"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does by chance approach these animals she must propitiate them by offerings of grain. Nor in some cases will she light a lamp, for fear the flame in some way may hurt the child. She should not finish any sowing, previously begun, during pregnancy, nor should her husband thatch the house or repair his axe. An eclipse is particularly dangerous to the unborn child and she must not leave the house during its continuance, but must sit still with a stone pestle in her lap and anoint her womb with cowdung. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... removed and his place taken by Mr. James Mann. That year land was bought on which to build a chapel, and in 1788 the first Methodist church in Canada was built at Point de Bute. It stood somewhat back from the road in the present cemetery. The house was of stone, with a roof of thatch. The following is the deed of the property on ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath Where all that's wretched paves the way for death? Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud are all that lie between; Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patch'd, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him no hand the cordial ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... which many huge baobab trees were growing. The shores surrounding the harbour were low and covered with mangroves, but in and out could be discerned several lofty hills. Here and there could be seen isolated native huts, while at the head of the harbour clustered the thatch and tin-roofed houses of the German settlement, which had for several months ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the rosemary bushes; dung-beetles, which are storing food for the winter and throwing up their rubbish on the threshold of their burrows. And then the fine sand, soft to the touch, easily tunnelled, easily excavated or built into tiny huts which we thatch with moss and surmount with the end of a reed for a chimney; and the delicious meal of apples, and the sound of the aeolian harps which softly whisper among the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... cottage at the foot of the tree-clad slope. The door of the cottage stood wide open, and the scent of the wood-fire hung on the chill, damp air filling the narrow lane. A blackbird flew into the apple-tree overlooking the thatch, shook the moisture from his wings, and cleaned his bright orange bill on a bough. Then his full, reed-like music floated over the fields. The skylarks soared above the upland pastures, and a shower of song descended to the valley out of the pearl-blue haze just lifting in a cloud from the hill-top. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... time one of the most famous of sea-robbers was harassing the Atlantic coast of North America, and from New England to the West Indies, he was known as the great pirate Blackbeard. This man, whose real name was Thatch, was a most terrible fellow in appearance as well as action. He wore a long, heavy, black beard, which it was his fancy to separate into tails, each one tied with a colored ribbon, and often tucked behind ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... are lovely lookin' from the outside with their thatched roofs, some on 'em with little bushes growin' out on the thatch and little bunches of grass growin' out under the eaves. The children of the poor are entirely naked and don't have a rag on 'em until they're ten or twelve. A lot of 'em come up to the jinrikishas and called out "oh-hi-o" to Josiah, and he shook ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... we shall find the hato or dwelling of a Llanero. The building, we shall find in every case, is a roughly-constructed hut, consisting of a floor raised a couple of feet above the spongy soil, and covered with a steep roof of palm-branches, with perhaps a thatch composed of the leaves of the same invaluable tree. A rough partition of mud-plastered twigs divides the Llanero's dwelling into unequal apartments; the lesser being reserved for the use of the females of the household, while the larger, furnished with half-a-dozen hides, the skin of a jaguar, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the birds in the upper boughs' of the sycamores caught the tokens of the coming day, and began to twitter in the dusk. Their notes fell on Ramona's sleeping ear, like the familiar sound of the linnets in the veranda-thatch at home, and waked her instantly. Sitting up bewildered, and looking about her, she exclaimed, "Oh, is it morning already, and so dark? The birds can see more sky than we! Sing, Alessandro," and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Desdemona came to a standstill beside the stem of a starveling yew-tree, and just below the crest of the Down. Her muzzle was thrust into an opening in the steep side of the Down, over which there hung a thatch of furze. But though her head entered the opening, her shoulders could not pass it and there was wrath and excitement in the belling note she ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... The people had more civilization, more regular industry, and more wealth. They were much more highly skilled in the arts of civilized life. They had cities and large towns; and dwelling-houses, built of timber and covered with thatch, like those common in England, were scattered over all the rural districts. Some of the cities now found in ruins were then inhabited. This peninsula had been the seat of an important feudal monarchy, which arose probably after the Toltecs ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... shod like horses; wheat was universally reaped with a sickle, and as universally threshed with a flail, the bent figure of the wheat-barn tasker being a familiar object in the "big old barn with its gloomy bays and the moss upon the thatch." An honest pride he took in his work and has found a fit memorial in the delightful Sketches of Rural Life by Mr. Francis Lucas, of Hitchin, who says of ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... and, horribile dictu! a row of modern brick-built cottages for background! Long, thatched and creeper-covered, built upon slabs of stone, with timber and plaster above, with tiny windows under the thatch, surrounded by a well-filled and carefully tended garden, the place makes a quick and enduring appeal to the imagination, even though the legends associated with it are, for the most part, legends and nothing more. It is easy to realise the supreme beauty ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... beneath its humble thatch Requir'd a master's care; The wicket, opening with a latch, Receiv'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... civilization he found on a higher level than in the other parts he penetrated. He described them as being little different in their manner of living from the Gauls, whose houses were built of planks and willow-branches, roofed with thatch, and were large and circular in ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... of Life is weather-stained with years — (O Child in Me, I wonder why you stay.) Its windows are bedimmed with rain of tears, The walls have lost their rose, its thatch is gray. One after one its guests depart, So dull a host is my old heart. (O Child in Me, I ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... she said. "What a fool I've been, Minnie, and how clever you are under that red thatch of yours! Dicky can not appear as long as I am here, and Pierce takes his place, and I help to keep the secret and to play the game! Well, I can appreciate a joke on myself as well as most people, but—Minnie, Minnie, ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... leaves are falling, and the days are closing in, And the breeze is growing chilly, and my hair is getting thin! I've a comfortable income—and my age is thirty-three; But my Thatch is thinning quickly—yes, as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... tendency to depart from the primitive simplicity so strongly enjoined by their founder; and, down to the present time, the homes of the Buddhist priesthood are modest and humble structures generally reared of mud and thatch, with no pretension to external beauty and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... by a sty, beneath a roof of thatch, Dwelt Obloquy, who in her early days Baskets of fish at Billingsgate did watch, Cod, whiting, oyster, mack'rel, sprat, or plaice: There learn'd she speech from tongues that never cease. Slander beside her, like a magpie, chatters, With Envy (spitting cat!), ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... in stuffing cushions. The shell, cut in half, supplies good cups, and is artistically carved by the Polynesians, Japanese, Hindoos, and other benighted heathen, who have not yet learnt the true methods of civilised machine-made shoddy manufacture. The leaves serve as excellent thatch; on the flat blades, prepared like papyrus, the most famous Buddhist manuscripts are written; the long mid-ribs or branches (strictly speaking, the leaf-stalks) answer admirably for rafters, posts, or fencing; the fibrous sheath at the base is a remarkable ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees—live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called—which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the school. It was a long, low, thatched building, of one story and a garret, with five windows to the lane, and some behind, for she could see light through. It had been a weaving-shop originally, full of hand-looms, when the trade in linen was more prosperous than it was now. From the thatch some of the night's frost was already dripping in slow clear drops. Past the door, which was in a line with the windows, went a gutter, the waters of which sank through a small grating a few steps further on. But there was no water ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone; it would ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, Take me far away to the hills that hide your home; Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door— But what if I heard my first love calling ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... they marched, when at length the village of Plymouth Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its manifold labors. Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke from the chimneys Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily eastward; Men came forth from the doors, and paused and talked of the weather, 500 Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing fair for the Mayflower; Talked of their Captain's departure, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... assume so much importance in the world's eye had about three thousand inhabitants within its lowly; thatch-roofed houses. It fronted directly upon the seacoast and stretched backward in a southerly direction, having the sandy downs on the right and left, and a swampy, spongy soil on the inner verge, where ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... them, and he knew, according to the rigorous selection he commanded, not having been clipped in the fall, that the shining mohair draping the sides of the least of them, as fine as any human new-born baby's hair and finer, as white as any human albino's thatch and whiter, was longer than the twelve-inch staple, and that the mohair of the best of them would dye any color into twenty-inch switches for women's heads and sell ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... been left behind in the nest spread himself out to his full size. He was now, you know, a householder; but his grandeur did not last long: in the night red fire broke through the windows, the flames seized on the roof, the dry thatch blazed up high, the whole house was burnt, and the young sparrow with it; but the young married couple escaped, fortunately, with life. When the sun rose again, and every thing looked so refreshed and ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... or round straight sticks, varying from half-an-inch to three inches in diameter, driven firmly into the ground, in an upright position, as close together as possible, and held in their places by pine-wood battens. The roof was composed of palm-leaves, or "fan-thatch." The floor was boarded. ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... met the adventurer. The farm-buildings were heaped graciously together on a little wave in the sea of ploughed fields. Except for two pale ricks in their midst, they exactly matched their surroundings, they were plastered dark red, and thatched with very old green and brown thatch. Beyond the buildings was a little wood, its interior lighted up with bluebells, and this wood merged into an orchard, where a white pony and an auburn pig strove apparently to eat the same blade of grass. The various sections of the ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... my boots trying to plug the holes in the sluiceway with some plank." He was looking down into her eyes now. Never had he seen her so pretty. The exercise had made roses of her cheeks, and the up-turned face framed by the thatch of a bonnet bound with the veil, reminded ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... probably no vegetable poison, make use of the venom of snakes on the tips of their arrows. The heads of those serpents, from which they extract this deadly substance, are exposed on the sticks, which are thrust into the inside of the thatch of their dwellings as a ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... built the church for this monastery of stone, and after the Roman fashion; for till that time stone buildings were very rare in Britain, even the church of Lindisfarne was of wood, and covered over with a thatch of straw and reeds, till bishop Eadbert procured both the roof and the walls to be covered with sheets of lead, as Bede mentions.[2] St. Bennet also brought over glaziers from France, for the art of making glass was then unknown in ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... opening of the cave with a thatch of willows and aspens, so that not even a bird or a rat could get in to the sacks of grain. And this work was in order with the precaution habitually observed by him. He might not be able to get out of Utah, and have to return to the valley. But ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... step sounded on the stairs. Past the maid's white-strapped shoulder I could see a familiar thatch of gray hair, and in a moment I was face to face with Doctor Stewart. He was very grave, and his customary geniality ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... insthructed be you, Larry Doyle. Some people think no one knows anythin but dhemselves. [To Broadbent, deferentially] Of course I know a gentleman like you would not compare me to the yeomanry. Me own granfather was flogged in the sthreets of Athenmullet be them when they put a gun in the thatch of his house an then went and found it there, bad cess ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid and swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay; and even the opulent, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... forefinger on the hanging waterproof sheet which served as a door, there was nothing pretentious about the erection—it could not be called a building—which was for the time being the residence of three drivers of the Royal Field Artillery. But the shelter, ingeniously constructed of hop-poles and straw thatch, was more or less rain-proof, and had the advantage of being so close to the horse-lines that half a dozen strides brought the drivers alongside their 'long-nosed chums.' It was early evening; but the horses having been watered and fed, the labours of their day were over, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... Man's Wife never left it until she was borne forth into the securer refuge of the narrow house that needed none of her care-taking. Upon the low green thatch lies heavily the shadow of a mighty monument that, to the satirist's eye, has a family likeness to the stone ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... great storm in the spring of '97, the year that we had two great storms. This was the first one, and I remember it well, because I found in the morning that it had lifted the thatch of my pigsty into the widow's garden as clean as a boy's kite. When I looked over the hedge, widow—Tom Lamport's widow that was—was prodding for her nasturtiums with a daisy grubber. After I had watched her for a little I went down to the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... England for dominion in America. This Acadian division possesses large tracts of fertile lands, and valuable mines of coal and other minerals. In the richest district of the peninsula of Nova Scotia were the thatch-roofed villages of those Acadian farmers whose sad story has been told in matchless verse by a New England poet, and whose language can still be heard throughout the land they loved, and to which some of them returned after years of exile. The ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... with a broad chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims—farther than most of us realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... you would at once get a ladder, and take off some of the thatch and make a hole, I could get into it, and you could then replace the thatch long before the soldiers are likely ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... in the Animallai Hills where thirty-five years ago there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass thatch and bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a club, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected far ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... passed the door where Bonaparte lay dreaming of Trana and her wealth, and he mounted the ladder steps. From those he clambered with some difficulty on to the roof of the house. It was of old rotten thatch with a ridge of white plaster, and it crumbled away under his feet at every step. He trod as heavily as he could. So much the ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... permitted to go to their huts during rain; and even had this privilege been granted, many of those miserable habitations were in so dilapidated a condition, that they would afford little or no protection. Negro huts are built of logs, covered with boards or thatch, having no flooring, and but one apartment, serving all the purposes of sleeping, cooking, &c. Some are furnished with a temporary loft. I have seen a whole family herded together in a loft ten feet by twelve. In cold weather, they gather around the fire, spread ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... little gennlemun'. So all we've got to do is to look for some young duke of polished manners and exterior, with a thatch of light hair." ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... an Ideal, And saw the sear future through spectacles green? Then find me some charm, while I look round and see all These fat friends of forty, shall keep me nineteen; Should we go on pining for chaplets of laurel Who've paid a perruquier for mending our thatch, Or, our feet swathed in baize, with our fate pick a quarrel, If, instead of cheap bay-leaves, she sent a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... diagrammatic sketch—Fig. 6—to illustrate the apse-like projection of the roof of an emone and the platform arrangements. I have in this sketch denuded the apse roof of its thatch, showing it in skeleton only; and I have shaded all timber work behind the platform, in order more clearly to define ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... captain, hardly articulating from under his thick, sandy-coloured moustache, which, growing downwards from his nose, looked like a heavy thatch put on to protect his mouth from the inclemency of the clouds above. 'A doosed ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... buildings are spread over a considerable extent of ground, they have a very imposing effect, unlike any inhabited by persons of the same rank in England. But close even to the palaces of the most wealthy are to be seen wretched mud huts; and rows of native hovels, constructed of mats, thatch, and bamboos, often rest against their outer walls, while there are avenues opening from the principal streets, intersected in all directions by native bazaars, filled with unsightly articles ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... effectual result. Konigseck sits in Chotusitz;—and yet withal the Russians are not out of it, will not be driven out of it, but cling obstinately; whereupon the Austrians set fire to the place; its dry thatch goes up in flame, and poor old Konigseck, quite lame of gout, narrowly escaped burning, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... other, and are tied to the bamboos which serve for rafters. There are various other and more durable kinds of covering used. The kulitkayu, before described, is sometimes employed for this purpose: the galumpei—this is a thatch of narrow split bamboos, six feet in length, placed in regular layers, each reaching within two feet of the extremity of that beneath it, by which a treble covering is formed: iju—this is a vegetable ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the view, where up the side Of that steep hill, the roofs of russet thatch Rise mix'd with trees, above whose swelling tops Ascends the tall church-tower, and loftier still The hill's extended ridge, crown'd with yellow corn— While slow beneath the bank, the silver stream Glides by the ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... sward, between a diamond-chequered artu trunk and the massive bole of a breadfruit, a house had come into being. It was not much larger than a big hen-house, but quite sufficient for the needs of two people in a climate of eternal summer. It was built of bamboos, and thatched with a double thatch of palmetto leaves, so neatly built, and so well thatched, that one might have fancied it the production of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Perhaps the burrowing rabbit gave them an idea for providing some dwelling-place. At any rate the earliest and simplest notion for constructing a habitation was that of digging holes in the ground and roofing them over with a light thatch. Hence we have the pit dwellings of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... war rests on the authority of Homer, and forms the subject of the noblest poem of antiquity. 12. Every stalk, bud, flower, and seed displays a figure, a proportion, a harmony, beyond the reach of art. 13. The natives of Ceylon build houses of the trunk, and thatch roofs with the leaves, of the cocoa-nut palm. 14. Richelieu exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, and banished the confessor, of the king. 15. James and John study and recite grammar ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and large of his age like his brother. His pale blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to his back, lest he might be ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in, "if you walk to Plymouth you must pass the house where I live—a low-roofed house about three miles this side of St. Germans village, with a thatch on it, and windows opening right on the road, and 'Minden ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... He had recognized her at once as the ideal person with whom to be wrecked on a desert island. A flirt, and engaged, too, was she? No matter. He wrecked himself with her, and they lived on mussels and edible roots and berries, and some canned stuff from the ship, and he built a hut of "native thatch," and found a deposit of rubies, gathering bushels of them, and he became her affianced the very day the smoke of the rescuing steamer blackened the horizon. And throughout an idyllic union they always thought rather regretfully of that island; ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... disturb me, and I'll finish them before I open the door, if you were to burn the house over my head, and myself in it. Up," said she to the Rapparee, "through the roof—get that ould table undher your feet—the thatch is thin—slip out and lie on the roof till they go, and then let them whistle jigs to the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a small garden behind it. The two that fronted the west were thatched with golden-coloured straw, and the glass in the little windows was almost as blue as the sky. The two that looked to the east had darker thatch and brown glass windows. The first were for Matty and Nelly, the others for ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... he continued, "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to decide what folk'll bear, and what they will not. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upwards and along the roof until they rested on the spot directly over his head, where they became fixed, and, at the same time, opened out to a glare, compared to which all his previous glaring was as nothing—for there, in the thatch, looking down upon him, was the angular head of a huge python. The snake was rolled up in a tight coil, and had evidently spent the night within a yard of the professor's head! Being unable to make out what sort of snake it was, and fearing that it ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... During her impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family, and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.[213] The Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women at such seasons in the outer verandah of the house for eight days, and will not let them enter the kitchen or the cowhouse; during this time the unclean woman may ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... palace. He who destroyed the property of another lost his right hand. But there was no public executioner; and there are many records of the flight of guilty persons, though an intention to make "the punishment fit the crime" is evident. No one was allowed to build a house close to the walls, and thatch was forbidden. A blasphemer was pilloried for a day (a list of illegal words and phrases is attached to this section). Workmen were forbidden to receive more than the wage prescribed, butchers had to accept the price fixed for meat by the justices, and the times and places for ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... hear people say 'home,' it's Whitecroft I think of, with its narrow windows and thatch roof and the farm-buildings about it, and the bits of trees all bent one way with ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... windows out of the walls, putting wood across to support the top. I should have explained that the turf used in building was the upper and coarser part of the peat, which was plentiful in the neighbourhood. The thatch-eaves of the cottage itself projected over the joining of the new roof, so as to protect it from the drip; and David soon put a thick thatch of new straw upon the little building. Second-hand windows were ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair, — thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn, — howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... as an Indian, for she scorned shade-hats, and oftenest had nothing on her head at all but her own thick thatch of riotous ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... of fire was particularly urgent in time of war; for, as Caesar informs us, these people were acquainted with a method of throwing red-hot clay bullets from slings, and burning javelins, on the thatch of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... by the end of the lane it stands, Where the sumac grows in a crimson thatch, Down where the sweet wild berry patch, Holds out a lure for eager hands. Down at the end of the lane, who knows The ghosts that sit at the well-scarred seats, When the moon is dark, and the gray sky meets With the dawn time light, ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... between the white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... attribute of the lady's appearance has still to be mentioned. She always wore a slouch hat, which from motives of propriety she called her bonnet, which gave her a singular appearance, as though it had been put on to thatch her entirely from the weather. It was made generally of black straw, and was round, equal at all points of the circle, and was fastened with broad brown ribbons. It was supposed in the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the colony. "Very well!" said my father to me, when he found he was refused that assistance which M. Schmaltz had ordered to the other unfortunate persons in the colony, "let the governor be happy if he can, I will not envy his felicity. Behold, my child, behold this roof of thatch which covers us; see these hurdles of reeds which moulder into dust, this bed of rashes, my body already impaired by years, and my children weeping around me for bread! You see a perfect picture of poverty! Nevertheless, there are yet beings upon the earth more unfortunate ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... some of us, at least, love the scanty relics of our forests, and are thankful if a bush is left of the old hedgerow. A crumbling bit of wall where the delicate ivy-leaved toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of grey thatch with patches of dark moss on its shoulder and a troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing to visit. And then the tiled roof of cottage and homestead, of the long cow-shed where generations of the milky mothers have stood patiently, of the broad-shouldered barns where the old-fashioned ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... dacent thing, any how; and I'm sorry that I can't be at home to thrate you with a bottle of the rale poteen. Never mind; tell Nancy it's in the thatch above the dure; and you're welcome to it all the same as if ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... in the pools of water on the roadside, not yet absorbed into the light limestone soil. The straggling one-sided street forming the entrance to Cloon looked more squalid than usual, the houses more wretched under their grass-grown thatch, the gleam and ring from the smithy the only touch of light and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the prematurely gray man in the howdah. The latter passed on to his estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their thatch huts. But still Little Shikara stood motionless—and it wasn't until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with startling suddenness he raced back through ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... spread it out; and therefore I have a right to look upon their foul frocks as scandalous and vile; at all events no miner should ever shake hands with 'em, or drink out of the same mug. I am determined too to die a man of honour, as I have grown old, without ever setting foot under their thatch roofs, or on their threshing-floors; I have preserved myself four and fifty years from this disgrace, and heaven will continue to guard me from it ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... down at the inn at Whithyford. Mrs Schank lived down a lane a little way off the road, and thither, my mother carrying the Little Lady on one arm and holding me by the other, and my father laden with bundles and bandboxes, we proceeded. The cottage was whitewashed, and covered with fresh, thick thatch. In front was the neatest of neat little gardens, surrounded by a well-clipped privet hedge, and the greenest of green gates. Indeed, neatness and order reigned everywhere outside as it did, as I was soon to find, in the interior. The Misses Schank had been expecting ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... clean freshness of a native house! It would not be fair to call it a hut, for that suggests squalor, or makeshift, whereas these houses are works of art. The roof rises inside like a great dome, the inner thatch being intricately woven in patterns, while the floor is made of clean pebbles, neatly laid and covered with fine mats. In the centre of the house the main pole stands like a tall mast, with several cross-bars where the furniture—rolls of mats and tapa, kava bowls and cups—is ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... it, John," said Standish briefly, and in effect the smaller package contained the same red and pungent powder encasing the bones of a little child, his head covered with a thinner thatch of the father's yellow curls, and the wrists, ankles, and neck surrounded with strings of fine white beads. Beside it lay a little bow and arrows ornamented with all the loving elaboration ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to be watched last night, for the grass was so dry and course that the stock would not look at it, but kept rambling about. The river was followed down about 13 miles. The whole country travelled to-day and yesterday shewed flood marks from 5 to 15 feet high. The rushes, nardoo, thatch, and water-grass, dried and parched by the hot winds, were matted together with mud and rubbish. At the camp the stream was 150 yards wide, the running water being 30 yards across. The banks were of clay and sandstone, from 20 to 30 ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... his grisly thatch. "Come to think of it, I never see 'im afore this. I'm standing back there, looking down at my old skiff and wondering about my job, when this fella comes up. 'This is for you, Charon,' he says, and held out your official incombusterible ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... at the same time, "Thus I seize this land; from this moment it is mine." As he arose, one of his officers ran to a neighboring hut which stood near by upon the shore, and breaking off a little of the thatch, carried it to William, and, putting it into his hand, said that he thus gave him seizin of his new possessions. This was a customary form, in those times, of putting a new owner into possession ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... party cycled to the little wattle-and-thatch Court House at Ikotobong, Miss Slessor being pushed by Dan up the hills. She took her seat at the table in the simplest possible attire. Before her was a tin of toffee, her only refreshment, with the exception of a cup of tea, during a long ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... "we are more prudent than the goddess, for we conceal the contents of our heads in the hard nut of the skull, and under a more or less abundant thatch of hair. Urania displays her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... match For Timour or for Zinghis in his trade. While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch Blazed, and the cannon's roar was scarce allayed, With bloody hands he wrote his first despatch; And here exactly follows what he said:— "Glory to God and to the Empress!" (Powers Eternal! such names mingled!) ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 'fake,' as anyone can try who will dip his own hair into the now fashionable 'anturic' baths. The outer coat should be distinctly long, but not long in the 'fancy' or show sense. Still, it should be long enough to hang as a thatch over the soft, woolly real coat of the animal and keep it dry so that a good shake or two will throw off most of the water; while the under coat should be so thick and naturally oily that the dog can swim through a fair-sized ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... in Sugbu, where the forces were gathered—who, as they were many, occupied all the houses, even the smallest ones—some soldiers were cleaning their weapons in one near the residence of the Recollect fathers. One fired his arquebus, which, unknown to him, was loaded. It caught in the thatch which formed the roof of that little house; and, as the sun was hot, and the wind the greater brisa, the house quickly caught fire. The father prior, Fray Pedro de San Nicolas, was very much annoyed; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... on those things, while resting under the modest little portal of the hotel, whose former magnificence, when a hermit cell, might still be discernible in a few remaining remnants of the rich Gothic lintel yet mingling with the matted straw and the clinging ivy of the thatch. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... presume it must be the same animal, and it is singular that the names should vary so little. I have never seen an instance of its poisonous powers, but I have seen a whole company of sepoys run out of their quarters because they have heard the animal make its usual cry in the thatch of the building; they say that it drops down upon people ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... one or two of clay, and one or two of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... sight their sister began to cry. Her friends asked what was the matter and she said a straw from the thatch had run into her eye, so they pulled down some of the thatch; she still went on crying and they again asked what was wrong; she said that she had knocked her foot against a stone in the ground; so they ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... time I might attain this joy—that this book might find shelter beneath roofs of thatch, and that the village girls, as they spin and turn the wheel, humming the while their much-loved verses, of the girl who so loved to make music that while fiddling she lost her geese, or of the orphan, who, fair ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Conditions, be whores still. And he whose pious breath seekes to conuert you, Be strong in Whore, allure him, burne him vp, Let your close fire predominate his smoke, And be no turne-coats: yet may your paines six months Be quite contrary, And Thatch Your poore thin Roofes with burthens of the dead, (Some that were hang'd) no matter: Weare them, betray with them; Whore still, Paint till a horse may myre vpon your face: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Europe, seemed able to apprehend almost everything except the possibility of existence in a country without bamboos! "When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that posts and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch, and the withes that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact, it might almost be said that among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a bamboo! Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... shelter; and he looks about him to see what material is ready to his hand. Scattered stones will serve for supports and low walls; there are fallen branches for the roof; twigs and leaves can be woven into a thatch. Already the general design has shaped itself in his mind. He sets to work, modifying the details of his plan to suit the resources of his material. At last, after hours of hard thought and eager toil, spurred on by his sense of his great need, the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... logs, the glassless windows were of deerskin parchment, the door-lock and the door-hinges were of wood, the latch string was of deerskin, the fireplace and the chimney were of clay, the roof thatch was of bark. The abode was clean, serviceable, and warm; and yet it was a house that could have been built thousands of years ago. But consider, for instance, Oo-koo-hoo's comfortable lodge; a similar dwelling, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... at his watch: Four minutes gone. "Jones," said he, "you patrol this path to the right so you can cover that gang there. There must be four or five lodges down that way. Cumnor, see that dugout with side-thatch and roofing of tule? You attend to that family. It's a big one—all brothers." Thus the sergeant disposed his men quietly and quick through the labyrinth till they became invisible to each other; and all the while flights of Indians passed, half seen, among the tangle, fleeting visions of ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... The former thatch of half-curly and indeterminately yellowish fuzz had changed to a rough tawny coat, wavy and unbelievably heavy, stippled at the ends with glossy black. There was a strange depth and repose and Soul in the dark eyes—yes, and ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... escape when the column is forming, are conveyed up to the clouds, and fall from them afterwards on land, not far distant from the sea." He had before related an instance of one that passed over the town of Hatfield, in Yorkshire, filling the air with the thatch it plucked off from the houses, and rolling strangely together several sheets of lead on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... passenger in the stage—a little boy with a soft thatch of straight, yellow hair that had been chopped short around the bowl of some domestic barber. He sat on the opposite seat and held a bundle in his arms, peering out over the top of it with ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... villa was a large tract of land, well wooded, which was beautifully laid out with garden plots, pebbly, shaded paths, vine-covered bowers and rustic seats. In one corner of the garden there stood an odd little thatch-covered arbor, nestling between high rocks in the shadow of the tall trees. A brook which fell in foaming whiteness flowed past this little nook, clear as crystal, and made the stillness fascinating by its intermittent murmuring. This spot the Duchess loved well, ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... most tremendous push, and the trees go cracking over. That is only because they are malice-minded, and are rotten at the heart; and the boughs break off, that is only because they have invited the fungus to grow on them; and the thatch on your papa's ricks is lifted up at the corner just as if the wind had chucked them under ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... indeed be guessed that it sought these avenues of least resistance, as well it might, since, unlike its grim stalker, it walked erect upon two feet—it walked upon two feet and was hairless except for a black thatch upon its head; its arms were well shaped and muscular; its hands powerful and slender with long tapering fingers and thumbs reaching almost to the first joint of the index fingers. Its legs too were shapely but its feet departed from the standards of all races of men, except ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... or decayed thatch, answers better for manure than that which is very rotten; but if the ground be fresh and light, they will want no manure, and the potatoes be of a better quality, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... done!—and then, faith, sure enough, As the pig was desaiced, 'twas high time to be off. So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch, Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch, Then tuk laave of each other's sweet lips in the dark, And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark; The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone! And poor I wid myself, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... matter of the boating mishap—he cursed himself now, as he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his dramatic itch—and now had paid for it with that idiotic story ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... point from shoulder to elbow and from wrist to elbow. Unless the anterior limb of the hairy human ancestor was held in the position of the climbing ape's, this arrangement would be disadvantageous, for the hair as a rain-shedding thatch would be effective only upon the upper arm, while the hairs upon the forearm would catch the rain. In a word, this vestigial coat indicates in the clearest possible manner that the ancestor of the human ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... The young leaves are coated with wax, called Carnaub wax, which is detached by shaking them, and then melted and run into cakes; it is harder than beeswax, and has been used for making candles. The leaves are used for thatch, and, when ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... as he shot him a hot glance from the melancholy eyes under his black thatch of brows, "behave yourself! ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... famished men. This meal conjured up visions of the "most unlovely of the functions." We fed on mien, that long, greasy, grimy, slippery, slimy string of boneless white—I see it now! And the half-done tin of sardines set before me, too, the broken stools in the thatch-worn shed, the dismantled hearth, the muddy earthen floor, the haggard, hungry ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... round. The sight which then met their eyes was startling enough to make them spring instantly to their feet. A snake fully seven feet long, and of the most deadly venomous kind (which had evidently just dropped out of the thatch of the hut), had flung its coils round the bare leg of one of the women, and, before help could be rendered, had struck its fangs deep into the flesh. The cruel heart-shaped head, with its wicked eyes glowing like a couple ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... short, rotund little man of forty-five, smooth-shaven, somewhat sandy in complexion, with twinkling eyes that were friendly, and a light thatch of pinkish hair which was noticeably thinning on the top of his head. There was a general air of cheerfulness and content about him and his mouth, that was inclined to twitch at the corners, seemed continually on the point of smiling. In truth, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though alien growth. There is a door and one window in front, besides another little window that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extending back at right angles from it, so as to inclose the farm-yard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the house: any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a long ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... heard, with as much impatience as he cared to show before guests whose rank was precious to the man who had still weakness enough to be ashamed that his father's brave and famous life had first been cradled under the thatch roof of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Manila resident does not pay more than fifty dollars in our money for his nipa house. The framework is of bamboo, bound together by rattan; the roof timbers are of bamboo, while the sides of the house and the thatch are made from the nipa tree. The sides look like mats. The windows are of translucent shell, while the door is of nipa or wood. These houses are usually about fifteen feet square, with one large room, and are raised about six feet from the ground. Under the house ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... The leaves make the thatch to cover the roofs of the houses, or shelter over their boats. Neatly fastened together with split rattans, they form the walls of the house. From the juice of the tree they make a fermented drink something like sweet beer, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the way we came, and then knew that we could in no way take the boat to Poole. The gale was raging at its highest, and thatch was flying from the exposed roofs. It would be dead against us; and the sea was white with foam, even in the haven. So we must go by road, and that was a long way. But we must get back to Odda, for he should be in Wareham ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... for admittance. He was a tall, powerful man, tawny- bearded and deep-chested, clad in a loose-fitting suit of tweed, cut for comfort rather than elegance. As he stood in the shimmering sunlight, I took in every feature of his face. The large, fleshy nose; the steady blue eyes, with their thick thatch of overhanging brows; the broad forehead, all knitted and lined with furrows, which were strangely at variance with his youthful bearing. In spite of his weather-stained felt hat, and the coloured handkerchief slung round his muscular brown neck, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... after a night of heavy rain, the large timbers, which were planted in the moist earth after the fashion of the country to support the framework, having become too rotten to support the weight of the saturated thatch. Without a day's loss of time the people began a new church. All were volunteers, some to remove from the wreck of the old building such timbers as might still be of service; some to quarry stone for a foundation, an extravagance never before dreamed of by ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... for me," pleaded Bakuma, "for more have I none, I, Bakuma, daughter of Bakala, a girl of the hut thatch." ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... a drizzle of misty rain up the road over mountainous moor, before I saw his cottage standing trim and white under its thatch in a screen of trees, and as I was nearing it, the boy with me showed me James down in a hollow, filling a barrow with turf. He stopped work as I came down, and called off his dog, looking at me curiously enough, for, indeed, strangers were a rarity in that spot, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... next consideration. Mr. Holt constituted himself architect, and commenced operations by lashing a pole across two trees at about his own height; the others cut sticks and shrubs for roofing. Three young saplings sloped back to the ground as principal rafters, and on these were laid a thatch of brushwood; the open ends of the hut were filled with the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... (Clay), Brown (Colfax), Butler, Canfield, Conklin, Dolan, Dunphy, Harrison, Heist, McShane, Norris, Patterson, Rogers, Sang, Schoenheit, Sowers, Thatch and Walker—18. Senator Butler voted with these for the purpose of being able to move a reconsideration. Nays—Bomgardner, Brown (Douglas), Conner, Dye, Filley and Reynolds—6. Absent—Barker, Brown (Lancaster), ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... privacy of her little chamber beneath the thatch, had reflected miserably on the spectacle of her husband far away in a prison cell, with his curls cropped off and his shapely limbs clad convict-fashion. When, therefore, Will, and not John Grimbal, as she expected, stood before her, his wife was perhaps more astonished than any ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... third stage of their architecture. The first, or nomad, is the hide or mat thrown over a bush or a few standing sticks; then comes the cylinder, the round hovel of the northern and southern regions, with the extinguisher or the oven-shaped thatch-roof; and, lastly, the square or oblong form which marks growing civilisation. The American missionaries laboured strenuously to build St. Mark's Hospital and Church, the latter a very creditable piece of lumber-work, with 500 seats in nave and aisles. But now everything hereabouts is ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... locked. They got through the hedge a little lower down and walked towards the house, which was screened on one side by an old wall shaggy with ivy and roofed with thatch. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... dawn above your thatch is red! Slip out of your bed, sweet Anne! I have stolen a fairy buck," he said, "The first since ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and plans for to-morrow's enterprise, the maiden on retiring to her chamber felt no inclination for repose, and her little couch was left vacant. It was a low room within the thatch, into which a narrow window, projecting from the roof, admitted the clear mellow radiance of the moon, now shining uninterruptedly from above. So lovely and inviting was the aspect of the night, that, after a long and anxious ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... does something else, still more clever! When a cottager builds his thatched roof, he has to plaster the ceiling to prevent any rain or sunshine from creeping in through the little spaces between the thatches. So also the thatch on the elephant's back has many gaps, through which the hot sun can still beat down on his skin. So what does he do to fill ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh |
