"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the soldiers passing by the farmhouse of La Belle Alliance—singular name which referred so prophetically to the enemy—sometimes saw him sitting on a chair by a table outside the house, his feet resting on a bundle of straw to keep them from the wet ground, nodding, asleep! And no wonder. It is doubtful if he had enjoyed as much as eight hours of sleep since he crossed the Sambre, and those not consecutive! Still, if ever he should have kept awake, that eighteenth ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... disappointments he had had in life, and of all the ingratitude he had met with. He thought far more of the good he had done, than the good others had got. "After all I have done for them," said he, with a sigh of bitterness, "not one of them cares a straw for me. My own children will be glad when I am gone!" At that instant he lifted up his eyes and saw, standing close by the door, a tiny figure in a long night-gown. The door behind her was shut. It was my little friend who had crept in noiselessly. A pang of icy fear shot to the old man's ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... of colour rose to her ordinarily pale cheeks, corresponding with a formless gladness permeating his own being. She wore ruffled lavender with a clear lace pelerine caught at her breast by a knot of straw-coloured ribbon and sprig of rose geranium. "Mr. Penny," she said, with a little gasp of surprise; but ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... anything, as they who had felt by experience its want. His God-like was a very labor-saving God-like, but he had found, on inquiry, that he came from another part of the island, and that he didn't care a straw which way his kite-tail (Noah's manner of pronouncing clientele) voted. In short, he defied any one to say ought ag'in' him this time, and he was not sorry the occasion had offered to show his independence, for his enemies had not been backward in remarking that, for ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the cottages in Sky, instead of being one compacted mass of stones, are often formed by two exterior surfaces of stone, filled up with earth in the middle, which makes them very warm. The roof is generally bad. They are thatched, sometimes with straw, sometimes with heath, sometimes with fern. The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... school children to be brought, and they repeated the wonder done by Moses and Aaron; indeed, Pharaoh's own wife performed it. Jannes and Jambres, the sons of Balaam, derided Moses, saying, "Ye carry straw to Ephrain!"[162] whereto Moses answered, "To the place of many ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... a masculine and feminine voice were intermingled in a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara sitting knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young man seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung on the ground, while he was looking up into her face, as young men often do into pretty faces seen by moonlight. Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... natural that having slept too much he should now sleep too little. She prescribed exercise and usefulness. One day she made him wash all the dishes, and prune all the rose-vines, and tie them in readiness for straw jackets when winter should set in, and she made him split wood in the cellar, and after dinner she made him go to the piano and play Irish music for her until the sweat stood out on his forehead. ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... my own sake alone, John, that I pray the Union will give in before my people begin to think of violence. You remember '94 in Chicago? Well, we don't want anything like that in Kenton City. It would be the last straw! Alleghenia has a big enough burden of disgrace to carry, as ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... don't like me, Miss Lovel," still half playfully—the thing was too impossible to be spoken of in any other tone. "For some reason or other I am obnoxious to you. Look me full in the face, and swear that you don't care a straw for me." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... day of my employment by him, Bonton put me at the mouth of the separator, where the canvas ran rapidly in, carrying the bundles down into the maw of the machine. My job was feeding the bundles to it ... up in the air in the back the threshed straw was kicked high, and the chaff whirled in dusty clouds ... from a spout in the side of the separator the threshed grain poured in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... uttered an exclamation as he drew his hand from the straw behind him, and produced an egg. The Mexicans glanced up. Pete dug in the straw and fetched up another egg—and another. Brevoort leaned forward as though deeply interested in some sleight-of-hand trick. Egg after egg came from the abandoned nest. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... at first, only boxes filled with straw, and covered with skins. Gradually, however, they became more luxurious, and were made of the most precious woods, inlaid with ivory, and sometimes with gems. Their cushions were soft ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... had been a strong motive with his father. The ancient hymn—Fana Novella!—was still sung by his people, as the new moon grew bright in the west, and even their wild custom of leaping through heaps of blazing straw on a certain night in summer was not discouraged. The privilege of augury itself, according to tradition, had at one time belonged to his race; and if you can imagine how, once in a way, an impressible boy might have an inkling, an inward mystic intimation, of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... murmured to herself, 'No! no! speed is my best hope;' and at once mounted the stairs, and entered a room, where the large stone crucifix, a waxen Madonna, and the holy water font gave a cell-like aspect to the room; and a straw pallet covered with sackcloth was on the floor, a richly curtained couch driven ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... described by Froissart, between themselves and the saddle. These were the squirearchy; Malcolm's late persecutors did not aspire to the benches around these boards, or only at second hand, and for the most part had no seat but the unclean straw and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... purpose. After this, a particular person goes to some distance, with his bow and arrows, and shoots at the heart of the animal till he has killed him. The horse is then flayed, and the flesh eaten after the performance of certain ceremonies. They then stuff the horses skin with straw, and sew it up, so as to appear entire, fixing pieces of wood under the skin of the legs, that the stuffed animal may stand up as it did when alive. They next construct a scaffold, amid the branches of a large tree, upon which they fix the stuffed horse skin, and worship it as a god; offering ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the two vessels near each other. They approach within hailing distance, and are announcing each to each their identity, when the young man at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting posture, and, from under a broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat, cries to the schooner's ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... groan and looked about helplessly for a chair. She was walking with a cane, and had on a miraculous black silk, the seams of which were like the ridges of a ploughed field. Miss Georgiana Stiles, the younger daughter, was almost invisible under a straw hat with feathers waving from its pinnacled crown. Miss Celandine, by no means a bad-looking young lady, wore her best black jersey, buttoned at the throat, over her cambric body, her best pique skirt, trimmed with torchon lace, her white silk mitts, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... and beat them small, then boil them till they are thick, and the moisture dry'd up, then take them off the fire, and beat them up with searc'd sugar, to make them into pretty stiff paste, roll them, without sugar, the thickness of a straw; make them up in little knots in what form you please; dry them in a stove or in the sun. You may make jumballs of any sort ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... glance fell covertly on the poor in the town. But these were going about in their customary half-slumber, working when there was work to be had and contenting themselves with that. "That would be the last straw," said Jeppe, "here, where we ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... be of feathers, on account of their undue warmth, which causes a sensation of languor throughout the system. A husk or sea-grass mattress, or even a straw bed, covered with a cotton quilt, is far preferable. The bedding should be changed frequently. It is better that the bed should be away from the wall, so as to admit of greater ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... flung a heavy military glove into the young soldier's face. Then he had the satisfaction of seeing the black eyes flare up into his own, like a blaze when straw is thrown on a fire. And he had laughed with a little ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... gate of iron, rushed the orchard, crossed the smaller hayfield in the open, heedless of the rabbits that rolled like fat balls into pockets made to fit them, slipped out of sight behind a stack of straw whose threatening lopsidedness seemed to support a ladder, and so eventually came to a breathless and perspiring halt upon the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... box of straw in the kitchen, the pigs fed, and Gentle Annie grazing contentedly, Sundown felt able to relax. It had been a strenuous day for him. He drew a chair to the stove, and before he sat down he brought forth from beneath the bed a highly colored ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... she-wolf at playin' a lone hand," growled Barkwell, shortly after dusk, to Jud Weaver, the straw boss. "Seems he thinks his friends is delicate ornaments which any use would bust to smithereens. Here's his outfit layin' around, bitin' their finger nails with ongwee an' pinin' away to slivers yearnin' to get into the ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... The Princess getting tired of propriety and making appointments in London! Little fool! do you think I should care one straw? ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... face to face with her, and with the evidence of her suffering so plain before him, Barney's intentions wavered. Like most fighting men, he was tender in his dealings with women. And now the last straw came in the form of a single tiny tear that trickled down the girl's cheek. He seized the hand that ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had been advised to do; since which time they had found nothing more in the child's pillow; however to avoid all risk of the said witches' spells they had always since then let their child sleep upon straw; he fully believed that this evil had come upon them ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... told him was a lie, and he got up to mount his horse and ride back. Just then he saw, away down, far off on the prairie, a small black speck, but he did not think it was moving, it was so far off,—barely to be seen. He thought maybe it was a rock. He lay down again and took sight on the speck by a straw of grass in front of him, and looked for a long time, and after a while he saw the speck pass the straw, and then he knew it was something. He got on his horse and started to ride up and find out what it was, riding way around it, through the hills and ravines, ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... remain loyal while Escovedo feeds his disloyalty, adds daily to the weight of temptation the burden of a fresh ambition? I tell you, man, I feel safe no longer." He rose up before me, a blotch on his sallow face, his fingers tugging nervously at the tuft of straw-coloured beard. "I tell you some blow is about to fall unless we avert it. This man this fellow Escovedo—must be dispatched before ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... seizure by the sex upon the boy's "Tam o'Shanter" as peculiarly suited for a play and school-hat, is therefore right and proper. For a more showy style, lingerie hats are justified. But the most beautiful and appropriate form of the "best hat" for a little girl is one of uniform material, straw, cloth or felt, with simple crown, and wide, and more or less soft brim, ornamented by a ribbon alone. The addition of a single flower may be permitted, though this is like the admission of the camel's nose into the tent,—it may lead to the entrance of the hump—the monstrosity of the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... new surroundings. It is then grafted with shoots from the Portugal or Bigaradier. It requires much care in the first few years, must be well manured, and during the summer well watered, and if at all exposed must have its stem covered up with straw in winter. It is not expected to yield a crop of flowers before the fourth year after transplantation. The flowering begins toward the end of April and lasts through May to the middle of June. The buds are picked when on the point of opening by women, boys, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... noiselessly to the door, and looked out into the farmyard. There was no one to be seen. Dark and brown and cool the door of the barn stood open, as if inviting me to shelter and safety; for I knew that in the darkest end of it lay a great heap of oat-straw. I sped across the intervening sunshine into the darkness, and began burrowing in the straw like a wild animal, drawing out handfuls and laying them carefully aside, so that no disorder should betray my retreat. When I had made a hole large enough to hold me, I got in, but ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Luther who here stood on the rockbed of a profound and mystic faith in which the absolute conscience of the eternal pervades all. In him all conceptions, like dry straw, were consumed in the glow of God's majesty, for him each human co-operation to attain to salvation was a profanation of God's glory. Erasmus's mind after all did not truly live in the ideas which were here disputed, of sin and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... his braggart way This foolish tale he told, That his daughter could spin from bits of straw Continuous threads of gold! So boastful had he grown, forsooth, That he cared but little for the truth: But since this was a curious thing It came to ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... think much of the property, I suppose," said Will, "for it is evident that in regard to agriculture it is not worth a straw?" ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... instrument, not of justice, but of jugglery. Men were born, said his philosophy, rather to risk their necks than ink their fingers; and if a bold adventure puts you in a difficulty, why, then, you hire some straw-splitting attorney to show his cunning. Indeed, the study of law was for him, as it was for Falstaff, an excuse for many a bout and merry-making. He loved his glass, and he loved his wench, and he loved a bull-baiting better than either. It was his boast, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... no reason why you should not. I was pretty. I was young. I'd been decently brought up—and it would have settled everything. Why didn't you instead of letting people think I was your mistress when I didn't count for as much as a straw in your life?" ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stretches from the bow to about four feet up the mast is stretched a piece of brown canvas just forward of the mast, on a flat stone some lumps of turf are burning, and under this canvas is spread the straw on which my friends sleep. Mike is now washing a prodigious quantity of potatoes in a large iron pot, "a grate crop of praties this year, but the salt water plays the divil with the keeping av them, like that," and he holds up one with a red mark on it in his gigantic paw. I kept ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... nearly waste, and had a very desolate look. Scattered around, and littered upon shake-down beds of straw, some half dozen young besmutted savages, male and female, lay stretched in all positions, some north, others south, without order or decency, but all seeming in that barbarous luxury which denotes strong animal health and an utter disregard of cleanliness and bodily comfort. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... interrupted the deeply troubled woman—"whether, in order to soften your heart, I am not painting in blacker colours than reality requires. Oh, how little you know me yet! I would rather this tongue should wither than that I should unchivalrously permit it to deviate one straw's breadth from the truth in order to attain a selfish purpose. No, mother! My description of the grief which often overpowers this soul was far too lukewarm. If your first sacrifice was intended to make me a happy man, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... parleyed for a time, all because of the pusillanimity of the Marshal, when he, at last, said,—"I am tired waiting on you; I see you are not going to give up. Go to the barn and fetch some straw," said he to one of his men, "I will set the house on fire, and burn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Hay or Straw in a box car than any other, and bale at a less cost per ton. Send for circular and price list. Manufactured by the Chicago Hay Press Co., Nos. 3354 to 3358 State St., Chicago. Take cable car ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky slope to the little valley just beneath. There in the lap of the hills around stood the wretched straw-thatched huts of the peasants belonging to the castle—miserable serfs who, half timid, half fierce, tilled their poor patches of ground, wrenching from the hard soil barely enough to keep body and soul together. Among those vile hovels played the little children ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... prevailed, that the retailers of this poisonous compound set up painted boards in public, inviting people to be drunk at the small expense of one penny; assuring them they might be dead drunk for two-pence, and have straw for nothing. They accordingly provided cellars and places strewed with straw, to which they conveyed those wretches who were overwhelmed with intoxication. In these dismal caverns they lay until they recovered some use of their faculties, and then they had recourse to the same mischievous potion; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... book of greatest circulation in the whole world, the Bible only excepted; having, during these same twenty-nine years of troubles and embarrassments without number, introduced into England the manufacture of Straw-plat; also several valuable trees; having introduced, during the same twenty-nine years, the cultivation of the Corn-plant, so manifestly valuable as a source of food; having, during the same period, always (whether in exile ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... ever wroten. Take Shakespeer for instunse. Peple think heze grate things, but I kontend heze quite the reverse to the kontrary. What sort of sense is thare to King Leer, who goze round cussin his darters, chawin hay and throin straw at folks, and larfin like a silly old koot and makin a ass of hisself ginerally? Thare's Mrs. Mackbeth—sheze a nise kind of woomon to have round ain't she, a puttin old Mack, her husband, up to slayin Dunkan with a cheeze ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Government. She was convinced that the ill treatment meted out to them at Massowah had only confirmed the old gentleman's determination to best his opponents at all costs. The burking of his cablegrams, made known by the Baron, was the last straw in an aggravated load. The yacht was going to Aden to enable him to lodge a complaint with the proper authorities, but she would leave almost at once for French—Somaliland, where a kafila would be collected and a dash made across the Italian frontier. And ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... sweet, grave with the protective fostering instinct of mothers in a maidenly hiding, ready to come at need. She wore her plain blue clothes as if unconscious of them and their incomplete response to the note of time. A woman would have detected that she trimmed her own hat, a flat, wide-brimmed straw with a formless bow and a feather worthy only in long service. A man would have cherished the memory of her thin rose-flushed face with the crisp touches of sedate inquiry about the eyes. "Do you want anything?" Anne's eyes were always asking clearly. "Let me get it for you." But ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He noted that it had hauled around to the east. With a great effort he threw himself on the sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain Lynch, driven like a wisp of straw, sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai's sailors, leaving a cocoanut tree to which they had been clinging, came to their aid, leaning against the wind at impossible angles and fighting and clawing every inch of ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... had received from John Melmoth, the Englishman. [Melmoth Reconciled.] He was interested in the third liquidation of Nucingen in 1826, a settlement which made the fortune of the Alsatian banker whose "man of straw" he was for some time. [The Firm of Nucingen.] He was associated with Cerizet who deceived him in a deal about a house sold to Thuillier. Becoming bankrupt he embarked for America about 1840. He was probably condemned for ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... write? How much better it would be to go to him, to fall upon his heart and say to him: "Dare to believe I am not yours only!" But she could only write. She had hardly begun her letter when she heard voices and laughter in the garden. Therese went down, tranquil and smiling; her large straw hat threw on her face a transparent shadow wherein ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... to take all the canteens and go over to that farm (Mills) and fill them, first questioning the people about the enemy and about the country around here. I also direct these two men to get some straw or hay for bedding in the shelter tents, and instruct them to return with ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... repeat this treatment every hour until the cow stops staggering, or if lying down, stands on her feet. It is necessary to strip the milk from the bag before giving an injection of air. If the cow is lying flat on her side, prop her up by placing bags of hay or straw against her side, also make her as comfortable as possible. If lying in the hot sun, provide shade by placing a canopy over her made from burlap; if the weather is chilly, blanket; if flies annoy her, use ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... sealing wax, pound it well, and put it into a 4 oz. vial, containing 2 ozs. of rectified spirits of wine; place it in a sand-bath or near a moderate fire till the wax is dissolved, then lay it on warm, with a fine soft hairbrush, before a fire or in the sun. It gives a good stiffness to old straw hats, and a beautiful gloss equal to ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Dmitritch," Paklin began, "you are upset, and for a very good reason. But have you forgotten in what times and in what country we are living? Amongst us a drowning man must himself create the straw to clutch at. Why be sentimental over it? One must look the devil straight in the face and not get ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... therefore, is the invention and introduction of such machinery. Boards were now planed, and bricks pressed, by machine. It was during this period that the farmers began to give up the flail for the thrashing machine; that paper was extensively made from straw; that Fairbanks invented the platform scales; that Colt invented the revolver; that steel pens were made by machine; and that a rude form of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... consume all in an instant. I was all at once so changed as not to be recognisable either to myself or to others. I found neither the blemishes nor the dislikes (which had troubled me): all appeared to me consumed like a straw in ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... talking now. Sure, every four years the lousy politicians come around and they stick coonskin caps on their heads or Indian bonnets and start saying ain't when they make their speeches. Showing they're just folks, see? They go out into the country, and stick a straw in their mouth and talk about crops to the farmers, all that sort of thing. But they aren't really common folks. Most of them are lawyers or bankers or something. They run those political parties and make all the ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... stood against a window, with his big straw hat on. His trotting sulky was outside. Gagnant, the established merchant, with contented reticence of well-to-do-ness, was remarking of some enterprise, "It won't pay its tobacco." Toutsignant, his insecure and overdaring young rival; who was bound to cut trade, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Traveller's Joy, (which she calls Old Man's Beard; Kitty always would differ from her elders!) and a soup-plate full of forget-me-nots. She said two of the children had half-drowned themselves, and lost a good straw hat in getting them for her. Just like their mother, as ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... four bottles into Pierre's glass, where they did not long remain. At midnight the wine-shop closed, and Michel having nowhere to go for the four hours that still remained until daybreak, Pierre offered him a bed of straw in the stable. Michel accepted. The two friends went back arm-in-arm; Pierre staggering, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... treasurer of Nimes had died, and the king appointed his successor. His brother, the Duke of Anjou, came and asked for the place on behalf of one of his own intimates, saying that he to whom the king had granted it was a man of straw, and without credit. Charles caused inquiries to be made, and then said to the duke, "Truly, fair brother, he for whom you have spoken to me is a rich man, but one of little sense and bad behavior." "Assuredly," said the Duke of Anjou, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... round her slim waist, and my lips met hers in a fond, passionate caress. She looked very dainty in a plain walking costume of cream serge, with a boa of ostrich feathers about her throat, and a large straw hat trimmed with autumn flowers. It was exceptionally warm for the time of year; yet at night, on the breezy East Coast, there is a cold nip in the air even in the height ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... coaxed, partly pulled her, she looked uneasily round the farm-yard, and we entered the cowshed. At one end of it was a cart-horse stable, close to that a large barn. With arm round her I led her towards the barn, there was straw and hay there; but in the stable in the first empty stall was a heap of fresh straw. I pushed her down on to it, the next instant I was fucking her, and what a fuck! I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, it was delicious. It was two months since I had ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... which Durward had borrowed of John Jr. At last 'Lena appeared, and if Durward had admired her beauty before, his admiration was now greatly increased when he saw how well she looked in her neatly fitting riding dress and tasteful straw hat. After bidding her good morning, he advanced to assist her in mounting, but declining his offer, she with one ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... why I should be so weak for such a trifle," I said, after a few swallows of ice-water had somewhat restored my equilibrium; "but I do feel very dismally about this voyage—have done so ever since I left Beauseincourt. This is the last straw on the camel's back, believe me, General Curzon. You must not reproach yourself in the least—nor me; and now let me bid you ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... these thoughts were passing in his mind, a drowsy, slatternly charwoman, in an old black straw bonnet and grey bed-gown, opened one of the shutters, and throwing up the sash of the window by where Mr. Sponge sat, disclosed the contents of the apartment. The last waxlight was just dying out in the centre of a splendid candelabra on the middle of a table scattered about with ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... beautiful, presented a dreary aspect of ruin. The storm of war had swept over it, and had converted all its attractive homes into smouldering embers. They chanced to find an old building which had escaped the flames, and here, upon a bed of straw, they passed the night. With blended emotions of bliss and of anguish, the bereaved mother journeyed along the next day, and about noon reached Concord. Here she met many of her friends, who rejoiced with her in her rescue, and ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... stables therefore at the posadas are not only very large, but the best part of the building, and is the lodging-room of man and beast; all the muleteers sleep there, with their cloaths on, upon a bundle of straw: but while your supper is preparing, the kitchen is crowded with a great number of these dirty fellows, whose cloaths are full of vermin; it would be impossible, therefore, for even a good cook to dress a dish with any decency or cleanliness, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... devices for entertaining children by means of paper building-cards, wooden berry-baskets, straw and paper furniture, paper ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... creature of about ten years old, small for her age, with shy yet trustful eyes, and soft, brown, curly hair; and as she stood there, clad in a black frock and a straw hat, well worn, it is true, but free from tatters, with a piece of crape neatly fastened around it, had any one amidst that busy multitude paused to look at the little flower-seller, they would have wondered why so young a child was trusted alone in ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... the market place of Borislau women standing ankle deep in the mud, selling vegetables. One woman really had to build a platform of straw, on which to place a bushel of potatoes; if the straw foundation had not been there, the potatoes would have sunk out of sight. Borislau is three miles from Drohobich, a city of thirty thousand inhabitants; between the two places, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... and was coming round by the back of the cart. The horse was now standing on his four legs, trembling in every fibre, and with eyes that were still wild and staring. Holding him firmly, I faced the lady as she stopped near me. She was a young woman in a jaunty summer costume and a round straw hat. She did not seem to be quite mistress of herself; she was not pale, but perhaps that was because her face was somewhat browned by the sun, but her step was not steady, and she breathed hard. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been assisted to the side of ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... the rod of quartz is held in the fingers or occasionally in a clip. The end of the fine point is attached to a straw arrow by means of a little sealing-wax. The arrow is laid on the stock of a crossbow in the proper position for firing. See Figs. 67 and 68, which ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are not a whit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... mowing- machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of a locust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that, the grass and the grain at this season have become hard. The timothy stalk is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint; the grasshoppers snap sharply as they fly up in front of you; the bird-songs have ceased; the ground crackles under foot; the eye of day is brassy and merciless; and in harmony with all these things is the rattle of the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... loud and uncivil answer which came back to her, and in a moment Ella appeared round the corner of the house, carelessly swinging her straw flat, and humming a fashionable song. On seeing her sister she drew back the corners of her mouth into something which she intended for a smile, and said, "Why, I thought it was Bridget calling me, you looked so much like her in that gingham sun-bonnet. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... corpse and to fix his eyes upon him while he himself was shot. The corpse of the young man shot in the garden was carried into the house and put on a bed. The next morning the Germans asked where the corpse was. When they found it was in the house, they fetched straw, packed it around the bed on which the corpse was lying, and set fire to it and burned the house down. A great many houses were ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... settled some days with the nuns; such dear little nuns (nuns always go straight to the heart of an old priest-hater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed in brown robes and close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hat flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees. Your protegee ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... this bizarre tribe is perhaps not untimely; the leveling process progresses fast, over Basque-land as in all the world; steam and lightning are the genii of the age, but they destroy while they build. As a significant straw, the French government enforces here, in the public schools, the teaching and speaking of French to supersede the Basque. Similarly, Spanish is required in the schools over the border. In some of these, a child detected in a lapse into Basque must wear a certain ring, which he is allowed to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... creek also joined it from the southward; as subsequently observed by Mr. Roper. Beyond these creeks, several lagoons or swamps were seen covered with ducks, and several other aquatic birds, and, amongst them, the straw-coloured Ibis. ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... grandmother, to divert her mind, took her in her lap, and read to her Bible stories, until the first bell rang for church. Then Fanny was dressed in a neat lawn, and her long curls were fastened back, under her simple straw bonnet; and taking hold of Frank's hand, they walked to church ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... swiftly down one of the transversal corridors. Descending a flight of stone steps, the two men with their burthen entered a range of subterranean cloisters, at whose extremity was a low and massive door, which Don Baltasar opened, and they entered a narrow cell, having a straw pallet and earthen water-jug for sole furniture. Close to the roof of this dismal dungeon was an aperture in the wall, through which a strong iron grating, and the rank grass that grew close up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope's Court looked like a coster's orange barrow. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country as were brought together by that single advertisement. Every shade of colour they were—straw, lemon, orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay; but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real vivid flame-coloured tint. When I saw how many were waiting, I would have given it up in despair; ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... borne swiftly through the air by a dragon, Edna had done what was the correct thing to do in the circumstances—she had promptly fainted. She opened her eyes to find that she had been deposited uninjured, on a truss of straw in a Courtyard. On her right was the massive front of Castle Drachenstolz; before her were its lofty walls and the grim towers that flanked its heavy gate; to the left were the stables, from the windows of which some of the black carriage horses looked out, their wrinkled ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... be converted, the prisons were kept full. They were kept there without the usual allowance of straw, and almost without food. In winter they had no fire, and at night no lamp. Though ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many died in prison—feeble women, and ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... one, captured at Manassas. The chaplain, still talking, was persuaded stiffly to dismount, to give Pluto's bridle into Stafford's hand, and to enter. There were other occupants, two rows of them. Stafford saw his old friend laid in a corner, on a wisp of straw; then, finding Fontaine in the ranks, gave over the grey, and joined the staff creeping, creeping on tired ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... personages are to talk, however, they must talk naturally and interestingly—and "there's the rub!" As in real life a man often shows himself to be a fool when he begins to talk, so in fiction a character frequently proves to be but a poor puppet of straw when he opens his mouth. The only way to make your characters talk naturally is to imitate the speech of the persons whom they in some degree represent. People in general do not talk by book: they use colloquial language, full of poor grammar, slang, and syncopated words; and their sentences are ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... men had stayed on Inishmaan to learn Irish, and the boy pointed out a line of hovels where they had lodged running like a belt of straw round the middle of the island. The place looked hardly fit for habitation. There was no green to be seen, and no sign of the people except these beehive-like roofs, and the outline of a Dun that stood out above them against ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... the jailer, turning the harsh key in the lock and opening the door wide enough to admit Dinah. A jet of light from his lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where Hetty was sitting on her straw pallet with her face buried in her knees. It seemed as if she were asleep, and yet the grating of the lock would have been ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... crowded betting ring; then, more clearly, a garish, over-furnished room in a Southern mansion; clouds of tobacco smoke rising in the cones of bright light above roulette and poker tables; negro servants in white, with trays; mint juleps in tall, frosted glasses; a pretty girl with straw-colored hair—"You're right!" he agreed, finally. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... good earl of Kent had put over him to' take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was prevailed upon to put off the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... (Ill.) Aristarchean" has spoken with condescending blandness of my poems? I know that Miss Plum dotes upon my productions. I know that she pictures me to herself as a Corydon in sky-blue smalls and broad-brimmed straw hat, playing elegies in five flats, or driving the silly sheep home through the evening shades. Now, whatever else I may be, I am not that. I keep my refinement for gala-days; I do not shave, because I would save sixpences; I do not wear purple and fine linen. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... wandered over heaps of stones for building, over the hideous water in which a truss of straw was floating, over a factory chimney rising towards the horizon. Sewers sent forth their poisonous exhalations. They turned to the opposite side; and they had in front of them the walls of the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... few score of horses) across the river, and will bring me back again. The sale of tickets there was an amazing scene. The noble army of speculators are now furnished (this is literally true, and I am quite serious), each man with a straw mattress, a little bag of bread and meat, two blankets, and a bottle of whisky. With this outfit they lie down in line on the pavement the whole night before the tickets are sold, generally taking up their position at about ten. It being severely cold at Brooklyn, they made ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Individualist, and believing that liberty is a principle which applies to commerce, not less than to intellectual and moral freedom, Mill, of course, insisted on Free Trade. But after Roosevelt joined the Republican Party—in the straw vote for President, in 1880, he had voted like a large majority of undergraduates for Bayard, a Democrat—he adopted Protection as the right principle in theory and in practice. The teachings of Alexander Hamilton, the wonderful spokesman of Federalism, the champion of a strong Government which ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and, with clubbed rifle, dealt the animal a terrific blow upon the skull, that I saw Victory, her long blade flashing in her hand, close, striking, upon the beast, that a great paw fell upon her shoulder, and that I was swept beneath the surface of the water like a straw before the ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... down Main Street, past the post-office, where she wished to mail a letter. They attracted much attention as they drove through the street in the colonel's new trap. Graciella's billowy white gown added a needed touch of maturity to her slender youthfulness. A big straw hat shaded her brown hair, and she sat erect, and held her head high, with a vivid consciousness that she was the central feature of a very attractive whole. The colonel shared her thought, and looked at ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him, old Fauchelevent held in his hand the end of a straw mat which he was occupied in spreading over the melon bed. During the hour or thereabouts that he had been in the garden he had already spread out a number of them. It was this operation which had caused him to execute the peculiar movements observed from ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the girl in the plantation. When I got out, through the sand-hills, on to the beach, there she was, in her little straw bonnet, and her plain grey cloak that she always wore to hide her deformed shoulder as much as might be—there she was, all alone, looking out on the quicksand ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of the lake is the thriving town of Burlington, the chief town of Vermont. Here we stopped to take in passengers, and were pleased with the bustle and activity of the place. The wharf was crowded; and, as the day was hot, straw hats and shirt-sleeves, also the mitigated form of comfort—viz., coat and ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... of six years is old enough to be made useful and should be taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not been done to assist others." We are told that a child can be taught to braid straw for his hats or to make feather fans; the objection to which would be that a modern mother would not let a child wear that kind of ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Sir Digby for a time, Richards could afford to quietly await the turn of events. His practice had been sharp, but it was certainly justifiable. He had often hinted to his partner Keane, nay, even told him plainly, that the baronet was but a man of straw. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... circumstance which, I have often heard her say, gave great umbrage to the other Princesses of the Court of Versailles, who never showed themselves, from the moment they rose till they returned to bed, except in full dress; while she herself made all her morning visits in a simple white cambric gown and straw hat. This simplicity, unfortunately, like many other trifles, whose consequences no foresight would have predicted, tended much to injure Marie Antoinette, not only with the Court dandies, but the nation; by whom, though she was always censured, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... shall ride at Moulay Saa's right hand, please God, and I shall cut the necks of Roumi with my sword, like barley straw!" ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of flat-roofed houses enclosed with a double wall, without the ring of which were thousands of straw huts, shaped like bee-hives, wherein dwelt natives of the country, slaves or servants of the occupying Phoenician race. To Aziel's right, and not more than a hundred paces from the governor's house in which he was, rose the round and mighty battlements of the temple, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... burst forth like an exploding bomb. He seized his straw hat and his cane, the emblem of his office, and strode to the house of Rosendo. His face grew more deeply purple as he went. At the door of the house he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... soon as he was able to speak—and then the cabman gave 'im a truss of straw to lay on and a rug ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... terrible as the hell fire that I had been taught to believe in. When Christian Science came to me two years ago through a dear friend, she gave me a copy of Science and Health and asked me to read it. I told her that I would, for I was like a drowning man grasping at a straw. I had been a Bible student for twenty-eight years, but when I commenced reading Science and Health with the Bible I was healed in less than a week. I never had a treatment. A case of measles was ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down with a wisp of straw. Then she hooked about her for hay; but the place was bare of feed, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house, thankful for the respite, and got some clap-bread, which she mashed up in a pailful of lukewarm water. Every moment ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... moving figure came slowly into sight on the edge of the opposite wood, and strolled into the sunshine, stooping as she came to pick the pale purple crocuses of which the grass was full—little Henriette, a basket on her arm, her face shaded by a broad straw bonnet. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... faithful Sigier falls beside him. Slowly but surely the tower creeps nearer the wall. The Saracens redouble their efforts. They throw down between the wall and the tower, pots of burning oil, blazing wood, and Greek fire. They fortify the wall with mattresses of lighted straw until it seems one sheet of flame. The tower approaches this barricade of fire, but the smoke and flame stifle the Crusaders. They ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... more especially, as, the rooms being vaulted, each story formed a separate lodgement, capable of being held out for a considerable time. On such occasions, the usual mode, adopted by the assailants, was to expel the defenders, by setting fire to wet straw in the lower apartments. But the border chieftains seldom chose to abide in person a siege of this nature; and I have not observed a single instance of a distinguished baron made prisoner in his own house[41].—Patten's Expedition, p. 35. The common people resided in paltry huts, about the safety ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... look very inviting yesterday, with a lowering sky above, and the wind blowing dust and bits of straw and paper into my face and preventing me from seeing what I knew to be there, a consoling glimpse of green fields and fir woods down at the other end; but I had not been for a long while—we have had such a lovely summer—and something inside me had kept on saying aggressively all ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... opened the door, and, walking out upon the piazza, which ran entirely around the cottage, gave a low whistle. There was a slight rustling among the straw in the kennel where the dogs slept, and Brave came out, and followed his master into ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... A wire from the Third German Army to the War Ministry, Berlin, dated 17th July, 1918, stated: "Chloride of lime has all been issued in boxes to the troops. Reserves exhausted." One had the impression of a drowning man catching at a straw. Supply on a sufficient scale to cover most cases was practically impossible. Each soldier would have to carry the protective chemical as part of his equipment, and its proper use depended on training. There was no time to identify and assemble the thousands of affected ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... bed no feather bed is employed; sometimes mattresses filled with sweet new wheat or cut straw, with the grain in the ears, and mingled with balm, rose leaves, lavender flowers, and oriental spices, and, at other times, springy hair mattresses are used. Neither will you find upon the celestial bed linen sheets; our sheets are of the richest and softest ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Now I remember, years and years ago, your discussing with me how curiously easily plants get naturalised on uninhabited islands, if ships even touch there. I remember we discussed packages being opened with old hay or straw, etc. Now think of hides and wool (and wool exported largely over Europe), and plants introduced, and samples of corn; and I must think that if Australia had been the old country, and Europe had been the Botany Bay, very few, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... other hand, John Truck sailed his own ship; was civil to his passengers from habit as well as policy; knew that every vessel must have a captain; believed mankind to be little better than asses; took his own observations, and cared not a straw for those of his mates; was never more bent on following his own views than when all hands grumbled and opposed him; was daring by nature, decided from use and long self-reliance, and was every way a man fitted to steer his bark through the trackless ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... All the straw bunks & —— in ye different regts. occupied by the well to be collected for the sick of Col. Forman's regt. A sergeant & 8 men to be employed cutting wood for a coal pit for the armorers shop—apply ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... the preceding summer, Miss Wilhelmina walked into the town, wearing a man's broad-brimmed straw hat, and carrying a cane in her hand, with a very small dog trotting at her heels. She inquired at the first hotel in the town for lodgings, and hired two very handsome apartments of Mrs. Turner, who kept very respectable lodgings, and was patronised by the best families ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... of ripe juicy peaches, mash or bruise them in a tub, and pour them into a barrel, large enough to contain them, and place it in a cool place. At the bottom of the barrel, before putting in the peaches, some clean straw must be placed to prevent the pumice from filling up the spigot. The head of the barrel must be covered. In about three days the Peach Wine is ready for use. Draw it off, from the spigot, and if care and attention have been adopted, a ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... a roof which you have thatched with straw is leaking, there will be threatenings of danger, but by your rightly directed energy they ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Arabin knew, to prove his earnestness. Many men, fickle as weathercocks, are ready to marry at the moment,—are ready to marry at the moment, because they are fickle, and think so little about it. "But she hears, perhaps, of your liking other people," said Mrs Arabin. "I don't care a straw for any other person," said Johnny. "I wonder whether if I was to shut myself up in a cage for six months, it would do any good?" "If she had the keeping of the cage, perhaps it might," said Mrs Arabin. She had nothing more to say to him on that subject, but to tell him that Miss Dale ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... my service: I depart.' Then strode he to his cow-house in the mead, Displeased though meek, and muttered, 'Slow of eye! My kine are slow: if rapid I, my hand Might tend them worse.' Hearing his step, the kine Turned round their horned fronts; and angry thoughts Went from him as a vapour. Straw he brought, And strewed their beds; and they, contented well, Laid down ere long their great bulks, breathing deep Amid the glimmering moonlight. He, with head Propped on a favourite heifer's snowy flank, Rested, his deer-skin ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... was in the air, softening the chill of the crowded streets with warming sunshine and a hint of the coming miracle of the yearly resurrection. The shops were filled with the crisp, fresh-tinted goods of the nearing season, and here and there among the smartly dressed women was a modish straw hat brightening the winter furs and velvets. Patricia's cup was full and running over. She had no need for speech with Elinor, but she kept giving her hands quick little squeezes in her muff, while now and again they exchanged swift telegraphic ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... waved in every passing breeze. It was only when he rode forth on his mysterious journeys that he crowned himself with a Chinese straw helmet. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... with the torch there, Sandy, and touch off the pile of hay and straw inside the barn when I give the word. Then come ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... Senator well enough to fight with him at his own table, and could only groan and moan and look up at the ceiling. Doctor Nupper endeavoured to take away the sting by smacking his lips, and Reginald Morton, who did not in truth care a straw what he drank, was moved to pity and declared the claret to be very fine. "I have nothing to say against it," said the Senator, who was not in the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... be a fledgling again," he cried. "I want you to help me make a home under the eaves, a lovely little nest of mud and straw, where you can rest as you are now doing, while I bring ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... every unwelcome detail upon his attention: the old cabin, built of hewn logs, held together by wooden pin and augur-hole, and shingled with rough boards; the dark, windowless room; the unplastered walls; the beds with old-fashioned high posts, mattresses of straw, and cords instead of slats; the home-made chairs with straight backs, tipped with carved knobs; the mantel filled with utensils and overhung with bunches of drying herbs; a ladder with half a dozen smooth-worn steps leading to the loft; ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... sweet potatoes they would dig a pit and line it with straw and put the tatoes in it then cover them with straw and build a coop over it. This would keep the potatoes from rotting. The Irish potatoes they would spread out in the sand under the house and the onions they would hand up in the fence ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... hole like worm hole dere is de clam. He breathe up tru dat, and suck in his drink like sherry-cobbler through a straw. Whar dere is no little air holes, dere is no clam, dat are a fac. Now, Massa, can you tell who is de most knowin' clam-digger in de worl? De gull is, Massa; and he eat his clam raw, as some folks who don't know nuffin' bout cookin' eat oysters. He take up de clam ebber so far in de air, and let ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... fatal day of sale arrived. N——, in the depth of his distress had early sent for me to consult whether even at the eleventh hour something could not be done to avert the calamity. A sinking man catches at a straw. It wanted less than three hours of the time of sale when I entered the grounds of Fernlands. The gate was half off its hinges, the posts plastered with advertisements of the sale; and people, as always happens in such cases, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... returned to the room below. Half an hour later, some armed natives entered. One of them carried a large bundle of straw, which he threw down in one corner; another bore a dish of rice, and a third a skin of water. They had evidently been told not to address him for, as soon as they had placed their burdens on the ground, they retired ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... the effects of her first unhappy passion, she seemed to have vowed a state of perpetual chastity. She was long deaf to all the sufferings of her lovers, till one day, at a neighbouring fair, the rhetoric of John the hostler, with a new straw hat and a pint of wine, made a second ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... brilliant parasols, but I must say that the soberer tone of some of the old farm-wives' brown calicoes and outdated bonnets contributed to enrich the coloring, and there was a certain gayety in the sunny glisten of the men's straw hats everywhere ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... Culpeper knocked at the door of Corinna's shop, she noticed that the pine bough in the window had been replaced by bowls of growing narcissi. For a moment her stern expression relaxed, and her face, framed in a bonnet of black straw with velvet strings, became soft and anxious. Beneath the veil of white illusion which reached only to the tip of her small sharp nose, her eyes were ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... noticeable in England, the race of the cultured talented, who live well-ordered lives in the calm light of a mild and unobjectionable publicity, who produce in the midst of comfort, giving birth to nothing on straw, who are sane even to the extent of thinking very much as the man in Sloane Street thinks, who occasionally go to a levee, and have set foot on summer days in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Heath, perhaps, could not be ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... from this nonchalant private was a straw too much for Westerling's patience. He made a nervous gesture—a distinctly nervous one as he dropped the teaspoon. He would have an ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of wind and rain, so that it was hardly possible to go forth with safety. And being weary with their journey, they laid themselves down and sought to sleep. And when they looked at the couch, it seemed to be made but of a little coarse straw full of dust and vermin, with the stems of boughs sticking up therethrough, for the cattle had eaten all the straw that was placed at the head and the foot. And upon it was stretched an old russet-coloured ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... rose shrill above the crickets and the frogs. It was the Enemy singing "Glory, glory, hallelujah." That was the last straw. Margaret writhed deeper into the pillows. She knew what the rest of it was—"Glory, glory, hallelujah, 'tisn't me! My soul goes marching on!" She was out ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... wall, eager for a first sight of her home after all the long time she had been absent from it, saw an old pair of kitchen bellows, numberless scraps of paper, a broken battledore, a shabby straw hat, and three grubby, battered dolls perched up against an old tub, which had once contained flowers, but had long since ceased to ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... healthy enough to sleep out al fresco. Fortunately a kind-hearted man, who was the agent of the steamers, and his wife, seeing the plight we were in, conceded us a small room in their house with their only spare bed. Luckily we had one of those large straw Pondicherry reclining-chairs, which I just bought from the captain of the steamer, and a rug; so Richard and I took the bed in turns night about, the other in the chair. We did not mind much, for we had come to see Goa, and were used to roughing it better out of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... big pursy body, almost as large as his thumb, and of the very snowiest white that Freckles ever had seen. There was a band of delicate lavender across its forehead, and its feet were of the same colour; there were antlers, like tiny, straw-colored ferns, on its head, and from its shoulders hung the crumpled wet wings. As Freckles gazed, tense with astonishment, he saw that these were expanding, drooping, taking on color, and small, oval ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... different at that time,' mused Biles. 'The Bishops didn't lay it on so strong then as they do now. Now-a-days, yer Bishop gies both hands to every Jack-rag and Tom-straw that drops the knee afore him; but 'twas six chaps to one blessing when we was boys. The Bishop o' that time would stretch out his palms and run his fingers over our row of crowns as off-hand as a bank gentleman ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... to clear the way, cut the branches with a blow of his axe. Woot followed next, and last of the three came the Scarecrow, who could not have kept the path at all had not his comrades broken the way for his straw-stuffed body. ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... then they had to eke it out with such nods and jumps as reminded one of "Punch and the Devil." Their clothing was chiefly made of skins, and a kind of cloth made from fibre or wool and hair, or a mixture of both. "In these clothes and a coarse mat and straw hat they would sit in their canoes in the heaviest rain as unconcernedly as if they were in perfect shelter." Their houses of logs and boards made by splitting large trees, were some as much as 150 feet long by 20 to 30 feet wide, and 7 or 8 feet high; they were divided into two compartments, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... particularly those on the Servian shore, had the same poverty-stricken look I had frequently noticed in Galicia. Wretched clay huts, thatched with straw, lay scattered around; and far and wide not a tree or a shrub appeared to rejoice the eye of the traveller or of the sojourner in these parts, under the shade of which the poor peasant might recruit his weary frame, while it would conceal from the eye of the traveller, in some degree, the poverty ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Madame Grandoni, "if I like her, we 'll have it that you ought to be in love with her. If you fail in this, it will be a double misdemeanor. The man she 's engaged to does n't care a straw for her. Leave me alone and I 'll tell her what I think ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... of it one June morning, came the Towncrier, a picturesque figure in his short blue jacket and wide seaman's trousers, a red bandanna knotted around his throat and a wide-rimmed straw hat on ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks before I knew the cause of my waking so suddenly. We made a long march the remaining part of the day, and, rested at night with five hundred guards on each side of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... hair, or working on sandbags with the imperturbability of the Easterner who is placid under death. Farther on, again, you come on families, sometimes three generations huddling together on a six-foot straw mat. A mother trying to feed a child from her half-dry breasts tells you quietly that it is no use, since the meagre fare she is already getting does not make sustenance enough for her, let alone her child. Yet ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a lieutenant-colonel. I may live yet to see him a general officer; certainly, if I live to be as old as my grandfather, Sir Thomas. As for Maud, she finds Beulah uneasy about Beekman; and having no husband herself, or any over that she cares a straw about, why she just falls upon Bob as a pis aller. I'll warrant you she cares no more for him than any of the rest of us—than myself, for instance; though as an old soldier, I don't scream every time I fancy a gun fired ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... sun-burn'd sicklemen,[442-34] of August weary, Come hither from the furrow, and be merry: Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on, And these fresh nymphs encounter every one In ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Black Forest the stove is invoked in these terms: "Dear oven, I beseech thee, if thou hast a wife, I would have a man" (130 a. 60). Among the White Russians, before the wedding, the house of the bridegroom and that of the bride are "cleansed from evil spirits," by burning a heap of straw in the middle of the living-room, and at the beginning of the ceremonies, after they have been elevated upon a cask, as "Prince" and "Princess," the guests, with the wedding cake and two tapers in their hands, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... preceding generation. There scarcely was a chimney to the houses, even in considerable towns; the fire was kindled by the wall, and the smoke sought its way out at the roof, or door, or windows: the houses were nothing but watling plastered over with clay; the people slept on straw pallets, and had a good round log under their head for a pillow; and almost all the furniture and utensils ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... who sings ballads in a voice that can only be described as that contradiction in terms "a shrill contralto." Her notes are very piercing and can be heard from one end of the Square to the other. She sings "Annie Laurie" and "Robin Adair," and wears a battered hat of black straw. On Thursday there is a handsome Italian with a barrel organ that bears in its belly the very latest and most popular tunes. It is on Thursday that the Square learns the music of the moment; thus from one end of the year to the other does it ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... place. To supply them, therefore, with regular instruction, a preacher would be necessary to every family; who would condescend to their mode of life, travel when they travelled, rest when they rested, and be content with the ground and straw for his bed, and a blanket tent for his covering! All this would subject them to great personal inconvenience, and at the same time be very expensive and highly improper. Neither would it be possible for ministers to be appointed occasionally and alternately to visit the Gipsies in different ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,—the straw hat, the homespun coat, the brogan shoes,—they drove the plough in the open field, or wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with their history, have dreamed that those ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... about it!' said Alaric, looking at him with withering scorn. But Undy was not made of withering material, and did not care a straw ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Apparently, he thought all was right, again; and he led the way, flourishing both hands, while all in the boat, fishermen inclusive, were bawling, and shouting, and gesticulating, in a way that would certainly have confused us, had I cared a straw about them. I thought it well enough to follow the boat; but, as for their cries, they were disregarded. Had Monsieur Le Gros seen fit to wait for the ship in the narrowest part of the inlet, he might have embarrassed us; but, so far from this, he appeared to be entirely carried away by the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... which is the story of the battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish Herculus; while the most wonderful example of animal evolution on record is found in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely informed that "the lion shall eat straw like ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney |
