"Tortoiseshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any shapes of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble or tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells, etc., as tenderly as you can, in the darknesses that correspond to their colors; and when you find you can do this successfully, it ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the City. I learnt afterwards that Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... a sister, 5s. There was likewise given a little box, containing the following articles: a lady's bag, a pair of gloves, a silver fruit knife, a gold seal, a needle book with two farthings, a purse containing two-halfpence, 41/2 francs, and a copper coin; a little tortoiseshell box containing two old sixpences, two fourpenny pieces, a shilling, a sixpence, and a pebble; a silver vinaigrette, a seal, two patterns for worsted work, a microscope, and 6 embossed cards. This evening I received two silver ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... which is opposite to Yaman, and then along the coast of Ethiopia, from whence we have the leopard skins of Barbary[18], which are the best of all, and the most skilfully dressed; and lastly, along the coast of Zeilah, whence come excellent amber and tortoiseshell. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... made by that wonderful race of boatbuilders, the Ke islanders, who annually turn out some hundreds of boats, large and small, which can hardly be surpassed for beauty of form and goodness of workmanship, They trade chiefly in tripang, the medicinal mussoi bark, wild nutmegs, and tortoiseshell, which they sell to the Bugis traders at Ceram-laut or Aru, few of them caring to take their products to any other market. In other respects they are a lazy race, living very poorly, and much given ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... spiritual Emperor brought to them by a steam engine on an iron road. The men had all had their heads fresh shaven, and their funny little pigtails rearranged for the occasion. The women's hair was elaborately and stiffly done up with light tortoiseshell combs and a large pin, and decorated with artificial flowers. Some of the children were gaily dressed in red and gold under garments, the prevailing colour of the costumes being dark blue, turned up with red. They also wore ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up in the dressing-room of the Regent's daughter at the risk of his life. Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun, to keep up his mistress's courage while she was lying in of her child. There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt's little finger than in your whole race of higglers that ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... poverty-stricken population, a dirty lane, a filthy court, a rickety stair, and a dark passage. Possibly the cause might have been found in a large and much-worn family Bible, which lay on a small table in company with a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles, at ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... authors. In some respects the gulf fixed between virtue and vice in Japan is even greater than in England. The Eastern courtesan is confined to a certain quarter of the town, and distinguished by a peculiarly gaudy costume, and by a head-dress which consists of a forest of light tortoiseshell hair-pins, stuck round her head like a saint's glory—a glory of shame which a modest woman would sooner die than wear. Vice jostling virtue in the public places; virtue imitating the fashions set by vice, and buying trinkets or furniture at the sale of vice's effects—these are social ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the bourgeoise. There were carefully-hoarded lengths of rich material in the cupboards, lace and ribbons and shawls in different chests of drawers; upon Madam's dressing-table was a manicure set and a set of tortoiseshell-backed brushes; in the drawers of the same table were perfumes in great variety. Far below stairs, Sally found the wine cellar, and although it was small in size it contained more kinds of wine than she had been able to imagine hitherto, and filled ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... beyond the process of onlaying is INLAY, where one material is not laid on to the other, but into it, both being perhaps backed by a common material. The process is, in fact, precisely analogous to that inlay of brass and tortoiseshell which goes by the name of its inventor, Boule. The work is difficult, but thorough. It does not recommend itself to those who want to get effect cheaply. The process is suited only to close-textured stuffs, such as cloth, which do ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... youngest Dona Anunciacion. Three or four generations had passed through that little drawing-room of the Calle del Carpo, so modest and neat, with its polished wood floors, straw-bottomed chairs, red damask sofa, mahogany sideboard with branch candlesticks, its tortoiseshell framed mirror, and several little pictures in pastels representing the story of Romeo and Juliet. The reception of the de Meres was the oldest institution of Lancia, and, contrary to the usual course of things, these old ladies who had not been able to marry themselves, had a perfect ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... picture; she suggested nothing artistic and everything domestic. From a wistful Burne-Jones type with large eyes and a drooping mouth she had relapsed to her plebeian origins and now, fat, kind, cheerful, she was nothing but wife and mother, with a figure like a sack and cheap tortoiseshell combs stuck, apparently at random, in the ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... tied in a leathern cue more greasy still, is a tobacconist, a relation of Mrs. Bertram's mother, who, having a good stock in trade when the colonial war broke out, trebled the price of his commodity to all the world, Mrs. Bertram alone excepted, whose tortoiseshell snuff-box was weekly filled with the best rappee at the old prices, because the maid brought it to the shop with Mrs. Bertram's respects to her cousin Mr. Quid. That young fellow, who has not had the decency to put off his boots and buckskins, might ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Veragua and the country about it, when they talk to one another are constantly turning their backs and always chewing an herb, which we believed to be the reson that their teeth were rotten and decayed. Their food is mostly fish, which they take with nets, and with hooks made of tortoiseshell, which they cut with a thread as if they were sawing, in the same manner as is done in the islands. They have another way of catching some very small fishes, which are called Titi in Hispaniola. At certain times these are driven towards the shore by the rains, and are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... past days had been so hectic that we had no wish to recall it. Blenkiron's face wore an air of satisfaction, and as he looked out at the sunny spring landscape he hummed his only tune. Even Wake had lost his restlessness. He had on a pair of big tortoiseshell reading glasses, and when he looked up from his newspaper and caught my eye he smiled. Mary slept like a child, delicately flushed, her breath scarcely stirring the collar of the greatcoat which was folded across ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... who could be near-sighted on occasion, put up her tortoiseshell-mounted eyeglass and looked at him aggressively; but as he returned her gaze with steadiness, she ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... to quality, from 5 to 200 pounds a ton. This establishment had been put up by the crew of a small vessel from Sydney, and several such have at various times made voyages along this coast and in Torres Strait, collecting trepang and tortoiseshell, the latter procured from the natives ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... his grandmother. She loved him very much, in spite of his inquiring mind, and hardly scolded him at all when he frizzled up her tortoiseshell comb in his anxiety to find out whether it was made of real tortoiseshell or of something that would burn. Edmund went to school, of course, now and then, and sometimes he could not prevent himself from learning something, but he never did ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... (Vol. v., p. 465.; Vol. vii., p. 271.).—I have certainly heard of tortoiseshell tom-cats; but never having seen one, I cannot affirm that any such exist. The fact of their rarity is undoubted; but I should like to be informed by W. R., or any other person who has paid particular attention to the natural history of this useful and much calumniated ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various |
