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More "Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there remained only wrecks of the walls, and a few beams and rafters standing up in the air, or lying across each other, without any thatch to cover them. Something must be left inside, however; for Roger was busy with his pitchfork. This something must be valuable, too; for Roger, after carefully feeling the depth, jumped out of the tub, and went on filling it, while he stood in the water. Oliver thought this very daring, till, ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... you had just lost all your money at play, or had committed some terrible blunder in company. The plaster covering the houses, soaked by the rain, had fallen away in many places from their walls, which from white had become streaked and spotted, whilst old reeds served to thatch them. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... It pushed its way into the upper air under the plain cap of the A.P. It budded under the (slighted tilted) head-dress of Number One, and blossomed forth into a full-blown project under the gilded oak-leaves that thatch the Bloke. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... poor Jack now felt sad, And thought of the home, so safe he once had, Where he'd plenty of food, and clean straw for his bed, And at night, a roof of good thatch o'er his head. He escaped from the field, though he scarcely knew how, And scampered as fast as his strength would allow: In the distance, a town, long and wide he could see; "Ah! ah!" said Jack Swine, "that's ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... suspicion at her from under the black thatch of brows that met above his nose and were ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... time I might attain this joy—that this book might find shelter beneath roofs of thatch, and that the village girls, as they spin and turn the wheel, humming the while their much-loved verses, of the girl who so loved to make music that while fiddling she lost her geese, or of the orphan, who, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... of the road. Each habitation had a small low door, which alone showed the number of separate dwellings in a row. The sides were composed of broad strips of bark, and bamboo leaves served for the thatch. Here and there were larger houses built of bamboo, with raised floors, marking the residences of chief men. At last they reached a house nearly a hundred feet in length, and, having ascended some steps, Jack found himself ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... think they did? One of them, a wauf, drucken-looking scoundrel, fired a gold ring over the window, and mostly set fire to the thatch house opposite—which was not insured. Yet where think ye did the ring go to? With my living een I saw it taken out of auld Willie Turneep's waistcoat pouch, who was sitting blind fou, with his mouth open, on one of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... more or less arranged so as to leave a lane or street between them, and are generally built of bamboo, though many have their principal timbers of teak or eng-wood. The floors are usually of split bamboo, and the roof of elephant-grass, or "thekka," as the thatch of dried leaves is called, forms a good protection against the summer sun or monsoon rains, while the walls are formed of bamboo mats, often coloured and woven into some pretty ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... each lane, and every alley green Dingle, or bushy dell of this wilde Wood, And every bosky bourn from side to side My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood, And if your stray attendance be yet lodg'd, Or shroud within these limits, I shall know Ere morrow wake, or the low roosted lark From her thatch't pallat rowse, if otherwise I can conduct you Lady to a low But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320 Till further quest. La: Shepherd I take thy word, And trust thy honest offer'd courtesie, Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds With smoaky rafters, then in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... poor coolies heard the shots and the terrible roars and growls and dared not come to their master's assistance. The tiger tore and scratched the thatch with all his might and soon made a hole. "Look! Saheb!" screamed the ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... on his back and went out with it. Then he thought he'd better water the cow before he turned her out on the thatch, and he took up a bucket to draw water out of the well. But, as he stooped down at the brink of the well, all the cream ran out of the churn over his shoulders, about his neck, and down ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... stood at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... missed many a familiar face, and searched in vain for many a cottage. The pleasant little thatched dwellings, with velvety tufts of moss studding the roof, and pretty creepers climbing till they mingled with the brown thatch, telling of the inmates' loving fingers, were all swept away now, and in the place that once knew them, stretched trim drills of turnips, fenced by grim stone walls, to which time had not yet given a ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, nor was ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... grateful in a Climate where the sun hath so powerful an influence. They are generally built in form of an Oblong square, the Roofs are supported by 3 Rows of Pillars or posts, and neatly covered with Thatch made of Palm leaves. A middle-siz'd house is about 24 feet by 12, extream heigth about 8 or 9, and heigth of the Eves 3 1/2 or 4. The floors are cover'd some inches deep with Hay, upon which, here and there, lay matts for the ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... voice, rising above the low purr of the engine with a note of satisfaction in it. The figure beside him, still in open, white shirt, with bare arms and uncovered, thick thatch of red hair, did ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... all our flocks and herds which should have been grazing somewhere on the plain or the foothills ahead, not a horn or a hoof was to be seen. Also, the house looked different: it had the appearance of being not as high as usual; I could not see the grey thatch of its roof; and the walls, instead of being pure white, as they had been when I last saw them, were white only in comparatively small patches, the remainder being brown, and in ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... mind. But she cannot do her marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out. There is heather in blow on the hills about her home, and foxglove reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... affectionate act, a number of the warriors ran off, fetched their gods, and threw them on the temple floor. Then Ongoloo, seizing a brand from the fire, thrust it into the loose cocoa-nut fibre, and set the pile in a blaze. Quickly the flames leaped into the temple thatch, and set the whole structure on fire. As the fire roared and leaped, Waroonga, with Tomeo and Buttchee, started a hymn. It chanced to be one which Zeppa had already taught the people, who at once took it up, and sent forth such ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... falls on squire, I don't vally that; squire's back is broad enough to bear the load, but I'm a poor man.' That's how a' goes on, ye know. Poverty is always in his mouth, but the old chap have got a hatful of money hid away in the thatch or some're, only he haan't a got the heart ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... vol. vi. (Add. MSS. 8173.), in the British Museum, are the following Notes of this church, taken 1st June, 1808, by H. I. and D. E. D.: "The Church consists of a nave and chancel, both under one roof, which is covered with thatch. The chancel is 30 ft. 3 in. long, and 15 ft. 5 in. wide. The communion-table is neither raised nor inclosed. The floor of the whole church is also of the same height. The nave is 30 ft. long, and 16 ft. 1 in. wide. Between the chancel and nave are the remains of a screen, and over it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... of those trim, modern park-lodges, all angles and peaks, which one sees everywhere now-a-days, but a low cottage, with a very thick, wig-like thatch, into which rose two astonished eyebrows over the stare of two half-awake dormer-windows. On the front of it were young leaves and old hips enough to show that in summer it ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the forest made a camp fire in front that kept everybody toasting warm in ordinary weather. The regimental and company officers had similar quarters, improved sometimes by a roof of canvas or tarpaulin beneath the evergreen thatch. There were but few days in the East Tennessee winters when such shelter was not a sufficient protection for men young and accustomed to hardship. It was in fact more comfortable than life in tents at division and corps headquarters, but with us tents were a necessity on account ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... square miles which are now rich corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the south of the Thames. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... old as the Eden Tree—and new as the newest green, For each man knows ere his lip thatch grows the caddy's mocking mien. And each man hears, though the ball falls fair, the Devil's cursed cough Of joy as the man holes out in ten, "You did ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... scene, watching, with unconcealed delight, the spectacle of tumbling roof and toppling wall, giving vent to their feelings in laughter and loud shouts of approval, like delighted children, whenever another bulky square of mud and thatch comes tumbling down. Fortunately, nobody happens to be hurt, beyond the half-burying in the debris of some donkeys, which are finally induced to extricate themselves by being vigorously bombarded with ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and I made the way for you. I was a hunter of beasts and a fighter of men. I discovered fire and covered my nakedness with the skins of animals. I builded cunning traps, and wove branches and long grasses and rushes and reeds into the thatch and roof-tree. I fashioned arrows and spears of bone and flint. I drew iron from the earth, and broke the first ground, and planted the first seed. I gave law and order to the tribe and taught it to fight with craft and wisdom. I enabled the young men to grow strong and lusty, and the women to ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... in flames, from one end to the other. Still there was work for them to do, to try and save the out-buildings. Even the mill itself was threatened, as the wind blew towards it. The men pulled down the sheds nearest the house, and damped the straw thatch of two or three outhouses, the farmer not only showing them what to do, but working away with his own hands as hard as any one. At last the fire was got under, and the mill was saved; but the house was ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the evening, too tired to put away my packages, had retired to rest at once. My little maid, who was not so fatigued as I was, and slept more lightly, woke me in the night to listen to a noise in the thatch, at the further end of the store; but I was so accustomed to hear the half-starved mules of Cruces munching my thatch, that I listened lazily for a few minutes, and then went unsuspiciously into another heavy sleep. I do not know how long it was before I was again awoke by the child's loud screams ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... it back, but the chub showed such little eagerness to be caught by me that I generally preferred to steer and watch my companion pulling them out as he stood in the prow, his face nearly hidden under the thatch of his straw hat. When the fish were in a biting humour, he had one on his hook every time he threw ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... very small; yet, small as it was it was grim to a degree. The flint in rows, tier upon tier, grinned at him fiercely, reminding him of a dog showing its teeth. The colour of steel, the rows of set teeth, the shaggy roof of thatch, the flag ruffling it from the chimney, all bespoke the same sturdy fighting character. Indeed it was so small, and yet so truculent, that ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of the city with the plough, and made it almost a square. He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midst of it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fifty families of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws and runaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him. The date of the building of Rome was supposed to be ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... called Raheni.[203] He has in this place very large and handsome palaces, with numerous courts.... There are also in this city many other palaces of great lords, who live there. And all the other houses of the place are covered with thatch, and the streets and squares are very wide. They are constantly filled with an innumerable crowd of all nations and creeds.... There is an infinite trade in this city.... In this city there are many jewels which are brought from Pegu and Celani (Ceylon), ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... loose stones, and covered with a thatch of turf and straw, known to the natives by the name of "driss," the gourbi, though a grade better than the tents of the nomad Arabs, was yet far inferior to any habitation built of brick or stone. It adjoined an old stone hostelry, previously occupied ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... mortgaged his farm-house and gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of the cottages were built in an Essex fashion, of puddled clay and chopped straw faced with tarred boards. Some dwellings, however, were faced with straw instead of boards. They had just had their wall thatch renewed ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the herring season, an occasional fish-curer comes the way, rarely bait at the Gardenstone inn; and in the little low-browed room, with its windows in the thatch, into which, as her best, the land-lady ushered me, I certainly found nothing to identify the locale with that chosen by the literary lawyer for his open library. But, according to Ferguson, though "learning ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... she now? She, accustomed to all the luxury that wealth could procure, no longer had any home except a poor thatch-covered hovel, whose walls were not even whitewashed, whose only floor was the earth itself, dusty as the public highway in summer, frozen or ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... should now have been before their eyes, and at a distance of not quite two hundred paces, was no longer there! The ruins of it alone were visible. The large boulders with which its walls had been built, the beams and thatch that had composed its roof, the grass couches upon which they had slept, the rude improvised utensils and other articles which had served them for furniture, were all strewed far and wide over the ground; and not the semblance of a house, or even hovel, remained to show that ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... that thatch is not uncommon in the Stura valley. In the Val Mastallone, and more especially between Civiasco (above Varallo) and Orta, thatch is more common still, and the thatching is often very beautifully done. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... variegated with every tinge to be found amongst the browns and yellows, according to the respective periods of their construction. Some of them are enveloped in blue smoke, which oozes through every interstice of the thatch, and spreads itself, like a cloud hovering over these frail habitations, or moves slowly along, like a strata of vapour not far from the ground, as though too heavy to ascend, and loses itself in the thin ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mere shed. There are also regular log-cabins encountered with locked corners, especially among the southern Tarahumares. Finally, when a Tarahumare becomes civilised, he builds himself a house of stone and mud, with a roof of boards, or thatch, or earth. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... difficulty of approach and their retired situation. Here the general fixed himself, much to his liking, in a cane brake, about a quarter of a mile from the river, which however was soon cleared to thatch the huts of himself and his men. Some lakes which skirted the high land, rendered the post difficult of approach, and here was forage for horses, and beef, pork, rice, and green corn** for the men, in the greatest ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... wide belt made of some kind of raw-looking leather that was held together by two leather lacings, while on his feet were a kind of sandal shoes that appeared to be made of the same leather. He must have constructed both belt and shoes himself, and he hadn't any hat at all upon his crimson-gold thatch of hair. I looked at him so long that I had to look away, and then when I did I looked right back at him because I couldn't believe that ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at length descended from before the altar, to administer the water to such as desired to receive it. Among these, Toussaint bent his head lowest—so low, that the first slanting sunbeam that entered beneath the thatch seemed to rest upon his head, while every other head remained in the shadow of the roof. In after days, the negroes then present recalled this appearance. Jean Francais, observing that General Hermona was making some remark about Toussaint to the officers ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... fire while Jack located on the chart the present extent of the blazing area, and sent in his report. When he had finished he did not go out to her immediately. He stood staring down the hill with his eyebrows pinched together. Now and then he lifted his hand unconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back from his forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old. He was feeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire; cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from that beautiful stretch ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... masterly piece of pen work. There is not a feeble or tentative stroke in the whole of it. The color is brilliant and the textures are expressed with wonderful skill. The student ought to carefully observe the rendering of the various roofs. Notice how the character of the thatch on the second cottage differs from that on the first, and how radically the method of rendering of either varies from that used on the shingle roof at the end of the picture. Compare also the two gable chimneys with each other ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... found the village of Cacahuamilpan on the slope of a hill. In the midst of neat trim gardens stood the little white church, and the ranches of the inhabitants, cottages of one room, with walls of canes which one can see through in all directions, and roofs of thatch, with the ground smoothed and trodden hard for a floor. Everything seemed clean and prosperous, and there was a bright sunny look about the whole place; but to Englishmen, accustomed to the innumerable appliances of civilized life, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... smoothly hewn stones, no carved windows, no decoration of any kind distinguished it from the houses of the people. It was a small, low building of rough stone, unplastered, even inside, and roofed by a heather thatch. There was a single door in the side wall. The roof within was open to the rude, unvarnished beams which upheld the thatch. The floor was of beaten clay, and there were rough benches for the people to sit upon during the sermon, but ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... from another portion of the same chapter in Macaulay:—"Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry, would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed miraculous." Speaking ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... had reached this point another listener had arrived: the blue eyes of Annie Anderson were fixed upon the speaker from over the half-door of the workshop. The drip from the thatch-eaves was dropping upon her shabby little shawl as she stood, but she was utterly heedless of it in the absorption of hearkening to Thomas Crann, who talked with authority, and a kind of hard ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... blocks of honey-comb,—which, however, had been treated by the builders so that they had a hard glaze, to prevent the wings and feet of the butterflies from sticking when they touched the walls. The roof was a woven affair, very cunningly made so that the top surface was a sort of thatch of flower-stems, while the ceiling was a solid sheet of flowers. Of course, in this climate, they were always fresh. The butterflies had their beds on the ceiling; indeed, as Sara arrived rather early, a few ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... profusion. The wild roses of June were like the high notes of a violin, and there was clover, and mown hay. In the southeast the clouds were banking, but still the moon rose high, and the cottage was clear as in daylight, clearer even in the mind's eye—the whitewashed walls, the thatch like silver, the swallows' nests beneath the eaves. The hard round sea-cobbles beneath his feet were clear and individual, and to where he sat in the haggard came a girl's ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, 15 The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair,—thy brethren wait to sup. The hound is kin to the jackal spawn,—howl, dog, and 20 call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my father's ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... wild callant, Geordie?' said David in some surprise, for Ringan was not only provided with a pony, but his thatch of tow-like hair had been trimmed and covered with a barret cap, and his leathern coat and leggings were like those ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... people say 'home,' it's Whitecroft I think of, with its narrow windows and thatch roof and the farm-buildings about it, and the bits of trees all bent one way with the ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... such as is used to shelter that al fresco entertainment, the luau. But in the old times of strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to lift his hand and the entire population of a district ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles, beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of the hula, such as La'a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, did not allow the divine art ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... mistake, boy. Let God and our Little Father look to the world. It is none of my work to mend my neighbour's thatch. Why, last winter old Michael was frozen to death in his sleigh in the snowstorm, and his wife and children starved afterwards when the hard times came; but what business was it of mine? I didn't make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. And then the blight ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... devastation, as the wolves were heard howling in the night, the food supplies were fast disappearing, and the houses of shelter were delayed in completion by "frost and much foul weather," and by the very few men in physical condition to rive timber or to thatch roofs? The common house, twenty foot square, was crowded with the sick, among them Carver and Bradford, who were obliged "to rise in good speed" when the roof caught on fire, and their loaded muskets in rows beside the beds threatened ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... will see smoke wreaths straying upward from undiscerned chimneys. A little farther on, the road, now wholly rural, dips downward, and Cockington village reveals itself, not substantially changed, with its thatch and its red mud walls, from what it had been more than two hundred years ago. Its most prominent feature is the blacksmith's forge, which, unaltered except for repairs, is of much greater antiquity. It is said that, as a contrast between the ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... grassy land like to meadows. Also on their left board they saw presently three head of neat cattle going, as if in a meadow of a homestead in their own land, and a few sheep; and thereafter, about a bow-draught from the river, they saw a little house of wood and straw-thatch under a wooded mound, and with orchard trees about it. They wondered little thereat, for they knew no cause why that land should not be builded, though it were in the far outlands. However, they drew their ship up to the bank, thinking that they would at least abide awhile ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... the chiefs would not have had the land at all, could the clansmen have foreseen the present state of the Highlands—their children in mournful groups going into exile—the faggot of legal myrmidons in the thatch of the feal cabin—the hearths of their loves and their lives the green sheep-walks of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... a large rambling Mansion. The pillars were rotten, the galleries tumbling down, the thatch dry and combustible, and there was only one door. Suddenly, one day, there was a smell of fire: the old man rushed out. To his horror he saw that the thatch was aflame, the rotten pillars were catching fire one by one, and the rafters were burning like tinder. But, inside, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the old Flax-spinner took upon herself, the day she brought the helpless child to share the shelter of her thatch. The Oak outside her door held up ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of a rude altar, situated amid a grove of trees; but, even in the case of large temples with a complete group of buildings, the architecture is extremely plain, the material employed being unornamented white wood with a thatch of chamaecyparis. The entrance to the temple grounds is always through gateways, called Torii; these are made sometimes of stone, but more properly of wood, and consist of two unpainted tree-trunks, with another on the top and a horizontal beam beneath. ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... 'twas too far to take her down to the meadow, so he'd just get her up on the house top-for the house, you must know, was thatched with sods, and a fine crop of grass was growing there. Now their house lay close up against a steep down, and he thought if he laid a plank across to the thatch at the back he'd ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... up the opening of the cave with a thatch of willows and aspens, so that not even a bird or a rat could get in to the sacks of grain. And this work was in order with the precaution habitually observed by him. He might not be able to get out of Utah, and have to return to the valley. But ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... meeting-house in Dorchester, a very unpretentious structure of logs and thatch, was completed in 1631, and no free-holder was allowed to plant his domicile farther than the distance of half a mile from it, without special permission of the fathers of the town. It stood near the intersection of the present Pleasant and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... built. I have known an officer order a house to be built of three rooms, with doors and windows to each, and of a comfortable size, and three or four Burmahs will complete this house in a day, and thatch the roof over. In another point, the Burmahs show a degree of civilisation, which might be an example to the northern Athens—to every house there is a very neat ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Should take his place and fight; An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue Than a liver that's wake an' white; Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades His finger a thrigger can pull, An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel sight From under its thatch o' wool. So hear me all, boys, darlins! Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff, The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, An' ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... be From meaner beauties sorted; Hoping that I from them might draw Some graces to delight me, But there such monstrous shapes I saw, That to this houre affright me. Throw the thick Hayre, that thatch'd their Browes, Their eyes vpon me stared, Like to those raging frantique Froes For Bacchus Feasts prepared: 40 Their Bodies, although straight by kinde, Yet they so monstrous make them, That for huge Bags blowne vp with wind, You very well may take them. Their Bowels in their Elbowes ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... would be wilful waste if timber were ever wanting. The floor is sometimes sandy, but generally of hard and level tamped clay, to which the European would prefer boarding, and, as a rule, it is clean—no fear of pythogenie from here! The pent-shaped roof of rafters and thatch is water-tight except when the host of rats disturb it by ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the olives. He had gone (straight from his bed, and in perhaps the least considered of toilets: an old frieze ulster, ornamented with big buttons of mother-of-pearl, a pair of Turkish slippers, a bathing-towel over his shoulder, and for head-covering just his uncombed native thatch) he had gone for a swim, some half a mile upstream, to a place he knew where the Rampio—the madcap Rampio, all shallows and rapids—rests for a moment in a pool, wide and deep, translucent, inviting, and, as you perceive ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... ways, Laird of Ellangowan," she cried, "ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day ye have quenched seven smoking hearths—see if the fire in your own parlour burns the brighter for that? Ye have riven the thatch off seven cottars' houses—look if your roof-tree stands the faster. There are thirty yonder that would have shed their lifeblood for you—thirty, from the child of a week to the auld wife of a hundred, that you have made homeless, that you have sent out to sleep with the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Widow's long lonely years, Her Father supported us all: Yet sure she was loaded with cares, Being left with six Children so small. Meagre Want never lifted her latch; Her cottage was still tight and clean; And the casement beneath it's low thatch Commanded a ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... speaks truth, or Moses. But you must be good men, when I am not here. Such of you as live in our borders must pay your taxes quietly as before. I have spoken of the villages to be gently treated this year. Such of you as live in the hills must refrain from cattle-lifting, and burn no more thatch, and turn a deaf ear to the voice of the priests, who, not knowing the strength of the Government, would lead you into foolish wars, wherein you will surely die and your crops be eaten by strangers. And you must not sack any caravans, and must leave ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... stood by and heard, with as much impatience as he cared to show before guests whose rank was precious to the man who had still weakness enough to be ashamed that his father's brave and famous life had first been cradled under the thatch roof of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... glory, he left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while they begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and mimic their pleadings. I ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... large farm-house surrounded by a small village of barns and outbuildings. It was a typical Canadian farm of the older, western type. One of those places which had grown by degrees from the one central hut of logs, clay and thatch to the more pretentious proportions of the modern frame building of red pine weather-boarding, with shingled roofing to match, and the whole coloured with paint of a deep, port-wine hue, the points and angles being picked out with a dazzling white. It was a ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... cunning, treacherously shifting under the thatch of his heavy brows; he was like an old rat seeking for any hole of refuge. "Well—maybe I might. Anyhow, I'll go on—with ye. Kin I sit up? I 'm dog ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... summer. While we talked I tried to place the reason he disturbed me, but I couldn't seem to do it. He was dressed in an old plaid shirt and dungarees and his blond hair wasn't many shades removed from my own straw thatch. But there was something odd about him that I couldn't ...
— Prelude to Space • Robert W. Haseltine
... Again, when the genial day has dulled the light of the stars, she seeks her daughter from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. Fatigued by the labor, she has {now} contracted thirst, and no streams have washed her mouth, when by chance she beholds a cottage covered with thatch, and knocks at its humble door, upon which an old woman[56] comes out and sees the Goddess, and gives her, asking for water, a sweet drink which she has lately distilled[57] from parched pearled barley. While she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... no time to finish her polite objection, for the next moment she felt herself lifted in the air, smelled the bark thatch within an inch of her nose, saw the firelight vanish behind her, and subsiding into his curved arms as in a hammock, the two passed forth into the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... sense, was Nikky, but tall and straight, with a thatch of bright hair not unlike that of the Crown Prince, and as unruly. Tall and straight, and occasionally truculent, with a narrow rapier scar on his left cheek to tell the story of wild student days, and with two clear young ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and all three crept under cover of a patch of plantains to the shelter of the broad eaves of the thatch of reeds which covered the dwelling. Here they found that a hole had been made in the cane walls, and they crept into the house, thus avoiding the entrance by the door, which faced another house ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... cot of thatch and clay We'd list the flitting pipers play, Our lives a twine of good and gay ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... chimney showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims—farther than most of us realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles Standish. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... was to be had, or where, as in Norfolk, no stone was to be had, then of flint, as in so many of our church towers. Usually, however, the manor house was built in great part of timber. The poorer houses were dirty hovels, run up "anyhow," sometimes covered with turf, sometimes with thatch. None of them had chimneys. Six hundred years ago houses with chimneys were at least as rare as houses heated by hot-water pipes are now. Moreover, there were no brick houses. It is a curious fact that the art of making bricks seems to have been lost in England for some hundreds ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... him among them acting his part against him; upon which the old charmer went away muttering some words of malevolence against him. He lived at the foot of Rhyw Coelbren, and there was a large hole in the side of the thatch of his house, thro' which the people believed he went out at night to the fairies, and came in from them at night; but he pretended it was that he might see the stars at night. The house is down long ago. He lived by himself, as did the before-mentioned Charles Hugh, who was very famous in ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... must remember that the Chancellor Oxenstiern found nothing more worthy of remark to show his son, than by how little wisdom the world could be governed. We must hope these men of straw will serve as thatch to keep out the rain, and not be exposed to the assaults ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... wind, as usual, from the N.E. The weather was cooler than yesterday. I visited a group of cottages, or rather huts, and received a present of a korna for holding water. The thatch of these primitive habitations was of bou rekaba stalks. The korna is allowed to twine itself over the roofs, as the woodbine over our cottages, and looks very pretty. This group of cottages was inhabited by a single ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... yow in two like a carrot. Bed's best place for 'im. He's as wet as thatch with his ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... than a hundred yards distant was poor man's cottage, with an old gray thatch which wanted some repairing, and was plentifully covered with herbs, sending the threads of their roots into the straw. A little badly cultivated garden, fenced off from the hill-side by a loose stone wall, surrounded the house, and a gate without ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... hill, being only a deep hole in the ground, by which meanes, they easily make a passage out from the bottom of it, to carry away all the water, which, if it should remain stagnating therein, would melt the Ice and Snow: but they thatch it with straw, in the shape of a Saucepan-cover, that the rain may not come at it. The sides (supposing it dry) they line not with any thing, as is done in St. Jeames's Park, by reason of the moistness of the ground. This Pit they ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... of wind shook the hut, rending the thatch apart, and through the rent a little jet of rain fell upon his brother's forehead and ran down his pallid cheeks like tears. Then the strange understanding look passed from the wide eyes, and once more they became human, and the lips ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... defense of it were equally fierce, bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in the paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... in flowers o'er the thatch, And the swallow chirps sweet from her nest in the wall; All trembling with transport, he raises the latch, And the voices of loved ones ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... through the door, and in a moment the crashing of the brandies, as he broke through the wood, was no longer heard. The storm was now still; and Aubrey, incapable of moving, was soon heard by those without. They entered; the light of their torches fell upon the mud walls, and the thatch loaded on every individual straw with heavy flakes of soot. At the desire of Aubrey they searched for her who had attracted him by her cries; he was again left in darkness; but what was his horror, when the light of the torches once more burst upon him, to perceive ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... make use of the venom of snakes on the tips of their arrows. The heads of those serpents, from which they extract this deadly substance, are exposed on the sticks, which are thrust into the inside of the thatch of their dwellings as a ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... reflected in the pools of water on the roadside, not yet absorbed into the light limestone soil. The straggling one-sided street forming the entrance to Cloon looked more squalid than usual, the houses more wretched under their grass-grown thatch, the gleam and ring from the smithy the only touch of light and sound that ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... birds roll themselves into a ball in a hole in the winter, I know not. Single ones are certainly to be seen on a bank on a frosty, sunshiny day. Have they come out to view the world and report on it? Those very odd, unused nests are often to be found hanging from the thatch within outhouses. May it be recorded here that a wren once came to peck the sprigs on ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... yameni-runners shout deprecatingly at the mob; in return the mob loudly announce their intention of working destruction upon my unoffending head. Fortunately for me that head is pretty thoroughly hidden beneath the thick pith thatch-work of my Indian solar topee, otherwise I should have succumbed to the first fusillade of stones at the instance of a cracked pate. Stones that would have knocked me out of time in the first round rattle harmlessly on the 3/4-inch pith helmet, the generous proportions of which effectually ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Tang signifies Anglo-Saxon "thatch," from Sea Weed having been formerly used instead of straw to cover the roofs of houses. When bruised and applied by way of a poultice to scrofulous swellings and glandular tumours, the Sea Tang has been found very valuable. The famous ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church dedicated to St. Theresa, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... disappeared, leaving him bland, benign of countenance, although the same imperishable wrinkles lined his pinched cheeks. He was just as careless about his sparse hair as in the days of old. It was never by any chance sleek and orderly. The habit of running his fingers through his thatch still clung to him, significant reminder of the perplexities that filled his daily life over the ledgers and day- books. In all other respects, however, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... girl with a pale face and a lot of light thatch on it, with fine ways that she picked up in Carlisle.' But when I came to see you, I thought that if I had had to describe you, those were just the things I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... and as we approached Fa'a, I lit a match and looked at my watch. It was nearly two o'clock. The Dummy stopped the horse at Kelly's dance-hall in a palm grove. The building was of bamboo and thatch, with a smooth floor of Oregon pine, and was a former himene house. Kelly had rented it from the church authorities. The dancing was over for the night, but a few carts were in the grove, and the lights were bright. We went inside, and found forty or fifty Tahitians, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... stale dinners and storm-beaten woollen garments, but there was, after all, that savor of festivity which Ellen was apt to discover in the new. She looked over her book with utter content. In a line with her, on the boys' side, there appeared a covertly peeping face under a thatch of light hair, and Ellen, influenced insensibly by the boy's shyly worshipful eyes, looked and saw Granville Joy. She remembered the Christmas top, and blushed very pink without knowing why, and flirted all her curls towards ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... impulse to cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... kept by an old woman upwards of seventy years of age, who has received frequent notices that if she did not leave the gate, her house should be burnt down. About three o'clock on Sunday morning, a party of ruffians set fire to the thatch of the toll-house. The old woman, on being awakened, ran into the road and to a neighbouring cottage within twenty yards of the toll-house, shouting to the people who lived in it, 'For God's sake to come out and help her to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... things nobody mentions unless chance brings them up. Courtlandt—the one I knew—has been dead these sixteen years. If I knew he had had a son, I'd forgotten all about it. The only graveyard isn't on the hillside; there's one under everybody's thatch." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... the slope of the mountain near a roaring stream a hut built on the gnarled logs hides itself among the trees. Over its kogon thatch clambers the branching gourd-vine, laden with flowers and fruit. Deer antlers and skulls of wild boar, some with long tusks, adorn this mountain home, where lives a Tagalog family engaged in hunting ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... practically the cottage is now built, for there are no indoor fittings to speak of. The chimney is placed at the end of the room set apart for day use. There is no ceiling, nothing between the floor and the thatch and rafters, except perhaps at one end, where there is a kind of loft. The floor consists simply of the earth itself rammed down hard, or sometimes of rough pitching-stones, with large interstices between them. The furniture of this room is of the simplest description. A few chairs, a deal table, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... languidly upwards and along the roof until they rested on the spot directly over his head, where they became fixed, and, at the same time, opened out to a glare, compared to which all his previous glaring was as nothing—for there, in the thatch, looking down upon him, was the angular head of a huge python. The snake was rolled up in a tight coil, and had evidently spent the night within a yard of the professor's head! Being unable to make out what sort of ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... far more ancient than the houses of the town, were covered with green thatch, were buried in ivy, and would soon be radiant with roses and honeysuckles. They were gathered irregularly about a gate of curious old ironwork, opening on the churchyard, but more like an entrance to the grounds behind the church, for it told of ancient state, bearing on each ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of solid gold that can be weighed and counted. Fifty new guineas from the mint of King George, in a water-proof bag just fit to be buried at the foot of a tree, or well under the thatch, or sewn up in the sacking of your bedstead, ma'am. Ah, pretty dreams, what pretty dreams, with a virtuous knowledge of having done the right! Shall we say it is a bargain, ma'am, and wet it with a glass, at my expense, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid and swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay; and even the opulent, lustrous ripple ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... who think of nothing but the bread box, and who are incessantly bowed in toil towards the ground; who dig; who harrow; who make hay, glean, gather in the harvest, knead the bread and strip hemp; who, huddled among domestic beasts, infants and men, dwell in holes and dens scarcely covered with thatch; to whom it is of little importance from what source children rain down into their homes. Their work it is to produce many and to deliver them to misery and toil, and if their love is not like their labor in the fields it is at least as ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the bats to their diurnal retreat, which was in the thatch above my hammock, informed me that the sun was now fast approaching to the eastern horizon. I arose in languor and in pain, the pulse at one hundred and twenty. I took ten grains of calomel and a scruple of jalap, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... that can be found in England. A thatched cottage suggests a very rude dwelling indeed; but this had a pleasant parlor and drawing-room, and chambers with lattice-windows, opening close beneath the thatched roof; and the thatch itself gives an air to the place as if it were a bird's nest, or some such simple and natural habitation. The occupants are an elderly clergyman, retired from professional duty, and his sister; and having nothing else to do, and sufficient means, they employ themselves in beautifying this sweet ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of ground, they have a very imposing effect, unlike any inhabited by persons of the same rank in England. But close even to the palaces of the most wealthy are to be seen wretched mud huts; and rows of native hovels, constructed of mats, thatch, and bamboos, often rest against their outer walls, while there are avenues opening from the principal streets, intersected in all directions by native bazaars, filled with unsightly articles of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... once as the ideal person with whom to be wrecked on a desert island. A flirt, and engaged, too, was she? No matter. He wrecked himself with her, and they lived on mussels and edible roots and berries, and some canned stuff from the ship, and he built a hut of "native thatch," and found a deposit of rubies, gathering bushels of them, and he became her affianced the very day the smoke of the rescuing steamer blackened the horizon. And throughout an idyllic union they always thought ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... there is beyond the sea That I have never seen, But Johnny says he'll take me there, And I shall be a queen. He'll build for me a palace there, Its roof will be of thatch, And it will have a little porch And everything ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... wrought havoc in their columns; the pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... uprights (jacal); or it may be a mere shed. There are also regular log-cabins encountered with locked corners, especially among the southern Tarahumares. Finally, when a Tarahumare becomes civilised, he builds himself a house of stone and mud, with a roof of boards, or thatch, or earth. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... timber grown in New Guinea, which must be much larger than any trees we saw growing on the island. After a short delay I was carried by some native policemen through a little village consisting of a few circular and oblong houses made of plaited grass and thatch, all of which had been so familiar to one's eyes in the South Seas. It was quite like old times to see these dwellings again, and some of them were actually occupied by genuine South Sea Islanders—Kanakas. The men of these ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of suspicion at her from under the black thatch of brows that met above his nose and were as ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... threw his leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one who performs ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... dead, but for the gods, and is intended to secure their good offices for the departed. While a Tagbanua corpse is above ground it is liable to be eaten by a vampire called the balbal that lives on Mindanao, has the form of a man with wings and great claws, tears open the thatch of houses and consumes bodies by means of a long tongue, which it thrusts through the opening in the roof. These Tagbanuas do not believe in a heaven in the skies, because, they say, you could not get up there. When a man dies ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... soon come pattering through the leaves. It was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of the open plain. This happened only where the path lay much upon the slope, and there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood at some distance below the level at which I chanced myself to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of foreshortened distance, miniature fields, and Lilliputian houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment in the aperture, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "'Ain't got room fer one under his yaller thatch. You wait till you set your lamps on him once before you go to gettin' excited. Why, he ain't one-two-three with our missionary! Gosh! I wish he'd come back an' see ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... that season, took up his quarters at Genabum, a town of the Carnutes; and lodged his men in houses, partly belonging to the Gauls, and partly built to shelter the tents, and hastily covered with thatch. But the horse and auxiliaries he sends to all parts to which he was told the enemy had marched; and not without effect, as our men generally returned loaded with booty. The Carnutes, overpowered by the severity of the winter, and the fear of danger, and not daring to continue ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... face in Anne's shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly thatch at Marilla. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trouble to fish them out again. The place was next set on fire in every direction, when the party, each man carrying such booty as he had managed to pick up, left the fort to the destruction awaiting it. The flames spread amid the wooden and thatch-roof buildings, till the surrounding stockades caught fire, and the whole hornets' nest was one sea ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... bought on which to build a chapel, and in 1788 the first Methodist church in Canada was built at Point de Bute. It stood somewhat back from the road in the present cemetery. The house was of stone, with a roof of thatch. The following is the deed of the property on which the ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... then, faith, sure enough, As the pig was desaiced, 'twas high time to be off. So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch, Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch, Then tuk laave of each other's sweet lips in the dark, And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark; The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone! And poor I wid myself, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... to be real, with its rows of Elizabethan cottages whose windows twinkled at us with their diamond-shaped, diamond-bright panes, sparkling under their low, thatch-eyebrows, from between black oak beams. The Tudor chimneys were as graceful as the smoke wreaths that lazily spiraled above them, and the whole effect was—was—well, inexpressibly Birket Foster. I used ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses' thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the only date I could ever get out of you, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... little room under the thatch she flung herself face downwards on the bed, and lay tense. What should she do? What should she do? He had seen her. He was on her track. Sooner or later he would run her to earth. And she—what ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... descendant Look (thick) as thatch, and (swelling) like a carriage-cover. His stacks will stand like islands and mounds. He will seek for thousands of granaries; He will seek for tens of thousands of carts. The millets, the paddy, and the maize Will awake the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... insthructed be you, Larry Doyle. Some people think no one knows anythin but dhemselves. [To Broadbent, deferentially] Of course I know a gentleman like you would not compare me to the yeomanry. Me own granfather was flogged in the sthreets of Athenmullet be them when they put a gun in the thatch of his house an then went and found it there, bad cess ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... a ruin since I saw it last. The winter's winds had lifted the thatch, and the wall on one side had tumbled in. There was no sign of the old life we lived there. The little window from which the guiding light had shone so often was fallen to pieces. Even the friendly hearth within was filled with ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... some time I might attain this joy—that this book might find shelter beneath roofs of thatch, and that the village girls, as they spin and turn the wheel, humming the while their much-loved verses, of the girl who so loved to make music that while fiddling she lost her geese, or of the orphan, who, fair as the dawn, went to drive home the birds at eventide—if even those village ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... music heard in a dream. Art, in establishing instruments for human life beyond the human body, and moulding outer things into sympathy with inner values, establishes a ground whence values may continually spring up; the thatch that protects from to-day's rain will last and keep out to-morrow's rain also; the sign that once expresses an idea will serve to recall it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... burnin' a stack?" remonstrated Andrew, blinking defiantly round the table. "Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute"— he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin—"It was this way: I was jist startin' to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o' mine, on the Vic. side o' the Murray, when up comes ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn: thy ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... ground, they have a very imposing effect, unlike any inhabited by persons of the same rank in England. But close even to the palaces of the most wealthy are to be seen wretched mud huts; and rows of native hovels, constructed of mats, thatch, and bamboos, often rest against their outer walls, while there are avenues opening from the principal streets, intersected in all directions by native bazaars, filled with unsightly ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... years. He tried to do it, and worked till noon, but the filth was as bad as ever. Then the Giant's youngest daughter came, and bid him sleep, and she cleaned out the stable, so that a golden apple would run from end to end of it. Next day the Giant set him to thatch the byre with birds' down, and he had to go out on the moors to catch the birds; but at midday, he had caught only two blackbirds, and then the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and bid him sleep, and then she caught the birds, and thatched the byre with the feathers ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... mother of Mrs. Belknap-Jackson; I mean to say, the confirmed Mixer—an elderly person of immense bulk in gray walking-skirt, heavy boots, and a flowered blouse that was overwhelming. Her face, under her grayish thatch of hair, was broad and smiling, the eyes keen, the mouth wide, and the nose rather a bit blobby. Although at every point she was far from vogue, she impressed me not unpleasantly. Even her voice, a magnificently ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a new class in Germany, but many of the evils of their position are new. They are more dependent on ready money than formerly; thus, where a peasant used to get his wood for building and firing from the common forest, he has now to pay for it with hard cash; he used to thatch his own house, with the help perhaps of a neighbor, but now he pays a man to do it for him; he used to pay taxes in kind, he now pays them in money. The chances of the market have to be discounted, and the peasant falls into the hands of money-lenders. Here ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... near-by journeys of ours. The August moon was big and hot and late in rising; there was a rick of old hay in a clean-looking field by the roadside that had evidently been used as winter fodder for young cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, leaving a protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very substantial, but sufficient shelter for a still night. Then and there we decided to play gypsy and camp out, literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the horse, watered him at a convenient roadside puddle, and tethered ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... at the opposite side of the road, cut into the rock of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... particularly enumerated, or otherwise charged with duty, not being articles wholly or in part made up; magna-grocia ware; manuscripts; maps, and charts; matresses; meat, (salted or fresh), not otherwise described; medals; palmetto-thatch manufactures; parchment; pens; plantains; potatoes; pork, fresh and salted; silk, thrown or dyed, viz., silk, single or tram, organzine, or crape-silk; thread, not otherwise enumerated or described; woollens, viz., manufactures of wool, not being goats' wool, or of wool ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone; it would have its windows and its ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the magic song which attracted the boor from his thatch under the hill, and the goat-herd from ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... as if I were casting up an account. Many a time in those days I studied my appearance in the glass like a foolish maid. I was not well featured, having a freckled, square face, a biggish head, a blunt nose, grey, colourless eyes, and a sandy thatch of hair, I had great square shoulders, but my arms were too short for my stature, and—from an accident in my nursing days—of indifferent strength. All this stood on the debit side of my account. On the credit ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... from the many temples, water-terraces, and ghats on the city side: opposite is a great sandy plain. The town below looks a mass of poor, square, flat-roofed houses, of which 12,000 are brick, and 16,000 mud and thatch, through the crowd of which, and of small temples, the eye wanders in vain for some attractive feature or evidence of the wealth, the devotion, the science, or the grandeur of a city celebrated throughout the East for all these attributes. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... upon your knee, Your tired knee that has so much to bear; A child's dear eyes are looking lovingly From underneath a thatch of tangled hair. Perhaps you do not heed the velvet touch Of warm, moist fingers, folding yours so tight; You do not prize this blessing overmuch,— You almost are too tired to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Max, as he stared at a rough, whitewashed hovel, thatched, and covered with hazel rods tied down to keep the thatch ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... that," said Bunting slowly. "Regular right-down queer. Leetle touched, you know, under the thatch," and, as he tapped his head significantly, both young people ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door. Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch. Companion of his solitary ways, Purveyor of his feasts on holidays, On him this melancholy man bestowed The love with which his nature overflowed. And so the empty-handed years went round, Vacant, though voiceful with prophetic sound, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the blushing dewdrops falter; The peacock wakes and leaves the cottage thatch; A deer is rising near the hoof-marked altar, And stretching, stands, the day's new ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... brown head showed just above the tall back of the old-fashioned pew. The sun shining through the long windows on the side of the church shone upon Neale's thick thatch of hair with iridescent glory. Whenever he moved his head, the hue of the hair seemed to change—like a piece of ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, they will need," he added after a minute, "and it is unlikely that the Senor Seem'son understands the making of a thatch. Diego and Juan are skillful; and the tules they lay upon a roof will let no drop of rain fall within the room. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... famous isle, standeth, which is seven miles every way, and whereunto there is no access but by three causies, whose inhabitants in like sort by an old privilege may take wood, sedge turf, etc., to burn, likewise hay for their cattle and thatch for their houses of custom, and each occupier in his appointed quantity throughout the isle; albeit that covetousness hath now begun somewhat to abridge this large benevolence and commodity, as well in the said isle as most other places ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... direct into life itself—that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead souls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves of the living. How many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed thoughts and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my forehead, I don't know. But I believe a good many. And I hope they have a good time. And I hope not too ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... he hung there, clawing with his feet like a cat on a clothesline, but presently a piece of the thatch came away, and Mr. Philander, preceding it, ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... never exhibited any tendency to depart from the primitive simplicity so strongly enjoined by their founder; and, down to the present time, the homes of the Buddhist priesthood are modest and humble structures generally reared of mud and thatch, with no pretension to external beauty and no attempt ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... draught of air drew down under the foliage in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. In front it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been kindled outside. With the rapidity of lightning the flame ran up the stream that continued to flow, igniting the whole of the spirits in the cask, which blew up with a tremendous explosion, darting the fiery liquid over the whole interior, and communicating the flame to the thatch, and every part of the building, which was instantaneously in ardent combustion. The shrieks of the poor disabled wretches, stretched on the sails, to which the fire had communicated, and who were now lying in a molten sea of flame like that described in Pandemonium by Milton—the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... foresee and croak th' event. My friends ne'er think, but talk by rote, Speak when they're taught, and so to vote. When rogues like these (a Sparrow cries) To honour and employment rise I court no favour, ask no place, From such, preferment is disgrace: Within my thatch'd retreat I find (What these ne'er feel) true peace ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... thatch to cover the roofs of the houses, or shelter over their boats. Neatly fastened together with split rattans, they form the walls of the house. From the juice of the tree they make a fermented drink something like sweet beer, also ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... And in truth Mr. Havisham was beginning to be greatly interested; but perhaps not quite so much in Dick and the apple-woman as in this kind little lordling, whose curly head was so busy, under its yellow thatch, with good-natured plans for his friends, and who seemed somehow ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only remnants of the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... broken sheds, all sad and strange. He shoo-ed them from the clinking latch, And from the weeded, ancient thatch, Upon the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... the Hervey Islanders (p. 17 of notes): "The state is conceived of as a long house standing east and west, chiefs from the north and south sides of the island representing left and right; under chiefs the rafters; individuals the leaves of the thatch. These are the counterpart of the actual house (of the gods) in the spirit world." Compare Stair, ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... walls upholding reaches of silvery-oak weather-boarding; buttresses of mixed flint and bricks; outside stairs, stone upon arched stone; curves of thatch where grass sprouted; roundels of house-leeked tiles, and a huge paved yard populated by two cows and the repentant Rambler. He had not thought of himself or of the telegraph office for ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... the farmers live on better food than they had twenty years ago, but I should think that there has been little improvement in the little thatch-roofed houses in which they live. These houses are grouped into small villages, as are the farm houses in Europe, the farmer going out from the settlement to his fields each working day, much after the fashion of the workers on the largest American plantations. Buildings corresponding ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... under his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow; The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, He seemed ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... 17th-and 18th-century ice pits in England. This pit which lies 250 feet east of the Visitor Center may have served a spacious house which once stood nearby. It may be assumed that the missing surface structure was circular, probably of brick, had a small door, and was roofed over with thatch or sod for insulation. ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... off. In November the plants that show signs of heading are stripped of the larger outer leaves, then taken up and set close together in beds and covered with hot-bed sash. In cold weather straw or thatch is added. In this way the plants continue to give heads until February. Plants which have begun to head may be taken up in the same way and set in a cellar. Just enough moisture should be given to keep them from wilting, as, if too much is given, they are liable ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... thatched, and which, as it could easily be set on fire by arrows with burning tips, was likely to prove dangerous. The considerable force we brought enabled these operations to be rapidly carried on. The thatch was conveyed to a distance from the house, that it might not be employed for smoking us out, while all the men able to use saws and hammers set to work to fit and nail up the timbers. Every door and window was so strongly barricaded, that a ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... patronage. It was housed in a recess in the wall of the traveling trench, and was open to the sky. There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... and herds which should have been grazing somewhere on the plain or the foothills ahead, not a horn or a hoof was to be seen. Also, the house looked different: it had the appearance of being not as high as usual; I could not see the grey thatch of its roof; and the walls, instead of being pure white, as they had been when I last saw them, were white only in comparatively small patches, the remainder being brown, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the world yearly visit this relic of Old Shanklin. Pretty thatched cottages can be seen in many parts of the Island, but nowhere is there such a combination, there being three different styles of roof in thatch, the setting in a background of trees completing the illusion of the country. In the angle where the figures stand is the rustic fountain on which hangs the shield with the verse written by the poet Longfellow when staying at Hollier's Hotel, ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... stern faces of those who held them as lightning does. But soon there was to be light. If any had leisure to observe, they may have seen flakes of fire flying upwards from the dim bush, and wondered what they were. They were bunches of burning grass being thrown on spears to fall in the thatch of the hospital roof. Presently something could be seen on this roof that shone like a star. It grew dim, then suddenly began to brighten and to increase till the star-like spot was a flame, and a hoarse cry passed from man to man of: 'O God! ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... ideal person with whom to be wrecked on a desert island. A flirt, and engaged, too, was she? No matter. He wrecked himself with her, and they lived on mussels and edible roots and berries, and some canned stuff from the ship, and he built a hut of "native thatch," and found a deposit of rubies, gathering bushels of them, and he became her affianced the very day the smoke of the rescuing steamer blackened the horizon. And throughout an idyllic union they always thought rather regretfully ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... long shed of uniform height on each side of the road. Each habitation had a small low door, which alone showed the number of separate dwellings in a row. The sides were composed of broad strips of bark, and bamboo leaves served for the thatch. Here and there were larger houses built of bamboo, with raised floors, marking the residences of chief men. At last they reached a house nearly a hundred feet in length, and, having ascended some steps, Jack found himself ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... type of Celt. The wild thatch of his scrubbing-brush hair shone purple in the light. Scrape his face as he would, the purple shadow of his beard seemed ingrained in his white white skin. Black-browed and black-lashed, he had the luminous blue-gray-green eyes of the colleen. There was a curious untamable ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... with a pale face and a lot of light thatch on it, with fine ways that she picked up in Carlisle.' But when I came to see you, I thought that if I had had to describe you, those were just the things I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... There are a great number of palm trees of a different kind from those in Guinea and from ours, of a middling height, the trunks without that covering, and the leaves very large, with which they thatch their houses. The country is very level." The Admiral jumped into his boat and went on shore. He came to two houses, which he believed to belong to fishermen who had fled from fear. In one of them he found a kind of dog that ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... was at this time erected, to the material of which every man, woman, and child contributed something, even if only a stick or a reed of thatch. Some were drafted off to put up the house, and the rest commenced to fight in real earnest, and settle any old grudges with each other. He who got the most wounds was set down for special favours from the god. With the completion ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... destitution, and on a tract which had probably once been part of the Bog itself, there stood—there stands still—a short, square tower, battlemented at top, and surmounted with a pointed roof, which seems to grow out of a cluster of farm-buildings, so surrounded is its base by roofs of thatch and slates. Incongruous, vulgar, and ugly in every way, the old keep appears to look down on them—time-worn and battered as it is—as might a reduced gentleman regard the unworthy associates with which an altered fortune had ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... neighbourhood a plantation of mango and other fruit-trees. It had, I was told, been planted only three years ago by Hiraman and Motiram, and I sent for them, knowing that they would be pleased to have their good work noticed by any European gentleman. The trees are now covered with cones of thatch to shelter them from the frost. The merchants came, evidently much pleased, and I had a good deal of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... from the dream, more especially as head and limbs were still heavy, weary, and battered. The strange roaring still sounded, and sometimes seemed to shake the bed. Twilight was coming in at a curtained window, and showed a tiny chamber, with rafters overhead and thatch, a chest, a chair, and table. There was a pallet on the floor, and Anne suspected that she had been wakened by the rising of its occupant. Her watch was on the chair by her side, but it had not been ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the shepherdess, "what here in this strange place? No, that I shall not, I can tell you. I never slept from under the thatch of my father's cottage in my life, but once, and that was at the wedding of my dear, obliging Rovena. But perhaps," added she, "my father and mother will come to me here. So I will even try and be compilable, for I never was obstinate. But indeed my head ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... as in Norfolk, no stone was to be had, then of flint, as in so many of our church towers. Usually, however, the manor house was built in great part of timber. The poorer houses were dirty hovels, run up "anyhow," sometimes covered with turf, sometimes with thatch. None of them had chimneys. Six hundred years ago houses with chimneys were at least as rare as houses heated by hot-water pipes are now. Moreover, there were no brick houses. It is a curious fact that ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... anticipated, for in the evening, during the night, and early in the morning, the Dwarf had laboured so hard, and with such ingenuity, that he had nearly completed the adjustment of the rafters. His next labour was to cut rushes and thatch his dwelling, a task which he performed with ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... account of his being three-parts drunk most of the time. At last the rain was coming in through the roof. When Anthony saw that he came to himself a bit and sent for my grandfather and settled with him to put a few patches of new thatch on the worst places. My grandfather was the best man at thatching that there was in the island in them days, and he took the job though he misdoubted whether he'd ever be paid for it. Anthony never came next or nigh him when he was working, which shows that he hadn't got his senses ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... roof, and eaves projecting some feet from the walls, and reaching nearly to the ground, except where the door was. The small casements of the upper story, if there were any, were completely hidden. A row of fleur-de-lis was springing up, green and glossy, along the peak of the brown thatch; this and the picturesque eaves forming its only beauty. The thatch looked old and rotten, and was beginning to steam in the warm sunshine. The unpaved yard about it was a slough of mire and mud. There were mould and mildew upon all the wood-work. The place bore the aspect ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... ones besides, for a good heart had the eldest brother, though only a brickmaker. The poor thing built her house with her own hands; it was very narrow, its one window was all on one side, the door was too low, and the thatch on the roof might have been laid on better, but it gave her shelter and a home, and could be seen far over the sea, which sometimes burst over the trench in its might, and sprinkled a salt shower over the little house, which kept its place there years after he who made the bricks ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... westering sun, was a beaten gold and remodeled to unfamiliar lines. Well known cat's-claw and cactus clumps had disappeared. A sand drift a foot in length covered the well curb. A drift that touched the thatch lay against the east side of the cook tent and had spilled within, half burying the tables and benches. Within the living tent, sand lay thick on trunks and cots. But the tents had ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... a long thicket of these oak-like trees—live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called—which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eyes, shining in the firelight, appear at the edge. At the same moment there was a sound of scraping and scratching at some of the other holes. The roof was constructed of rough poles laid at short distances apart, and above these were small branches, on which was a sort of thatch of reeds and rushes. Standing close under one of the holes Beric could see nothing, but from the sound of the scratching he could tell from which side the wolf was at work enlarging it. He carefully thrust the point of his spear through the branches and ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... night peace brooded over the distracted city and the Cyprian stars looked down on the old, sweet story of mother and child—as closely clasped beneath the gilded roof of the royal palace as under the thatch of a peasant shed—smiling, forgetful of the days of anguish that ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... this matter of the boating mishap—he cursed himself now, as he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his dramatic itch—and now had paid for it with that idiotic story ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... your thatch is red! Slip out of your bed, sweet Anne! I have stolen a fairy buck," he said, "The first since ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the south of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who had lived pleasantly—a very dreadful thing. In the old agricultural days that had drawn to an end in the eighteenth century there had been a pretty proverb of love in a cottage; and indeed in those days the poor of the countryside had dwelt in flower-covered, diamond-windowed cottages of thatch and plaster, with the sweet air and earth about them, amidst tangled hedges and the song of birds, and with the ever-changing sky overhead. But all this had changed (the change was already beginning in the nineteenth century), and a new sort of life ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... mother was doubtful as to her daughter-in-law's project and even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet wife toiled unseen. The mother and husband patiently waited, until after a week, the little woman rejoined the family ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... threshold was somewhat worn; but upon the platform before it a large egg-shaped jar of unmistakable Chinese origin encased the roots of a flowing cactus that might have added a grace to the proudest palace in the Misty City. This was the modest portal of the Eyrie; ivy vines sheltered it like a dense thatch; ivy vines clung fast to a deep bay window that nearly filled one side of the library of the old mansion, now a living-room; ivy vines curtained the glazed wall of a conservatory where some one slept as in ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... disembarked. The duke himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the Norwegians; they ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is one street, with a ruined cross at one end and the church at the other, and the great hill over all. The cottages are as white as snowdrops, and they have heavy thatch roofs. The women wear large blue Worcestershire sunbonnets. The only shop is a post-office too, so that Robert was able to ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... is a beast, my dear one, With his paws he tears at the thatch, His breath is a curse and a warning, You can see it ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... which enormous sombrero I seated myself by him on the outside of the Weybridge coach, and amazed the gaping population of each successive village we passed through with the vast dimensions of the thatch I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... treatment. The friends and relations are then anointed, the turmeric being applied, however, to their left feet. The bow, arrows, da, and u star are carefully placed inside the inner surface of the thatch on the roof, and the ceremony is over. Rice flour is then distributed to all who are present, and the male adults are given liquor to drink. After two or three months the ears of the child are bored and ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... trench opposite had a chance at him. He advanced through a vast burrow. Trenches ran parallel, and other trenches cut across them. One could wander through them for miles. Most of them were uncovered, but others had roofs, partial or complete, of thatch or boards or canvas. Many had little alcoves and shelves, dug out by the patient hands of the soldiers, and these niches contained their ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mentioned, constructed of large blocks of stone so perfectly worked that the joints of the masonry were scarcely perceptible, but without ornament or adornment of any kind whatever, and roughly roofed with thatch. The exception was in the case of the temple, which, like so many in ancient Peru, was dedicated to the Sun. This structure was erected upon the summit of a low mound, scarcely important enough in height to be termed a hill, yet high enough to allow the building ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... English—I've seen them, spit the child on the mother's breast. I've seen them set fire to the thatch of the widow and childless. But this.... But this.... I can save you, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... left standing. While they gazed with wonder at the sight, and lamented the fate of their neighbors, that old house of theirs was changed into a TEMPLE. Columns took the place of the corner-posts, the thatch grew yellow and appeared a gilded roof, the floors became marble, the doors were enriched with carving and ornaments of gold. Then spoke Jupiter in benignant accents: "Excellent old man, and woman ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... stout leather hat, and ran down the street. Out came all the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same thing once before, on being scolded. There is no water but what runs down ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... stones, are often formed by two exterior surfaces of stone, filled up with earth in the middle, which makes them very warm. The roof is generally bad. They are thatched, sometimes with straw, sometimes with heath, sometimes with fern. The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a lady's hair in papers; but I should think that, when there is wind, they would come down, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... returning, late in the evening, too tired to put away my packages, had retired to rest at once. My little maid, who was not so fatigued as I was, and slept more lightly, woke me in the night to listen to a noise in the thatch, at the further end of the store; but I was so accustomed to hear the half-starved mules of Cruces munching my thatch, that I listened lazily for a few minutes, and then went unsuspiciously into another heavy sleep. I do not know how ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... steps leading to the top of the wall; from this the ascent to the house was easy, round which was a fine gravel walk. The house was built, in all respects, like to their common dwelling-houses; that is, with posts and rafters, and covered with palm thatch. The eaves came down within about three feet of the ground, which space was filled up with strong matting made of palm leaves, as a wall. The floor of the house was laid with fine gravel; except, in the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... besides," he continued, "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bivouacked by the brawling Jihun under a roof of thatch, whose walls were represented by more or less upright wooden posts and debris; for Kagig would not permit anything to stand even for an hour that Turks could come and fortify. None of us believed that the repulse of that handful of Kurdish plunderers and the capture of a Turkish colonel would ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this one feature judge what an expensive Herr. Streets were hung with cloth, carpeted with cloth, no end of draperies and cloth; your oppressed imagination feels as if there was cloth enough, of scarlet and other bright colors, to thatch the Arctic Zone. With illuminations, cannon-salvos, fountains running wine. Friedrich had made two Bishops for the nonce. Two of his natural Church-Superintendents made into Quasi-Bishops, on the Anglican model,—which was always a favorite with him, and a pious wish ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... remained where the sun had disappeared, and a deep-red glow was even now beginning to kindle where he was soon to rise. Just here, Hund's ear caught some tones of the soft harp music which the winds make in their passage through a wood of pines; and there was a fragrance in the air from a new thatch of birch-bark just laid upon a neighbouring roof. This fragrance, that faint vibrating music, and the soft veiled light were soothing; and when, besides, Hund pictured to himself his mind relieved by a confession to the good bishop—perhaps cheered by words of pardon and of promise, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... me, walking erect, and gravely held out a long and bony paw for me to shake. Then, as if satisfied that she had done all that hospitality demanded of her, she walked to the further end of the thatch verandah and stood there looking off into the forest, from which there came a few minutes later the most unearthly and yet most human ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... fell the matted, dusty hair. His tangled beard reached far below his waist. Even his eyebrows, naturally rather light, had grown to a heavy thatch above his eyes. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... not deceive yourself; they are not for the cow, but for the fool that lassoed the cow. And I promise you, Epifanio, that if it is not restored to me, this thatch over our heads will not be broad enough ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... head, an antiquated little town full of old maids and aged elms and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to be the changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had a more majestic spread, the weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss, and doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the burial-ground inscribed with names that had once been familiar in the village street; yet, summing up all the mischief that ten ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of the hatchets, Henry Burns proceeded to stretch a line between two trees; then interlacing the line, on a slant between other trees, he constructed a slight network; upon which, after an excursion amid the surrounding woods, he laid a sort of thatch of boughs. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... replied. "You don't suppose they would be such fools as that and, if they had, you don't suppose as I should be such a fool to split on 'em. Not likely. I ain't no desire to wake up, one night, and find the door fastened outside and the thatch on fire." ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... the upper part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid and swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... indeed looked very fertile, and the farmhouses very alluringly clean and neat, at least on the outside. They were not gray, as in the West of England, or brick as in the Southeast, but were of stone whitewashed, and the roofs were of slate, and not thatch or tile. As I have noted, they were not so much gathered into villages as in England, and again, as I have noted, it is out of such houses that the farmers' boys and girls go to the co-educational colleges of the Welsh ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... mountain village of K——, in Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No—a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep street, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and fringed with long grass, but rudely smoothed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... from the thieves of Cruces. I had been down to Chagres for some stores, and returning, late in the evening, too tired to put away my packages, had retired to rest at once. My little maid, who was not so fatigued as I was, and slept more lightly, woke me in the night to listen to a noise in the thatch, at the further end of the store; but I was so accustomed to hear the half-starved mules of Cruces munching my thatch, that I listened lazily for a few minutes, and then went unsuspiciously into another heavy sleep. I do not know how long it was ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. "But if thou thinkest the price be fair,—thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,—howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the Norwegians; they seemed rather to wait ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... workmen was to be already heard as he drew near to the mill. There were men there pulling the thatch off the building, and there were carts and horses bringing laths, lime, bricks, and timber, and taking the old rubbish away. As he crossed quickly by the slippery stones he saw old Jacob Brattle standing before the mill looking on, with his hands in his breeches pockets. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of the hatchets, Henry Burns proceeded to stretch a line between two trees; then interlacing the line, on a slant between other trees, he constructed a slight network; upon which, after an excursion amid the surrounding woods, he laid a sort of thatch of boughs. ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with earthen tiles; others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What especially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... near to the village with quick and joyful steps. He saw the smoke curling through the roof, and the thatch where green plants had thickly sprouted. He heard the children shouting and calling, and from a window that he passed came the twang of the koto, and everything seemed to cry a welcome for his return. Yet suddenly he felt a pang at his heart as he wandered down ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... What thatch survives is dung for the grass, The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof Will not bear a mower to mow it. But Only fowls have ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... of logs, the glassless windows were of deerskin parchment, the door-lock and the door-hinges were of wood, the latch string was of deerskin, the fireplace and the chimney were of clay, the roof thatch was of bark. The abode was clean, serviceable, and warm; and yet it was a house that could have been built thousands of years ago. But consider, for instance, Oo-koo-hoo's comfortable lodge; a similar dwelling, no doubt, could have ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... seems to be the explanation. With the Mali may be classed the Barai, the grower and seller of the pan or betel-vine leaf. This leaf, growing on a kind of creeper, like the vine, in irrigated gardens roofed with thatch for protection from the sun, is very highly prized by the Hindus. It is offered with areca-nut, cloves, cardamom and lime rolled up in a quid to the guests at all social functions. It is endowed by them with great virtues, being supposed to prevent heartburn, indigestion, and other ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... wilde Wood, And every bosky bourn from side to side My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood, And if your stray attendance be yet lodg'd, Or shroud within these limits, I shall know Ere morrow wake, or the low roosted lark From her thatch't pallat rowse, if otherwise I can conduct you Lady to a low But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320 Till further quest. La: Shepherd I take thy word, And trust thy honest offer'd courtesie, Which oft is sooner found in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... will be done!—and then, faith, sure enough, As the pig was desaiced, 'twas high time to be off. So we gothered up all the poor duds we could catch, Lock the owld cabin-door, put the kay in the thatch, Then tuk laave of each other's sweet lips in the dark, And set off, like the Chrishtians turned out of the Ark; The six childher with you, my dear Judy, ochone! And poor I ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... had not been for the smoke, whirled and beaten about by the breeze, she would have thought the house was not really a human habitation, but a bit of the moor itself risen up, so brown and rough and weather-beaten it looked under its old lichen-grown thatch. But the smoke was real smoke, and Esther, stepping nearer, saw one window lit by the leaping, cheery glow of ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... up the sky that night. The little thatch houses, and the children in their quaint garbs moving against the flames composed ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... that the gentleman puzzled and interested me very much. Not because people had given him the name of "Silver King." I do not covet, and I do not admire wealth alone, pure and simple. I know how to describe a vine-embowered cottage, or even a thatch-roofed hut, with a garland of gourd blossoms around its small windows, and I can appreciate the beauties of a picturesque church or castle. But all my descriptive faculties desert me before the marble and gold luxury ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... of square miles which are now rich corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... savages, like spirits of darkness, rushed upon the defenceless village. They bore with them lighted matches, made of some combustible substance twisted in the form of a cord, which, being waved in the air, would blaze into flame. The village was built of reeds, with thatch of dried grass. The torch was everywhere applied; the gale fanned the fire. In a few minutes the whole village was a ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... for shooting, Bana; let us look at your gun." It happened to be loaded, but fortunately only with powder, to fire my announcement at the palace; for he instantly placed caps on the nipples, and let off one barrel by accident, the contents of which stuck in the thatch. This created a momentary alarm, for it was supposed the thatch had taken fire; but it was no sooner suppressed than the childish king, still sitting on his throne, to astonish his officers still more, levelled ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... drawing their nets the coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, the rocks were peopled with memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours of Pan; and dwellers under thatch—the goatherd mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked them for the vintaging—were conscious, as the wind went by among the beeches and the pines, and brought with it ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... of that object, and he allowed them to travel languidly upwards and along the roof until they rested on the spot directly over his head, where they became fixed, and, at the same time, opened out to a glare, compared to which all his previous glaring was as nothing—for there, in the thatch, looking down upon him, was the angular head of a huge python. The snake was rolled up in a tight coil, and had evidently spent the night within a yard of the professor's head! Being unable to make out what sort of snake it was, and ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... solidly built of brown stone, and, with the exception of the waggon-shed and other outbuildings which were roofed with galvanised iron, that shone and glistened in the rays of the morning sun in a way that would have made an eagle blink, was covered with rich brown thatch. All along its front ran a wide verandah, up the trellis-work of which green vines and blooming creepers trailed pleasantly, and beyond was the broad carriage-drive of red soil, bordered with bushy orange-trees laden with odorous flowers and green and golden fruit. On the farther side ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... of horticulture are indirectly improving their own race by furnishing finer and more healthful materials to be built into man's body. Marble, cedar, rosewood, gold, and gems make a finer edifice than thatch and ordinary timber and stones. So South-Down mutton and Devonian beef fattened on the blue-grass pastures of the West, and the magnificent prize vegetables and rich appetizing fruits, equal to anything grown in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Through the unbroken thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered—not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces. But south of us, along the ascending trail by which we had come, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... lover had so often loitered hand in hand, a gay party of children and young people were assembled. The cottage had been purchased by an opulent and retired manufacturer. He had raised the low thatched roof another story high—and blue slate had replaced the thatch—and the pretty verandahs overgrown with creepers had been taken down because Mrs. Hobbs thought they gave the rooms a dull look; and the little rustic doorway had been replaced by four Ionic pillars in stucco; and a new dining-room, twenty-two ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small; yet, small as it was it was grim to a degree. The flint in rows, tier upon tier, grinned at him fiercely, reminding him of a dog showing its teeth. The colour of steel, the rows of set teeth, the shaggy roof of thatch, the flag ruffling it from the chimney, all bespoke the same sturdy fighting character. Indeed it was so small, and yet so truculent, that Kit ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... his mouth to protest and shut it resolutely, turned and walked down the room ruffling his hair, so that when he went back to Aymer, his iron-grey thatch was more ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... so a few peasant people had dropped their little farms and cottages amidst the great green woods on the winding river. It was a pretty place, with one steep, stony street, shady with poplars and with elms; quaint houses, about whose thatch a cloud of white and grey pigeons fluttered all day long; a little aged chapel with a conical red roof; and great barns covered with ivy and thick creepers, red and purple, and lichens that were yellow ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... stones, and covered with a thatch of turf and straw, known to the natives by the name of "driss," the gourbi, though a grade better than the tents of the nomad Arabs, was yet far inferior to any habitation built of brick or stone. It adjoined an old stone hostelry, previously occupied by a ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... granted that you have been in the country, and seen a very old farmhouse with a thatched roof, and mosses and small plants growing wild upon the thatch. There is a stork's nest on the summit of the gable; for we can't do without the stork. The walls of the house are sloping, and the windows are low, and only one of the latter is made so that it will open. The baking-oven sticks out of the wall like a little fat body. The ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... and it was now getting late, I desired to betake myself to rest; so I was just flirting with a piece of ham, preparatory to the cold grog, when I again felt a similar thump and rattle against the side of the canoe. There was a small aperture in the palm thatch, right opposite to where I was sitting, on the outside of which I now heard a rustling noise, and presently a long snout was thrust through, and into the canoe, which kept opening and shutting with a sharp ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... kindly your dutiful present; but, till we are out of pain, cannot make use of it, for fear we should partake of the price of our poor daughter's shame: so have laid it up in a rag among the thatch, over the window, for a while, lest we should be robbed. With our blessings, and our hearty prayers for ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... clearings it passed directly across them, and by the tortuous record of its spoor it might indeed be guessed that it sought these avenues of least resistance, as well it might, since, unlike its grim stalker, it walked erect upon two feet—it walked upon two feet and was hairless except for a black thatch upon its head; its arms were well shaped and muscular; its hands powerful and slender with long tapering fingers and thumbs reaching almost to the first joint of the index fingers. Its legs too were shapely ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shrink, that had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... front, for the members of the fire brigades carried huge lanterns on high poles. From the mass of old wet reed in the roadway I judged that the first act of the firemen had been to use their long hooks to denude the roof of the burning house of its thatch, which in the lightest wind is so dangerous to surrounding dwellings. Nobody in the village is insured, but the neighbours seem to meet about a third of the loss caused by a fire. It is an illustration of local values that a larger subscription ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... there's a lot of things nobody mentions unless chance brings them up. Courtlandt—the one I knew—has been dead these sixteen years. If I knew he had had a son, I'd forgotten all about it. The only graveyard isn't on the hillside; there's one under everybody's thatch." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... our Lord spied, as he passed, A starving tigress. Hunger in her orbs Glared with green flame; her dry tongue lolled a span Beyond the gasping jaws and shrivelled jowl; Her painted hide hung wrinkled on her ribs, As when between the rafters sinks a thatch Rotten with rains; and at the poor lean dugs Two cubs, whining with famine, tugged and sucked, Mumbling those milkless teats which rendered nought, While she, their gaunt dam, licked full motherly ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... gables, and ruinous walls, showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On some huts the rafters, varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like skeletons, and a few, wholly or partially covered with thatch, seemed still inhabited, though scarce habitable; for the smoke of the peat-fires, which prepared the humble meal of the indwellers, stole upwards, not only from the chimneys, its regular vent, but from various ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the churn on his back and went out with it. Then he thought he'd better water the cow before he turned her out on the thatch, and he took up a bucket to draw water out of the well. But, as he stooped down at the brink of the well, all the cream ran out of the churn over his shoulders, about his neck, ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... lanai such as is used to shelter that al fresco entertainment, the luau. But in the old times of strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to lift his hand and the entire population of a district ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles, beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of the hula, such as La'a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... in the sun, sideways on the leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house, with three chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt the clergyman's; there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from any other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney at the back, evidently that of the kitchen, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Moroland, have you not seen the master of the house mount to the roof and remain there through the night? Well, that is to prevent the evil spirit, Bal-Bal, from entering. This dread creature sails through the air like a flying Lemur (monkey), tears the thatch from the roof with his terrible curved nails, scatters the defenders, and licks up the body with his forked tongue of fire. The soul of this deceased never reaches heaven. Your charm, Piang, will ward him off." The boy sat, mouth open, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... her through an open tract of the forest, full of brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her; and, beyond that again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining overhead the thatch of its long branches. At that hour the place was breathless; a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of the wood; and she went groping, knocking against the boles - her ear, betweenwhiles, strained to aching ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the mountains a Shan village nestled into the grass. The bamboo houses, sheltered by trees and bushes, were roofed in the shape of an overturned boat with thatch and the single street was wide and clean. Could this really be China? Verily, it was a different China from that we had seen before! It might be Burma, India, Java, ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... had they marched, when at length the village of Plymouth Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its manifold labors. Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke from the chimneys Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily eastward; Men came forth from the doors, and paused and talked of the weather, 500 Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing fair for the Mayflower; Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the dangers that menaced, He being gone, the town, and what ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... heart of the forests of Wiltshire. Upon reaching the hut, and showing to the man the king's signet-ring, which when leaving the standard he had told him would be the signal that any who might come for it were sent by him, the man produced the standard from the thatch of his cottage, in which it was deeply buried, and hearing that it was again to be unfurled called his two stalwart sons from their work and at once set out with Edmund and ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... probably rotten or buried in mud formed from the decaying weeds, the fallen leaves, and branches which were gradually closing it up. A few yards from the edge there was a mass of ivy through which a little brown thatch could be distinguished, and on approaching nearer this low roof was found to cover the entrance to a cave. It was an ice-house excavated in the sloping ground or bank, in which, 'when George the Third was King,' the ice of the ponds had been preserved to cool the owner's ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the backbrand in, The green logs steam and spit; The half-awakened sparrows flit From the riddled thatch; and owls begin ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... bredths, triforme, square, ovall, round, And rules Ge'metricall in beards are found. Besides the upper lip's strange variation, Corrected from mutation to mutation; As 'twere from tithing unto tithing sent, Pride gives to Pride continuall punishment. Some (spite their teeth) like thatch'd eves downeward grows, And some growes upwards in despite their nose. Some their mustatioes of such length doe keepe, That very well they may a maunger sweepe: Which in Beere, Ale, or Wine, they drinking plunge, And sucke ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... boats were aground, having been purposely drawn close to the shore. When the last man had stepped on board, at a given signal the boatmen jumped into the water and waded to the bank. They had contrived to secrete burning charcoal in the thatch of most of the boats; this soon blazed up, and as the flames rose and the dry wood crackled, the troops in ambush on the shore opened fire. Officers and men tried in vain to push off the boats; three only floated, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... V hut warm and comfortable, and on my return found it very different. I fear we had not put enough thatch upon it, and the ten days' rain had proved too much for it. It was now neither air-tight nor water-tight; the floor, or rather the ground, was soaked and soppy with mud; the nice warm snow-grass on which I had lain so comfortably the night before I left, was muddy ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... and their habitations. Brown, gypsey-like people they appear in the distance, wearing ordinary clothes like Europeans, only dirty and ragged usually. Here and there we pass a cluster of their whares, low down near the beach—brown huts of thatch-like appearance, for they are made of raupo grass. Some of them are very neat, with carved and painted doors and fronts. Near them is usually some fenced-in cultivation, and possibly a rough-grassed clearing, on which may be a few cattle or horses. There are always ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... potatoes have come off. In November the plants that show signs of heading are stripped of the larger outer leaves, then taken up and set close together in beds and covered with hot-bed sash. In cold weather straw or thatch is added. In this way the plants continue to give heads until February. Plants which have begun to head may be taken up in the same way and set in a cellar. Just enough moisture should be given to keep them from wilting, as, if too much is given, they are liable to rot. Fully headed cauliflowers ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... I waited thus, but all that happened was that a wren settled on the head of Odin and twittered there, then flew off to its nest in the thatch. ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... valleys grow trees, and canebrakes, and banana groves, and all manner of bushes and most pleasant grass; and in among the bushes and trees, here and there, are little huts of wattled golden cane overlaid with a thatch of brown. And it was in one of these jacals, standing a stone's throw below the causeway that crosses the arroyo of the ojo de agua, upon the point of land that juts out between the two valleys before they become one, that Pancha ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... clambers in flowers o'er the thatch, And the swallow chirps sweet from her nest in the wall; All trembling with transport, he raises the latch, And the voices of loved ones reply to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... been built only by a white man, or one versed in the ways of civilisation. Not that there was anything very imposing in its architecture; for it was but a wooden structure, the walls of bamboo, and the roof a thatch of the palm called cuberta—so named from the use made of its fronds in covering sheds and houses. But the superior size of this dwelling, far exceeding that of the simple toldos of the Chaco Indians; its ample verandah pillared and shaded by a protecting roof of the same palm leaves; ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fruit-trees. It had, I was told, been planted only three years ago by Hiraman and Motiram, and I sent for them, knowing that they would be pleased to have their good work noticed by any European gentleman. The trees are now covered with cones of thatch to shelter them from the frost. The merchants came, evidently much pleased, and I had a good ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... if they would be thatching the house that autumn; but she answered that the thatch would last out the old people, and she was going to join her ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the boating mishap—he cursed himself now, as he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his dramatic itch—and now had paid for it with that idiotic story ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... thought on those things, while resting under the modest little portal of the hotel, whose former magnificence, when a hermit cell, might still be discernible in a few remaining remnants of the rich Gothic lintel yet mingling with the matted straw and the clinging ivy of the thatch. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... lying on a blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees. The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... man with a thatch of thick black hair and small watery eyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in a pair of tight-fitting trousers of white lawn, a flaming red tunic and a ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... comfortable Northumbrian cottage, built of stones roughly dressed with the hammer, and having the windows and doors decorated with huge heavy architraves, or lintels, as they are called, of hewn stone, and its roof covered with broad grey flags, instead of slates, thatch, or tiles. A jargonelle pear-tree at one end of the cottage, a rivulet and flower-plot of a rood in extent in front, and a kitchen-garden behind; a paddock for a cow, and a small field, cultivated with several crops ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by the Paths which go from House to House, so that nothing can be more grateful in a Climate where the sun hath so powerful an influence. They are generally built in form of an Oblong square, the Roofs are supported by 3 Rows of Pillars or posts, and neatly covered with Thatch made of Palm leaves. A middle-siz'd house is about 24 feet by 12, extream heigth about 8 or 9, and heigth of the Eves 3 1/2 or 4. The floors are cover'd some inches deep with Hay, upon which, here and there, lay matts for the conveniency of sitting down; few houses ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... I won't wear 'em! I will give 'em to the poor boy!" screamed Archibald, furious, scowling, struggling in the restraining hold of his nurse. He was a robust, thick-set child of four years, with a thatch of dark-brown hair, and strange near-sighted brown eyes, behind spectacles which he had worn from the time he ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... by the way we came, and then knew that we could in no way take the boat to Poole. The gale was raging at its highest, and thatch was flying from the exposed roofs. It would be dead against us; and the sea was white with foam, even in the haven. So we must go by road, and that was a long way. But we must get back to Odda, for he should be ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... time he stretched out one hand in a feeble way, to find that he was touching straw, and that beneath the straw there were boards. But there was straw everywhere; even the ceiling seemed to be straw, coarse straw, till he realised that it was reed thatch, and by degrees that he must be in the upper part of a stable—the loft, for he could smell hay; and as he satisfied himself that he was right so far, he discovered something more—that there were horses somewhere below, for there was a loud ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... climbing plants are tied so as to go along from pole to pole, and the maize cobs are suspended to these by their own hooked fruit-stalk. As the corn cob is forming, the hook is turned round, so that the fruit-leaves of it hang down and form a thatch for the grain beneath, or inside it. This upright granary forms a solid-looking, wall round the villages, and the people are not stingy, but take down maize and hand ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... are drawn by little bullocks that trot along as fast as a pony. I often meet carts with a high cover of thatch. These carts carry the tea, which grows on the hills, down to the ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous
... the reason why so many of them died; which was mostly starvation, the plague, and cold. For the snow was more than two feet deep upon the ground, and they were lodged in pits below the ground, covered only with a little thatch. Nevertheless, each soldier had his camp-bed, and a coverlet all strewed with stars, glittering and shining brighter than fine gold, and every day they had white sheets, and lodged at the sign of the Moon, and enjoyed themselves if only they had been able, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... constructed have never exhibited any tendency to depart from the primitive simplicity so strongly enjoined by their founder; and, down to the present time, the homes of the Buddhist priesthood are modest and humble structures generally reared of mud and thatch, with no pretension to external beauty and no ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Gagara: the tree is called the palmer; which is the profitablest tree in the worlde: it doth alwayes beare fruit, and doth yeeld wine, oyle, sugar, vineger, cordes, coles, of the leaues are made thatch for the houses, sayles for shippes, mats to sit or lie on: of the branches they make their houses, and broomes to sweepe, of the tree wood for shippes. The wine doeth issue out of the toppe of the tree. They cut a branch of a bowe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... farmhouses very alluringly clean and neat, at least on the outside. They were not gray, as in the West of England, or brick as in the Southeast, but were of stone whitewashed, and the roofs were of slate, and not thatch or tile. As I have noted, they were not so much gathered into villages as in England, and again, as I have noted, it is out of such houses that the farmers' boys and girls go to the co-educational colleges of the Welsh University. It is still the preference of the farmers ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... school-boy dainty—is eaten raw and cooked. It produces oil, and is used in the manufacture of stearine candles. It is also used to make marine soap, which will lather in salt water. The wood of the palm is used for ornamental joinery, the leaves for thatch and basket-work, the fibre for cordage and cocoa-nut matting, and the husk for fuel ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a few, and cartridges, which they hid in the roof. The women wept very greatly when we burned such houses, but they did not approach too near after the flames had taken good hold of the thatch, for fear of the bursting cartridges. The women of the Boer-log are very clever. They are more clever than the men. The Boer-log are clever? Never, never, no! It is the Sahibs who are fools. For their own honour's sake the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... lieutenant led the remainder of his force through an orchard divided from the south end of the house by a narrow lane, over which a barn abutted. Its high blank wall had been loopholed on both floors and was quite unassailable, but its roof was of thatch. And as he studied it, keeping his men in cover, a happy inspiration occurred to him. He sent back to the camp for an oil-can and a parcel of cotton wadding, and by three o'clock had opened a brisk fire of flaming bullets on the thatch. Within twenty minutes the marksmen had it well ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... girl, who cannot swim; and every one of them has been used to tumbling about the little forest ponies—there's one of them now! They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can mow; many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep shop. I can tell you they ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Taj; and the prospect of living with it was a real enchantment; but I pondered most the kind of house that would be provided for the General Commanding the District, how many the dining-room would seat, and whether it would have a roof of thatch or of corrugated iron—I prayed against corrugated iron. I confess these my preoccupations. I was forty, and at forty the practical considerations of life hold their own even against domes of marble, world-renowned, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... I want of burnin' a stack?" remonstrated Andrew, blinking defiantly round the table. "Tell you how it come. Hold on a minute"— he went to the bucket, and refilled his pannikin—"It was this way: I was jist startin' to thatch a new haystack for two ole bosses o' mine, on the Vic. side o' the Murray, when ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in the sunlight. It was a crazy affair constructed of logs laterally laid and held in place by uprights, with walls that looked to be just able to hold together while suffering under the constant threat of collapse. The place was roofed with a thatch of reeds taken from the adjacent stream-bed, and its doorway was protected by a sheet of tattered sacking. There was also a window covered with cotton, and a length of iron stove-pipe protruding through the thatch of the roof seemed to threaten the whole ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... if he had drained Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter— Rather a season of bliss unchangeable Awakened from farm and church where it had lain Safe under tile and thatch for ages since This England, Old already, ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... poverty, and have no possessions of value. Neither do they inherit anything save a little plot of land which they sow with rice—not to sell, but only for what is necessary for their families. Their houses are built on four posts; their walls are of bamboo and thatch, and are very small. Such was the spoliation committed on a people so poor and wretched that they would say: "Father, I will give the king twenty reals of eight annually, so that they will spare me from repartimientos;" ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... St. Andrews was founded, and as giving to that place the name of Kilrimont.[28] The earliest Celtic church at St. Andrews was probably, like that of Iona, constructed with wattles and turf and roofed with thatch. It was customary to have caves or places of retirement for the hermits; they were used, too, as oratories or places of penance, and one such there is at St. Andrews, known as ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... flower-ports Was-I mean were-crusted one and orl; Ther rusted niles fell from the knorts That 'eld the pear to the garden-worll. Ther broken sheds looked sed and stringe; Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn their ancient thatch Er-pon ther lownely moated gringe, She only said 'Me life is dreary, 'E cometh ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... or two of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, nor was there mingled ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... fiery thatch out from the engine room. "I might 'a' known better'n to sweat over firin' up. You generally manage to make about three ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... house a few trees were growing. Some were cherry trees, and one was a birch, with long, slender branches which swayed in the wind, and with every breeze its leaves touched the dilapidated moss-covered straw thatch of the roof; when the stronger gusts of wind bent its boughs to the wall, and pressed its twigs and the waves of leaves against the roof, it would seem as if the tree loved the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... wooden structure upon which he was perched sat Wolfgang himself, whilst the man beside him was busily engaged in removing the thatch piece ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down the smithy—a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... answer of the trusting maid. Close in his arms he held her to his breast For one brief moment—would have yet assayed Some deeper word her heart to strengthen, lest It should though faithful be too much afraid; But the clock gave the warning to the hour— And on the thatch fell sounds not ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... this custom which leads to the practice of choosing a temporary location for the body, waiting for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This is often the occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and the many small stone jars containing skeletons of the dead, or portions of them, standing singly or in rows in the most unexpected places least in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... poor Widow's long lonely years, Her Father supported us all: Yet sure she was loaded with cares, Being left with six Children so small. Meagre Want never lifted her latch; Her cottage was still tight and clean; And the casement beneath it's low thatch Commanded ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... the Illinois September. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house, and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. One of the two—who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skull thatch—was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. You couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that trifling handicap and wallowed in to pull poor Billy Mimms ashore, I ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... he mortgaged his farm-house and gambled away all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten, and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take one more hunt to-morrow and then ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Life, and not even planned before his time, are the major and minor churches, the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers' little houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen was a poor building of brushwood and thatch, six or seven paces from the guest house, the blaze of which, when it caught fire, could be seen from the glass windows of the west end of the lay church. The wooden cells of the brothers lay round this in a ring. The guest house roof was of shingles. This kitchen fire ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... beside old roads and pathways where hardly one man passes in the day, and look out all the year on unbroken barriers of heath. At every season heavy rains fall for often a week at a time, till the thatch drips with water stained to a dull chestnut, and the floor in the cottages seems to be going back to the condition of the bogs near it. Then the clouds break, and there is a night of terrific storm from the south-west—all ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... platform all round, which was overgrown with coarse herbage. The outer and inner surfaces of the wall were of stones, and the middle part was filled in with earth; so that grass might well grow on the top. The roof was of thatch—part straw, part sods, tied down to cross poles by ropes of twisted heather. The walls did not rise more than five feet from the ground; and nothing could be easier than for the goats to leap up, when tempted to graze there. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... are small and low, as is the rule, rather than the exception, in English towns and villages. Many are covered with tiles, but the thatch roof is also very common here. This consists of a mixture of straw and earth, often more than a foot in thickness, and covered with moss and grass. Notwithstanding this, both the houses and the streets are kept remarkably ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... comes David, next comes Chad, And then comes Winneral, as though he were mad, White or black, On old house thack [thatch].' ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... at his thatch impatiently. 'Me mother—oh!—the old woman's name's Mrs Spicer. (Git up, karnt yer!)' He twisted himself round, and brought the stretcher down on one of the horse's 'points' (and he had many) with a crack that ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... above a bamboo ladder, which seemed to, serve instead of steps. Although the sun had scarcely set, the village was wrapped in a strange silence, the sound of our footsteps alone being heard. The smoke that seemed to be forcing its way through stray holes in the thatch amply convinced us, however, that the inhabitants were within doors, and, turning to our Arab guide, I asked him if he could distinguish among the many huts the one in which we expected to find the Maw-Sayah. He ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... linen mixed with cotton, or with wool, not particularly enumerated, or otherwise charged with duty, not being articles wholly or in part made up; magna-grocia ware; manuscripts; maps, and charts; matresses; meat, (salted or fresh), not otherwise described; medals; palmetto-thatch manufactures; parchment; pens; plantains; potatoes; pork, fresh and salted; silk, thrown or dyed, viz., silk, single or tram, organzine, or crape-silk; thread, not otherwise enumerated or described; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one who performs ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... is already kissing the earth on the horizon; it has turned crimson and will soon disappear. In Semyon's pothouse, which has lately changed its name and become a restaurant—a title quite out of keeping with the wretched little hut with its thatch torn off its roof, and its couple of dingy windows—two peasant sportsmen are sitting. One of them is called Filimon Slyunka; he is an old man of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to the Counts Zavalin, by trade a carpenter. He has at one time been employed in a nail ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... desolate. At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and there windows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments. Altogether a sinister ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to pull the thatch from the roof of a little house beside the road, but as the plying ankus made his head ache he couldn't stay long enough to finish that job but scooted uproad again in full pursuit of a Ford car, while an angry man shoved his head through the hole in the roof of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... post-office as much as you do the young lady at the post-office over there. She's a beautiful old person, really. She lives in a cottage set well back from the road, with rose-trees on each side of a narrow, flagged path, and honeysuckle all over the house right up to the thatch, which is quite a yard thick. I have a water-colour of her, sitting outside her door, with the Royal Arms and Georgius Rex just showing over her cap, and a fat tabby cat asleep on the threshold. It was late summer when I did it, and the air was warm gold with purple ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... so as to leave a lane or street between them, and are generally built of bamboo, though many have their principal timbers of teak or eng-wood. The floors are usually of split bamboo, and the roof of elephant-grass, or "thekka," as the thatch of dried leaves is called, forms a good protection against the summer sun or monsoon rains, while the walls are formed of bamboo mats, often coloured and woven into ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... the Giant crept, So far through the forest ways, They found the house with the red gold thatch'd; It glitter'd like straw ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... restricted to the supply required by the Arabs for the manufacture of their cloths. These are woven by themselves, the weaver sitting in a hole excavated in the ground before his rude loom, shaded by a rough thatch about ten feet square, supported upon poles. There is a uniformity in dress throughout all the Nubian tribes of Arabs, the simple toga of the Romans this is worn in many ways, as occasion may suggest, very similar ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful sky of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold and quiveringly still as the sea on a ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... on a week day, were they permitted to go to their huts during rain; and even had this privilege been granted, many of those miserable habitations were in so dilapidated a condition, that they would afford little or no protection. Negro huts are built of logs, covered with boards or thatch, having no flooring, and but one apartment, serving all the purposes of sleeping, cooking, &c. Some are furnished with a temporary loft. I have seen a whole family herded together in a loft ten feet by twelve. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... [106[BF]] so as they were necessitated therunto. This fire was occasioned by some of y^e sea-men that were roystering in a house wher it first begane, makeing a great fire in very could weather, which broke out of y^e chimney into y^e thatch, and burnte downe 3. or 4. houses, and consumed all y^e goods & provissions in y^m. The house in which it begane was right against their store-house, which they had much adoe to save, in which were their co[m]one store & all their provissions; y^e which if it had ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... and yellow pareus, watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... history of the Trojan war rests on the authority of Homer, and forms the subject of the noblest poem of antiquity. 12. Every stalk, bud, flower, and seed displays a figure, a proportion, a harmony, beyond the reach of art. 13. The natives of Ceylon build houses of the trunk, and thatch roofs with the leaves, of the cocoa-nut palm. 14. Richelieu exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, and banished the confessor, of the king. 15. James and John study and recite grammar ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... which are clustered irregularly together near the beach, are very low, and are made of logs squared and notched at the ends, and chinked with masses of dry moss. The roofs are covered with a rough thatch of long coarse grass or with overlapping strips of tamarack bark, and project at the ends and sides into wide overhanging eaves. The window-frames, although occasionally glazed, are more frequently covered with an irregular patchwork of translucent fish bladders, sewn ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... over by a further layer of turf. There were few windows, and no chimneys at all—not even a hole in the roof. And what was meant by the two men who, standing on one of the turf walls, were busily engaged in digging into the rich brown and black thatch and heaving it into a cart? Sheila had to explain to him that while she was doing everything in her power to get the people to suffer the introduction of windows, it was hopeless to think of chimneys; for by carefully guarding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... opening, hardy hart's-tongue and tufts of parsley fern sprang from every crevice in the stones, while the top was covered with a tangle of briars, nettles, and matted grass. These combined to form a species of thatch which perfectly protected the interior from ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... ghosts, and call out, "So-and-so, come and eat; here I set down food for you, it is a part of all we have." If after such an offering and invocation the night wind rustles the tops of the trees or shakes the thatch of leaves on the roofs, they know that the ghost is in the village. The twinkle of a glow-worm near his grave is the glitter of his eye. In the morning, too, before they sally forth to the woods, one of the next of kin to the dead huntsman will go betimes to his grave, stamp on it ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... hills. Blue smoke curled up into the sky from the lodge cottage at the foot of the tree-clad slope. The door of the cottage stood wide open, and the scent of the wood-fire hung on the chill, damp air filling the narrow lane. A blackbird flew into the apple-tree overlooking the thatch, shook the moisture from his wings, and cleaned his bright orange bill on a bough. Then his full, reed-like music floated over the fields. The skylarks soared above the upland pastures, and a shower ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... and feed the calves, She took that old book down out of the thatch And has been doubled over it all day. We would be deafened by her groans and moans Had she to work as some do, Father Hart, Get up at dawn like me, and mend and scour; Or ride abroad in the boisterous night like you, The pyx and ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire (Little Blue Book#335) • W.B. Yeats
... steps, denote the former importance ascribed to the great Altar of Nature, and the power of religion on the social life of the past. Generations of later inhabitants, dwelling in flimsy huts of bamboo and thatch, regarded the mysterious ruins of the Tankahan Prahoe as the work of giants or demons, and the haunted hill as a mysterious resort of evil spirits. In lofty Sindanglaya, the swaying palms of the lowlands yield to glorious tree-ferns, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... hat, too, that crowned his head and canted with the wind and flopped about his neck, and would have sailed away down many a mountain brook but for a faithful leather strap that lay buried in the half-moon whiskers and held on for dear life. And from under the rim of this thatch, and half hidden in the matted masses of badly adjusted hair, was a thin, peaked nose, bridged by a pair of big spectacles, and somewhere below these, again, a pitfall of a mouth covered with twigs of hair and an underbrush of beard, while deep-set ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... nipa-thatch house used by the original Filipinos," said Moro. "I can explain all about it, for all Moros, and many ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... where the forces were gathered—who, as they were many, occupied all the houses, even the smallest ones—some soldiers were cleaning their weapons in one near the residence of the Recollect fathers. One fired his arquebus, which, unknown to him, was loaded. It caught in the thatch which formed the roof of that little house; and, as the sun was hot, and the wind the greater brisa, the house quickly caught fire. The father prior, Fray Pedro de San Nicolas, was very much annoyed; and he came out, and with reason rebuked the soldiers, who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... other hand, the village is really cool, healthy, and pretty; there are pleasant drives over dreadful roads, if one makes up one's mind to the volante, and delightful river-baths, shaded by roofs of palm-tree thatch. One of the best of these is at the foot of Mrs. L.'s inclosure, and its use is included in the privileges of the house. The water is nearly tepid, clear, and green, and the little fish float hither and thither in it,—though men of active minds are sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful. These are the things that make the gamut ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sharp frosted silver. He passed the door where Bonaparte lay dreaming of Trana and her wealth, and he mounted the ladder steps. From those he clambered with some difficulty on to the roof of the house. It was of old rotten thatch with a ridge of white plaster, and it crumbled away under his feet at every step. He trod as heavily as he could. So much ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... of the forward poles stood Silan Petroff in a red shirt, open at the neck, showing his powerful throat and hairy chest, hard as an anvil. A thatch of gray hair fell over his forehead, under which laughed great black, warm eyes. His sleeves, turned up to the elbow, showed the veins standing out on his arms as they held the pole. Silan was leaning slightly forward, and looking watchfully ahead. Marka ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... horse he met, and rode furiously to the huts at Derncleugh. All was there dark and desolate; and, as he dismounted to make more minute search, he stumbled over fragments of furniture which had been thrown out of the cottages, and the broken wood and thatch which had been pulled down by his orders. At that moment the prophecy, or anathema, of Meg Merrilies fell heavy on his mind. "You have stripped the thatch from seven cottages, see that the roof-tree of your own ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... convenient place at the church, in order to do great damage to those in the fort; and firing without cessation, they did not allow our men to fire a shot through its loopholes and windows. Others of the enemy hastened by another side to gather bundles of thatch by uncovering the roofs of the houses; and by fastening together what wood and bamboo they could gather, and pushing this contrivance toward the fort, they set it afire. The fire burned a quantity of rice and abaca (which is the hemp of this country), and many men were choked ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... beard attested, he was much older. The thickness of his wrist and the greatness of his fingers made authentic the mighty frame of him hidden under loose dungaree pants and cotton shirt, buttonless, open from midriff to Adam's apple, exposing a chest matted with a thatch of hair as white as that of his head and face. The depth and breadth of that chest, its resilience, and its relaxed and plastic muscles, tokened the knotty strength that still resided in him. Further, no bronze and beat of sun and wind availed to hide the testimony ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... gloomily; "why did the gods ever drive me to this? My men are but children to exult as they do; as boys love to tear the thatch from the roof of a useless hovel, in sheer wantonness. I ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the midst of the fields, even a hovel may have a certain grace derived from the pure air, the verdure, the open country—a hill, a serpentine road, vineyards, quickset hedges, moss-grown thatch and rural implements; but poverty in Paris gains dignity only by horror. Though recently built, this house seemed ready to fall into ruins. None of its materials had found a legitimate use; they had been collected ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... off for a stout leather hat, and ran down the street. Out came all the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to tea. Our bungalow was of the usual type, consisting of cement floor, roof of crossed bamboos and two feet of sun-grass thatch, supported by immense teak posts, hard as iron and bidding defiance to the white ants. The walls were of mats. Tea-gardens usually had a surface of 300 to 1000 acres; some were on comparatively level ground, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... unbroken thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered—not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces. But south of us, along the ascending trail by which we had come, the westering sun glowed red across a ledge of rock, from which the hill fell sheer away, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... before. He was, I should think, not less than six feet six inches high, and broad in proportion. His great arms hung down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. His skin was quite dark, almost negroid; and a thick, close mat of curly black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. His face was muscular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, especially about the jaws and on the forehead. But the eyes fascinated me. They were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, sullen and glaring; they seemed to shine ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... only three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... you see the little birds that fly back and forward over the castle walls so freely, and build their nests in the thatch of the housetops?' ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... the cordelle, and still more rarely the oars, they moved all day across the lands and waters that were once the fastnesses of the Baratarian pirates. The engineer made his desired observations without appreciable delays, and at night they slept under Achille's thatch of rushes. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away three or four women, and withdraw, in the red glare of burning thatch, driving the cattle and goats before them to their own desolate hills. The Indian Government would become almost tearful on these occasions. First it would say, 'Please be good and we'll forgive you.' The tribe concerned in the latest depredation would collectively put ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the village is found to be beyond repair, it shall be replaced by a new house exactly like the original. In consequence, the houses look equally old and equally attractive, with their roofs of grayish thatch, and the second stories leaning protectingly over the ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... farm implements or human labor to be seen. "Which is the inspector's house," inquired Anton, in dismay. The driver looked round, and at last made up his mind that it was a small one-storied building, with straw thatch and dirty windows. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... passage in and out: With turfs and furze some others yet more gross Their homely sties in stead of walls inclose: Some, like the swallow, mud and hay doe mixe And that about their silly [p. 209] cotes they fixe Some heals [thatch] their roofer with fearn, or reeds, or rushes, And some with hides, with oase, with ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... holes for the foundation, and, as all hands worked hard, by the close of the day they had made some progress. The cocoa-nut fibre, twisted into rope, enabled them to bind the rafters together, and the long leaves of some palms, which grew farther inland, served for thatch. Old Tom encouraged them to proceed, though he had lost all hopes ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... before thou makest a feast. If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair, and thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,—howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... impregnable or so vulgar, but a summer's grass will attempt it. It will try to persuade the yellow brick, to win the purple slate, to reconcile stucco. Outside the authority of the suburbs it has put a luminous touch everywhere. The thatch of cottages has given it an opportunity. It has perched and alighted in showers and flocks. It has crept and crawled, and stolen its hour. It has made haste between the ruts of cart wheels, so they were not too frequent. It has been stealthy in a good cause, and bold out of reach. It has been ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... interest in the fish. The negro story of how Brother Rabbit nailed Brother Fox's tail to the roof of the house, and thus succeeded in getting the Fox's dinner, is identical with Hlakanyana's feat of sewing the Hyena's tail to the thatch. When this had been accomplished, Hlakanyana ate all the meat in the pot, and threw the ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... that al fresco entertainment, the luau. But in the old times of strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to lift his hand and the entire population of a district ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles, beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of the hula, such as La'a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... extend his arms and grasp the ground, pretending that his prostration was designed, and saying at the same time, "Thus I seize this land; from this moment it is mine." As he arose, one of his officers ran to a neighboring hut which stood near by upon the shore, and breaking off a little of the thatch, carried it to William, and, putting it into his hand, said that he thus gave him seizin of his new possessions. This was a customary form, in those times, of putting a new owner into possession of lands which he had purchased or acquired in any other way. The new proprietor ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... barking with delight, as if they knew him, half-smothering him with their rough caresses. Jacob led him into the hut, which looked extremely dirty and neglected, and had only one room. In the corners against the walls were piles of sheep-skins that had a strong and rather unpleasant smell: the thatch above was covered with dusty cobwebs, hanging like old rags, and the clay floor was littered with bones, sticks, and other rubbish. The only nice thing to see was a teakettle singing and steaming away merrily on the fire in the grate. Old Jacob set about preparing the evening meal; and ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, they will need," he added after a minute, "and it is unlikely that the Senor Seem'son understands the making of a thatch. Diego and Juan are skillful; and the tules they lay upon a roof will let no drop of rain fall within the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... conveyed up to the clouds, and fall from them afterwards on land, not far distant from the sea." He had before related an instance of one that passed over the town of Hatfield, in Yorkshire, filling the air with the thatch it plucked off from the houses, and rolling strangely together several sheets of lead on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... spring bubbled out of the ground, at the rate, I suppose, of a pint of water in a minute. The ferns grew immensely thick there; but someone had thinned out a few of the roots from the ground, leaving the uprooted plant with the ferns still living, to form a rough kind of thatch above a piece of earth big enough for a man's body. In the scented shade of this thatch, with the side of his face turned towards me, a big, rough, bearded man sat, filing away some bright steel irons which were riveted on his ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the small cottage where, at that very moment, her grandmother was preparing the evening meal. And, beyond, in the village was the little old stone church and Father Murphy's square bit of a house with its wide doorstep and its roof of thatch, and Widow Mulligan's and the Denny's and the Finnegan's ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... Belleisle, we shall find, does practically set off towards Germany;—like a kind of French Belus, or God of the Sun; capable to dazzle weak German Courts, by optical machinery, and to set much rotten thatch on fire!— ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... over the other, and are tied to the bamboos which serve for rafters. There are various other and more durable kinds of covering used. The kulitkayu, before described, is sometimes employed for this purpose: the galumpei—this is a thatch of narrow split bamboos, six feet in length, placed in regular layers, each reaching within two feet of the extremity of that beneath it, by which a treble covering is formed: iju—this is a vegetable production so nearly resembling horse-hair as scarcely ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... "A roof of thatch is better than that of heaven," is an old Spanish proverb, and means, doubtless, that the poorest accommodation is better than none, or that which the streets provide. Jessica, clinging to the Sister of Mercy's ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... and it is singular that the names should vary so little. I have never seen an instance of its poisonous powers, but I have seen a whole company of sepoys run out of their quarters because they have heard the animal make its usual cry in the thatch of the building; they say that it drops down upon people from ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... but talk by rote, Speak when they're taught, and so to vote. When rogues like these (a Sparrow cries) To honour and employment rise I court no favour, ask no place, From such, preferment is disgrace: Within my thatch'd retreat I find (What these ne'er feel) true ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... feeble or tentative stroke in the whole of it. The color is brilliant and the textures are expressed with wonderful skill. The student ought to carefully observe the rendering of the various roofs. Notice how the character of the thatch on the second cottage differs from that on the first, and how radically the method of rendering of either varies from that used on the shingle roof at the end of the picture. Compare also the two gable chimneys with each other as well ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... the next morning he quickly put his hand under his pillow. Yes, the little coffer was there! It had not been a dream. He drew it forth and raised the cover. The yellow bars glittered in the morning rays sifting through the overhanging thatch at the window. He passed his hand gently across them. What a fortunate discovery! And how strangely brought about. They were rich! Now he could take Carmen and flee! His heart leaped within him as he hastily threw on his scant attire and went out into the balsamic ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... right to look upon their foul frocks as scandalous and vile; at all events no miner should ever shake hands with 'em, or drink out of the same mug. I am determined too to die a man of honour, as I have grown old, without ever setting foot under their thatch roofs, or on their threshing-floors; I have preserved myself four and fifty years from this disgrace, and heaven will continue to guard me from it ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... permitted to go to their huts during rain; and even had this privilege been granted, many of those miserable habitations were in so dilapidated a condition, that they would afford little or no protection. Negro huts are built of logs, covered with boards or thatch, having no flooring, and but one apartment, serving all the purposes of sleeping, cooking, &c. Some are furnished with a temporary loft. I have seen a whole family herded together in a loft ten feet by twelve. In cold weather, they gather around the fire, spread their blankets on the ground, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... and Ned saw that his suspicions were correct, and that they were regarded by their captors as gods. Further proof was given of this when they were escorted to a large shed, composed of a roof of thatch supported on four upright posts, which stood in the center ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the Norwegians; ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... met and escorted by a delighted wife to her cot. The children and the husband are duly presented. At an opportune moment the proud wife cannot refrain from informing her visitors that "it was Donald himsel' the laird had to send for to thatch the pretty golf-house at the Castle. Donald did all that himsel'," with an admiring glance cast at the embarrassed great man. Donald "sent for by the laird at the Castle" ranks in Donald's circle and in Donald's own heart with ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... tell everything he knew about the previous night's events, without equivocation or reserve. He took a chair at the table, his bright bird's glance wandering from one to the other of the faces opposite him as he smoothed with one claw-like hand the thatch of iron-grey hair which hung down over his forehead almost to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... long, furtively drawn breath. Then her eyes flashed open and fixed themselves on me. Relief was there, yet something stricken, as they traveled over me from my gray thatch to my big feet. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the longest boughs in a row against the side of the fallen tree. This left a little place beneath their slope into which it was possible to creep. Archie smiled with satisfaction, and proceeded to thatch the sloping roof with moss and bits of bark. Then he grubbed up the green cushion and transferred ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... resolute, was tanned by desert suns and winds. His hair, once brown, was almost white. His beard, once flowing and silky, was cropped to a gray stubble. His steely blue eyes snapped under their heavy thatch, his head was carried high and well back, and his soft felt hat, wide-brimmed, was pulled down over the brows. His deep chest, square shoulders, erect carriage and straight muscular legs all told ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... wound, wrapped the shaft of it with cotton as a wad, and fired it back over the paling with his musket. The cotton he had used caught fire from the powder, and it chanced that this blazing shaft drove home into a palm thatch. In the hurry and confusion the flame was not noticed, though it spread rapidly across the huts till it reached some powder casks. There was a violent explosion just within the palisadoes, and stones and blazing sticks ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... a drawing in of the superficial gases toward the vortex. All the luminous spaces of more transparent cloud forming the adjacent photosphere, will be changed in shape by these centripetal currents. They will be greatly elongated; and there will so be produced that "thatch"-like ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... any money in the house?" whispered a long-nosed, sharp-visaged man; "I heard that he had lots hidden away under the thatch. Old Grenard knows that a box containing several thousand gold guineas was ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... first three there was a uniformity; the remnants of military training still clung to them. But this shrunken figure with a wild gray beard, watery, bloodshot eyes, a matted thatch of hair on which a broken-rimmed hat perched, ragged and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... amenities of civilisation are sadly lacking. The bungalows are lit only by oil-lamps, their floors are generally of pounded earth covered with poor matting harbouring fleas and other insect pests, their roofs are of thatch or tiles, and such luxuries as bells, electric or otherwise, are unknown. So the servants, who reside outside the bungalows in the compounds, or enclosures, are summoned by the simple expedient of ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... That which protects the dwelling and the property of the rich man, belongs just as much to the hovel of the beggar. God sends but one sun, and it is the same light that kindles against the roof of a mansion, that dawns upon the thatch of a hut. The same air comes to each, the same showers, the same seasons, summer and winter. And as is Nature, so in the North, is law, and the distributive benefits of society. They bathe society from ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the prematurely gray man in the howdah. The latter passed on to his estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their thatch huts. But still Little Shikara stood motionless—and it wasn't until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with startling suddenness he raced back through the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... undergrowth around had to be cleared; the huts, of which there were six, had to be cleaned out, fitted up with new parchment in the windows—for there was no glass in those days—and new thatch on the roofs, besides being generally repaired; additional huts had to be built for the people, pens for the sheep, and stabling for the cattle, all of which implied felling and squaring timber, while the smaller ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... wing Of morn, from Sorrow's dreary shades shall spring; 180 Young Modesty, with fair untainted bloom; And Industry, that sings beside her loom; And ruddy Labour, issuing from his hatch Ere the slant sunbeam strikes the lowly thatch; And sweet Contentment, smiling on a rock, Like a fair shepherdess beside her flock; And tender Love, that hastes with myrtle-braid To bind the tresses of the favoured maid; And Piety, with unclasped holy book, Lifting to heaven her ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... of the adjoining room was opened, and little Charlot appeared. He had heard his mother's voice, and came trotting into the apartment in his nightgown to give her a kiss. He was a chubby, pink little urchin, large and strong for his age, with a thatch of curling, straw-colored hair and big blue eyes. Silvine shivered at his sudden appearance, as if the sight of him had recalled to her mind the image of someone else that affected her disagreeably. Did she no longer recognize him, then, her ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... gun wadding fired by the mock cannon was thrown on the open roof of the Globe, and immediately ignited the thatch, spreading flames around the top rim of the great ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... is but a very small place indeed, now-a-days,—yet it possesses a church, grey and ancient, whose massive Norman tower looks down upon gable and chimney, upon roof of thatch and roof of tile, like some benignant giant keeping watch above them all. Near-by, of course, is the inn, a great, rambling, comfortable place, with time-worn settles beside the door, and with a mighty sign a-swinging before it, upon which, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o'er?— They are but sailing foam-bells Along Thought's causing stream, And take their shape and sun-color From him ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... country-folk within a circuit of twelve miles or more his knowledge was something daemonic. He could recount their pedigrees, intermarriages, numbers in family; he understood their straits, their degrees of affluence; he could not look across a gate at a crop, or view the state of a thatch, but his mind worked sympathetically with some neighbour's economies. He gave away little in hard money; but his charities in time and personal service were endless. And the countryside respected him thoroughly: for he was eccentric in the fashion of a true Englishman, and, with ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... way for you. I was a hunter of beasts and a fighter of men. I discovered fire and covered my nakedness with the skins of animals. I builded cunning traps, and wove branches and long grasses and rushes and reeds into the thatch and roof-tree. I fashioned arrows and spears of bone and flint. I drew iron from the earth, and broke the first ground, and planted the first seed. I gave law and order to the tribe and taught it to fight with craft and wisdom. I enabled the young men to grow strong and lusty, and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... the foliage in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. In front it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho Bay in a flood of almost constant volume and velocity, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sense of the words, ere, leaping from his horse, he bounded up the stairs, through the smoke, amid flakes of burning thatch falling from the roof, groped in the dense clouds of smoke for the senseless weight, and holding the shoulders while Malcolm held the feet, they sped down the stair, and rested not till they had laid him under a chestnut ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leaves. It was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of the open plain. This happened only where the path lay much upon the slope, and there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood at some distance below the level at which I chanced myself to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of foreshortened distance, miniature fields, and Lilliputian houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment in the aperture, and grow larger and smaller, and change ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were cunning, treacherously shifting under the thatch of his heavy brows; he was like an old rat seeking for any hole of refuge. "Well—maybe I might. Anyhow, I'll go on—with ye. Kin I sit up? I 'm ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... were in striking here," and Friedel sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust into the thatch. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and transport to the beach selected for the bivouac. Double rows of these arundos, driven into the sand, formed the partitions of the cabins, for which their interwoven leaves made an appropriate thatch. The green halls with matted vaults were picturesque enough; each peon, seeing how easily they were constructed, chose to have a house for himself; and the Tiger's Beach quickly presented the appearance of a camp disposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... roots of the plant. The Zostera of the warmer latitudes attain to a larger size than those of our Scottish seas. "A southern species," says Loudon, "Zostera oceanica, has leaves a foot long and an inch broad. It is used as a thatch, which is said to last a century; bleaches white with exposure; and furnishes the rush-like material from which the envelops of Italian liquor flasks are prepared." The simple rectilinear venation of ribbon-like fronds, usually much broken, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the top of the dome of thought." I have not yet tried the remedy, but I intend to do so, and when I appear again on the American platforms I shall probably rival Paderewski, who owes a great deal of his success and fortune to his "thatch." ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... occupied in resolves and plans for to-morrow's enterprise, the maiden on retiring to her chamber felt no inclination for repose, and her little couch was left vacant. It was a low room within the thatch, into which a narrow window, projecting from the roof, admitted the clear mellow radiance of the moon, now shining uninterruptedly from above. So lovely and inviting was the aspect of the night, that, after a long and anxious train of thought, she resolved to enjoy the calm and delicious ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... save the expense of glass, the broken panes up and down supplied by brown paper, few being able to afford white; in some places they were stopped with straw or hay. Another mark of our riches, are the signs at the several inns upon the road, viz. In some, a staff stuck in the thatch, with a turf at the end of it; a staff in a dunghill with a white rag wrapped about the head; a pole, where they can afford it, with a besom at the top; an oatmeal cake on a board at the window; and, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... more than regal welcome give, Ye thousands crowding round; Shout for the once lorn Fugitive, Whose soul no solace found Save in that SELF-RELIANCE—match For adverse worlds, alone— Which cheer'd the Tutor's humble thatch, Nor left him on the throne. The WANDERER MULLER'S sails they furl— The Wave-encounterer, who, When Freedom leagued with Crime to hurl Up earth's foundations, from the whirl Where vortex'd Empires raged, the pearl Of matchless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Five Hundred and Fifty-two, The Saxon invaders—a terrible crew— Had forced the lines of the Britons through; And Cirencester, half mud and thatch, Dry and crisp as a tinder match, Was fiercely beleaguered by foes, who'd catch At any device that could harry and rout The folk that ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... he thought on those things, while resting under the modest little portal of the hotel, whose former magnificence, when a hermit cell, might still be discernible in a few remaining remnants of the rich Gothic lintel yet mingling with the matted straw and the clinging ivy of the thatch. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... pulling it down, as the caprice of the moment dictated. Now it had bow-windows and white stuccoed walls—now it was Elizabethan—now the simplest, quaintest, rose-embowered cottager's dwelling, with diamond-paned casements, and deep thatch on the old gray roof. This afternoon she amused herself by collecting a small library for Valentine, while waiting Mr. Sheldon's next observation. He was to have all her favourite books, of course; and they were to be bound in the prettiest, most girlish bindings. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... now? She, accustomed to all the luxury that wealth could procure, no longer had any home except a poor thatch-covered hovel, whose walls were not even whitewashed, whose only floor was the earth itself, dusty as the public highway in summer, frozen or muddy ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... honey-comb,—which, however, had been treated by the builders so that they had a hard glaze, to prevent the wings and feet of the butterflies from sticking when they touched the walls. The roof was a woven affair, very cunningly made so that the top surface was a sort of thatch of flower-stems, while the ceiling was a solid sheet of flowers. Of course, in this climate, they were always fresh. The butterflies had their beds on the ceiling; indeed, as Sara arrived rather early, a few roistering young blades who had ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... his sandy thatch, she said, with a rueful droop at the corners of her mouth, a contradictory smile in her eyes: "I shall rejoice more if you do not lose your ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a rich man, Or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch To shelter me from the cold, And there shall the Sussex songs be sung And the story of ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... it, wiped it out with his hand, and went with it to the door, where a rude "launder" or shoot of wood carried the water from the thatch immediately over the door, and sent the collected moisture in a stream down one side. The boy held the vessel under the shoot till he had obtained sufficient for his purpose, and then, returning within, said, "I'll stop your wandering," went up to the child, sprinkled ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... Witham, enumerated in the Great Life, and not even planned before his time, are the major and minor churches, the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers' little houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen was a poor building of brushwood and thatch, six or seven paces from the guest house, the blaze of which, when it caught fire, could be seen from the glass windows of the west end of the lay church. The wooden cells of the brothers lay round this in a ring. The guest house ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... the shore, and then draw it back, but the chub showed such little eagerness to be caught by me that I generally preferred to steer and watch my companion pulling them out as he stood in the prow, his face nearly hidden under the thatch of his straw hat. When the fish were in a biting humour, he had one on his hook every time he ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the way, his voice strong, his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder. Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was still dominant,—sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money. Scalding words rose to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... trunk and the massive bole of a breadfruit, a house had come into being. It was not much larger than a big hen-house, but quite sufficient for the needs of two people in a climate of eternal summer. It was built of bamboos, and thatched with a double thatch of palmetto leaves, so neatly built, and so well thatched, that one might have fancied it the production ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... match For Timour or for Zinghis in his trade. While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch Blazed, and the cannon's roar was scarce allayed, With bloody hands he wrote his first despatch; And here exactly follows what he said:— "Glory to God and to the Empress!" (Powers Eternal! such ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... village, between low wooded hills, with a canal passing through it. Old Japanese cottages, dingy, neutral-tinted, with roofs of thatch, very steeply sloping, above their wooden walls and paper shoji. Green patches on all the roof-slopes, some sort of grass; and on the very summits, on the ridges, luxurious growths of yaneshobu, [1] the roof-plant, bearing pretty purple flowers. In the lukewarm air a mingling of Japanese odours, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... turnpike-gate called Hendy gate. This gate was kept by an old woman upwards of seventy years of age, who has received frequent notices that if she did not leave the gate, her house should be burnt down. About three o'clock on Sunday morning, a party of ruffians set fire to the thatch of the toll-house. The old woman, on being awakened, ran into the road and to a neighbouring cottage within twenty yards of the toll-house, shouting to the people who lived in it, 'For God's sake to come out and help her to put out the fire; there was ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... one of these children about here, boy or girl, who cannot swim; and every one of them has been used to tumbling about the little forest ponies—there's one of them now! They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can mow; many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep shop. I can tell you they ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Wife never left it until she was borne forth into the securer refuge of the narrow house that needed none of her care-taking. Upon the low green thatch lies heavily the shadow of a mighty monument that, to the satirist's eye, has a family likeness to the stone pile ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... sides, eating the little pests as the Papallactans do their lice.[115] Archidona is the largest village in the Napo country, containing about five hundred souls. The houses are of split bamboo and palm-thatch, often hid in a plantation of yuca and plantain. The central and most important structure is the little church; its rude belfry, portico, chancel, images, and other attempts at ornament remind us of the fitting words of Mrs. Agassiz, that "there is ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees. The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within Vanheimert's vision bore its little load ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... had neglected to thatch his cottage, was one day asked by a gentleman with whom he was conversing, "Did it rain yesterday?" Instead of making a direct and candid reply, he sought to hide his fault, which he supposed had been discovered; and the conversation proceeded as follows. "Did it rain yesterday?" ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... end of June, in 1807. The workshops have been shut up half an hour or more in Adam Bede's timber-yard, which used to be Jonathan Burge's, and the mellow evening light is falling on the pleasant house with the buff walls and the soft grey thatch, very much as it did when we saw Adam bringing in the keys on that ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seemed nothing of interest about the old cabin. The thatch had half blown off; the adobe-plastered stone fireplace and chimney had tumbled down, and sand had drifted in past the broken wattle door. But when Lennon went in to take advantage of the patch of shade that was offered, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... glow. Village after village we passed through, returning the polite salutes of early rising grand-sires who uncovered their grey heads, or wrinkled, pink-faced grandmothers, who waved kerchiefs from gabled windows beneath the thatch and smiled the straight and dry-lipped smile of toothless age as they wished us good ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... a rawboned man with a thatch of thick black hair and small watery eyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in a pair of tight-fitting trousers of white lawn, a flaming red tunic ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... shorter. It was a steep and stony bit of road which ran uphill through the broom. On the very top of it I always used to stop in front of Jean le Rouge's house. This house was low-roofed and spreading. The walls were as black as the thatch which covered it, and it was quite easy to pass by the house without seeing it at all, for the broom grew so high all round it. I used to go in for a chat with Jean le Rouge, whom I had known ever since I had been at Villevieille farm. ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... people had more civilization, more regular industry, and more wealth. They were much more highly skilled in the arts of civilized life. They had cities and large towns; and dwelling-houses, built of timber and covered with thatch, like those common in England, were scattered over all the rural districts. Some of the cities now found in ruins were then inhabited. This peninsula had been the seat of an important feudal monarchy, which arose probably after the Toltecs overthrew the very ancient kingdom of Xibalba. It was ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... went out. At the threshold of the door I found an axe which I took in my hand, walked around the hut several times, but could not discover the object of my search. I at length found his blanket tucked up among the thatch under the eaves of the hut, and immediately re-entered the room to tell my companions I was apprehensive that this strange departure of the Spaniard was influenced by another motive than ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water, A drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses' thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them in ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... dressed its walls, Houseleek adorned the thatch; The door was standing open wide,— They ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... straw-thatched houses. The flames caught in many places; but with the help of the Indians they were extinguished, though several Frenchmen were wounded, and there was great fright for a time. But the thatch was soon stripped off and the roofs covered with deer and bear skins, while mops fastened to long poles, and two large wooden canoes filled with water, were ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... as to her daughter-in-law's project and even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet wife toiled unseen. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... button'd-up one-half of him in a pair of short knee-enders. Now, Punch, on your oath, did you ever hear the likes o' that? But oh, houly Paul, if you only seen his big cock'd hat, Stuck up on the top of his jazy;—a mighty illegant thatch, With hair like young Deaf Burke's, all rushing up to the scratch, You must have been divarted; and, Jewil, then he wore A thund'ring big Taglioni-cut purple velvet roquelore. And who but Misther Dan cut it fat in all his pride, Cover'd over with white favors, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... would turn white or potato color or something," said Lathrop, to whom Harry confided his expectation, "this red thatch of mine is a nuisance. At school I was always Brick-top or Red-Head and out here the natives all look at my carrot-colored top-knot as if they'd like to scalp me and ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... ended only by a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day, and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the bare moor over which they were walking. Presently, a little way in front of them, the princess espied a whitewashed cottage, gleaming in the moon. As they came nearer, she saw that the roof was covered with thatch, over which the moss had grown green. It was a very simple, humble place, not in the least terrible to look at, and yet, as soon as she saw it, her fear again awoke, and always, as soon as her fear ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... distance, beneath a fog which is just beginning to dissolve, he perceives a vast mass of white and red houses, some with terraced roofs, others covered with thatch; through the humid veil which envelopes them, he sees the glistening of the glass in the windows; already he hears at his feet the confused noise of cities; murmuring voices reply; the measured sound of hammers and of mills even ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... know not, but others always supplied the places of those who fell. Hundreds of balls whistled by our ears and flattened themselves on the stone walls; the plaster was broken from the walls, and the thatch hung from the rafters, and as I turned for the twentieth time to fire, my musket dropped from my hand; I stooped to lift it, but I fell too: I had received a shot in the left shoulder and the blood ran like warm water down my breast. I tried to rise, but all that I could do was to seat ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... muddy road wound through huts of turf—among them one or two of clay, and one or two of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... house that seems to stoop Yellow under thatch, Like a three-sided chicken-coop, Where, if you watch, You'll see the starlings go and come All a spring morn— Half of that is my old ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... to Pegg to be sleeping as heavily as ever, and after he had looked at him carefully for a few minutes, there was a deep, buzzing hum as of some insect, and a great fly flashed across the golden rays which streamed in through the thatch, and hovered around for a few moments as if about to settle ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... which covered a piece of ground 327 feet long, and forty-two feet broad. It consisted of a roof, thatched with palm leaves, and raised upon thirty-nine pillars on each side, and fourteen in the middle. The ridge of the thatch, on the inside, was thirty feet high, and the sides of the house, to the edge of the roof, were twelve feet high; all below the roof being open. As soon as we entered the house, she made us sit down, and then calling four young girls, she assisted them to take off my shoes, draw down my ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... wild-looking, unclothed little daughter who shared his humble home. They generally kindled their fire inside the hut, which was made of most inflammable materials, and to judge by the clouds of smoke which poured out through the coarse thatch at cooking time, the operations were on rather a large scale. He also made a large bonfire of refuse bits of wood outside his hut on cold nights, and there he and a few friends would sit and toast themselves till ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... of darkness, that a few feet from the lantern still encompassed them, gave no indication of their progress, until their feet actually trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit. Had it not been ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was few left to plow the fields and sow them, to spin cloth and to make coats, to mend nets and to mend shoes, to thatch roofs and to plant apple-trees—there was few left to do these things for all the young men were out on the mountain hunting for ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... their eyes below, they beheld all the country sunk in a lake, only their own house left standing. While they gazed with wonder at the sight, and lamented the fate of their neighbors, that old house of theirs was changed into a temple. Columns took the place of the corner posts, the thatch grew yellow and appeared a gilded roof, the floors became marble, the doors were enriched with carving and ornaments of gold. Then spoke Jupiter in benignant accents: "Excellent old man, and woman worthy of such a husband, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... accommodated. The governor, in spite of this action, took all my apartments from me and lodged therein a royal official; whereupon, as there is a great lack of houses in this city, I was obliged to move into a house of wood and thatch, which was unsuitable to the last degree, and attended by much danger because of the frequent fires which occur in this city. Accordingly, in the two fires which have occurred this year I have been obliged to go with my effects and books from one place to another, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... showed the village crowded with Indians, over whose heads the cracked rocket slowly whizzed. The light of the next rocket did not disclose a single person, and it was apparent that the place was deserted. The third rocket happened to strike one of the roofs, and exploding there, set the thatch on fire. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... Sambo Should take his place and fight; An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue Than a liver that's wake an' white; Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades His finger a thrigger can pull, An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel sight From under its thatch o' wool. So hear me all, boys, darlins! Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff, The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, An' ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... or the royal mount, which afterwards became famous as the site on which the church of St. Andrews was founded, and as giving to that place the name of Kilrimont.[28] The earliest Celtic church at St. Andrews was probably, like that of Iona, constructed with wattles and turf and roofed with thatch. It was customary to have caves or places of retirement for the hermits; they were used, too, as oratories or places of penance, and one such there is at St. Andrews, known as St. ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... the nine cocos we made our camp, and old Sru and the women and children at once set to work to build a "house" to protect us in case it rained during the nights. Very quickly was the house built. The "devil" was sent up the cocos to lop off branches, which, as they fell, were woven into thatch by the deft, eager hands of the women, who were supervised by Sivi, Nalik's handsome wife, amid much chatter and laughter, each one trying to outvie the other in speed, and all anxious to follow Nalik and ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... be better than it then was? I love to think on thee, pretty, quiet D—-, thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided thy Lady Bountiful—she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. Pretty, quiet D—-, with thy ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... any exact sense, was Nikky, but tall and straight, with a thatch of bright hair not unlike that of the Crown Prince, and as unruly. Tall and straight, and occasionally truculent, with a narrow rapier scar on his left cheek to tell the story of wild student days, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of the mountain peaks ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should be carried outside the town and burnt. Here and there, however, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... architecture that would not shrink, that had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone; it would have its windows and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... between the roof and the palisade, and in the attempt lost his balance and nearly precipitated himself to the ground below. Cautiously he drew back, still looking about for some means to cross the chasm. One of the saplings of the roof, protruding beyond the palm leaf thatch, caught his attention. With a single wrench he tore it from its fastenings. Extending it toward the palisade he discovered that it just spanned the gap, but he dared not attempt to cross ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sent in his report. When he had finished he did not go out to her immediately. He stood staring down the hill with his eyebrows pinched together. Now and then he lifted his hand unconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back from his forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old. He was feeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire; cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from that beautiful ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... ought to be a water-furrow across this land: it's a nasty, stiff, clayey, dauby bit of ground, and thou and I must fall to, come next Monday—I beg your pardon, cousin Manning—and there's old Jem's cottage wants a bit of thatch; you can do that job tomorrow while I am busy.' Then, suddenly changing the tone of his deep bass voice to an odd suggestion of chapels and preachers, he added. 'Now, I will give out the psalm, "Come all harmonious tongues", to be ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... stream of fluid behind it as it went spinning down to earth. All that stream of inflammable stuff was aflame. The can itself struck earth and seemed to explode, and the trailing mass of fire was borne onward by the wind and lay across a row of thatch-roofed buildings. An incredible sheet of fire spread out. The stuff in the drying ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... tree in the orchard, and, having rifled the corpse, they dragged it up the stream, concealing it under the overhanging banks of the water-course. Then they carefully covered over all marks of blood on the road, and hid the pistol in the thatch of a disused hut close to the roadside; then, setting the horse free to gallop home alone, they decamped across the country to ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... was about to start for the mountain, she shut him up in the house and thus detained him by force. But the words of his mother, warning him not to remain too long, came to his mind, and he determined to break away from his prison. So he climbed up to the roof, and removing a portion of the thatch, made his escape. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... living with it was a real enchantment; but I pondered most the kind of house that would be provided for the General Commanding the District, how many the dining-room would seat, and whether it would have a roof of thatch or of corrugated iron—I prayed against corrugated iron. I confess these my preoccupations. I was forty, and at forty the practical considerations of life hold their own even against domes of marble, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... me! Nowt prospers wi' me. My poor dame is besoide hersel, an' th' chilter seems possessed. Ey ha' tried every remedy, boh without success. Ey ha' followed th' owd witch whoam, plucked a hontle o' thatch fro' her roof, sprinklet it wi' sawt an weter, burnt it an' buried th' ess at th' change o' t' moon. No use, mesters. Then again, ey ha' getten a horseshoe, heated it redhot, quenched it i' brine, an' nailed it to t' threshold wi' three nails, heel uppard. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... came a huge fire-ball, blazing brightly. It struck the thatch of the cottage close to the edge of the roof, and before it fell to the ground had set fire to the abode, which began to burn as though no shower had ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
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