"Balls" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decorating the tree went on. Everybody talked about it, a great many laughed at it, and nearly everybody seemed inclined to give something to hang upon its branches. Kate brought a large box containing the decorations of her last Christmas tree, and she and Harry hung sparkling balls, and golden stars, and silver fishes, and red and blue paper angels, and candy swans, and sugar pears, and glittering things of all sorts, shapes, and sizes upon the boughs. Harry had a step-ladder, and Dick Ford ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... was at one time the cant phrase. Can we even now talk of Christian muscularity? For my part I think an Eton lad or a Camford man is a sight for gods and fishes. The glory of his neck-tie is terrible. He saith among the cricket balls, Ha, ha, and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thud of the oars and the shouting. I suppose the voice of the people is the voice of God; but let a thing once become fashionable and the devil steps in and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... No; and, if you ask me, I say they won't stand it, even from him. "No," says they, "fair's fair," they says. "All very well to treat us like volunteer scouts at a country game, or at the nets, returning the balls whilst you slog and show off. But when we want to put on the gloves and pads, and take a hand at the bat in a businesslike way, you boggle, and hint that it's degrading, ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... Stevens is going to make; and mamma was wondering if you knew it, and how you would like her; and papa said he thought Mr. Dinsmore wouldn't think much of her if he knew how she flirted and danced until he came, and now pretends not to approve of balls, ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the actual French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the "Cafe de Paris," and delirious Carnival balls: the animal goes through all such frantic pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous respect for English "gentlemen-sportsmen;" he imitates their clubs—their love of horse-flesh: he calls ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the insertion of the visiting cards of the diplomatic circle and of the most noble families; and the General's lady was proud of it. The diary kept growing through a long time, and amid many severe headaches, and through a long course of half-nights, that is to say, of court balls. Emily had now been to a court ball for the first time. Her mother had worn a bright red dress, with black lace, in the Spanish style; the daughter had been attired in white, fair and delicate; green silk ribbons fluttered like flag-leaves among her yellow locks, and on her head she wore a wreath ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... does discover—a globe-shaped object lying half-hid among the weeds, about the size and colour of a cricket ball. This to you, young reader; for Gaspar knows nothing of your national game. But he knows everything about balls of another kind—the bolas—that weapon, without which a South American gaucho would feel as a crusader of the olden ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the shattered remains of the gates and the earthworks behind them, doing no great damage beyond the killing of about a score of people by cannon shot and arquebuss balls. But they attempted no assault that day. At length the darkness fell and their fire ceased, but not so our labours. Most of the men must guard the gates and the weak spots in the walls, and therefore the building of the barricades was left chiefly to the women, working under ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... overlooked the market-place. Here at ten o'clock in the morning I posted myself; for that was the hour, as I had been careful to ascertain, when the prisoners were to start for Foggia. I opened the window about three inches and fixed it there; I took out my gun, put eight balls in it, and looked down upon the square. It was crowded with the country people in their bright-coloured costumes chaffering over their produce. I looked above them to the tall campanile of the church which filled one side of the square. I receded a step and adjusted my gun on ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... house. It struck her as curiously uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond in a shower on the top boughs of the woods. The click of billiard-balls came from the ingle-nook—Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English garden. She reached the verandah and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of voices from the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could ride south to Noordwyk; find a barge there going north. Hide in her cabin till she arrives, say, at Alkmaar. Meet Argyle somewhere near there. Then remain hidden till it is time to move. We can set all the balls moving, by sticking up a few bills in the towns." I did not know what he meant by this. Afterwards I learned that the conspirators took their instructions from advertisements for servants, or of things lost, which ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... festivity. The shutters were thrown open, and through the windows Barbara could see a beautiful Christmas tree in the centre of a spacious room,—a beautiful Christmas tree ablaze with red and green lights, and heavy with toys and stars and glass balls, and other beautiful things that children love. There was a merry throng around the tree, and the children were smiling and gleeful, and all in that house seemed content and happy. Barbara heard them singing, and their song was about the prince who ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... possessed every advantage of education, who had studied abroad and brought into Russia the choicest of French and German fashions. There were also many young army officers, always welcome guests at these affairs, in which young ladies were apt to predominate. It is not strange, therefore, that these balls should present the most fascinating aspects of Russian life, and form a charming contrast to the dark scenes of ignorance and misery which it has been ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... said a young giant beside me, rubbing his big hands enthusiastically, "it will be the greatest football match that ever was played;" but an old burgher, with his left hand in a sling, bound up in dirty-looking bandages, interposed: "No; the only game we like to play now is the one with cannon-balls." No; these dour, stolid men take their fighting sadly and sternly; there is none of the "frolic welcome" with which our Irish Tommies, for instance, enjoy their fighting or endure the waiting for it. When I ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... tops of the ramparts and in the towers were seventy-one pieces of artillery, including cannons and mortars, without counting culverins. The quarry of Montmaillard, three leagues from the town, produced stones which were made into cannon balls. At great expense there were brought into the city lead, powder, and sulphur which the women prepared for use in the cannons and culverins. Every day there were manufactured in thousands, arrows, darts, stacks of bolts,[494] armed with iron points and feathered with parchment, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... professional strong man, who kills himself by an over-strain; it is not a story at all, it is the record of an incident, and there is only the strong man in it and his friend the zany, who makes the jokes while the strong man juggles with bars and cannon-balls. It is all told in a breath, without a pause, as if some one who had just seen it poured it out in a flood of hot words. Such vehemence, such pity, such a sense of the cruelty of the spectacle of a man driven to death like a beast, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of bracket, made of little mud balls and straw stuck on a beam in a hayloft. Eggs white, with plenty ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... with the tears of the clouds; the camomile smiled with her white petals like a lady's teeth, and the narcissus looked at the rose with her negro's eyes: the citrons shone like cups and the limes like balls of gold, and the earth was carpeted with flowers of all colours; for the Spring was come and the place beamed with its brightness; whilst the birds sang and the stream rippled and the breeze blew softly, for the attemperance ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... acting in defiance of the laws and Government of both countries, opened a fire from several pieces of ordnance upon the Canadian shore, which in this part is thickly settled, the distance from the island being about 600 yards and within sight of the populous village of Chippewa. They put several balls (6-pound shot) through a house in which a party of militiamen were quartered and which is the dwelling house of Captain Usher, a respectable inhabitant. They killed a horse on which a man at the time was riding, but happily did ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... 'Member once when we was crossin' the line, about twelve o'clock at night, there was an old man with a long white beard that shone like silver, came and stood at the masthead, and he had a pitchfork in one hand, and a lantern in the other, and there was great balls of fire as big as my fist came out all round in the rigging. And I'll tell you if we didn't get a blow that ar night! I thought to my soul we should ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Prince Esterhazy's, and another this week at Prince Liechtenstein's, and that to-morrow I am to put on my cocked hat and laced coat to make a visit to her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Mother, and that to-night there is to be the first of the assembly balls, the Vienna Almack's, at which—I shall be allowed to ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... from the academy and is caught into the whirl of society, and her life becomes what is called one round of pleasure—one round certainly of parlor dances, social hops and grand balls with champaign dinners and early goings home (early in the morning, ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... this one, nor any of the others, ever attempted to charge. Having broken his legs with a rifle-ball, we fired into him at forty yards as rapidly as we could load and discharge the rifles. He simply shook his head at each shot, and received at least sixty Enfield balls before he fell. Our excellent sailor from the north of Ireland happened to fire the last, and, as soon as he saw the animal fall, he turned with an air of triumph to the Doctor and exclaimed, "It was my shot that ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... when her dear Serena was gone. She had no one amongst her immediate neighbours for whom she cared much. The general round of country dinner-parties she had always found very dull, and the annual hunt week and assize balls she had never liked; so she found herself again thrown quite upon her own resources. As long as Colonel Vaughan had been in the country, she had taken an interest in everything; when he left, her ordinary pursuits—her ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... fell dead at my feet, while my dog at the same time I heard barking furiously. Having dispatched this second intruder, I saw that my dog had the first one, entangled in the branches of a fallen tree. I searched for my balls, and was vexed to find that I had left them at home. In this predicament I cut with my knife, a knot from a beech limb, put it in my rifle, and took deadly aim at the enraged wolf. The wooden ball struck him between the eyes and ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... fashionable, and more exclusive than in these republican days, being, in a manner, the outposts of the English aristocracy, where all places of dignity or profit were secured for younger sons, and poor, but proud relatives. During the session of the Legislature, dinners and balls abounded, and there were occasional attempts at theatricals. The latter was an amusement for which Washington always had a relish, though he never had an opportunity of gratifying it effectually. Neither was he disinclined to mingle in the dance, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... noticed on an island in the Rhine, at the very extremity of the French Empire, the convent of Rolandswerth. He was told that the nuns who lived there had refused to leave it during the last war, that very often the cannon-balls of the contending armies had often fallen on the island without damaging the convent where those holy women were praying. The Emperor became interested in their fate, and made over to them the forty or fifty acres of which ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... would give that name. I do not think there is anything, either, which foreigners call societe intime in Philadelphia. During a certain part of the year certain wealthy individuals give a certain number of entertainments, evening parties, balls, etc. The summer months are passed by most of the well-to-do inhabitants somewhere out of the city, generally at large public-houses, at what are called fashionable watering-places. Everybody has a street acquaintance with everybody; but I know of no such thing as the easy, intimate society which ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... don't mean to, Iry," she crooned. Married couples like the Balls, where the man has been at home only for brief visits between voyages, if they really love each other, never grow weary of the little frills on connubial bliss usually worn shabby by other people before the honeymoon is past. "I know you don't mean to. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... of 1910-1911 Nelka spent again with her aunt Martha in Washington. Her aunt had a large house and was in the social whirl of the capital. Dinners, balls, the White House, the Embassies—but all this meant little to Nelka and she felt the futility of all that activity, its artificiality and uselessness. Irritated and longing for a change she once again returned to Russia, and once again went ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... while silver watches endeavored to excuse the clumsiness of their make by describing themselves as "strong workmen's." The side entrance, up a narrow alley, was surmounted by the usual three brass balls, and here Mr. Hyams' clients were wont to call. They entered as optimists, smiled confidently upon Mr. Hyams, argued, protested shrilly, and left the establishment pessimists of a most pronounced and ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... made by Mr. Eggleso, of Broadway, of mahogany; the pannels covered with rich crimson velvet, surrounded by a gold bordering; the rings of deep burnished gold; the pannel also crimson velvet, edged with gold; the inside lined with black velvet; the whole supported by four gilt balls. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... than the mass of the building. The guns have been removed from the casemates on the eastern face, and the lower tier of casemates has been filled up with earth to give extra strength, and prevent the balls from coming right through into the interior of the work, which happened at the last attack. There is consequently a deep hole in the parade inside Fort Sumter, from which the earth had been taken to fill up these ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... books, who seem alive, as I read in the Virginians' letters regarding them, whose voices I almost fancy I hear, as I read the yellow pages written scores of years since, blotted with the boyish tears of disappointed passion, dutifully despatched after famous balls and ceremonies of the grand Old World, scribbled by camp-fires, or out of prison; nay, there is one that has a bullet through it, and of which a greater portion of the text is blotted out with the blood ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his loins, turned him heels overhead, and brought him down in a sweep that would have battered the life out of any other man. Up came the civil guard, and the convict was brought into the lodge covered with dust, sweat and blood, his eyes flashing like balls of fire. They had the lad's body on a stretcher beside him, the lips white, and the cheeks a mask of blue. It was a tremendous spectacle, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... to speak of the gaiety of Salisbury; its golf and tennis and polo and dancing; and their visitor urged them to stay for a fancy-dress ball, when four hundred guests all in costume were expected. But neither of them were in the mood for balls, and the only attraction they cared about was an early-morning gallop with the hounds after jackal. Nothing could solace them for the careless, happy days they had left, and as soon as Mr. Pym had transacted his business, they persuaded him to take ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... how dey roll de great balls about,'" quoted Hildegarde. "If we were in the Catskills, we might look out for Hendrik Hudson and his men, after such a peal ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... conquered, pretended to lose his temper, cursed his own ill-luck, swore that the table had a cast, and that the balls did not run true, changed his mast, and with great warmth, challenged his enemy to double the sum. The gamester, who feigned reluctance, complied with his desire; and having got the two first hazards, offered to lay one hundred guineas to fifty on the game. The odds were ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... French governess, and also a woman servant whose sole business it was to attend on me. My play-room was crowded with toys, and my dress was the admiration of all my youthful visitors, to whom I gave balls and entertainments as often as I pleased. I looked down on all my young companions as my inferiors; but I chiefly assumed airs of superiority over Maria Hartley, whose father was a clerk in my father's counting-house, and therefore I concluded she would regard ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... him and his. A boarding-house, no matter how genteel or well-conducted a boarding-house it may be, could not longer be tolerated in that situation. The boarders irritated him by trespassing upon his premises, by knocking their tennis balls into his garden beds, by bathing and skylarking on the beach in plain sight from his verandas. And the house and barn interfered with his view. He wished to be perfectly reasonable in the matter; Mrs. Barnes, of course, understood that. He was willing to pay for the privilege of having ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... match-pedlars, with vendors of cake and tripe and coke; there were touts there too, altars to unimportant divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old clothes, in obscene pictures and unmentionable wares; at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber shops, where, through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where vagabond slaves and ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the ground, covered with blood. The minister gazed upon the dark countenance once so joyful, and he thought it looked as if the poor Arab had died in great agony. It was frightful to observe the number of his wounds. Three balls had been shot into his body by the gun which went off three times. Three great cuts had been made in his head; his neck was almost cut off from his head, and his hand from his arm! How suddenly was the proud Arab laid low in the dust! All his delights were perished forever. Suleiman had ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... he, gettin' out his glasses. "Oh, yes! The fellow has used an indelible pencil to put his initials on it. I often do that myself, so the caddies can't sell me my own balls. He's made 'em rather faint, but I can make out the letters. H. A. And to be sure, he's put ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... Angouleme, so closely connected through its paper-mills with the art of typography in Paris, the only machinery in use was the primitive wooden invention to which the language owes a figure of speech—"the press groans" was no mere rhetorical expression in those days. Leather ink-balls were still used in old-fashioned printing houses; the pressman dabbed the ink by hand on the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... function, husband and wife are not paired off together in their entertainment. He takes some other woman out to dinner, and she is escorted by some other man. Even at dances and balls it is not good form for them to dance together too frequently, except at public dances where they are two of a private party of four or six, in which case rotation of partners would bring them together more ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... Hall flew by on rapid wings in a round of gayety. The Hall was crowded with young folks, who were to remain until after the marriage. Dinner parties were followed by May-pole dances out on the green lawns, and by charades and balls in the evening. The old Hall had never echoed with such frolicsome mirth before. Rex plunged into the excitement with strange zest. No one guessed that beneath his winning, careless smile his ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... brought the conversation round to the masked balls of the Opera, remarking that Marie had never been to one, and proposing that she should ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... one side of a great valley the gun was being set up. Its muzzle pointed up the valley, toward the side of a mountain, into which the gigantic projectile could plow its way without doing any damage. Tom was going to fire two kinds of cannon balls—a solid one, and one ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... church afterwards called the Church of the Holy Cross. The date is given as 1596. There is also a story of the Swedish war of 1658, when a party of Swedish cavalry took a tailor prisoner, and set him at work on a table in a farm-house, while they fired at a mark on the door, the balls passing close to his head. It is said the door yet exists, with the bullet marks ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... the men, they were as jolly as the proverbial sandboys; and at night the walls echoed with song and chorus. Then games were contrived, some played by the light of the fires and others outside the walls. Bats, balls, and stumps were made for cricket; of course very roughly fashioned, but they afforded as much amusement as if they had come straight from one ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... that is, in Ethiopia, about 800 A.D., coffee was looked upon as a food. The whole ripe berries, beans and hulls, were crushed, and molded into food balls held in shape with fat. Later, the dried berries were so treated. So the primitive stone mortar and pestle were ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... make-up, vividly described by William James:[19] "The craving for drink in real dipsomaniacs, or for opium and chloral in those subjugated, is of a strength of which normal persons can have no conception. 'Were a keg of rum in one corner of the room, and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get that rum. If a bottle of brandy stood on one hand, and the pit of hell yawned on the other, and I were convinced I should be pushed in as surely as I took one glass, I could not refrain.' Such statements abound ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... were when I was young. There are plenty of pretty, lively girls (rather too lively, in my old-fashioned judgment), but not the real stately beauty that it was worth a twenty miles' drive there and back, just to see, at one of the old county balls.' ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... for success on their numbers, the Persians did not wholly despise the use of contrivance and stratagem. At Arbela, Darius Codomannus had spiked balls strewn over the ground where he expected the Greek cavalry to make its attacks. [PLATE XXX., Fig. 5]; and, at Sardis, Cyrus obtained his victory over the Lydian horse by frightening them with the grotesque and unfamiliar camel. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... then the English fought a retreating fight, but in a fine and gallant way, and we drove them to their fortress foot by foot, they facing us all the time, and their reserves on the walls raining showers of arrows, cross-bow bolts, and stone cannon-balls ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... over which Her Most Gracious Majesty, whom may Heaven preserve, holds sway. But SONOGUN had never thought of Heaven. To him, young, proud, gloomy, and moody, Heaven had seemed only—(Several chapters of theological disquisition omitted.—ED.) The click of the billiard-balls maddened him, the sight of a cue made him rave like a maniac. One evening he was walking homeward to Drury Lane. He had given his coat to a hot-potato-man, deeming it, in his impulsive way, a bitter satire on the world's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... Dick, half indolently. 'I used to spoon a pretty girl up in Dublin, ride with her when I could, and dance with her at all the balls, and a certain chum of mine—a Joe Atlee—of whom you may have heard—under-took, simply by a series of artful rumours as to my future prospects—now extolling me as a man of fortune and a fine estate, to-morrow exhibiting me as a mere pretender with ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... place the next morning, on the lawn below the terrace, where he found her, in the early sunshine, knocking about golf balls with her brother. Almost at once, and with infinite relief, he saw that the resemblance of which Madame de Chantelle boasted was mainly external. Even that discovery was slightly distasteful, though Darrow was forced to own that ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... our acquaintance, only there was not so much method in her rushing. The curtains were raised as high as the tapes would take them, and the slant rays of the yellow sun were streaming boldly in, doing their bravest to melt into oil the balls of butter on the table, for poor, tired, bewildered Sadie had forgotten to let down the shades, and forgotten the ice for the butter, and had laid the table cloth crookedly, and had no time to straighten it. This had been one of her trying days. The last fierce look of summer ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... his wicker-encased right hand as a racquet. The court is nearly three times the length of a racquet-court, and is always open to the air. There is a back wall and a wall on the left-hand side; the other two sides are open and filled with spectators. The players are marvellously adroit, and get up balls which seem quite impossible to return; they are all professionals, for the game is so difficult that it must be learnt in early boyhood. It is scored like racquets up to fifteen points, one side invariably wearing blue "berets" and sashes, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... heat of the fire. Heavens, how hungry it made me! I take up my old position, so as not to be in anyone's way, and watch Lindstrom. He's the man — he produces hot cakes with astonishing dexterity; it almost reminds one of a juggler throwing up balls, so rapid and regular is the process. The way he manipulates the cake-slice shows a fabulous proficiency. With the skimmer in one hand he dumps fresh dough into the pan, and with the cake-slice in the other he removes those that are done, all at the same ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... hatched the girls were greatly disappointed at the appearance of little grayish fluffy balls, instead of the lovely red things they had expected, and were by no means consoled when their father told them that it would be three or four years before they gained their beautiful color. However, they became ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... resolves matter, and which are so small that they are no longer divisible, as if they were solid bodies with weight and form, with centre and circumference, colliding with one another like billiard-balls, or like cosmic bodies in the depths of space, striking one another squarely, and, for aught I know, each going through another, or else grazing one another and glancing off. To particles of matter ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... jasper so closely built that it seemed all one stone. The wall rose 19 feet above the surface of the water, and was terrassed on the inside. On the top of the wall was a massy twist, on which was a brass rail, having little columns at regular distances, on which were the statues of women having balls in their hands, all likewise of brass. At some distance from these were figures of iron, of monstrous shapes, that seemed to give each other their hands; and further on were several curious arches of stones of various colours. On ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... neck she had a string of beads, of red amber, as large as seagulls' eggs. She walked with a staff, knotted with amber; on her head was a hood of black lambskin, lined with white. There was a girdle round her loins made of dried puff-balls strung together, and a fishskin pouch hung from that, in which were the charms she used in her prophesying. Her shoes were calfskin with the hair outside, and were bound to her ankles with broad leather thongs. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... Java, seemed to merit the gloomy name of Death, by her grim, ferocious aspect. Completely black, she lay crouching and rolled up in the bottom of her cage, and her dark hues mingling with the obscurity which surrounded her, nothing was distinctly visible but fixed and glaring eyes—yellow balls of phosphoric light, which only kindled, as it were, in the night-time; for it is the nature of all the animals of the feline species to enjoy entire clearness of vision ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Dutch column was formed, and came on at a resolute and laborious trot towards the shattered gate of the fort. Lyons had trained two 24-pounders, loaded to the muzzle with musket balls, on the gate, left invitingly open. He himself stood, with lighted match, by one gun; his second in command, with another lighted match, by the other. They waited coolly by the guns till the Dutch, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... evil-boding inaction I oppose my living, daring strength; to your gloom my clear, resonant laugh! Ho, repel the blows! You have a stone brow, devoid of reason. I will throw the glowing balls of my sparkling thought at it. You have a stone heart, devoid of pity. Take care, I will pour into it the poison of my rebellious outcries. The dark cloud of your grim wrath overshadows the sun. We will light the darkness with our swords. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... minutes to think it over, Governor," said the sparkling-eyed, dark-faced, swell cracksman. "I know Jersey like a book. I worked the 'summer racket' there once. The excursion boats, the farmers' races, the Casino balls, the Military games, and the whole lay. I think I can cook up a plan. You don't show up just yet. I am to do ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... see, three thousand moving, Up the brow of BUNKERS-HILL, Many a gallant vet'ran shoving, Cowards on against their will. The curling volumes all behind them, Dusky clouds of smoke arise, Our cannon-balls, brave boys shall find them, At each shot a hero dies. Once more WARREN midst this terror, "Charge, brave soldiers, charge again, Many an expert vet'ran warrior Of the enemy is slain. Level well your charged pieces, In direction to the town; They shake, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... balls of glass the days were of many colors and of many kinds. Some were dark and some were light; some were ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... sickness and for exorcising evil spirits, and love-philtres. They do cupping and tattooing and also make reed mats, cane baskets, palm-leaf mats and fans, ropes from grass- and tree-fibre, brushes for the cotton-loom, string-net purses and balls, and so on; and the women commonly dance and act as prostitutes. There is good reason for thinking that the Kanjars are the parents of the European gipsies, while the Thugs who formerly infested the high-roads of India, murdering solitary travellers and small parties by strangulation, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... with which they dug edible roots, and they could also use them for scratching hand and foot holes in the face of a steep cliff. Others had hoofs, and these carried the heaviest burdens; and some had balls of magic spider web, which they could use on occasion for ropes, and they could also spread the web and use it as a mantle, rendering the wearer invisible ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... filled with round stones, or with musket balls, or with large shot, and with water to the surface, and then an opening be made at the bottom of the cask, all the water, except a thin film adhering to the surface of the vessel and its contents, will ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... up one of Charley's favorite cakes in her big mixing-bowl. It was a crisp autumn evening, just cold enough to make one glad to quit playing tag in the yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had begun to roll popcorn balls with syrup when we heard a knock at the back door, and Tony dropped her spoon and went to open it. A plump, fair-skinned girl was standing in the doorway. She looked demure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her blue cashmere dress and little ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... mightiness. He can make caroj and he can make the monster that burns and moves them, I know because I watched him do it. He also made balls of fire that burned the D'zertanoj and many other things. I brought him to be your slave so that he could make caroj for the Perssonoj. Here are the pieces of the caroj we traveled in, after it was consumed by its own fire." Snarbi shook the tools and burnt fragments out onto the floor ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... of a Frenchman. The New Englanders were brave enough, but they had little discipline, and, worse still, they had no leader worthy of the name. They spent shot and shell uselessly battering the solid rock upon which Quebec is built. Their aim was bad, and their guns so small that even when the balls hit the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... of Bull Run, and halting there were shown into a stone structure which had been the target for many cannon balls from both sides during the battle. Here was given about midnight a meal, the first for 24 hours, which we managed to slightly cook by making fires upon the floor with laths wrenched from the ceiling. Somewhat refreshed we took passage in open ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... regarded as inexcusable frivolity. Hon. A.G. Riddle, who was present on the occasion referred to, states positively that there was no dancing; the party was a quiet one, intended only to relieve the rather dull and formal receptions. But the President was pained by the rumors that "fashionable balls" were permitted at the White House in war-time; and the party was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to do anything but look after her household duties, after the old custom of the good housewives, from which the ladies of France were led away when Queen Catherine and the Italians came with their balls and merry-makings. To these practices Francis the First and his successors, whose easy ways did as much harm to the State of France as the goings on of the Protestants lent their aid. This, however, has nothing ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... their flails again. In scatter'd groups the little idle boys With purple fingers, moulding in the snow Their icy ammunition, pant for war; And, drawing up in opposite array, Send forth a mighty fliower of well aim'd balls, Whilst little hero's try their growing flrength, And burn to beat the en'my off the field. Or on the well worn ice in eager throngs, Aiming their race, shoot rapidly along, Trip up each other's heels, and on the surface With knotted shoes, draw ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... displayed his wares. His stock was never too large for his personal transportation, but its variety was almost infinite, bull's-eyes and liquorice, maple sugar and other "sweeties," were staples. Then, too, there were balls of gum, beautifully clear, which in its raw state Foxy gathered from the ends of the pine logs at the sawmill, and which, by a process of boiling and clarifying known only to himself, he brought to ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... unmistakably, for they rattled like glass balls when he picked up several onions and examined ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... diminished in some slight degree since the time of Champlain by the action of the waves, but probably very little. On the southern extremity of the island where De Monts placed his cannon, about twenty-five years ago a workman in excavating threw out five small cannon-balls, one of which was obtained by Peter E. Vose, Esq., of Dennysville, Me., who then resided near the island, and was conversant with all the circumstances of the discovery. They were about a foot and a half below the surface, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... touchingly and heartbreakingly, that the listeners were very soon in agonies before him. The eyes of the Dwarf rolled like little fire-balls in their cells—his cheeks grew paler and paler, and cold sweat poured down in a stream from his forehead. Nevertheless, he fiddled away incessantly—now merrily, now mournfully, now slowly, now quicker than ever. Every dancer had reason that night to thank his stars, if he left off without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... of the metropolis. Should he put down Ralph's name at the famous Carlton, of which he had lately become a member? Ralph already belonged to an old-fashioned club, of which his father had been long a member, and declined the new honour. As for balls, evening crushes, and large dinner-parties, our Norfolk Ralph thought himself to be unsuited for them just at present, because of his father's death. It was not for the nephew of the dead man to tell the son that eight months of mourning for a father was more than the world ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... cribbed in with stays, the feet with tight shoes,—hence causing deformity, and preventing a free circulation of blood. The mind, that ought to be calm and unruffled, is kept in a constant state of excitement by balls, and concerts, and plays. Mind and body sympathise with each other, and disease is the consequence. Night is turned into day, and a delicate girl leaves the heated ball room, decked out in her airy finery, to breathe the damp and cold air of night. She goes to bed, but, for the first ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... people among whom she associated, was graphic, piquant, and most entertaining. Like many a merry, warm-hearted girl, she cherished a half-contemptuous opinion of much that was fashionable and gay; and to hear her speak of the crowded assemblies, the dreary dinner parties, the exciting balls, and the endless morning calls, was to give Grace both surprise ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... long line of observation balloons made a crescent round Albert. One could count over twenty, and not one German. The air was thick with our aeroplanes. The German lines looked like long ribbons of white fur. The air was full of shrapnel balls, especially over the woods, and the villages were burning. The heavy howitzers were causing dreadful eruptions on the German strong points. La Boisselle, believed impregnable, was a concentrated hell. The Germans were putting shrapnel into the woods that lie ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... mind a clammy memory of the sort of housing he had known in those evil days, and he shuddered inwardly, smelling again the effluvia of dank oilcloth and musty carpets, of fish-balls and fried ham, of old-style plumbing and of nine-dollar-a-week humanity in the unwashen raw—the odour of misery that permeated the lodgings to which his lack of means had introduced him. He could see again, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... you dear, unsophisticated man. I have heard you, with the sound of your hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-month salary ringing in your ears, gurgle and splash about a girl who wears "simple white muslins" to balls; and I have heard you set down, as extravagant, and too rich for your purse, the girl who wears silk. There is no more extravagant or troublesome gown in the world than what you call a "simple white muslin." In ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... situation, they must inevitably perish, they determined to search for the hut, and to winter there, if so fortunate as to find it. Himkof, with three others, were selected to make the search. They were provided with a musket, twelve charges of powder, a dozen balls, an axe, a small kettle, a knife, a tinder-box and tinder, a wooden pipe for each, some tobacco, and a bag with twenty pounds of flour. This was as much as they could carry with safety, as they had to make their way for two miles over loose ridges of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... natural concavity of the foot and to give it the form which will have no suction on wet ground, will not pick up mud, or retain snow-balls. ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... running full night time. These girls also encountered a special danger in the early morning hours as they returned from work, debilitated and exhausted, and only too easily convinced that a drink and a little dancing at the end of the balls in the saloon dance halls, was what they needed to brace them. One of the girls whom we then knew, whose name, Chloe, seemed to fit her delicate charm, craving a drink to dispel her lassitude before her tired feet should take the long walk home, had thus been decoyed into a saloon, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... fellow schemer in many luncheon and dinner parties, my authority upon vintages, my gastronomic good angel, was one of a band of conspirators, who played with life and death as though they had been the balls of a juggler? Was I to believe that there existed even in this very hotel, which for years had been my home, the seeds of these real tragical happenings which sometimes, though only half disclosed, blaze out upon the world as a revelation of the great underground world of crime? ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shop was very small and did not contain much stock. The new shelves showed a row of biscuit-tins, but little else, and from the ceiling hung balls of string. On the counter lay an inviting round of boiled beef. Odours of provisions and of fresh paint were strong in the air. Every thing gleamed from resent scrubbing and polishing; the floor only emphasised its purity by a little track where a child's shoes had brought ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... like the Ravenswing's, "as b-b-big as billiard balls" and of some brightness, are allowed her, but ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thou art dead else.—Antonio! The man I would have sav'd 'bove mine own life! We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and banded Which way please them.—O good Antonio, I 'll whisper one thing in thy dying ear Shall make thy heart break quickly! Thy fair duchess And ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... the segments of the cirri, but only one had the large plate on the prosoma. I may here mention that in one specimen, in which the calcified plates were most developed, and which was nearly ready to moult, there were, within the filamentary appendages on the prosoma, small irregular balls of calcareous matter, appearing to me as if calcareous matter had been morbidly excreted, and not like a provision ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... their brother too. You have only to look into the local papers to see what a broad stream of good works is perpetually flowing from that family. What with ecclesiastical decorations, Sunday-school and day-school fetes, dancing at charity balls, managing coal and clothing clubs, and a hundred other things in which the world and the Church get their alternate share pretty evenly, that family is a perfect pattern of good deeds for everybody to look at,—like the ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... and affected Courage, Speak in their hideous shouts with voice scarce human; Like that which issues from his hollow throat Who sleeping bellows in a frightful dream. More near their glaring eye-balls flashing meet; Terror and Rage distorting every face, Inflame each-other into trembling fury. Soft-ey'd Humanity, oh! veil thy sight! Tis not in Rationality to view (Even in thought) the dire ensuing scene; For Madness, ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... together with 1 cupful of small carrots or larger carrots cut into strips. Fry a finely chopped onion with several strips of bacon, and cut these more finely while frying until the whole is well browned. Then add them to the meat in the casserole dish. Also, add 1 cupful of potato balls or 1 cupful of diced potatoes. Season well with salt and pepper, add 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, and over the whole pour sufficient hot water to cover. Cover the casserole dish, place it in a moderate oven, and cook slowly until the chicken is ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... at four balls already; I won't be known by my colors, like a bird. I have made up my mind to wear the jaune, and I will, in spite of them all; that is, if I can find anybody who cares enough for me to try it on, and tell ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... or the Caledonia Springs; while the winter, with its snow and ice and long endurance, brings round a continuous carnival of pleasant racket, and is really the season of society amongst all ranks of the people. I heard magnificent accounts of the balls, parties, sleighings, and country frolics, which take place; also of the walking expeditions far out into the wilds, with snow shoes, tents to sleep in, and Indian attendants; and of the wild sport in hunting the moose-deer, and other tenants of the wood—during ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... first mentioned bay a river which we had passed, which has shoals and is very long. [150] We found in this place a great many vines, the green grapes on which were a little larger than peas, also many nut-trees, the nuts on which were no larger than musket-balls. The savages told us that all those inhabiting this country cultivated the land and sowed seeds like the others, whom we had before seen. The latitude of this place is 43 deg. and some minutes. [151] ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... while the religious observation of the sabbath is not regarded, the superstitious observation of holy-days, even in Scotland, is so much authorized, that on some of them the most considerable courts of justice are discharged to sit. Stage-plays, masquerades, balls, assemblies, and promiscuous dancings, the very nurseries of impiety and wickedness, are not only tolerated, but even countenanced by law. And as these, with other evils, are permitted by the civil powers; so this church seems to have lost all zeal against sin. ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... is a society leader, you know. She goes calling, and has bridge parties every week. Then she has her teas and dinners, and the balls, or theater parties, in season. Other times she has her clubs and Welfare Work—she is President of a Charity Work, you see, and has to address her members every once in a while," said Eleanor, warming up to her description as she visualized her ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the second is their merciless and metallic snobbery. They have made a god of caste, and in a country where, of all other cults, that of caste is the most preposterous. The men (the real grown-up men, who may hate the big balls, but are nevertheless a great deal in the movement as regards other gay pastimes) watch them with quiet approbation. Many a New York husband is quite willing that his wife shall cut her own grandmother ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted himself on a starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardour and perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely any parallel in history. In comparison with his great object he held the lives ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... across the free Campagna was discernible. With that sight I comprehended Caterina's intention and at the same instant the boy-girl Giovanni let fall the Borgia emblem, which was instantly trampled in the mire by the mob, and snatching the banner bearing the Medici balls from his sister's hand he waved it triumphantly in its proper position, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of the darkness and the drifts of snow. They started after midnight and did not arrive at the prince's hunting house, situated near the woods, beyond Przasnysz, until daybreak. The wooden mansion was large and the panes of the windows were made of glass balls. In front of the house were the well-sweeps and two barns for horses, and round the mansion were many tents made of skins and booths hastily built of the branches of pine trees. The fires shone brightly ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... boiled yams, which are pounded in a mortar until they obtain a tenacity that will admit of being drawn out like birdlime. While the Duke is at dinner, or breakfast, he usually has some foofoo before him. This he rolls in his hands into small balls, of about two inches in diameter, before he partakes of it: it is, however, but justice to remark, that his Majesty always washes his hands both before ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... promised to do so. For instance, she had started a grove of paper-shelled pecans, which was soon due to bear; the ranch house and its clump of palms was all but hidden by a forest of strange trees, which were reported to ripen everything from moth-balls to bicycle tires. Blaze Jones was perhaps responsible for this report, for Alaire had shown him several thousand eucalyptus saplings ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... flowers in the world. Or, no. I've got it." He was already out of the house, hastening toward the subway. "I'll send her one of these lingerie tea-baskets with all kinds of baby pots of preserves and tea-balls and stuff.... Wonder what Dunleavy sent her?... Rats! I don't care. Jiminy! I'm happy! Me to Palm Beach ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... in comparison with what had been in the past. They no longer poured cold water on the heads of lunatics nor put strait-waistcoats upon them; they treated them with humanity, and even, so it was stated in the papers, got up balls and entertainments for them. Andrey Yefimitch knew that with modern tastes and views such an abomination as Ward No. 6 was possible only a hundred and fifty miles from a railway in a little town where the mayor and all the ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... laboring under an Indian sun, and cutting down every personal expense to the last shilling, that he might send a liberal allowance to his wife in England; while she meanwhile was recklessly spending twice what was thus sent her; running up overwhelming accounts, dashing about to public balls, paying for a bouquet what cost the poor fellow far away much thought to save, giving costly entertainments at home, filling her house with idle and empty-headed scapegraces, carrying on scandalous flirtations; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... solved the problem. There were a dozen balls of stout seal twine lying in the locker. The old man, unable longer to haul wood or drive dogs himself, spent much of his time knitting up gear for the boys. He put on Sally his own cap, coat, and mits, tied the twine round his wrist, and then let him ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell |
