated only by a ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... He gazed a while in silence, but at length he uttered a grunt of satisfaction as the figure of a woman rose gradually into sight. She came slowly towards him in a stooping posture, dragging behind her a great load of straw, which completely hid the little sledge on which it rested, and which was attached to her waist by a rope of ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... not all be explained without a great variety of examples; but, for present purposes, the following will serve. If you should make a little man of straw, for the same reason that Sister Helen made a little man of wax,—and nail it, with nails not less than five inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox (2),—and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw man, should die thereafter ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... rousing himself, they lighted some huge torches, and also set fire to some bundles of straw, and three or four rolls of brimstone, which they had placed in different parts of the cavern. The peddler rubbed his eyes, and seeing and smelling all these evidences of pandemonium, concluded he had died, and was now partaking of his final doom. But ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... thump, and started me off by myself. I wasn't the least bit afraid, I know that. It was a new sensation, and delightful; round and round the field we went, I shaking my reins with one hand, and holding on a great flapping straw hat with the other; the pony grunting and squeaking, with his mane and tail floating on the breeze, and papa standing in the middle, waving his hat and applauding with all his might. After that I was qualified to ride anything; and by ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... wherein a quantity of straw was placed, was appropriated for the comfort of the dogs, Ringwood and Jowler, which had been presented to Glenn by his obliging friend, after they had exhibited their ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... wardrobe. On the large plantations negro women produced much of the cloth for both slaves and family. Except on special occasions, a very large proportion of the clothing worn by the average Southern community was of household or local manufacture. Hats were made of fur, wool, or plaited straw. Hides were tanned on the plantations or more commonly at a local tannery and were made into shoes by local ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... and that all the villagers should return in that provided by the farmer. Trenholme put in the child, who was now sleeping, and helped in the women, one by one. Their white skirts were wet and soiled; he felt this as he aided them to dispose them on the straw which had been put in for warmth. The farmer, an Englishman, made some wise, and not uncivil, observations upon the expediency of remaining at home at dead of night as compared with ascending hills in white frocks. He was a kind man, but his words made Winifred's tears flow afresh. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... which, however, had no particular attractions. With the exception of the canals, and the manners and customs of the people, there is little to see in Rotterdam. On the way they met a funeral, the carriages of which were peculiar; and the driver of the hearse wore a black straw hat, with a brim more than a foot wide, and with great ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... the prick-eared leverets stare At strangers come to spy the land—small sirs, We bring less danger than the very breeze Who in great zig-zag blows the bee, and whirs In bluebell shadow down the bright green leas; From whom in frolic fit the chopt straw darts and flees. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... no meeting for them here below, in the other world the Saviour would lead them to each other the more surely, the more obediently they strove to fulfil His divine command. As Heinz desired to take up the cross in imitation of Christ she, too, would bear it. It was to be found beside the straw pallets of the wounded criminals. The fulfilment of every hard duty which she voluntarily performed seemed like a step that brought her nearer to the Saviour, and at the same time to the union with her lover, even though in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was most pardonably proud, and by that indescribable lissomeness and lazy grace which Irishwomen inherit, perhaps, with their tinge of southern blood; and when, in half an hour, she reappeared, with broad straw-hat, and gown tucked up a la bergere over the striped Welsh petticoat, perhaps to show off the ankles, which only looked the finer for a pair of heavy laced boots, Elsley honestly felt it a pleasure ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... himself and the audience! What an effort he has to recover himself, and struggle through this exposure of the naked truth! It has been considered as one of the triumphs of Garrick's tragic power, that once, when he was playing Lear, his crown of straw came off, and nobody laughed or took the least notice, so much had he identified himself with the character. Was he, after this, to pay so little respect to the feelings he had inspired, as to tear off his tattered ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... off. "Of course, if I were driven to it, Emily would be fifty times more suitable for me than that calm blond spinster. Liberty is sweet, however, and I will not do it if I can help it. The worst of it is, that Emily, of all the women of my acquaintance, is the only one who does not care one straw about me. There's no hurry—I fancy myself making her an offer, and getting laughed at for my pains." Then John Mortimer amused himself with recollections of poor Fred Walker's wooing, how ridiculous he had made himself, and how she had laughed at him, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... House of Representatives or Congress combined can do, ought to be done to save the country. I have very little faith or hope, and I would express the reason why. But as little as there is, I will cling to the last remaining straw, and sink with it grasped fast in my hands, if I have no other resource. This country is of too much importance to me, to my family, to my friends, to my State, to my associates everywhere, to give up without a struggle. That struggle may prove to be fruitless; it may prove ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the purpose of strengthening Mother Spurlock's powers of patient argument. She is the only person in the world to whom I speak from the depths, and the relief of her sweetened and seasoned wisdom is the straw at which I often clutch to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the interstices of the walls of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... with dark blue, for I actually did sport a coach—I, poor newspaper writer holding no Government stock—for five or six years. And my ponies were none the less fat and in good condition though they were fed on literature, had substantives for oats, adjectives for hay, and adverbs for straw. But alas! there came, no one knows very well why, the Revolution in February; a great many paving-stones were picked up for patriotic purposes, and Paris became rather unfit for carriage travel. I could of course have escaladed the barricades with my agile ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... not a word. He knew the value of effect, and could bide his time. The three passed into a lighted apartment. De Sylva placed himself under a chandelier, and took off a frayed straw hat which he had borrowed from someone on board the Unser Fritz. The colonel, a grotesque figure in his present ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... where we observed a hedge of dry branches, and, parallel to it, and probably to the leeward, was a row of fire places. It seemed that the natives sat and lay between the fires and the row of branches. There were, besides, three huts of the form of a bee-hive, closely thatched with straw and tea-tree bark. Their only opening was so small, that a man could scarcely creep through it; they were four or five feet high, and from eight to ten feet in diameter. [A hut of this description, but of smaller dimensions, is described by Capt. King, at ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... jealously-guarded secret drops out; or, again, a Boer's wife or daughter, flinging a taunt at a cursed "Rooinek," allows her temper to run away with her discretion. There are a hundred ways in which such things get about; only straws, perhaps, but a straw can point the way windward. A talkative Kaffir who has been reared on a Dutch farm will at times give things away that would cost him his life if the length of his tongue was known to his master; especially will the nigger talk if his mouth be judiciously ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... many cocks and hens, my dear (sans arriere pensee), with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, and tolerable snug roosting in the barn: yonder on the terrace, in the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice and flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail. Don't let us be too angry, my ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... round in his chair. This was the last straw! If he had told Mrs. Ball once that he was never to be disturbed in the morning on any pretext whatsoever, he had told her twenty times. It was simply too infernal to be endured if his work time was ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the skill in forming it which is so highly estimated. Every thing that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shews man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. The first man who balanced a straw upon his nose[653]; Johnson, who rode upon three horses at a time[654]; in short, all such men deserved the applause of mankind, not on account of the use of what they did, but of the dexterity which they exhibited.' BOSWELL. 'Yet a misapplication of time and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... The crystals were more beautiful than diamond stars. They put it in a solid square of ice, which was packed in charcoal and straw, and then cased in cocoa matting. To this I attached cords, and slung it about my neck. The veil, in a satin case half an inch ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... reading newspapers. Went to the Cercle des Patineurs, where fences were being put up on the lawns to enclose sheep and oxen to provision Paris. In the tennis court we saw about two hundred Kabyles from Algeria, who had been found astray in Paris. They sleep on straw beds in the tennis court and are provided with rations. They are all men, and will be drafted into the ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... fidelity with which all his friend's scientific instruments are drawn attest Holbein. He never adds a detail for merely pictorial purposes; and never shuffles one that concerns the personality of a sitter. No biographer with his pen sets every straw to show the winds of character and circumstance more deliberately than does this historian with his brush. Something of Kratzer's shrewd wit,—for he was a "character"—can still be read in his half-destroyed picture. Years later we shall see the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... on a straight-brimmed straw hat which in the various shifts of the long water route and many camps had suffered disaster, so that a part of the brim drooped forlornly over his left ear. This headgear had preserved upon his brow the pallid fairness of his skin. From the eyebrows down his ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a wealth of devices for entertaining children by means of paper building-cards, wooden berry-baskets, straw and ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... autumn and winter months in any open-air place where they may be convenient for feeding purposes. In parts of California where there is hard ground freezing, protection must be given by covering with boards or straw or any other material available. We have no need for root cellars or cold storage, for our winter temperatures are neither high nor ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... the size of its kernel. In the lowlands grows the stolid mesquite tree, more underground than above, whose roots furnish excellent firewood,—albeit they must be broken up with a sledge hammer, for no axe will stand the impact. Near it may be seen huge bunches of grass (or perhaps straw would describe it better), which the white man gathers for hay with a huge hoe. Then there is the ever-present, friendly sage-brush, miniature oak trees, with branch and trunk, so beautiful. It grows, as a rule, about two feet high, but I have seen it higher than my head; that is, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... in suspense yesterday morning, till at 8.30—just about the latest time for completing a morning movement—two huge barges appeared with orders to embark on them at 10! Not only that, but although there are scores of straw-roofed barges about, these two were as open as row boats, and in fact exactly like giant row boats. To complete the first situation, the S. and S. had not been apprised of the postponement, and so there was no food for the men on board. Consequently they had to load kits, ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... irresponsibles there are in the ordinary and even in the better walks of life. To the wilful type of irresponsible person the transmission of a syphilitic infection is nothing, and cannot weigh a straw against the gratification of his desire or the pursuit of his own interest. The disease cannot teach such people anything, and if it cannot, how can the physician? Such people pursue their personal and sexual pleasure, marry, spread disaster around ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... only edifice of stone; the materials had been transported from Pannonia; and since the adjacent country was destitute even of large timber, it may be presumed, that the meaner habitations of the royal village consisted of straw, or mud, or of canvass. The wooden houses of the more illustrious Huns were built and adorned with rude magnificence, according to the rank, the fortune, or the taste of the proprietors. They seem to have been distributed with some degree of order and symmetry; and each spot ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... hopeless idiot, and so lived for years and years; clanking the chain, and moaning under the lash, and howling through long nights when the moon peered through the bars of his solitary cell, and he buried his face in the straw. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... large, much depressed, hemispheric or lenticular, the base umbilicate, stipitate; the wall a firm, dark colored membrane, variegated with large and small irregular shining scales, greenish-yellow or straw color, rupturing irregularly. Stipe stout, thick, erect, rugulose, ochraceous or ferruginous, variable in length, expanding at the base into a thin hypothallus; the columella brown, convex or hemispheric. Capillitium of slender, dark colored threads, simple or sparingly ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... on her side of the lawn was shaking with laughter, and this sight was the last straw to ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... in the sitting-room of her own particular suite, one of three small and rather stuffy rooms, on the second floor. These rooms consisted of an anteroom, covered with a cretonne paper of blue and brown, a carpetless floor, a table, and some common, straw chairs placed against the wall. From the anteroom two doors led into two bedrooms, one on either side. Another door, opposite the ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... ready for the evening. Later there had been the stroll down to the field in the shade of the waning afternoon, to find out what time the men would be in for supper; and the sheer delight of breathing in the pungent smell of the straw as it came flying from the funnel, looking, with the sinking sun shining through it, like a million bees swarming from a hive, while the red-brown grain gushed, a lush stream, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... moderate, rounded above; outer edge straight, emarginate opposite base of tragus, terminating in a small lobe; tragus lunate; tail long; last vertebra free. The face is more clad with fur than in other species of this genus; fur of the body pale, straw brown above, pale buff beneath. For a fuller description and illustration, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... "A little straw makes a great reek," said Bruce, laughing, "and when a mon gives out before his pipe, he is like to be burnet," and he pointed to a long black and brown singe on the worsted comforter of the traveller, by which ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... understand having duties put on me which are too much for me. I don't understand, I dislike, having a will of my own, when I have not the means to use it justly. In such a case, to tell me to act of myself, is like Pharaoh setting the Israelites to make bricks without straw. Setting me to inquire, to judge, to decide, forsooth! it's ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... workshop; he furnished none that did not bear the initials of his name on the iron. But he could not explain by what means this axle had been substituted for the other. Secondly, the breakage of the suspicious axle was caused by a hollow space having been blown in it and a straw very cleverly inserted. ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... to her chauffer, who was in the courtyard. Just then Blanche came out. She had changed her gown for one of plain white serge, and she wore a hat of tuscan straw ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she murmured to herself, and she beheld as it were a balance, and on one of the scales lay the homage which in her vain fancy she had so coveted. It was of no more weight than chaff, and its whole mass was like a heap of straw, which flew up as soon as Polykarp laid his love—a hundredweight of pure gold, in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... perquisition about them, and the thaif of a porter said that he shouldn't wonder if I had them, saying that he had once seen me reading; and then the rector came with others to my cell, and took my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me how I came by them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again till the blood ran down my back; and making some perquisition, they at last accused the cook of having carried ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... she cried, snatching at a straw. "Maybe this isn't the one, after all. And if it isn't, oh, won't you let me buy it back for father? Because I'm not going to New ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... sat down again. Then he began at once speaking with loud, nervous haste, gesticulating, and in a positive frenzy. He was unmistakably a man driven into a corner, on the brink of ruin, catching at the last straw, ready to sink if he failed. Old Samsonov probably grasped all this in an instant, though his face remained cold and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... explained how the men had got away. His account proved to be quite correct, for it will be remembered that they were caught, hiding under some straw in a barn, within two miles of the spot. How did they get away from the edge of ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... more than two thousand wives, and was taller by a joint of a bamboo than Bandeliah—whose stature was at least six feet four—yet nothing would be of any use to him, unless he could come to an agreement with Mabonga, the queen of the Houlas, to split a durra straw with him. But Mabonga was coy, and understanding men, as well as jumping over them, would grant them no other favour than the acceptance of their presents. However, the other great king was determined to have her for his wife, if he abolished all the rest, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... we have been travelling ever since I can remember; we have been far, and seen a great many strange sights, and some such queer people!—There! that is our shepherd in Australia; isn't he funny? his name was Dirk. I tied that blue ribbon round his straw hat, that seems big enough for an umbrella. He looks as if he were laughing, doesn't he? That's because I was there when my father sketched him; and he made such droll faces, with his brown skin and his great grizzly moustaches, when father told him he must make up a pleasant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... within six months' time. How could that be arranged? Could Lilian Rosenberg be bribed or persuaded into it? for of course Miss Templeton being a woman—albeit an old maid—had at once divined that Lilian Rosenberg was in love with Shiel—that she did not care a straw for Kelson, and that to marry the latter she would need some very strong inducement. And the only inducement she could think of was Lilian's genuine love ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... eventful afternoon when the Seniors took the straw ride into the country and built a bonfire upon which to burn the books they hated most. Blue Bonnet had helped Annabel select a much thumbed Cicero (there had been some difficulty in choosing), longing with all her heart for the day when ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Mitford, now forgive this ingratitude which is gratitude all the time. I love you and thank you; but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and let me love and thank you still more. When you see my new edition you will see that everything worth a straw I ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in conjuration I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on the stubble that remains—if anything does remain, indeed. Now, more than enough of this. For the rest, I am delighted. I am even ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... is gone. The d—d Jew, who wanted to advance the money at twenty-five per cent., declares he will have nothing more to do with me. Well, let him do the other thing. I don't care a straw for him. And at Michaelmas we may really go a-begging, for this time nothing remains to us but what we stand up in. But this I tell you: this time I shall not survive the blow. An honorable man must set some value on himself, and if one fine morning ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... smooth-faced scribe with his comely pelisse, and his silver ink-box stuck in like a dagger at his girdle. And mingled with these were the camels, some standing, some kneeling and being unladen, some twisting round their long necks, and gently stealing the straw from out of their ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... went ploughing with his father, who gave him a whip made of a barley straw, to drive the oxen with; but an eagle, flying by, caught him up in his beak, and carried him to the top of a great giant's castle, and dropped him on the leads. The giant was walking on the battlements and thought at first that it was a foreign bird ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... "I saw the poor baby last night; hadn't anything on but dirty cotton rags. It was lying asleep in a cold cellar on a little heap of straw. The woman had given it something, I guess, by the way it slept. The petticoat had gone, most likely, to Sam McFaddon's. She spends everything she can lay her hands on in ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... do, then, but I dared not go dusty, dishevelled, travel-stained as I was. So I got off my horse, and washed myself in a streamlet that trickled beside the road. Then I picked up a wisp of straw and rubbed down the mare. It was but little I could do for her, but I wiped the foam from her, and made her look less conspicuous than she had been before. This done, I mounted again and ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... and quickly. He was so calm, so jaunty, so defiant of life, and yet so courteous to it. These lawyers, this jury, this straw-and-water judge, these machinations of fate, did not basically disturb or humble or weaken him. He saw through the mental equipment of the jury at once. He wanted to assist his counsel in disturbing and confusing Shannon, but his reason told him that only an indestructible fabric ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... said Argile, sadly, "and yet, do you know, Iain, you did me a bad turn yonder. You made mention of my family's safety, and it was the last straw that broke the back of my resolution. One word of honest duty from you at that time had kept me in Inner-aora though Abijah's array and Jeroboam's horse and foot were ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... his neck. Instead, she stood still. Some way, in spite of the long letters which had passed between them during these years, Kitty had fully expected to see a stout, tanned boy, in a strong, coarse suit of grey, with thick boots and a new straw hat. Of, at least,—why, of course, she knew he must have changed some; hadn't she? But then she did not think he would be so tall, and have a face and hands without tan or freckle, or that his clothes would be so very black and fine, and fit as though they had grown on ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... and this, in its interest, has eclipsed even V.C.s for the moment. De Robeck reminded me that Lord K.'s cable (begging me to help him to combat any idea of withdrawal) must have been written that very day. A significant straw disclosing the veering of the winds of high politics! Evidently K. felt ill at ease; evidently he must now be sitting at a round table surrounded by masked figures. Have just finished writing him to sympathize; to say he is ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... crustily. "I mean, hang the boy or his father, and that's what some of 'em'll come to," he cried grimly, "if they don't mind. They're a bad lot down that court. Lor' a mussy me! I'd sooner live in one of our sheds on some straw, with a sack for a pillow, than be shut up along o' these ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... But only disappointment met him on every side. The beautiful, sleek, Aberdeen-Angus herd, which was his joy and pride, had vanished. They had gone, he knew. They had gone the same way that, during the last five years, hundreds of head of his stock had gone. It was the last straw. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... on the shovel, bending her back and drawing up her knees. No sooner was she seated than the boy, seizing hold of the handle, pushed her into the oven and slammed the door to. Then he took the woman's fur cloak, stuffed it out with straw, and laid it on the bed. Seizing the giant's bunch of keys, he opened the twelve locks, snatched up the golden harp, and ran down to his boat, which he had hidden among the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... his personal appearance at this time as follows: "He wore a mixed jean coat, claw-hammer style, short in the sleeves and bob-tailed; in fact, it was so short in the tail that he could not sit on it; flax and tow linen pantaloons and a straw hat. I think he wore a vest, but do not remember how it ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... and some had their face blackened as if to heighten their attractions. The outer petticoat, worn on gala days such as this, differs from the common sort in being much finer in texture and workmanship, besides being dyed red and green, with intermediate bands of straw colour and broad white stripes of palm-leaf. It is made of long bunches of very light and soft shreds, like fine twisted grass, apparently the prepared leaf of a calamus or rattan. None of the women that I saw possessed even a moderate share of beauty ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... our passions and our pains. You seem to be downcast, or at any rate, you carry the symbolical flower of sorrow in your hand, like the rueful god Hymen. Come! all your troubles will vanish away with the smoke," and again the ecclesiastic held out his little straw case; there was something fascinating in his manner, and kindliness towards Lucien lighted up ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Highness," but she knew also, the wise child!—that since the Guelphs came over to rule the English, Royal Highnesses had been more plentiful than popular; she knew that she was obliged to wear, most of the time, very plain cotton gowns and straw hats, and to learn a lot of tiresome things, and that she was kept on short allowance of ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... but in the internal vision, in which adultery was the principal agent, and occupied every point of thought, he was not rational; wherefore the external vision was closed, and the internal opened; and when the latter was opened, he said, "What do I see now? is it not straw and dry wood? and what do I smell now? is it not a stench? What is become of those paradisiacal objects?" The angel said, "They are near at hand and are present; but they do not appear before your internal sight, which is adulterous, for it turns celestial ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... high, and Viner, pondering many matters, went downstairs to entertain his visitors, the unlucky Hyde's sisters, with stories of the morning's proceedings and hopes of their brother's speedy acquittal. The poor ladies were of that temperament which makes its possessors clutch eagerly at any straw of hope floating on the sea of trouble, and they listened eagerly to all ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... were lilac; white straw was her bonnet; Her dress was light grey, with dark braiding upon it; Her jacket was black; and her boots of stout leather Were fitted for walking in all sorts ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... much more about them is reported by the people of Delos than by any others. For these say that sacred offerings bound up in wheat straw are carried from the land of the Hyperboreans and come to the Scythians, and then from the Scythians the neighbouring nations in succession receive them and convey them Westwards, finally as far as the Adriatic: thence they are sent forward towards the South, and the people of Dodona receive ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... Fryar-Gannett had then become the blazing regnant antisocial star; a distresser of domesticity, the magnetic attraction in the spirituous flames of that wild snapdragon bowl, called the Upper class; and she was angelically blonde, a straw-coloured Beauty. 'A lovely wheat sheaf, if the head were ripe,' Diana said ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cushion.—Ver. 34. This was probably the mattress or covering of the couch on which the ancients reclined during meals. It was frequently stuffed with wool; but among the poorer classes, with straw ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... rumors; scarcely any two alike. But I took no heed of them. My duty was to catch him; and it mattered not a straw to me who or what he was. But now I must really beg to know all about him, and what makes you think such things of him. Why should that excellent old couple hang upon him? and what can make him worth such a quantity of money? Honestly, of course, I mean; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to the common superstition there are two ways of fighting with the Devil. You may cut him in half with a straw, or he will vanish if you spit over his horns with a fasting spittle. Note by S. T. C. in M. P. According to the superstition of the West-Countries, if you meet the Devil, you may either cut him in half with a straw, or force ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... That proposed by the Attorney-General is the requiring security to the amount of 500L. from two sureties that the editor shall pay fines on account of libels. This is reasonable, and would to some extent prevent the putting up, as is now done, men or women of straw as editors, who have no means of paying fines. The other proposal of the Attorney- General, that the types should be seizable to whomever they may belong, is objectionable and would hardly be carried. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... Cherry had changed the wedding satin for the cream-coloured rajah silk then, and wore the extravagant hat. It would be many years before she would spend twenty-five dollars for a hat again, and never again would she see bronzed cocks feathers against bronzed straw without remembering the clean little wood-smelling bedroom and the hour in which she had pinned her wedding hat over her fair hair, and had gone, demure and radiant and confident, to meet her husband ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... specimens should be so packed, that the surfaces may be defended from exposure to air, moisture, and friction: for which purpose, if strong paper cannot be obtained, dry moss, or straw, or leaves, may be used with advantage. Where paper is used for wrapping the specimens, they are best secured by fastening ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... I have here understand the great peril in which we are placed, excepting you and myself. We are few in number, and these savage Indians are many, and of fickle and irritable natures. On the least provocation they may throw firebrands from the shore, and consume us in our straw-thatched cabins. The arrangement which you have made with them for provisions, and which at present they fulfill so cheerfully, to-morrow they may break in their caprice, and may refuse to bring us any thing; nor have we the means to compel them by force, but ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... is one of the world's major suppliers of licit opiate products; government maintains strict controls over areas of opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate; major consumer of cocaine ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... like a red fringe along the riverside under the water. Near Oxford, and up the Cherwell, Windrush, and other streams they were, before the pestilence, so numerous that making crayfish pots was as much a local industry as making eel-pots, the smaller withes, not much larger than a thick straw, being used for this purpose. Most cottages near the river had one or two of these pots, which were baited on summer nights and laid in the bottom of the stream near the crayfish holes. It must be supposed that they only use them by day, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... consulship of which we thought so much, which Curio used of old to call an apotheosis, if this Afranius is elected, will become a mere farce and mockery? Therefore I think one should play the philosopher, as you in fact do, and not care a straw for ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and it filled her heart with joy and also pain. Then she caught at a straw: he was no ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... drawing-room, a spacious apartment now in its simple summer dress of straw matting, linen ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the straw of the manger When she gazed on the altar's pure white? Did she fear for her Son any danger In the little Host, helpless, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... Pandavas to act only as a charioteer, so thou art not alarmed. That, however, will not be, even for a moment. If my wrath is excited, I may then consume all the kings (assembled by thee) like a fire consuming a heap of straw. At Yudhishthira's command, however, I shall only discharge the functions of charioteer to the high-souled Falguni, of senses under complete control and who alone, (amongst us two) will fight! If thou fliest beyond the limits of the three ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... concerned in the whole awkward matter I but wanted to deal with him discreetly. "Your apprehensions, sir," I said at last, "your not unnatural surprise, perhaps, at the candour of our interest, have acted too much on your nerves. You're attacking a man of straw, a creature of unworthy illusion; though I'm sadly afraid you've wounded a man of spirit and conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on your estate, in which case your agitation is superfluous; or ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... housekeeper and the birds and flowers, and maybe he will come pretty soon," she said, as she swung her straw hat by the string ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... him the story, leaving no word unsaid that would mount to the credit of Alan Macdonald. Colonel Landcraft was as hot as blazing straw over the matter. He swore that he would roast Saul Chadron's heart on his sword, and snatched that implement from the chair where it hung as he spoke, and buckled it on with ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden |
