"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been obliged to spend sixteen hours out of every twenty-four gathering food for himself and the members of his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the inhabitant of the Egyptian city found himself possessed of a certain leisure. He used this spare time to make himself many things that were merely ornamental and not in the least ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... that in the same genus as our currant and gooseberry, which we have cultivated for their fruits, there are some ornamental species, as the Ribes sanguinea, and in these the flowers have been selected so as to produce deep red, pink, or white varieties. When any particular flower becomes fashionable and is grown in large quantities, variations are always ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... up the strain of effort a long time. Unless, then, tangible results came and came quickly, he was liable to relapse into old habits. Therefore he must succeed and succeed at once. She would have preferred a less ornamental position than the ambassadorship, but there were no other openings. The Alabama senators were firmly seated for at least four years and the Governorship had been carefully arranged for. A term of four years abroad, however, might bring Harry Cresswell back in time for greater advancement. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... invited to partake of it. As we went down the ladder under the half-deck, Peters and Green could not help casting an eye of admiration at the clean and clear deck, the style of the guns, and perfect union of the useful and ornamental, so inimitably blended as they are sometimes found in our ships of war. There was nothing in the captain's repast beyond cleanliness, plenty, hearty welcome, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the New Museum at Berlin, one of the finest edifices of modern times. It may be interesting to our readers to know that the total expense of the building and interior decoration was in round numbers $1,100,000. Of this sum the execution of the ornamental work and works of art in the interior, including the frescoes of Kaulbach and others, with the arrangement of objects of art and furniture necessary for their display, cost ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... garden-meadow, or meadow-garden; for the plushy sod is in many places so crowded with gentians, daisies, ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes. ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... was just going to give up this splendid "ravage," when the man said, "Ride your own fashion; here, at Truckee, if anywhere in the world, people can do as they like." Blissful Truckee! In no time a large grey horse was "rigged out" in a handsome silver-bossed Mexican saddle, with ornamental leather tassels hanging from the stirrup guards, and a housing of black bear's-skin. I strapped my silk skirt on the saddle, deposited my cloak in the corn-bin, and was safely on the horse's back before his owner had time to devise any way of mounting me. Neither he ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... those who love "working in the shade." Not that he was ashamed or afraid of working in the light, but he was content to pursue the less attractive and less ornamental paths of usefulness, which few comparatively cared to follow. And so he had set himself resolutely and prayerfully to the task of rearranging the character of one who, he was persuaded, was capable and desirous of doing good and great things, could she only be got to ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... and the aristocratic. He was proud of his pure plebeian blood, as many plebeians are; he gloried in it. He disliked show, with a calm and deep aversion. He was a plain man with a simple, unostentatious taste for money. The difference between Helen's name and her ornamental raiment gave him pleasure in the name. But he had not been examining her for more than half a minute when he began to find pleasure in her rich clothes (rich, that is, to him!). Quite suddenly he, at the age of sixty, abandoned without an effort his dear prejudice against fine feathers, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... scarcely like to call an oversight in mental construction—shuts me out from the flowery pathway of the romancer, a co-ordinate requital endows me, I trust, with the more sterling, if less ornamental qualities of the chronicler. This fairly equitable compensation embraces, I have been told, three distinct attributes: an intuition which reads men like sign-boards; a limpid veracity; and a memory which habitually ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... strains present where one was supported by the other being in this way overcome. Hundreds of thousands of horse power of this design were built, giving great satisfaction. The boiler was known as the "C. I. F." (cast-iron front) style, an ornamental cast-iron front having been ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... character, which has caused it to spread rapidly throughout the country. The teachers and pupils of the schools were invited to unite in its observance, and instead of trees being planted merely as screens from the winds, they were also planted for ornamental purposes and as memorials of important historical events and of celebrated persons, authors, statesmen, and others. Thus the tree-planting has gained a literary aspect and an interest for all classes, for young as well as old. In preparation for it the pupils of the schools ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... them the moneys designed by Andrews for the Observatory. It would not be right, they contended, that the kindly intentions of the late Provost towards his kindred should be frustrated for the sake of maintaining what they described as "a purely ornamental institution." The authorities of the College protested against this claim. Counsel were heard, and a Committee of the House made a report declaring the situation of the relations to be a hard one. Accordingly, a compromise was made, and the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... transportation, may make all the difference between profit and loss. Even though all these conditions are satisfactorily met, builders and users are often so conservative that a new product finds difficulty in breaking into the market. A well-established building or ornamental stone, or a limestone used for flux, may hold the market for years in the face of competition from equally good and cheaper supplies. The very size of a quarry undertaking may determine its ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... she most liked to hear Jesse Bulrush read. He was a born sentimentalist, and this became by no means subtly apparent to Kitty during Crozier's illness. Whenever Nurse Egan was on duty Jesse contrived to be about, and to make himself useful and ornamental too; for he was a picturesque figure, with a taste for figured waistcoats and clean linen—he always washed his own white trousers and waistcoats, and he had a taste in ties, which he made for himself out of silk bought by the yard. He was, in fact, a clean, wholesome man, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... emblems, typifying his position as judge of the world and his endless course. The position of Merodach as sun-god is confirmed by the small lapis-lazuli relief found by the German expedition at the mound known as Amran ibn 'Ali, as he also carries a staff and a ring, and his robe is covered with ornamental circles, showing, in all probability, his solar nature. In the same place another small relief representing Rimmon or Hadad was found. His robe has discs emblematical of the five planets, and he holds in each hand a thunderbolt, one of which he is about to launch forth. Merodach ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... haven't any use for Doris Hayward at all. Ethel I admire tremendously, though I don't think she likes me; and Basil is a saint straight out of heaven, suffering martyrdom for no conceivable reason, but Doris is like a useless ornamental china shepherdess, which ought to be put on a hight shelf where it can't get itself nor any one else into trouble. I'm really dreadfully afraid if I had to spend a whole evening alone with her, I should drop her and break her to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... have been by later systematists separated from the genus Otis. India, too, has three peculiar species, the smaller of which are there known as floricans, and, like some of their African and one of their European cousins, are remarkable for the ornamental plumage they assume at the breeding-season. Neither in Madagascar nor in the Malay Archipelago is there any form of this family, but Australia possesses one large species already named. From Xenophon's days (Anab. i. 5) to our own the flesh ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... attainment. We are conscious of our own defects, and eagerly endeavour to supply them by artificial excellence; nor would such efforts be wholly without excuse, were they not often excited by ornamental trifles, which he, that thus anxiously struggles for the reputation of possessing them, would not have been known to want, had ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... found his saddle, a very ornamental and expensive piece of horse furniture, trimmed with silver and made of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... hanging gas-jet in the centre of the room was an ornamental iron grating, between the apertures of which there now appeared about an inch and a half of brass tube, like the end of a big peashooter. A moment later there was a prodigious puff, and four "throw-downs" exploded with a simultaneous crash in the centre ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... them up in damp flannel for a day or two, so that the modelled work will stick on the vase. Let the shape of the vases be very plain and simple, with a good broad surface to receive the modelled decoration. I have chosen as the illustration (fig. 3) the blackberry, as it is a very ornamental plant and one familiar to all readers. Throw on your stalk first of all, letting it wrap round the vase, and so place it that the leaves, flowers, and fruit can spring from it so as to be seen to the best advantage. The stalks might be placed ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... ornamental. The girls were all to work on the staking out and preparation. But each girl was then to take a section of it and plant ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... heaven. There were fakeers in plenty, with their bodies dusted over with ashes and their long hair caked together with cow-dung; for the cow is holy and so is the rest of it; so holy that the good Hindoo peasant frescoes the walls of his hut with this refuse, and also constructs ornamental figures out of it for the gracing of his dirt floor. There were seated families, fearfully and wonderfully painted, who by attitude and grouping represented the families of certain great gods. There ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reach the top of the house, where sunshine is fiercest, before blooming. Under the best conditions, indeed, it is slow to produce its noble wreaths of flower—deep red, crimson, and orange. Upon the other hand, the plant itself is ornamental, and it grows very fast. The Duke of Devonshire has some at Chatsworth which never fail to make a gorgeous show in their season; but they stand twenty feet high, twisted round birch-trees, and they have occupied ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... late headmaster of Charterhouse, Dr. William Haig-Brown, saying that he wished to have his son "interred" at that school. The headmaster wrote back immediately saying he would be glad to "undertake" the boy. The same headmaster being shown over a model farm remarked of the ornamental piggery, built after the manner of a Chinese Pagoda, that if there was Pagoda outside there was certainly ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... fields out were just going round. The faces of the crew, pallid with exhaustion, seemed of an ivory whiteness in the dusky gloom of the boat, which never resembled a gigantic and fantastically ornamental coffin so closely as she did ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... Travellers did not often carry full information on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets; and even the most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the flower-flushed tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's fancy. Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated the times with its leaven and entered into everybody's food; it was fermenting still as a distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long-haired German ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Walsingham school whose ideal lay in the advancement of protestantism and antagonism to Spain. When not warped by the vain imaginings of his earlier years, he would seem to have been a person of respectable abilities, little decision of character, decently loyal; an ornamental figurehead whose position enabled him to serve his friends; shallow; neither dangerous, nor conspicuously incapable; not entirely deserving of the extreme contempt which is usually poured upon him; but at best a poor creature whose importance ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... success, gouging and tearing at each other's hearts in Wall Street, and sees their gouging and tearing bring about a panic which takes from the people in an hour over a billion dollars and drives scores to suicide, murder, and defalcation—the two men continuing meanwhile as ornamental pillars of society instead of wearing prison stripes. One sees a great railroad corporation, in which are millions of the trust funds of widows, orphans, and charitable institutions, caught "short" (having sold something ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... note and looked quietly round. Now he knew what he missed. It was the little ornamental clock, which was hers. It had gone from the mantelpiece. He went into the front room, his bedroom, the parlour, lighting the gas as he went. From the chiffonier had gone the knick-knacks of silver and plate. From the table-top, the lace ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... firs, Moreton Bay fig-trees and araucarias; past cherished English hollies growing side by side with giant cacti. In one corner stood a rockery, where a fountain played and goldfish swam in a basin. The house itself, of brick and two-storeyed, with massive bay-windows, had an ornamental verandah on one side. The drawing-room was a medley of gilt and lustres, mirrors and glass shades; the finest objects from Dandaloo had been brought here, only to be outdone by Henry's own additions. Yes, Ocock ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... broken pieces of brass are again fixed in the stone; but so many of the pieces were long ago lost, and I think those which were lately separated from the stone are not placed in their original position: so, except the figure, there is little remains to convey an idea of the ornamental and beautiful work by which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... Duilius, to attack the enemy off the Sicilian town of Myl, and the Carthaginians were overwhelmed, what remained of their fleet being forced to seek safety in flight. The naval prestige of Carthage was destroyed. There was a grand celebration of the victory at Rome, and a column adorned with the ornamental prows of ships was ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Ornamental stove plants—such as Brugmansias, Centradenias, Clerodendrons, Eranthemums, Euphorbias, Geissomerias, Gesneras, Justicias, Poinsettias, &c., to be supplied with clear liquid manure, and to have their rambling shoots stopped. Many of the free-growing plants will require shifting occasionally. The ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... through elegant manners, delicate flattery, fashionable drawing-rooms, or valets and women on an intimate footing; mistresses here enjoy no credit and there are neither favorites nor the favored; a valet is regarded as a useful implement; great personages are not considered as extra-ornamental and human furniture for the palace. Not one among them dare ask for a place for a protege which he is incapable of filling, an advancement which would derange the lists of promotions, a pass over the heads of others; if they obtain any favors, these ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... asking where the fair wearers of the article he had bought could be seen, he told me that all the ladies had gone into the interior. I hope they found my importations useful; they certainly were not ornamental. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... faculty of putting up ornamental trimmings on his house, and there is no spot the sparrow chooses more willingly in which to build his nest than the ornamental quirks and cornices of man's architecture. A Corinthian column with comely leaves ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... ornamental timber gateway, erected in 1620, leading to the Council House, the temporary residence, during feudal times, of the Lords President of the Marches. Continuing along this street, we pass the Raven ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... cottages have no pretty confusion of blossoms as in our villages. You never see the cottager at work among his roses; once his necessary labours are over, he smokes and talks to his neighbours: to grow flowers for aesthetic reasons were too ornamental, too unproductive a hobby. AEsthetically the Dutch are dead, or are alive only in the matter of green paint, which they use with such charming effect on their houses, their mills and their boats. What is pretty is old—as indeed is the case in our own country, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Royalty. It was formerly the seat of the Hon. Mrs. Egerton, of whom it was purchased by Queen Charlotte, in 1792, who made considerable additions to the house and gardens. The grounds were laid out by Uvedale Price, Esq. a celebrated person in the annals of picturesque gardening. The ornamental improvements were made by the direction of the Princess Elizabeth, (now Landgravine of Hesse Homburg,) whose taste for rural quiet we noticed in connexion with an Engraving of Her Royal Highness' Cottage, adjoining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... by itself has no value. It is as useless as a reed cut out of an organ or a finger that is severed from a hand. It is not even ornamental or adaptable to any other pur-pose. It is not at all like a piano or a talking-machine, which has a separate existence. It is useful only in proportion to the number of other telephones it reaches. AND EVERY TELEPHONE ANYWHERE ADDS VALUE ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Cotton Factory has been erected on a portion of the site of the Refinery, Laboratory and Incorporating Mills, and so arranged that the Confederate obelisk stands conspicuously in front of the centre; the battlemented and ornamental architecture of the Powder Works was adopted in the construction of the Factory buildings, which give them a fine and ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... outermost boundary of the flower-garden, and then returned by another path, which led back, past the side of an ornamental summer-house commanding a view over the fields from a corner of the lawn. A slight noise—like, and yet not like, the chirruping of a bird—caught her ear as she approached the summer-house. She stepped round to the entrance; looked ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... our Sculptured Stones. Most of them, however, and some even in late times, have been sadly mutilated and destroyed, to a greater or less degree, by human hands, and converted to the most base uses. The stone at Hilton of Cadboll, remarkable for its elaborate sculpture and ornamental tracery, has had one of its sides smoothed and obliterated in order that a modern inscription might be cut upon it to commemorate "Alexander Duff and His Thrie Wives." The beautiful sculptured stone of Golspie has been desecrated in the same ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... the side balconies to watch the crowd streaming down the marble staircases. It is a scene that I never tire of. There is something so fantastically tawdry in the coloured marble of the architecture. It is for all the world like a triumph of ornamental soap work; one expects to smell the odours. And the torrent of humanity pouring liquidly aslant through the mirror-like light, and the spaciousness.... Yes, it is fantastic, ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... down and glanced through it, but concluded that one had to be a female saint, or at least an aspirant, to appreciate it. Then there were things made out of dried flowers, out of hair, out of shells, out of pine-cones. There were vases and other ornamental bits of china and glass, also Victorian, looking as if they were meant to be continually washed or dusted by the worn, busy fingers of the female saints. As I came to fuller realization of all these relics, my resolution flickered out and there fell upon me a strange ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... eyes fairly stood out with wonder and admiration when a procession of colored men came out of the pantry, bearing a grand array of ornamental dishes. Pineapples, bananas, great baskets of fancy cakes, and other dainties attracted their wonder-stricken gaze. But most of all, numerous pyramids of macaroons, two or three feet high, with silky veils of spun sugar falling down from summit to base, fascinated their attention. ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... advance within four or five miles of the Black Sea, is almost uninterruptedly studded with fanciful and ornamental buildings: beautiful villages, and brilliant summer palaces, and bright kiosks, painted in arabesque, and often gilt. The green background to the scene is a sparkling screen of terraced gardens, rising ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... they intended to draw up a petition to the school trustees, humbly praying that a fence be put around the school grounds; and a plan was also to be discussed for planting a few ornamental trees by the church, if the funds of the society would permit of it . . . for, as Anne said, there was no use in starting another subscription as long as the hall remained blue. The members were assembled in the Andrews' ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... we followed led us lengthwise through the wonderful Santa Clara country, straight up a wide box plait of valley tucked in between an ornamental double ruffle of mountains. I suppose if we passed one ranch we passed a thousand—cattle ranches, fruit ranches, hen ranches, chicken ranches, bee ranches—all the ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... from the sea commands as fine a view as that of the sea itself. It is closed in behind by two day-rooms, from the windows of which can be seen the entrance to the villa from the road and another garden as rich as the first one but not so ornamental. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... peaceful evening, and I fell a-wandering there in pleasant reverie, until the waning light hinted to me the question of time. I looked about me. Only one human being was in sight, a man with his back towards me, seated upon a bench overlooking the ornamental water. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... soul without education like marble in a quarry which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher sketches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs throughout the body ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... a cheap device for a man to trick himself out with lodge pins and fraternity symbols, rings, and badges in the hope that they will open doors for him. Highly ornamental jewelry of any kind is inappropriate. Not many men can offset a heavy gold watch chain stretched full length across their bosoms, not many can live down a turquoise ring set with pearls, and very few can bear the handicap of a bright gold front tooth. Artists, alone, may gratify ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... in the ornamental parts, for I had an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power, and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... requirements of Yankee warfare. When anything absurd, forlorn, or desperate was to be attempted, the Irish brigade was called upon. But, ordinarily, they were regarded, as a party of mad fellows, more ornamental than useful, and entirely too clannish and factious to be entrusted with power. Meagher himself seemed to be less erratic than his subordinates; for he had married a New York lady, and had learned, by observation, the superiority of the pelfish, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... marble of which the city is built, the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to the fore. None of these ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... system of advertising has since been carried has rendered it a bore and a nuisance. The usual result of almost any great and original achievement is, the production of a shoal of brainless imitators, who are "neither useful nor ornamental." ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... We merchants have strange fancies, and foreigners have curious tastes now and then. Please to make all my socks with a hitch like that in them all round, just above the ankle. It will form an ornamental ring. I'm sorry to put you to the trouble, but of course I pay extra for fancy-work. Will six shillings a pair ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a difference in color between the outer and inner wood, the older wood becomes darker and is called the heart-wood, the outer is the sap-wood. In Birds-eye Maple, and some other woods, the abortive buds are seen. They are buried in the wood, and make the disturbance which produces the ornamental grain. In sections of Pine or Spruce, no ducts can be found. The wood consists entirely of elongated, thickened cells or fibres. In some of the trees the pith rays cannot be seen ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... ornamental waters with ice, and gave opportunity for the healthy and exhilarating exercises proper to the season. Those who ventured before the ice was well formed ran considerable risks, and many persons were immersed; but the only disastrous accident occurred on the 20th of January, when four ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... blazing fires, over which hung pots and brazen kettles. Game and meats broiled on spits, there being no cook-stoves in those days. Heavy doors, strapped with great wrought iron hinges and studded with ornamental scroll-work led into pantries ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... few words on the art of inlaying one metal with another, in which, as in all ornamental branches of the working of metals, the ancient Italians possessed great skill. In the time of Seneca, ornaments of silver were seldom seen, unless their price was enhanced by being inlaid with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but somehow ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the pictures of the early German painters, a school ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... don't see the necessity for having Mrs. Streeter; she is a good creature—very obliging when one needs a neighbor, in cases of sickness, or the like, but would be far from ornamental. I can have an excuse for omitting her in never having received an invitation from her—she does not give parties. She will be very well satisfied, I dare say, if I send her a basket of fragments afterward. You must understand, Cousin Sabina, that as this is my first ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... he refers to," Jack, smiling, explained, "is not in sight. It is under the ornamental brass piece that circles the rod from which the chandelier hangs. It was made to listen at, and not to see through, ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... him, had their own good and profitable reasons for crying up the works of this poet. When I was a very little boy, there was a jubilee in honour of SHAKSPEARE, and as he was said to have planted a Mulberry tree, boxes, and other little ornamental things in wood, were sold all over the country, as having been made out of the trunk or limbs of this ancient and sacred tree. We Protestants laugh at the relics so highly prized by Catholics; but never was a Catholic people half so much duped by the relics of saints, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... about to close in one of the deadliest yet most heroic and memorable conflicts set down in the annals of our race. The Hundred Days are its epilogue—the war of twenty-five years ending in that great manner! Then, like a pallid dawn, the ideal once more arises. Congress after congress meets in ornamental debate, till six can be reckoned, or even seven, culminating in the recent conference at The Hague. Its derisive results, closing the debate of the nineteenth, as Frederick's words sum the debate of the eighteenth century, are too fresh in all men's ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Ornamental gardening, too, was now changing its complexion. Dutch William was dead and buried. Addison had written in praise of the natural disposition of the gardens of Fontainebleau, and, at his place near Rugby, was carrying out, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... was much older. The Lancaster house was also a colonial mansion, much after the fashion of Eudora's, but it showed signs of continued opulence. Eudora's, behind her trees and leafing vines, was gray for lack of paint. Some of the colonial ornamental details about porches and roof were sloughing off or had already disappeared. The Lancaster house gleamed behind its grove of evergreen trees as white and perfect as in its youth. The windows showed rich slants of draperies behind their green ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... absurdity. They do not ask if the means is suited to the end; they all ask (with profound and penetrating scepticism) if the end is suited to the means. They do not ask whether the tail suits the dog. They all ask whether a dog is (by the highest artistic canons) the most ornamental appendage that can be put at the end of a tail. In short, instead of asking whether our modern arrangements, our streets, trades, bargains, laws, and concrete institutions are suited to the primal and permanent idea of a healthy human life, they never admit that ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... always. No writer of the time avoids it wholly. The dedication of the King James version shows that these scholars themselves did not avoid it. In that dedication, and their preface, they give us fine writing, striving for effect, ornamental phrases characteristic of the time. Men were feeling that this English language was rough and barbarous, insufficient, needing enlargement by the addition of other words constructed in a foreign form. The essays of Lord Bacon are virtually contemporaneous with this translation. Macaulay says ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... confidential discourse by speaking to me of a joiner's business which he had hoped to buy, and work to good account with Robert's help. The present owner had made a fortune by it, and, after thirty years of business, he was thinking of retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city, a usual retreat for the frugal and successful workingman. Michael had not indeed the two thousand francs which must be paid down; but perhaps he could have persuaded Master Benoit to wait. Robert's presence would have been a security for him, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... the family, that he might talk German. Then he dived into differential calculus and philosophical abstrusities. He was not sent to college: he went. And he made college give up all it had. On the wall of his room, as a sort of ornamental frieze in charcoal, he wrote this from Emerson: "High knowledge and great strength are within the reach of every man who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to say?" roared Mr. von Inwald. I hadn't noticed him before. He had his sheet on in Grecian style and it looked quite ornamental although a little short. "Haven't you any apology to ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... where education, institutions, opinion, manners, the habits of society, and of domestic life, happily combine to give the just proportion of all that is attractive, useful, ornamental, and amiable to the female character—in England, Count Altenberg had hopes of finding a woman who, to the noble simplicity of character that was once the charm of Switzerland, joined the polish, the elegance, that was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... decorated with foliage in carved woodwork, which has been erroneously attributed to Grinling Gibbons. It was executed by Thomas Young, who was engaged as the principal carver in wood in 1689, and by a pupil of his, Samuel Watson, a native of Heanor, in Derbyshire, whose claim to the principal ornamental woodcarving at Chatsworth is set forth in verses on his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... with a flint or a shell), drawings by palaeolithic man, in the British Museum, I have only observed one purely decorative attempt. Even in this the decoration resembles an effort to use the outlines of foliage for ornamental purposes. In almost all the other cases the palaeolithic artist has not decorated his bits of bone in the usual savage manner, but has treated his bone as an artist treats his sketch-book, and has scratched outlines ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... only lasted out till, on some grand field-day, the word was given, "Draw swords?" Some felt this, doubtless; but the most part, I imagine, were possessed with a comfortable assurance that their short life had been useful, if not ornamental; and so, to a certain extent, they had their reward. At any rate, their ending was to the full as glorious as that of some other friends of ours, who crawl away from the battle-ground of the Viveurs to die, or to linger ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... first and last a simple business man, having only one point of contact with their world, enjoyed—perhaps a trifle guiltily—his excursions into so sophisticated a set, feeling, no doubt, that in some new way for him he was "seeing life." The men and women he met were ornamental and amusing, possessed expensive habits, spoke in thousands, and told you in the same breath that they hadn't a bean. Many might have been somewhat hazy as to antecedents, but all were well-provided with a certain stock-in-trade—personal ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... side-table—and of course under such circumstances each article must be sizable—stood a sewing machine, in the corner was a bedstead with exquisitely clean bedding, in another a tiny cooking stove. Vases of flowers, framed pictures and ornamental quicksilver balls had been found place for, this bargewoman's home aptly illustrating Shakespeare's adage—"Order gives all things view." The brisk, weather-beaten mistress now came up, no little gratified by ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in English; but the word scarcely does justice to these reservoirs, which with their handsome flights of steps are quite ornamental.] ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... every light and shadow produces its own effects. Important events connected with the lives of great men and memorable circumstances desired to be kept in remembrance, help to lend importance to sparkling gems and less ornamental stones. This will be better ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... he had little. Bailey was useful in the office, and Ruth ornamental at home. They satisfied him. He had never troubled to study their characters. It had never occurred to him to wonder if they were fond of him. They formed a necessary part of his household, and beyond that he was not interested in them. If he had ever thought about Ruth's nature, he had dismissed ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... but saw at a glance that the assassin, in order, to secure time for escape, had locked the door, and either taken the key with him or thrown it where it could not be found. It was in vain that he ran in all directions, searched every place likely to conceal the villain; not a clump of trees or ornamental shrubs remained unexamined. The search, however, was fruitless. No individual was seen, nor any clue gained on which even a conjecture could be founded. The only individual visible was our friend the Cannie Soogah, whose loud ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... intervals had sighed for a tennis lawn; but whenever she dared to mention the idea she was hooted by her big brothers, who did not want the garden to be made in the least bit, as they expressed it, ornamental. ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... at the period of this history, Ashdown Lodge is a large square edifice, built in the formal French taste of the seventeenth century, with immense casements, giving it the appearance of being all glass, a high roof lighted by dormer windows, terminated at each angle by a tall and not very ornamental chimney, and surmounted by a lofty and lantern-like belvedere, crowned in its turn by a glass cupola. The belvedere opens upon a square gallery defended by a broad balustrade, and overlooking the umbrageous ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... disappeared, and there seemed no further need for caution. As Warren approached nearer, he noted the dark, tumbledown building, which looked as though it had been a ruin for centuries, dismal and uninhabited. Only one thing was noteworthy. The door, a stout one heavily barred with ornamental straps of ancient and rusty iron, was fitted with strong, modern hinges, and had been closely fitted in anew frame. Warren's keen eye quickly grasped these details as he sauntered past, and stopped before 'the building, but what he did not see, and could not guess, was the ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... I told him where we had found the furniture, and how the ornamental part thereof had been ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... the horns according to the directions given in Vol. 5, No. 43. They are very ornamental, but there is no great demand for them. You might be able to dispose of a pair or two ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... his flock to dispose off, we think their introduction among cottagers, for their wool and also for their milk, a fair subject for some of our female readers to speculate on. This variety of the common goat (or, probably, it may be a distinct species) is a fine-looking animal, and would be very ornamental in a park, on a ruin, on the side of a rock, or in a churchyard. It would also be very pleasant to have a home-made Cashmere shawl. We shall, therefore, give all the information we can on the subject, from Mr. Tower's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... and the 'four o'clock,' a kind of 'marvel of Peru,' supposed to open at that hour. The houses, crepi or parget below and bamboo above, are mere band-boxes raised from the ground; the smaller perfectly imitated poultry-crates. All appeared unusually neat and clean, with ornamental sheets of clam-shells trodden into the earth before the thresholds. 'Fetish' was abundant, and so was that worst of ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... a single spring that issues on higher ground near by. Several other springs in the vicinity afford rare mill-power. At Harrisonburg, a county town farther up the valley, I was attracted by a low ornamental dome resting upon a circle of columns, on the edge of the square that contained the court-house, and was surprised to find that it gave shelter to an immense spring. This spring was also capable of watering the town or several towns; stone steps led down to it at ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... somewhat ornamental salad is desired, daisy salad, which is illustrated in Fig. 15, will prove satisfactory. As will be observed, this salad resembles a daisy. To make it, cut celery into strips about 2 inches long and trim one end of each round. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... graining or other ornamental configurations on conical rolls so as to form a continuous body, for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... and fifty men in Bontoc and Samoki own and sometimes wear at the girdle a large 7-inch disk of mother-of-pearl shell. It is called "fi-kum'," and its use is purely ornamental. (See Pls. LXXX and XXX.) It is valued highly, and I have not known half a dozen Igorot to part with one for any price. This shell ornament is widespread through the country east and also south of the Bontoc area, but ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... added to the house by the same occupant, who has, however, religiously preserved all the old rooms, which still exhibit the "fittings" that existed in Cowley's time. The bed-chambers are wainscotted with oaken panels. The staircase is a very solid structure, with ornamental balusters, leading toward the small study in which the poet wrote,—a little back room, about five feet wide, looking upon the garden. It may be distinguished in our back view of the house, by a figure placed at the window. Cowley ended his life ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... where men disported themselves. To him nothing was more ridiculous than to run after petticoats. Women, for Pelle, were really rather contemptible; they had no strength, and very little intelligence; indeed, they understood nothing but the art of making themselves ornamental. But Manna and her sisters were something apart; he was still enough of a child to play, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... it would be," she said, between laugh and sigh, "if only it could be kept out of the newspapers! I see it from here under the Fashionable Intelligence. 'The beautiful Princess Zobraska was observed in a boat on the ornamental water in Regent's Park with the well-known—tiens—what are you?—politician, say—with the well-known young politician, Mr. Paul ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... interrupted. I can not read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance; yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an accomplishment of mine—and in the slang use of the word accomplishment, as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess—and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Of late, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... want—except the measles—and everything I do want, I can't get. I want a home. What have I? A box stall with nobody in it but a man to curry me; and he's curried me so often that he's lost all respect for me. I want to stop being merely ornamental and become useful; but when I say so, everyone hands me the jocose and jibing jeer and proceeds to lock up anything that seems to have any relation whatsoever to industry, commerce, or utility of any kind. And the best I can get is the festive roof garden, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... to its value as a fruit, the mango forms a handsome ornamental tree, and one that provides a good shade for stock. It is very free from disease, as with the exception of one or two species of scale insects, which do not cause any very serious damage, it has few serious pests. It is a fruit that is bound sooner ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... of readers to them, as described in his third chapter, from which it would appear, that a most manifest and most glorious progress has been made since that period in all the arts of civilization, both useful and ornamental. In those times, travelling was difficult and slow, from the badness of the roads and the imperfections of the carriages. Highwaymen were secreted along the thoroughfares, and, in mounted troops, defied the law, and distressed the whole travelling community. The transmission of letters by post ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... kindly, that although I was not very thorough in, any branch of study, yet she thought I had a decided taste for the lighter and more ornamental parts of female education. That a few months earnest attention to these would fit me for a position independent of my connexions, and one of which none of my friends would have ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... producers of tales, have never produced a good novel yet.[19] Moreover, the guide-book element is a great set-off to the novel. It is not—or at any rate it is not necessarily—liable to the objections to "purpose," for it is ornamental and not structural. It takes a new and important and almost illimitably fresh province of nature and of art, which is a part of nature, to be its appanage. It would be out of place here to trace the development of this system of reinforcing the novel beyond France, in Scott more particularly. It ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of the ruins, and especially at Copan, there are clusters of four-sided stone pillars or obelisks varying from twelve to over twenty feet high. These are elaborately sculptured, and show human figures, ornamental designs, and many inscriptions. One or two statues have been discovered, and a statuette twelve inches high is described; "it is made of baked clay, very hard, and the surface is smooth as if coated with enamel." At Palenque are remains ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... have been rather proud of this, as I managed to discover, until quite lately when something very disagreeable occurred, which served to remind them that family ghosts are not always content, as I might say, to remain purely ornamental. ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... books was making his life weary with its importunate demands in those years when he was writing to pay his debts, and it is pleasant to see that some of his later reviews discussed matters that were not less dear to his heart because they were not literary. The articles on fishing, on ornamental gardening, on planting waste lands, remind us of the observation he once made, that his oaks would ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... One of these ornamental ledges, stretching along the roof with many others, lost itself in the gloom and seemed to be a hopeful living-place—all the more hopeful that it was in the full blaze of light that gushed in through the front opening of the cave. This opening, it will be remembered, was on the face of ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the granary. I could not do it even if I wished. I am a high-stepper, fit only for a carriage, and of no use on sandy, rutty roads, where common horses do the work better and more steadily. At the building of a house I could not carry the bricks, but might do something in the ornamental line, but where it is a question of four simple walls and a sound roof, artisans such as I are not wanted. If at least I had a mighty impulse towards work, I still might be able to force myself to do something. But in the main, it is only a question of appearances. I wish ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in the least Sybaritic in his tastes, but he could not stifle a sigh of satisfaction at sinking so naturally into the unobtrusive little comforts which the ornamental life offers to its votaries. They rose up around him and pillowed him, and were grateful to the tired fibers of his being. His remoter past had enjoyed these things as a matter of course. They had framed the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... been taken in the fashion journals that treat of house decoration and etiquette, and on one occasion, when making a call at one of our most comfortable farms, I found the worthy Deacon's wife poring over an ornamental volume, entitled "Hints to those about ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the bitterness which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had obviously been cast—of a good-humoured, ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the tragedians have convinced you, you have only two alternatives: you must suppose that divinity is temporarily lodged either in the actor—a Polus, an Aristodemus, a Satyrus—, or else in the actual masks, buskins, long tunics, cloaks, gloves, stomachers, padding, and ornamental paraphernalia in general of tragedy—a manifest absurdity; for when Euripides can speak his own sentiments unfettered by dramatic necessity, observe the freedom of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... head turned slowly; his mouth looked almost square as he fought to say something. Then he slumped, tumbling from the saddle into the embrace of an ornamental bush as his horse clattered along the sidewalk. Drew knew ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... scholarship, theology, and almost everything in the world but archaeology, are being taught and learned with very great vigour. The hardest worked of men is a conscientious college tutor; and almost all tutors are conscientious. The professors being an ornamental, but (with few exceptions) MERELY ornamental, order of beings, the tutors have to do the work of a University, which, for the moment, is a teaching-machine. They deliver I know not how many sets ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... sweet and garden peas and lettuces, for succession of crops, covering the ground with straw, &c. Sow also Savoys, leeks, and cabbages. Prune and nail fruit trees, and towards the end of the month plant stocks for next year's grafting; also cuttings of poplar, elder, willow trees, for ornamental shrubbery. Sow fruit ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... 'calling' and that in which men with far paltrier aims pursue theirs! And what a still sadder contrast there is between the way in which we Christians go about our daily business, and the way in which we go about our Christian life! Why, a man will take more pains to learn some ornamental art, or some game, than he will ever take to make himself a better Christian. The one is work. What is the other? To a very large extent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... affluent;—for those who possess, or can afford to possess, all the luxuries of the garden. We read of the management of hot-houses, green-houses, forcing-houses; of nursery-grounds, shrubberies, and other concomitants of ornamental gardening. Now, although it is acknowledged that many useful ideas may be gathered from these works, still it is obvious that they are chiefly written for those whose rank in life enables them to employ a chief gardener and assistants, qualified for the performance of the many operations ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... fact destroyed its liberties, disposed of its finances, overruled the constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in public affairs, and finally reduced the nominal prince—the doge—to a mere puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... since, those hands had mouldered into dust, and the spot lay neglected; yet, in spite of neglect, beautiful still. There was no enclosure to mark it from the fields beyond, that stretched, far as the eye could discern, till lost in a rich growth of woods, but a few ornamental trees and graceful shrubs, with here and there a plot, now gay, with autumn flowers, alone kept alive, in the heart of the beholder, a remembrance of its purpose. A quiet scene of rural beauty it was, and so thought the maiden, as, rousing from her ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... water had become suddenly deserted. The curious-eyed heads and the cotton nightcaps had been swallowed up in the hollows of the dark, little windows. The baker's boy had long since mounted his broad basket, as if it were an ornamental head-dress, and whistling, had turned a sharp corner, swallowed up, he also, by the sudden gloom that lay between the narrow streets. The sloop-owners had linked arms with the defeated captains, and were walking off toward their respective boats, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... had no pink cloth," replied the woman. "Still, I cannot see as it matters much, for I wish my Patchwork Girl to be useful rather than ornamental. If I get tired looking at her patched face I ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... for his own, that arrears were shown in his secretary's subscription-books, and that, unless the funds were augmented, he would reconsider the step he had taken in accepting the Mastership. Useless servants, useless hounds, and merely ornamental members of the Hunt, alike disappeared; and with system and discipline came season after season of prosperity, contentment, and justice, till it seemed that the best old traditions of British sport were revived in a community of hard-working, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... I think it must have been her mother that I saw that morning when little Felix dragged me to a cigar-shop in quest of an ornamental crab-a handsome, slatternly hag sort of woman, who might have been on the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bridegroom and bride sat together on two stools in the middle of the church. They were simply and plainly dressed in clean white "sillapaks," i.e., light calico tunics edged with broad braid, mostly red. The woman's was rather more ornamental than the man's, and had a longer tail hanging over her skirts. She had a ring on one finger, but that played no part in the ceremony. In his opening address the minister named the pair. William Tuktusna comes from the South, and possesses both Christian name and surname, ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... knots are generally known as "fancy knots" they are by no means merely ornamental, many of them playing important parts in the standing rigging ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... fit for the ordinary intercourse of life. That religion having little hold on the minds of people by external ceremonies and extraordinary observances, or separate habits of living, the clergy make up the deficiency by cultivating their minds with all kinds of ornamental learning, which the liberal provision made in England and Ireland for the parochial clergy, (to say nothing of the ample Church preferments, with little or no duties annexed,) and the comparative lightness ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tarpaulin or two if the ship is ever to be brought into order," observed Benbow; "these young gentlemen from the shore are very well in their way, but they are more ornamental than useful." ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... dispersion of the ministry up and down the country. These circumstances made the charge of the despatch-box the more interesting to me. It was very similar in size and shape to the old-fashioned workboxes used by ladies before boxes of polished and ornamental wood came into vogue, and, like them, it was covered with red morocco leather, and it fastened with a lock and key. The first time it came into my hands I took such special notice of it as might be expected. Upon one corner of the lid I detected a peculiar device scratched slightly upon it, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... desirable; because it would draw the calls of two or three old New York families who had hitherto stood upon their dignity, and refused to acknowledge the shoddy aristocracy. The beautiful Mrs. John Seymour, therefore, was no less useful than ornamental, and advanced Mrs. Follingsbee's purposes in her ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in Spain, I, 115, 310. In the patriarchal age of the Jews, there was a relatively very large quantity of ornamental objects in gold and silver: Michaelis, De Pretiis Rerum apud Hebraeos, in the Comm. Soc. Goetting., III, 151 ff., 160. Conservative Sparta, in the middle age of its history, was certainly not rich, and yet it had more gold and silver than any ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... work in the pottery. And now, instead of making brown butter-crocks and stone jugs all of the time, he was experimenting in glazes. In fact, he had made a little wooden workbox and covered it over with tiny pieces of ornamental "porcelain" in a semi-transparent green color, that he had made himself. And this pretty box he sent to Sarah. Unfortunately, the package was carried on horseback in a bag by the mail-carrier, and on the way the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Scots law, the accused person in a criminal action, the prisoner. Peel, fortified watch-tower. Plew-stilts, plough-handles. Policy, ornamental grounds of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais" in six volumes by Viollet-le-Duc; narrated as history by M. Labarte, M. Molinier, M. Paul Lacroix; catalogued in museums by M. du Sommerard and a score of others, in works almost as costly as the subjects,—all the vast variety of bric-a-brac, useful or ornamental, belonging to the Church, increased enormously by the insatiable, universal, private demands for imagery, in ivory, wood, metal, stone, for every room in every house, or hung about every neck, or stuck on every hat, made a market ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... well enough coloured; but the process and the material give them a glossy, unnatural appearance, which must prevent them from ever being considered as more than so many tours de force in the arts. But on vases, dinner-sets, and all ornamental furniture of this nature, in which we look for the peculiarities of the material, they produce a magnificence of effect that I cannot describe. Vases of the value of ten or fifteen thousand francs, or even of more money, are not uncommon; and ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... familiar, black-and-white bird that fishes by hovering kestrel-like on rapidly-vibrating wings and then dropping from a height of some twenty feet into the water below; it is a bird greatly addicted to goldfish and makes sad havoc of these where they are exposed in ornamental ponds. The nest of the pied kingfisher is a circular tunnel or burrow, more than a yard in length, excavated in a river bank. The burrow, which is dug out by the bird, is about three inches in diameter and terminates in a larger chamber in ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... opened upon a lawn covered with orange, magnolia, and other ornamental trees. The house was low on the ground, and it was not more than three feet from the window-sill to the lawn. Without explaining any thing, Captain Passford took his daughter's trunk, carried it to the window, and then dropped it ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... isn't such a thing—in the course of Nature. But you shelter from Nature in houses, you protect yourselves by clothes that are useful instead of being ornamental, you wash—with such abstersive chemicals as soap for example—and above all you consult doctors." He approved himself with a chuckle. "Have you ever found anyone seriously ill without doctors and medicine about? Never! You say a lot of people would die without ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... to pay a morning visit to the family at the great house,—another fine place, commanding another fine sweep of country. The park, studded with old trees, and sinking gently into a valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style of ornamental landscape, though more according to the common routine of gentlemen's seats than the singularly original place which we have just left. There is, however, one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the great house;—the magnificent firs which shade the terraces and surround the sweep, giving ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... they were out of sight Bob went off for a pike, and his father, first new-flinting his firelock, proceeded to don his uniform, pipe-claying his breeches with such cursory haste as to bespatter his black gaiters with the same ornamental compound. Finding when he was ready that no bugle had as yet sounded, he went with David to the cart- house, dragged out the waggon, and put therein some of the most useful and easily-handled goods, in case there might be an opportunity for conveying ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the entrance to Mercers' Hall, is a handsome stone-fronted house, built by Sir Christopher Wren. The houses adjoining the Hall were of similar ornamental character; although the unenclosed shop-fronts present a strange contrast with some of the improvements and superfluities of modern times. The Hall front has lately been renovated, and presents a rich display of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... bearings are defaced by time, and a few worn-out letters may be read at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan—de Hamel,—or Johan—de Lamel—And it is also true, that of another tomb, richly sculptured with an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition can only aver, that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose, and ruder rhyme, the history ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... black ribbon, and reached to the small of the back, in the shape of the tail of that motherly animal which furnishes ungrateful bipeds of the human race with milk, butter, and cheese. Where nature had not bestowed a sufficiency of this ornamental appendage, the living and the dead contributed of their superfluity to supply the deficiency. Our ear-locks,—horresco referens!—my ears tingle and my countenance is distorted at the recollection of the tortures inflicted on them by the heated ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... uneasy glances. Corson's demeanor invited the Governor to assume the responsibility. His Excellency was manifestly shirking. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the fireplace, as if he felt an impulse to arm himself with the ornamental poker and tongs. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... them with a boat, but were dismayed at finding that these birds were neither mallards, nor porchards, nor any known form of British duck; their colouring, too, seemed strangely brilliant. Then they remembered the neighbouring Zoo, with its ornamental ponds covered with rare imported and exotic waterfowl, and they realised what they had done. It is quite possible that they had killed some unique specimens, imported at fabulous cost from Central Africa, or from the heart of the Australian ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Archbishop Whately, the author's nephew, 1839]. Hazlitt confused T. Whately's Observations on Modern Gardening with George Mason's Essay on Design in Gardening, and the one error led to the other.] the author of a Treatise on Ornamental Gardening (not Mason the poet), began a work of a similar kind about forty years ago, but he only lived to finish a parallel between the characters of Macbeth and Richard III which is an exceedingly ingenious piece of analytical criticism. Richardson's Essays include ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... is elongated and pointed. This cone is crossed obliquely by two zigzag flashes of lightning, terminating at either end in arrow-points. Later forms of this symbol have the forward end the same, but the other end is wrought into an ornamental and somewhat arborescent head. This form with the lightning flashes is always borne uplifted, and by the god standing in readiness to hurl the bolt. This is the form we are to look for in connection with the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... eminently characteristic of the mediaeval mind. The subject is too wide to be discussed here; but readers may be reminded of the numerous examples which the architecture of the period shows, in which grotesque or even indecent figures are introduced among the ornamental work of sacred buildings. ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... a large, well-arranged square, where an out-door military concert is given twice a week, a universal practice in all Cuban cities. It is laid out with excellent taste, its broad paths nicely paved, and the whole lighted at night with numerous ornamental gas-lamps. The vegetation is both attractive and characteristic, consisting of palms, laurels, and flowering shrubs, mingled with which are some exotics from the North, which droop with a homesick aspect. Plants, like human beings, will pine ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... steps; on each side is a long window, divided into two heights by a stone transum (panelled). Under the lower window is a raised panel also; and in the flank of the building the plinth is furnished with openings; each of the windows is filled with ornamental iron-work, for the purpose of ventilating the vaults or catacombs. The flank of the church has a central projection, occupied by antae, and six insulated Ionic columns; the windows in the inter-columns are in the same style as those in front; the whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... of construction (which often prove bad space fillers) such items as connect their outlines with the encasement or frame. With some ingenuity advocates of pure design as the basis of pictorial structure, point out the similarity of certain compositions to formal, ornamental design or type forms of plants, flowers, etc., yet omit to state how many of the best compositions they reject in their search for the happy hit or to allow for the fact that in those which they cite, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... same opinion, and eager preachers began to sound the note of restitution.[401] Growing bolder, the Lower House of Convocation presented the bishops immediately after with a series of remarkable requests. The pope, in the terms on which he was reinstated, was but an ornamental unreality; and the practical English clergy desired substantial restorations which their eyes could see and their ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... difficult to describe the form, it had so many recesses which were filled up with shelves of ebony and cabinets of japan and ormolu—some for holding books, of which Mrs. Martha had an admirable collection, some for a display of ornamental china, others for shells and similar curiosities. In a little niche, half screened by a curtain of crimson silk, was disposed a suit of tilting armour of bright steel inlaid with silver, which had been worn on some memorable occasion by ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott |
