"Horsehair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bade them bring his arms, And clad himself in steel; the arms he chose Were plain, and on his shield was no device, Only his helm was rich, inlaid with gold, And, from the fluted spine atop, a plume Of horsehair waved, a scarlet horsehair plume. So arm'd, he issued forth; and Ruksh, his horse, Follow'd him like a faithful hound at heel— Ruksh, whose renown was noised through all the earth, The horse, whom Rustum on a foray once Did in Bokhara by the river find A colt beneath its dam, and drove him ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the battalions of infantry, marching in order, their shields on the left arm; in the right hand the lance, curved club, bow, sling, or ax, according as they were armed; the heads of these soldiers were covered with helmets, adorned with two horsehair tails, their bodies girded with a cuirass belt of crocodile-skin. Their impassible look, the perfect regularity of their movements, their reddish copper complexions, deepened by a recent expedition to the burning regions of Upper Ethiopia, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... the genuine native life and history, language and learning of his own peninsular country is of greater value to the student than the pedantry borrowed from China. Why these possess any interest to a "scholar" is a mystery to the head in the horsehair net. Anything of value, he thinks, must be on the Chinese model. What is not Chinese is foolish and fit for women and children only. Furthermore, Korea "always had" Chinese learning. This is the sum of the arguments of the Korean literati, even as it used to be of ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... time employed herself about her ordinary household work. Then she sat down alone in the dingy old dining-room, to think what had better be done in her present circumstances. The carpet of the room was worn out, as were also the covers of the old chairs and the horsehair sofa which was never moved from its accustomed place along the wall. It was not a comfortable Squire's residence, this old house at Vavasor. In the last twenty years no money had been spent on furniture or embellishments, and for the last ten years there had been no painting, either inside or ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... out softly like stars in the houses beyond the church-tower, and in the parlour of the rectory a lamp flared up and then burned dimly under a red shade. Looking through the low window, she could see the prim set of mahogany and horsehair furniture, with its deep, heavily carved sofa midway of the opposite wall and the twelve chairs which custom demanded arranged stiffly at equal distances on ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... texture called Husi is made of a mixture of fine hemp (lupis) and pine-apple leaf fibre. Sometimes this fabric is palmed off on foreigners as pure pina stuff, but a connoisseur can easily detect the hemp filament by the touch of the material, there being in the hemp-fibre, as in horsehair, a certain amount of stiffness and a tendency to spring back which, when compressed into a ball in the hand, prevents the stuff from retaining that shape. Pina fibre is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... natural to some people," said Bud, "and then, too, he may have been in Mexico. Some of the Greasers are pretty slick with the horsehair. But let's watch." ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... to find a resting-place and failed; the tiny chiffonnier, unenlightened by a looking-glass or any ornament save a vase, which had been one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, though ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... into the parlour and sat down as bidden. He found himself in the most old-fashioned room he had ever seen. The solidly made chairs and tables, of some wood grown dark and polished with age, made even Mrs. Williamson's "parlour set" of horsehair seem extravagantly modern by contrast. The painted floor was covered with round braided rugs. On the centre table was a lamp, a Bible and some theological volumes contemporary with the square-runged furniture. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mention, in the cushioned basket-chair, the only comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard, horsehair things having antimacassars tied to their backs by means of lemon-coloured bows. It was different from those dear old talks at Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the window, which was open (the night was so tranquil and warm), and the dim light—for we did not use the lamp—suited her admirably. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... pots were protected wholly from the light, or had light admitted from above or on one side as the case might require, and were covered above by a large horizontal sheet of glass, and with another vertical sheet on one side. A glass filament, not thicker than a horsehair, and from a quarter to three-quarters of an inch in length, was affixed to the part to be observed by means of shellac dissolved in alcohol. The solution was allowed to evaporate until it became so thick that it set hard in two or three ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... cobbler's visionary soul. A door left wide open communicated with an inner room (very low was its ceiling), in which the Bandit slept, if the severity of his persecutors permitted him to sleep. In the corner of the sitting-room, near that door, was a small horsehair sofa, which, by the aid of sheets and a needlework coverlid, did duty for a bed, and was consigned to the Bandit's child. Here the tenderness of the Cobbler's heart was visible, for over the coverlid were strewed sprigs of lavender and leaves ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had rebelled ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now defiled, sank to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head; but then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry;— ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... a large hall with bare walls, a noble enough apartment in its unadorned simplicity, in spite of the mean horsehair chairs that stood round it. Above the fire-place, instead of a mirror, was a Mater dolorosa that caught the eye by its dazzling whiteness. Big marble tears stood arrested in mid-career down the cheeks, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... always found. The nest when completed assumes the form of a large, suspended gourd. The walls are thin but firm, and proof against the most driving rain. The mouth is hemmed or over-handed with strings or horsehair, and the sides are usually sewed through and ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... ourselves into the unknown recesses of the house, and sat gingerly on greasy horsehair-seated chairs, in the parlour, while the bubbling cry of the rasher and eggs arose to heaven from the frying-pan, and the reek filled the house as with a grey fog. Potent as it was, it but faintly foreshadowed the flavour of the massive slices ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Welsbach gas mantles. Viscose film, transparent and a thousandth of an inch thick (cellophane), serves for candy wrappers. Cellulose acetate cylinders spun out of larger orifices than silk are trying—not very successfully as yet—to compete with hog's bristles and horsehair. Stir powdered metals into the cellulose solution and you have the Bayko yarn. Bayko (from the manufacturers, Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer and Company) is one of those telescoped names like Socony, Nylic, Fominco, Alco, Ropeco, Ripans, Penn-Yan, Anzac, Dagor, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... stuff down even to the fingers and feet: I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me,—faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and seemed as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen. The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... to extracting a horsehair from the stuffing of the elbow of his chair; and there was a look over his face as near sullenness as ever came to his gay, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this misunderstanding (which had been a long one) had made me almost hysterical. I clearly remember the feeling of lying with my face against the horsehair sofa in the little dining-room, feebly repeating, 'You shouldn't, you know. You shouldn't!' amid my tears, my hair being softly stroked the while by the two sisters, who comforted me, and blamed themselves with a depth of self-abasement that almost made me laugh. It had hardly ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Denny jumped off, had only run a little way and stopped, only too glad of the chance to rest. He was now standing near Hogan, as if intent on being of some further use to him. Suddenly Denny's anxious eyes lighted on the horsehair lariat attached to the saddle. Here was the means at hand. Quickly as he could he undid it, and with great difficulty tied one end to the pommel and the other to the lance. Then he gave the horse a sharp blow, and, Crash! down ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... still undecided where they should sit, looked at the little horsehair sofa. Monsignor brought forward for her one of the six high, straight-backed chairs, and they sat at the circular table laid out with severe books; a volume of the Lives of the Saints lay under her hand, and she glanced ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... water held all Jim's attention. And while Peter procured a cupful, he lifted her gently in his arms and carried her into the parlor, and laid her on an old horsehair settee, propping her carefully into a sitting position. When the water was brought she drank thirstily, and then, closing her eyes, sank back with something like ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Cornelius, who has finished his breakfast and gone in to the room in which he receives rents and keeps his books and cash, known in the household as "the office." This chair, like the two occupied by Larry and Broadbent, has a mahogany frame and is upholstered in black horsehair. ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... Storer said it ought to be made less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head itch, & ach, & burn like anything Mamma. This famous roll is not made wholly of a red Cow Tail, but is a mixture of that, & horsehair (very course) & a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D—— made it (our head) all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, & my new cap on it, she then took up her apron & mesur'd ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... is akin to the lariat made of horsehair, the ends sticking out roughly all around, with which the Indian used to encircle himself before going to sleep, as a protection from the rattlesnake, who could not cross it. But here we are at Los Angeles. Hear the bawling cabbies: ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... clothes and heavy gilt frames, the white marble clock on the mantelpiece, a clock that would tick solemnly for twenty minutes and then give a little run and a jump for no reason at all, the straight horsehair sofa so black and uncomfortable with its hard wooden back, the big dining-room table with its green cloth (faded a little in the middle where a pot with a fern in it always stood) and his aunt with her frizzy yellow hair, her black mittens and her long bony fingers playing her interminable ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Voltaire did in innumerable pamphlets, facetioe, and philosophic diatribes, Beranger did in songs. He gave a refrain, and with it popular currency to the anti-clerical attacks and mockeries of Voltaire; he set them to his violin and made them sing with the horsehair of his bow. Beranger was in this respect only the minstrel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... he grew so afraid that he determined to go and talk to a black man he knew who dealt in magic. He found the man sitting at the door of his hut, making magic with a horsehair and a snakeskin, and some ground-up glass. Jean Malin, told him everything that had happened, about the bull, and how it had changed itself into a man and had come to visit the lady, and about the magic words, and how he had forced the man to ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... he exclaimed cordially as he threw himself upon the worn horsehair sofa in what was called the "sitting-room," "I find your story about the fighting Texans capped by one Major Mason was telling me last night about the North ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... luck, the Spartan warrior seized his foe by the horsehair crest of his helmet, and began to drag him towards the Grecian lines; but at this point Venus came to the aid of her favorite. Standing unseen beside him, she broke the helmet strap under his chin, and thus released him from the grasp of the wrathful Menelaus. Then she cast a thick ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... while he waited for her father and she brought him a glass of wine and a piece of cake, to reprove her again for absence from church. But she was so meek that he found it hard to inflict those "faithful wounds" which should prove his friendship for her soul; she sat before him on the slippery horsehair sofa in the parlor, her hands locked tightly together in her lap, her eyes downcast, her voice very low and trembling. She admitted her backslidings: she acknowledged her errors; but as for coming to ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... and greeted them. They found that the large room in front was a kind of drawing-room, in which rose-leaves, china-bowls, old engravings, a shining mahogany book-case, and a yellow-keyed piano atoned for the shortcomings of funeral horsehair and home-made carpets. They thought it on the whole a charming room, only to be eclipsed by the kitchen. For the kitchen, which was underneath the ground floor and nearly the entire size of the house, was therefore very spacious and comfortable, possessing three large ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Esther had closed the front door. Then they went into the parlour and sat down side by side on the little horsehair sofa placed against the wall facing the window. The anxiety in their hearts betrayed ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... church, and up into the belfry, where they hid. In a few moments a man appeared who began to work at something. They sprang on him and seized his wrists, and found in one of his hands a thin line of horsehair, to one end of which a hook was attached. The holder being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment that the cap would rise into the air, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that I could possibly offer a savage monarch; and upon examining my stock in trade I discovered that I possessed the complete uniform of a sergeant of hussars—tunic, pelisse, trousers and boots combined, shako with red and white horsehair plume complete, and a sabre—which, upon trial, seemed to fit me pretty well, if perhaps just a shade tight. I therefore decided upon this, together with a length of some two and a half feet of brass chain, the ends of which I united by a split ring, to which I attached ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... think any more than you did," said Priscilla stopping in front of the gate as a sign he was to open it for her. He did, and they walked through the garden and into the house in silence. Then she went into the parlour and dropped into a horsehair armchair, and leaning her head against its prickliness she sighed ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Mr. Strong's invitation with gratitude, indeed his kindness touched me. Leading me to his principal shop, we passed through it and down a passage to a sitting-room heavily furnished with solid horsehair-seated chairs and a sofa. In the exact centre of this sofa, reading by the light of a lamp with a pink shade which was placed on a table behind her, sat a prim grey-haired woman dressed in a black silk dress and apron and a lace ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... on to the house with his own luggage, and Happy Jack followed to take charge of the team; but the remainder of the Happy Family unobtrusively took the measure of the foreign element. From his black-and-white horsehair hatband, with tassels that swept to the very edge of his gray hatbrim, to the crimson silk neckerchief draped over the pale blue bosom of his shirt; from the beautifully stamped leather cuffs, down to the exaggerated height of his tan boot-heels, their critical eyes ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... in the hall-door as he went out—the first time such a thing had been done during our stay on the cape. Ugly coiled himself up on the horsehair sofa in the dining-room, and in half an hour more, I suppose, every soul in ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... stood on the right. On the left were priests in fustian, holding enormous flagons of Rhenish wine and dancing in a drunken measure with their arms round more drunken doxies dressed like German women. In the centre stood grave and reverend men wearing horsehair beards and the long gowns of English bishops and priests. Before these there knelt an angel in flame-coloured robes with wings like the rainbow. The angel supported a great volume on the back of which might be read in letters ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... with her own music, that she dropped it, and that is how we got it—and any man that says that it can be improved by putting a back and front to it, and four strings and a bridge on it, and getting some horsehair and resin, is no better than one of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... from the sides of its big limbs that help anchor the structure against all winds. Farther up on the limb and near the slenderer tip these curved fruiting twigs multiply and suggest the very shape of his nest to the chipping sparrow who loves to twine tiny roots and grasses, and especially horsehair, among them till his own light, wee structure is as securely placed as the cement bungalow of the bigger bird. So, too, the tyrant flycatcher loves to build his larger nest, often interwoven with waste string till it looks as ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of fine things—oil paintings of his father and mother, his sisters and himself; fine furniture all in horsehair; lots of silver for the table; and they kept two girls and had had 'em for years; and Mrs. Pendleton watched Bob very careful so he wouldn't catch cold or anything, because he had a weak chest. And Bob would take me down to his father's store where ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... and returned with a message from Mrs. Dixon to desire he would walk in. She conducted him through a dark passage, and up a still darker stair, into a dingy little parlour, with a carpet of red and green stripes, a horsehair sofa, a grate covered with cut paper, and a general perfume of brandy and cigars. There were some preparations for breakfast, but no one was in the room but a little girl, about seven years old, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enough to shade the face and back of neck. There should be a ventilating space all around the head-band; the wider the space the better. These helmets can be secured in Rio and Buenos Aires. Head-nets with face plates of horsehair are the best protection against small insect pests. They are generally made too small and the purchaser should be careful to get one large enough to go over his helmet and come down to the breast. Several pairs of loose gloves rather long in the wrist will be needed as protection ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... vest and jacket, both of brilliant colors, over which they wore gold chains, necklaces, and bracelets, with strings of coral, pearl, and amber; while their hair was in little curls, adorned with jewels and flowers. But all this was concealed by the thick, muffling, outer veil; they also had horsehair visards through which they could see ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... he lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring them again. The lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of the lumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlour on which he used to sit, smiling or serious, asking himself why he had come, displeased with her and with himself, confounded by the print of the Sacred Heart above the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach him in a lull ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... just standing there, a little, oldish man, terribly convincing in his simplicity, absolutely without prejudice, as ready to acknowledge the soul and its attributes as to refuse them, standing there twiddling his horsehair watch-chain, and speaking from the profundity of his knowledge with, at his elbow, a huge army of facts, instances, and cases, not one of which did not ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... cosy when Mary had made up the fire and lighted the lamp. She seated Joan in the worn horsehair easy-chair; out of which one had to be careful one did not slip on to the floor; and spread her handsome shawl over the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... be a job we care for, and I am keeping up the delusion, but all the time I run my seams straight, pull the horsehair out to the last fine shred, turn in my corners as the corners of a leather book are turned, so that I may be kept at it, although out of cunning I appear to grumble and long to ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... into the vague darkness he could almost see that chamber which he had so often imagined; the low whitewashed ceiling held up by a heavy beam, the smears of smoke and long usage, the cracks and fissures of the plaster. Old furniture, shabby, deplorable, battered, stood about the room; there was a horsehair sofa worn and tottering, and a dismal paper, patterned in a livid red, blackened and moldered near the floor, and peeled off and hung in strips from the dank walls. And there was that odor of decay, of the rank soil steaming, of rotting wood, a vapor that ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Further forward, a large old-fashioned iron stove, with the fire lighted. On the left, towards the back, a single smaller door. In front, on the same side, a window, covered with thick curtains. Between the window and the door a horsehair sofa, with a table in front of it covered with a cloth. On the table, a lighted lamp with a shade. Beside the stove a ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... from the lawn-mower. It is natural grass, with wild flowers in it here and there. Nearly all of it was brought from a meadow about a mile away from here. But now step inside a minute. Everything there is of the period of 1849: horsehair, you see, lots of black walnut, color all toned down, and all the ornaments covered with netting ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... would make you think—if anything," drawled the languid Miss Devine. She was a tall, handsome girl, engaged at the moment in futile efforts to recline with elegance and comfort combined upon a horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured the only easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that Miss Devine's remark received from the rest of the company more approbation than perhaps ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... "No;" for Papa did not approve of the birds being disturbed. Then there was a beautifully-formed mossy little cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree, just inside the coppice, smooth, round, and soft-edged, with the horsehair and wool lining all plaited together, and made as even as possible. It was so low down that, by bending the branch, the boys could look at it, which they did, while the poor chaffinches, in the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy—a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit—German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... houses of his neighbours. Mrs. Gerhardt thought that he "fancied" they would not like it. It was early in that spring that she took a deaf aunt to live with them, the wife of her mother's brother, no blood-relation, but the poor woman had nowhere else to go; so David was put to sleep on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room because she "couldn't refuse the poor thing." And then, of an April afternoon, while she was washing the household sheets, her neighbour, Mrs. Clirehugh, a little spare woman all eyes, cheekbones, hair, and decision, came ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... was a rather severe and gloomy apartment, with rigid horsehair furniture, stiff lace curtains, and white antimacassars that were always laid at a perfectly correct angle, except at such times as they clung to unfortunate people's buttons. Even Anne had never been able to infuse much grace into it, ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was no longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated fine wrinkles. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... three days' work and, turning it into groceries, set out for the poor home that soon would be lost to him, and as he rode he did some hard and gloomy thinking. On his wrist there hung a wonderful Indian quirt of plaited rawhide and horsehair with beads on the shaft, and a band of Elk teeth on the butt. It was a pet of his, and "good medicine," for a flat piece of elkhorn let in the middle was perforated with a hole, through which the distant landscape was seen much clearer—a well-known law, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... every time he looked up with his pen in his mouth until his wife died, when he ceased to notice things. The one picture on the walls, an engraving of a boy in velveteen, astride a tree, entitled "Boyhood of Bunyan," had started life with him. The horsehair chairs were not torn, and you did not require to know the sofa before you sat down on it, that day thirty years before, when a chubby minister and his lady walked to the manse between two cart-loads of furniture, trying ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... shown in figure 316. This pipe has a bowl of catlinite, and the stem is decorated with horsehair. ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,
... sculpture; the other is not so good, but has suffered in re-painting, the eyelid being made too red; if this were remedied, as it easily might be, the figure would gain greatly. Cav. Prof. Antonini has very successfully substituted plaster hair for the horsehair, which had in great measure fallen off. The motive of this incidental group is repeated, but with less success, in Giovanni D'Enrico's Nailing ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... of the faithful into a steamy short-tempered activity, like washing-day. "Think shame on yourself, Ellen Melville!" she rebuked herself. "She's a better woman than ever you'll be, with the grand work she's done at the Miller's Wynd Dispensary." But that the doctor was a really fine woman made the horsehair texture of her manner all the more unpleasing, for it showed her sinisterly illustrative of a community which had reached an intellectual standard that could hardly be bettered and which possessed certain moral energy, and yet was content to be rude. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... his arm around his wife, and drew her down beside him on the old horsehair sofa. One of the precious red wool tidies slipped to the floor, and lay there unnoticed. Slowly, while Mrs. Gray had been talking, the full depth of her trouble became clear to him, and the words to comfort her rose to ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... caboose. Altogether she had a very forlorn appearance, while there was no sign of a human being on board. Their first care was to get up the old man. Harry leaped down into the cabin of the brig, and instantly returned with a long horsehair sofa cushion. "We must pass straps round this, and parbuckle him up," he observed. Fortunately a davit remained. To this they secured a tackle, and David, jumping into the boat to pass the cushion under old Jefferies, they soon had him up safe on deck. They then, having got up ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... to be the lover of Mademoiselle, and she cried with scarlet face, "But neither, Monsieur!" we all shouted together and laughed and became the best friends in the world. Happy country of fraternity! The little soldiers—they were dragoons and wore helmets too big for them and long horsehair plumes—accompanied us with clanking sabres to the gallery of the theatre, and at Paragot's invitation sat one on each side of Blanquette, who, what with the unaccustomed bloodshed of the spectacle and the gallantry of her neighbours, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the tall and almost gigantic figure of a knight clothed in a mantle of black glossy bearskin, bordered with costly fur, but without any ornament of shining metal. His very helmet was covered with dark bearskin, and, instead of plumes, a mass of blood-red horsehair hung like a flowing mane profusely on every side. Well did Froda and Edwald remember that dark knight, for he was the uncourteous guest of the hostelry. He also seemed to remark the two knights, for he turned his unruly steed suddenly ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... top (which was close to the forehead) and very retreating. The protuberant temples, small eyes, heavy nose, wide mouth and retreating chin—the whole smeared with daubs of paint, such as soiled the horsehair-like covering of his head, rendered the features the most repulsive on which the lad had ever looked. He certainly had never beheld a ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... under medical instruction, sat down on the horsehair lounge with one leg gone, and told her simple ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... year, but I was fishing for trout; and, what is more, I have taken two, with Walton's number two June-fly, lad—Mr. Grylls's variety—the wings, if you remember, made of the black drake's feathers, with a touch of grey horsehair on the shank. I wished to know, first, if a Corsican trout would answer to a Cornish fly, and, next, if they keep the same seasons as in England. They do, Prosper—there or thereabouts. To tell you the truth—though, as they say an angler may catch a fish, but it takes a fisherman to tell ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... generally spoken of as his coif, but this designation is erroneous. The black blot is the coif-cap; and those who wish to see the veritable coif must take a near view of the wig, when they will see that between the black silk and the horsehair there lies a circular piece of white lawn, which is the vestige of that pure raiment so reverentially mentioned by Fortescue. On the general adoption of wigs, the sergeants, like the rest of the bar, followed in the wake of fashion: but at first they wore their old ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... affair which served them as both under her arm and swung Abe's figured old carpet-bag in her hand with the manner of one setting out on a pleasant journey. Abe, though resting heavily on his stout, crooked cane, dragged behind him Angy's little horsehair trunk upon a creaking, old, unusually large, toy express-wagon which he had bought at some ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... Hirt[127] considers girls should not be at all employed in, by reason of the danger to health, especially with an eye to their sexual functions, are: The preparation of bronze colors, of velvet and glazed paper, hat making, glass grinding, lithography, flax combing, horsehair twisting, fustian pulling, iron tinning, and work in ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... are commanded to present yourself before the Governor-General!" Turning round, Chichikov stared in horror at the spectacle presented; for in the doorway there was standing an apparition wearing a huge moustache, a helmet surmounted with a horsehair plume, a pair of crossed shoulder-belts, and a gigantic sword! A whole army might have been combined into a single individual! And when Chichikov opened his mouth to speak the apparition repeated, "You are commanded to present yourself before ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... with a stethoscope, is only useful for ascertaining the identity of the animal (if any) contained therein, and is valueless in the case of sausages that are filled with sawdust, india-rubber shavings, horsehair and other vegetables. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... meaningless battle-pieces, Algerian warfare and what not are characteristic of the "Citizen-King" whose fondness for red plush, green repp and horsehair sofas was notable. What he did at Versailles was almost as great a vandalism against art as that ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... vessels have been copied. These are sometimes globular, with large round bodies and small necks. They are generally very closely woven and are then coated over with a resin or gum which renders them capable of holding water. Like some of their water jugs, in pottery, they have small horsehair ears or loops attached to the sides through which strings are passed for carrying them either over the head or shoulder. This class of water jug basketry all show evidences of age, and it is possible that they were manufactured by the Apaches or other tribes skilled in the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... little parlour, which she had been made to take into use by Vassie, who had successfully made it hideous with antimacassars and vases of artificial flowers. As Annie sat rigidly upright upon a slippery horsehair-covered chair, her eyes wandered vaguely here and there and fell on the album in which Vassie had collected all the photographs taken of the family from time to time. Photographs printed on paper were only just beginning to supersede the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... without visible bridges, small, dark, oblique eyes, with heavy lids and imperceptible eyebrows, wide mouths, full lips, thick, big, projecting ears, deformed by great hoops, straight black hair nearly as coarse as horsehair, and short, square, ungainly figures. The faces of the men are smooth. The women seldom exceed five feet in height, and a man is ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... have remarked that he might as well have built a new house and been done with it. Not even old Nathaniel himself would have recognized his home when Nancy finished what she termed furnishing: out went the horsehair, the hideous chandeliers, the stuffy books, the Recamier statuary, and an army of upholsterers, wood-workers, etc., from Boston and New York invaded the place. The old mahogany doors were spared, but matched now by Chippendale and Sheraton; the new, polished ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not of poverty, then of self-denial, although I suspected both. A common room, with no carpet save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished oil-painting—these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... coat-sleeve and silently directed him into the gloomy little parlour crowded with mahogany and horsehair furniture, white antimacassars, wax flowers under glass, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... hard horsehair chair in a barely furnished room, and waited. The table was covered with magazines, but she did not touch them. She sat nervously twisting and untwisting her fingers. Then the sudden sound of voices outside attracted her attention. The door of the room in which she sat had been left ajar, and ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... direction, and soon saw his man at a distance. His head covered with an old straw hat, without a coat, and in slippers, with a huge blue apron such as gardeners wear, Goudar had climbed up a ladder, and was busy dropping into a horsehair bag the magnificent Chasselas grapes of his trellises. When he heard the sand grate under the footsteps of the newcomer, he turned his ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... wor nicely aght o' mi hands. What to do wi thi nah aw connot tell, unless aw cut off t'other ear to match, an' tee a bunch o' horsehair to thi tail an' see if aw connot mak a galloway aght on thi; an' if aw doo that, aw expect tha willn't be able to keep thi maath shut, an' that voice o' thine 'll let ivvery body know. But hahivver aw mun try an' bandage ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... evening; and the landlady, a funny little old woman with a shrivelled body and a deeply wrinkled face, had prepared high tea for him. Most of the sitting-room was taken up by the sideboard and a square table; against one wall was a sofa covered with horsehair, and by the fireplace an arm-chair to match: there was a white antimacassar over the back of it, and on the seat, because the springs were ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... men wear hats that go down over their shoulders. This is the kind of hat they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or mother. Some wear hats made of straw. These hats look like large flowerpots turned upside down. Some have hats made of horsehair. ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table—the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun, that had long been paling the lamps, struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... other, a mere frame of wood with four strings deftly knotted across it, in which cunningly contrived little bit of mechanism was imprisoned the intangible, yet living Spirit of Sound. A miracle in its way!—that out of such common and even vile materials as wood, catgut, and horsehair, the divinest music can be drawn forth by the hand of the master who knows how to use these rough implements! Suggestive, too, is it not, my friends?— for if man can by his own poor skill and limited intelligence ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... no, sir! The very opposite of saints. They eat and drink like their neighbours. They never think of wearing dirty horsehair when they can get clean linen. And when they are tempted to misconduct themselves, they find a better way out of it than knotting a cord and thrashing their own backs. Saints! They all ran out together to bid us welcome like a lot of school-children; the first thing ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... indulged in by the native Californians, who were among the most skilful horsemen in the world and marvelously expert with their lassos or reatas, as they called the long rope, usually made of hide or woven horsehair, which they used to catch their horses and cattle; and Thure Conroyal and Bud Randolph had become as expert as any native with their reatas, and, consequently, felt equal to the roping of even as ferocious and as huge a beast as El Feroz himself, the most ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... rest secure, Thou wilt no foreign reins, or Trojan load endure." He said; and straight th' officious courser kneels, To take his wonted weight. His hands he fills With pointed jav'lins; on his head he lac'd His glitt'ring helm, which terribly was grac'd With waving horsehair, nodding from afar; Then spurr'd his thund'ring steed amidst the war. Love, anguish, wrath, and grief, to madness wrought, Despair, and secret shame, and conscious thought Of inborn worth, his lab'ring soul oppress'd, Roll'd in his eyes, and rag'd within his breast. ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... up her apron and mounted the stairs. She didn't stop with the second floor and her own little room, but kept right on to the attic. There was a door at the head of the attic stairs. Elliott pushed it open. On a broken-backed horsehair sofa Gertrude lay, face down, her nose buried in a faded pillow. In a wabbly rocker, at imminent risk of a breakdown, Priscilla jerked back and forth. Gertrude's hair was tousled and Priscilla's face was tear-stained ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... the shield of Paris, and through the side of his breastplate, but only grazed his robe. Menelaus drew his sword, and rushed in, and smote at the crest of the helmet of Paris, but his bronze blade broke into four pieces. Menelaus caught Paris by the horsehair crest of his helmet, and dragged him towards the Greeks, but the chin- strap broke, and Menelaus turning round threw the helmet into the ranks of the Greeks. But when Menelaus looked again for Paris, with a spear in his hand, he could ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... is all done but the horsehair. We are on our way up to Farmer Brown's barnyard now to look for some. You haven't seen any around anywhere, ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... dead joys—a place where they had gone to reign forever in fixed and solemn festival. And while he could not see God there, actually, neither in the horse-hair sofa nor the bleak melodeon surmounted by tall vases of dyed grass, nor in the center-table with its cemeterial top, nor under the empty horsehair and green-rep chairs, set at expectant angles, nor in the cold, tall stove, ornately set with jewels of polished nickel, and surely not in the somewhat frivolous air-castle of cardboard and scarlet zephyr that fluttered ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... Another favourite instrument was the violin, a small and curiously shaped apparatus fitted with four strings, which, when rubbed or scraped with horsehair tightly stretched on a narrow wooden frame, were made to produce sounds imitating the cries of various animals, especially the mewing of a cat, to perfection. But as the timbre of the instrument did not lend itself to successful ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... far as Dammartin I caught a first glimpse of our own outposts. There was a troop of dragoons in a field, and of course I could see from the horsehair crests that they were French. I galloped towards them in order to ask them if all was safe between there and Paris, and as I rode I felt such a pride at having won my way back to my friends again, that I could not refrain from waving my sword in ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in 'boards' of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... his hat on one side, "is everybody kiddin' me about gentle Spring? There ain't any more spring in the air than there is in a horsehair sofa in a Second Avenue furnished room. For me the winter underwear yet ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... his coming to judge of the day's doings by the expression of his face, before it lit up with the dear welcoming smile. At sight of the weary lines, strength came to her, as though she could move mountains on his behalf. As they sat together on the horsehair sofa, his tired head resting on her shoulder, the strain and the burden fell from them both, and they knew ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... chaos. On the table there are pots of pomade, sticks of cosmetic, hairpins, combs and brushes, all carefully set out. Two artificial plaits stretch themselves languishingly upon a dark mass not unlike a large handful of horsehair. A golden hair net, combs of pale tortoise-shell and bright coral, clusters of roses, sprays of white lilac, bouquets of pale violets, await the choice of the artist or the caprice of the beauty. And yet, must I say it? amidst this luxury of wealth Madame's hair is undressed, Madame ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... custom, a large umbrella in hand, while her arm was loaded with an immense horsehair bag. She entered the little cabinet, where we were seated, like a shower of hail:—"Here you are at last," she exclaimed, "I have been into every room, in search of you, Do you know, my dear, that the chests of ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... beneath the horsehair sofa, rose, and, wiping the perspiration from his brow, pointed with a ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... backwards towards a big horsehair sofa, beneath the deer heads and assegais from Zululand. He did it on tiptoe, aware that this mysterious and suggestive way of walking has a marked effect on children in the dark. "I did not shoot it," he said, "because I lived with it. It was the most extraordinary ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... dip a little way into a new book which deals with these curious questions you were talking about, and others like them. You know they find their way almost everywhere. They do not worry me in the least. When I was a little girl, they used to say that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it would turn into a snake in the course of a few days. That did not seem to me so very much stranger than it was that an egg should turn into a chicken. What can I say to that? Only that it is the Lord's doings, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... similar is the "Chinese hedgehog," a wreath of fine, soft feathers with the quills solidly fastened by silver wire to a ring of the same metal, which is slipped over the glans. In South America the Araucanians of Argentina use a little horsehair brush fastened around the penis; one of these is in the museum at La Plata; it is said the custom may have been borrowed from the Patagonians; these instruments, called geskels, are made by the women and the workmanship is very delicate. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Sir William W. Gull, Physician to her late Majesty Queen Victoria: "Having passed the period of the goldheaded cane and horsehair wig, we dare hope to have also passed the days of pompous emptiness; and furthermore, we can hope that nothing will be considered unworthy the attention of physicians which contributes to the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... on looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated by them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the most horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair glove. He spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed through the arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a bristling top-knot, which gave ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... real good ninepenny paper once, all covered over with green brakes. I declare if 'twa'n't sweet pretty! Well, whether I paper or whether I don't, I've got some thoughts of a magenta sofy. I'm tired to death o' that old horsehair lounge that sets in my clock-room. Sometimes I wish the moths would tackle it, but I guess they've got more sense. I've al'ays said to myself I'd have a magenta sofy when I could git round to it, and I dunno's I shall be any nearer to it than ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... study table, and putting out the ends of his fingers so as to touch the young clergyman's hand. "Pray take a seat." And Arthur seated himself—as, indeed, he had no alternative—on a straight-backed old horsehair-bottomed chair which stood immediately under a tall black book-case. He was miles asunder from the fire; and had he been nearer to it, it would have availed him but little; for the grate was one of those which our grandfathers cleverly invented for transmitting ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... was pressed into the service, and grew quite enthusiastic, suggesting substitutes for necessities, until I suggested cutting off the tail of every horse on the run, to get enough horsehair for a mattress. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... The furniture of the other three rooms—an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look of it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... came into the circle. He was painted all over a greenish-rhubarb color, like a stagnant pool: his chin was blue, his face was streaked with red. He wore a very short shirt of deer-skin, with a very deep fringe of black horsehair. Though sansculotte, his legs were painted with red and blue hands on the rhubarb ground: all over his horse were these red and blue hands and red stripes, and the beast had a red mane and tail. This villain, who had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... dingy little room with a round table covered by a soiled cloth in the middle. Two windows, discreetly blinded, let in a dim London light. An armchair stood at each side of the empty fireplace, and an uncomfortable, old-fashioned, horsehair sofa lined the opposite wall. There were pink vases upon the mantelpiece, and a portrait of ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... returned to the farm where he had left his horse and, early next morning, put on his disguise again, painted lines round his eyes, touched some of the hairs of his eyebrows with white paint, mixed some white horsehair with the tuft on the top of his head, and dropped a little juice of a plant resembling belladonna—used at times, by ladies in the east, to dilate the pupils of their eyes and make them dark and brilliant—in ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... with round spectacles and bushy eyebrows, his wife, and a pretty girl of twenty or twenty-one. The girl apparently was a visitor, for she wore her hat, and her jacket lay across the arm of an old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall in the lamp's half shadow; and yet the gray little bookseller and his little Dresden-china wife very evidently made no stranger of her. They talked, all three, as members of a family talk, when contented and affectionate; at haphazard, taking one another for ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... no reply; but, feeling a bit tired, lay down to rest on the sofa. And so powerful was the sea air, and the effect of a fair allowance of exercise, that she fell into a doze in spite of the intensely wakeful properties of Mrs. Lobjoit's horsehair sofa, which only a corrugated person could stop on without a maintained effort, so that sound sleep was impossible. She never became quite unconscious of the scratching pen and the moaning wind; so, as she did not sleep, yet did not want ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose take off at night. Her hair is a libel on horsehair ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... wiped, and the room smelt slightly of paraffin. The old window-curtains, whose harsh green age had not softened, were drawn. The mahogany sideboard, the threadbare carpet, the small horsehair sofa, the gilt mirror, standing on a white marble chimney-piece, said clearly, 'Furnished apartments in a house built about a hundred years ago.' There were piles of newspapers, there were books on the mahogany sideboard and on the horsehair sofa, and on the ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... much too smart for the rest of his clothes, and a bundle of documents tied with red tape. Jobling and young Smallweed sometimes stopt to talk with him. The doors of the crowded court-rooms opened now and then, and gentlemen in gowns and horsehair wigs came out to speak with clients who waited under ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... were black with smoke, and the hangings absolutely colorless. Between the fireplace and the large square table at which the magistrate worked, the cook had set two cups of coffee on a small table, and two armchairs, in mahogany and horsehair, awaited the uncle and nephew. As daylight, darkened by the windows, could not penetrate to this corner, the cook had left two dips burning, whose unsnuffed wicks showed a sort of mushroom growth, giving the red light which promises length ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... body had descended to the floor from the level (possibly) of a bed. I have never seen consternation painted in more lively colours than on the faces of my hosts. It was proposed to smuggle me forth into the garden, or to conceal my form under a horsehair sofa which stood against the wall. For the first expedient, as was now plain by the approaching footsteps, there was no longer time; from the second ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sir—to mix with no prophets so long as we both should live. Prophets, she truly said, are low-class, even dirty, persons. Their parties, their 'at homes' are shoddy. They live in fourth-rate neighbourhoods. They burn gas and sit on horsehair. Only in rare cases do they have any bathroom in their houses. Their influence would be bad for the children when they begin to grow up. How could Corona make her debut"—Malkiel pronounced it debbew—"in prophetic ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... blue—black as they appear in our cold country, and beautiful white teeth, and sparkling black eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie—men and flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... might have been a large one; it was almost impossible to judge of its size, so crammed was it with heavy and light furniture of every conceivable shape and type. There was a monumental wooden bedstead in one corner, a huge sofa covered in black horsehair in another. A large table stood in the centre of the room, and there were at least four capacious armchairs round it. There were wardrobes and cabinets, a diminutive washstand and a huge pier-glass, there were innumerable boxes and packing-cases, cane-bottomed chairs and what-nots every-where. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... previous tenant, Walter had no visitors and was mostly out all day. At evening he would write at the dusty old bureau in which the late tenant had kept locked his family treasures, or sit in the deep, old horsehair-covered chair with his feet upon the fender, as he did that night after returning ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... of my companions prevented any open demonstration of my fears and condition of mind, but I certainly swore inwardly. During the dinner hour I felt all the time as if I had on a horsehair shirt with the ends protruding toward my skin, and, in the exaggerated sensitiveness of the moment, made sure "'em" were chasing up and down ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... face of their little daughter Raesel was still more touching. I think I can see her now, with her flat horsehair cap and watered black silk ribbons, her trim bodice and broad blue sash down to her knees, her little white hands crossed in the attitude of a dreamer, her long fair curls—all that was graceful, slender, and ethereal ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... was coaching him in the fourth book of the AEneid and all those wonderful speeches of Dido, where passion disdains construction; but the only line Pike cared for was of horsehair. "I fear, Mr. Pike, that you are not giving me your entire attention," my father used to say in his mild dry way; and once when Pike was more than usually abroad, his tutor begged to share his meditations. "Well, sir," said Pike, who was very truthful, "I can see a green drake by the strawberry ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... to join the great length of salon parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts blown ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... of charming devil spirits in the hues of animals also, again in startling arrangements of black and white, with the single hint of color in the red lips of the masks that covered their heads completely from view, and from which long tails of white horsehair fell down their grey white backs—completing the feeling once again of stout animal spirits roaming through dark forests in search of sad faces, or, it may ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... of fieldfares across the barren sea, so that they whirr out of every bush as ye come near it. Who will now run down into the village, and cut off the mane and tail of my dead cow which lies out behind on the common?" (for there was no horsehair in all the village, seeing that the enemy had long since carried off or stabbed all the horses). But no one would go, for fear was stronger even than hunger, till my old Ilse spoke, and said, "I will go, for ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... across a hole about the size of a crown piece, and consists of a strong noose made of horsehair, which is fixed to a peg, and so arranged that the slightest touch causes it to rebound and catch them by ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... that one's very old. And that's such a horrid man, like hump-backed Richard. And when nobody's looking, he tugs it, and beats it. Oh, I wish I could beat him!" and Amabel danced dangerously upon the horsehair seat in her white gaiters with impotent indignation. The Squire was very weak when pressed by his daughter, but at horses, if at any thing, he looked with an eye to business. To buy such a creature would be ludicrous. Still, Amabel had made a strong ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of these nests, and studied them: flimsy things, constructed of a few dried grasses, inwoven with horsehair and cobwebs. Before next spring the rains would dissolve ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for a while, if a change of sounds is silence. The Delhi mud sticks as tight as any, and the kneading of it from out of horsehair taxes most of a trooper's energy and full attention. Then, the East being the East in all things, a solitary; trooper picked up the scent and gave tongue, as a ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... a horsehair become a snake? The Hedge hog—What it is, how it lives, and where it is found. Illustrated. The Sponge—Its origin, growth, and uses. Educational Matters-Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Michigan. Cathedral of Rheims-The Coronation place of the old ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... restlessly up and down the small, uncomfortable apartment, the room which he had always hated. There were illustrated papers arranged in a row upon a leather-topped table, two stiff horsehair easychairs, and various views of Clonarty, the country seat of the Duke of Clonarty, around the walls. Presently he heard the laughter in the drawing-room cease. There was a short silence, then the ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and realised that he was cold and sitting cramped on an uncomfortable horsehair chair. He had dozed. He glanced for the yellow line between the folding doors. It was still there, but it seemed to quiver. He judged the candle must be flaring. He wondered ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... which include frozen and chilled beef and mutton, hides, sheepskins, wool, and such things as horsehair, tallow, jerked beef, etc., represented a value ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... would skate him all across and about the plains if it were not for these heels. The buckskin gloves tied in one of the saddle strings are used when roping, and to keep the half-inch manila lariat—or mayhap it's horsehair or rawhide pleated—from burning his hands. The red silken sash one was wont aforetime to see knotted about his waist, was used to hogtie and hold down the big cattle when roped and thrown. The ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... could not be a long one. Godfrey was the first to relax its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her. Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a spectre-Letty, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... seen his grounds, that he kept two gardeners on purpose to take care of them. His parlors were covered with carpets in which immense bouquets of flowers were wrought, and he had furniture not only of horsehair, but of flowered red velvet also. I suppose in these days cousin Padgett's house would be considered the extreme of expensive ugliness, and a violation of all laws of beauty. But it was the best money could buy then, and that was considered enough. Robert was not affected ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I sit lead up to the door of the cone. Inside, the green hops lie on the horsehair carpet, and the fumes of the sulphur burning underneath come up through them. A vapour hangs about the surface of the hops; looking upwards, the diminishing cone rises hollow to the cowl, where a piece of blue sky can be seen. Round the cone a strip of thin lathing ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... ungrammatically. He threw his hat on to the horsehair sofa, which seemed to be the most important piece of furniture in the room, and dropped into a chair. "Got a ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... greatest joy—the deepest lake is the old crater on top of the highest mountain. Sappy's eyes were not the sinister black beads of the wily Red-man, but a washed-out blue. His ragged, tow-coloured locks he could hide under wisps of horsehair, the paint itself redeemed his freckled skin, but there was no remedy for the white eyelashes and the pale, piggy, blue eyes. He kept his sorrow to himself, however, for he knew that if the others got an inkling of his feelings on the subject his name would have been promptly changed to "Dolly" ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this courtyard was what evidently had once been a fountain, though it had long since dried up. Around it squatted a group of vaqueros, all smoking cigarettes and some of them lazily twisting lariats out of horsehair. Close at hand a dozen or more wiry little mustangs stood saddled and bridled and ready for any emergency. In colour, one or two were of a peculiar cream and had silver white manes, but the rest were greys and chestnuts. It was evident that ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco |
