"Flax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "We call Zealand a group of forts defended by a garrison of farmers and shepherds. Zealand is the richest agricultural province in the Netherlands. The alluvial soil of these islands is a marvel of fertility. Few countries can boast such wheat, colza, flax, and madder as it produces. Its people raise prodigious cattle and colossal horses, which are even larger than those of the Flemish breed. The people are strong and handsome; they preserve their ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... to a victorious close. Who shall sing the sweetness of Isabel North, as she sat by the log-cabin door, placidly spinning flax, or the horror of the moment when, redskins swooping down on her and settlers on them, the ghost swept in and put them all to flight? Who will ever forget the exercises in the hall, when the "Suwanee River" was sung by minstrels, to a set of tableaux representing the "old folks" ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... structure would be advanced towards the wall, so as to enable the men to get close enough to dig a hole beneath the walls in order to bring them down. The besieged would not be inactive, but would cast heavy stones on the roof of the shed. Molten lead and burning flax were favourite means of defence to alarm and frighten away the enemy, who retaliated by casting heavy stones by means of a catapult into ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... as to the capacity and sure future destiny of that plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom) it is the inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal, iron, beef and pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes—land of ten million virgin farms—to the eye at present wild and unproductive—yet experts say that upon it when irrigated may easily be grown enough wheat to feed the world. Then as to scenery (giving my own thought and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... inimitable picturesqueness here: how the two spies, swimming the Jordan in flood, set out on their dangerous mission and found themselves in the house of Rahab, a harlot; how the king sent to capture them, how she hid them among the flax-stalks bleaching on the flat roof, confessed faith in Israel's God and lied steadfastly to save them, how they escaped to the Quarantania hills, how she 'perished not' in the capture, entered into the community of Israel, was married, and took ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... clasp of bone; And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks, His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw Of Verli and of Vecchio, well content With unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax.... One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lulled the parents' infancy; Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectured them Old tales of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... together as friends and partners. Altotas, in the course of a long life devoted to alchymy, had stumbled upon some valuable discoveries in chemistry, one of which was an ingredient for improving the manufacture of flax, and imparting to goods of that material a gloss and softness almost equal to silk. Balsamo gave him the good advice to leave the philosopher's stone for the present undiscovered, and make gold out of their flax. The advice was taken, and they ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... chateau, with its lake and pheasant-preserve; along the River Lys, with its miles of flax, soaked in this peculiarly potent water, now drying in countless little cones, like the tents of some vast Lilliputian army, and so at last ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... "Yes; and that piece of ground is where Father Wetherell raised the last piece of flax. I don't suppose you ever ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... will be a cordial of gladness to him; for he will know, as soon as he sees the face of him, that the brother will mean the sister and the wedding ring. If you get the spindle and distaff ready, my lass, God is sure to send the flax; and by the same token, if you get your plenishing made and marked, and your bride-clothes finished, God will ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." 2nd. Humility; in the grass for rest—"A bruised reed shall he not break." 3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing, (because of its swift kindling,)—"The smoking flax shall he not quench." And then finally observe the confirmation of these last two images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament, namely that contained in the ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... attention had been diverted from the thread of his own reminiscences by the fact that the little flax-wheel of Peninnah Penelope Anne had ceased to whirl, and the low musical monody of its whir that was wont to bear a pleasant accompaniment to the burden of his thoughts was suddenly silent. He lifted his eyes and saw that she was ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the silk That the worm spun, the linen of the flax;— O heavens! she standeth there, my statue-form, With the rich golden torrent-hair, white feet, And hands with rosy palms—my own ideal! The woman of my world, with deeper eyes Than I had power to think—and yet my Lilia, My wife, with homely airs of earth about her, And ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... about the platform at the base of this blackboard, catching the quotations from the clicking instruments and altering the figures on the board to keep pace with the changing information. A glance at this great blackboard will furnish the latest quotations on wheat, oats, barley, flax, corn, etc., ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Privy Councillors of God, Who write down judgments with a pen hard nibb'd: Ushers of Beelzebub's black rod, Commending sinners, not to ice thick ribb'd, But endless flames to scorch them up like flax, Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribb'd The impression of St. Peter's keys ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... good care that her own daughter's flax was fine and strong, while the stepsister had only some coarse stuff, which no one would have thought of using. As might be expected, in a very little while the poor girl's thread snapped, and the old woman, ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Isa. 61:1, 2. The execution of this mission required a tender and forbearing spirit, that would not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax; and such was the spirit of his whole ministry. For the penitent, though publicans and sinners, he had only words of kindness. Towards the infirmities and mistakes of his sincere disciples he was wonderfully ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... have a soul above hemp, and was intended for a brighter sphere; but vot can one do, cooped up at home without men of henergy for companions? No prospect of improvement either; for I left our old gentleman alarmingly well just now, pulling about the flax and tow, as though his dinner depended upon his exertions. I think if the women would let me alone, I might have some chance, but it worries a man of sensibility and refinement to have them always tormenting of one.—I've no objection to be led, but, dash my ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... every stroke of his razor he cut his head, and to every place which he cut he applied a piece of cotton. Said the Cogia to the barber, 'My good fellow, you had better sow half of my head with cotton and let me sow the other half with flax.' ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... clovers may be sown are the small cereal grains, as rye, barley, wheat and oats. Sometimes they are sown with flax, rape and millet. They usually succeed best when sown along with rye and barley, since these shade them less and are cut earlier, thus making less draft on moisture in the soil and admitting sunlight at an earlier period. Oats make the least advantageous nurse crop, because of the denseness ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... cows, to make up the butter which had been churned by Hosea, a stiff old out-door servant, in whom Grace Hickson placed great confidence; and each lassie had her great spinning-wheel for wool, and her lesser for flax, before a month had elapsed after Lois's coming. Faith was a grave, silent person, never merry, sometimes very sad, though Lois was a long time in even guessing why. She would try in her sweet, simple fashion to cheer her cousin up, when the latter was depressed, by telling her old stories ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... raise wheat, rye, Indian corn, oats, rice, indigo, cotton, tobacco, cane or maple sugar and molasses, sorghum, wool, peas and beans, Irish or sweet potatoes, barley, buckwheat, wine, butter, cheese, hay, clover, and all the grasses, hemp, hops, flax and flaxseed, silk, beeswax and honey, and poultry, in uncounted abundance. If he prefers a stock farm, he can raise horses, asses, and mules, camels, milch cows, working oxen and other cattle, goats, sheep, and swine. In many locations, these will require neither housing nor feeding ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... such as it would bring at once into some relation of heart and will with himself; whence arose his frequent demand of faith—a demand apparently always responded to: at the word, the flickering belief, the smoking flax, burst into a flame. Evil, that is, physical evil, is a moral good—a mighty means to a lofty end. Pain is an evil; but a good as well, which it would be a great injury to take from the man before it had wrought its end. Then it becomes all ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... war, for in the battles the slingers took the van. The stones were here, as in the Marquesas, as big as hens' eggs, and rounded by the action of the streams in which they were found. Braided cocoanut-fiber formed the sling, or flax was used, and looped about the wrist the sling was flung down the back, whirled about the head, and the missile shot with deadly ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Iohn, do you thinke though wee would haue thrust vertue out of our hearts by the head and shoulders, and haue giuen our selues without scruple to hell, that euer the deuill could haue made you our delight? Ford. What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax? Mist.Page. A puft man? Page. Old, cold, wither'd, and of intollerable entrailes? Ford. And one that is as slanderous as Sathan? Page. And as poore as Iob? Ford. And as wicked as his wife? Euan. And giuen to Fornications, and to Tauernes, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... sits beside her wheel; No maiden better knew To pile upon the circling reel An even thread and true; But since for Rob she 'gan to pine, She twists her flax in vain; 'Tis now too coarse,—and now too fine,— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... mountains of Italy; it is utilized not only for the vine, but for olives, maize, oats, hemp, rye and flax. On the gentler declivities of the Apennines, the terraced walls are wider apart and lower than on the steep slopes of the Ligurian Apennines and along the Riviera of the Maritime Alps, where the mountains rise abruptly from the margin of the sea.[1268] Careful and laborious terrace cultivation ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... n. The European flax is Linum usitatissimum, N.O. Liniae. There is a species in Australia, Linum marginale, Cunn., N.O. Linaceae, called Native Flax. In New Zealand, the Phormium is called Native Flax. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Manor, the Labadists undertook communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn, flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred. Sluyter, who ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... the country for many years, and, even after they were partially expelled by the settlers, they used to make occasional descents upon the settlements, and many a farmer that counted his sheep by twenties at night, would be thankful if he could muster half a score in the morning. It was flax, the pedlar's pack, and buckskins that the early settlers had to depend upon for clothing when their first supply was run out. Deerskins were carefully preserved and dressed, and the men had trowsers and coats made of them. Though not very becoming, they were said to be very comfortable ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... agreed only on condition that he would perform three tasks set him, and when Charles was curious to know what was required of him she led him into another room where was a large heap of every kind of seed—corn, barley, clover, flax—all mixed ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Rainbow-maiden, Never say in tones reproachful, She was born in lowly station, That her father was unworthy; Honoured are thy bride's relations, From an old-time tribe her kindred; When of corn they sowed a measure, Each one's portion was a kernel; When they sowed a cask of flax-seed, Each received a thread of linen. Never, never, magic husband, Treat thy beauty-bride unkindly, Teach her not with lash of servants, Strike her not with thongs of leather; Never has she wept ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... silent spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised himself— But the dell, Bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve, The level sunshine glimmers with ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... simple lines of industry were laid the foundations of the material greatness of Scotland—its mines, its furnaces, its machine shops, its shipyards, its flax and jute mills, and all the other forms of productive energy that have placed this little country and its few millions of people in the front rank of the mechanical activity of the world. But is ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... build—a dashing fellow. He had the physical strength, combined with neatness of lines, which characterized Buffalo Bill in his younger days. He was a blond of the desert type, with a shapely mustache the color of flax, with a ruddy skin finely tanned by sun and wind, and with deep blue eyes which flashed and sparkled under his flaxen brows. He was a manly appearing fellow, though there was a glamour about him ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. 11. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. 12. She will do him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. 13. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. 14. She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar. 15. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. 16. She considereth a field, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... came to corral the stock a new calamity was discovered. The cattle wandered into the edge of a field of flax as they neared the barn. Luther, following them, dropped from the back of his pony and stopped to examine the grain. The girl was excitedly getting the straying animals crowded on toward the pens and it was not till she had the gate shut fast on them that she could ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... to get above his work. Enough, therefore, of your advice and censure, Jerningham; we differ in every particular. Were we both engineers, you would spend your life in watching some old woman's wheel, which spins flax by the ounce; I must be in the midst of the most varied and counteracting machinery, regulating checks and counter-checks, balancing weights, proving springs and wheels, directing and controlling ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... she was helping. "Why, old Dr. Smith attended me forty years ago when I had measles. I remember he made me lie in bed with blankets over me, though it was August, and he wouldn't let me drink anything except hot flax-seed tea. They say all that has been ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... beginning of the present century, poor women found profitable employment in spinning flax or wool. This was a better occupation for them than straw plaiting, inasmuch as it was carried on at the family hearth, and did not admit of gadding and gossiping about the village. The implement used ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... flax. You grow it an' when it is grown you pull it clean up out of de groun' till it kinder rots. Dey have what dey called a brake, den it wuz broke up in dat. De bark wuz de flax. Dey had a stick called a swingle stick, made kinder like a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... maids to please, At midnight I card up their wool; And, while they sleep and take their ease, With wheel to threads their flax I pull. I grind at mill Their malt up still; I dress their hemp; I spin their tow; If any wake, And would me take, I wend ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... deluge of petitions from all manner of projectors. Patents and monopolies were sought for the carrying on of fisheries in Greenland and various other regions; for the growth, manufacture and sale of hemp, flax, and cotton; for the making of sail-cloth; for a general insurance against fire; for the {192} planting and rearing of madder to be used by dyers; for the preparing and curing of Virginia tobacco for snuff, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... alarm, very properly recommends, as in duty bound, that a stir be forthwith made in all the pools, and creeks, and bays, &c., of the united kingdom, in order that all those notoriously "susceptible" old offenders, skins, hemp, flax, rags, &c., may be prevented from carrying into execution their felonious intention of covering the landing of a dire enemy. In truth, from the grave as well as from the sublime, there often seems to be "but a step;" and in reading over this gentleman's suggestions about susceptibles and non-susceptibles, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... is always a soldat, she has become a blanchisseuse de fin. She did my blouses beautifully the last time I was there, and was so delighted to see me again. I gave her all my old clothes, even my old hats, though she always wears her Breton headdress. Her hair is still like flax, and her blue eyes are just like a baby's, and she has the same three freckles on her little nose, and talks about going back to ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... taken place. In the moonlight he found the heap of bodies, but his father was not among them, and he came back whistling joyously, having picked up several five-franc pieces trampled in the mud and overlooked by the victors. His mother was sitting on a stool beside the fire, employed in spinning flax. He made a negative sign to her, and then, ten o'clock having struck from the tower of Saint-Leonard, he went to bed, muttering a prayer to the holy Virgin of Auray. At dawn, Barbette, who had not closed her ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened; Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends. Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer; Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel. Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the swift-whirling spindles, Through the strings of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in the days of home-grown flax and spinning-wheels, was plain and unpretentious. Built of gray, rough-hewn quarry stone it hid like a demure Quakeress behind tall evergreen trees whose branches touched and interlaced in so many places that the traveler on the country road caught ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... are to be taxed. It was at first proposed that wheat flour should be taxed, but that item has, I believe, been struck out of the bill in its passage through the House. All articles manufactured of cotton, wool, silk, worsted, flax, hemp, jute, India-rubber, gutta-percha, wood (?), glass, pottery wares, leather, paper, iron, steel, lead, tin, copper, zinc, brass, gold and silver, horn, ivory, bone, bristles, wholly or in part, or ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... away their pretty little frocks, the boys went off together. They simply had to think of something, and it would never do to copy the girls. They came back later with the quaintest little breeches, made out of broad flax leaves, stitched together with the points downwards. It was clever of the boys! They had also stuck some of the red-brown flowers in their hair. The girls were vexed that they hadn't thought of ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... Rafferty), ENGINEER and MACHINIST. Flax, Hemp, Jute, Rope, Oakum, and Bagging Machinery, Steam Engines, Boilers, etc. Also Agent for the celebrated and improved Rawson & Rittinger Hoisting Engine, I will furnish specifications and estimates for all kinds of machinery. Send for descriptive ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... that which was most faulty in their conduct.—Formerly, and still in all the smaller Towns and Villages throughout North Germany, these Presents were sent by all the Parents to some one Fellow who in high Buskins, a white Robe, a Mask, and an enormous flax Wig, personates Knecht Rupert, i.e. the Servant Rupert. On Christmas Night he goes round to every House and says, that Jesus Christ, his Master, sent him thither—the Parents and elder Children receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones are most terribly frightened—He ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... considerable production of hemp, flax, and tobacco, but not for export in any large quantity. The tobacco grown in the colony was coarse and ill-flavored. It was smoked by both the habitant and the Indian because it was cheap; but Brazilian tobacco was greatly preferred by those who ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... beasts and other animals, as do also the mountains which rise there. And they feed exclusively upon the flesh of the wild beasts slain by them, and clothe themselves in their skins, and since they have neither flax nor any implement with which to sew, they fasten these skins together by the sinews of the animals, and in this way manage to cover the whole body. And indeed not even their infants are nursed in the same way as among ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... distressed owner tied them back firmly with a wide ribbon each morning; but the ribbon generally was missing early in the day, and might be replaced with anything that came handy—possibly a fragment of red tape from the office, or a bit of a New Zealand flax leaf, or haply even a scrap of green hide. Anything, said Norah, decidedly, was better than your hair all over your face. For the rest, a nondescript nose, somewhat freckled, and a square chin, completed a face no one would have dreamed of calling pretty. In his own mind her father referred ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the shore the inhabitants stood in clusters, offering food to the strangers. The habitation of Powhatan was situated on a high hill by the water side, with a meadow at its foot where was grown wheat, beans, tobacco, peas, pompions, flax, and hemp. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... matter how much he might be under the influence of liquor, he had never spoken a harsh word to this patient, loving, much-enduring child. For her sake he had often made feeble efforts at reform, but appetite had gained such mastery; over him that resolution was as flax ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... the flicker of firelight in the windows of the nearest house. It was Tom Daly's house. They could see Tom's shadow as he sat at his loom, weaving flax into beautiful white linen cloth. They could hear the clack! clack! of his loom. It made the Twins feel much safer to hear this sound and see Tom's shadow, for Tom was a friend of theirs, and they often went into his house and watched ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its spinneys of beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked down the length of the saloon, and everywhere ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... lived all alone in the little cottage. She worked hard, spinning, weaving, and sewing, and her old godmother's blessing seemed to prosper all she did. The flax seemed to spread and increase; and when she wove a carpet or a piece of linen, or made a shirt, she was sure to find a customer who paid her well, so that not only did she feel no want herself, but she was able to help ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... of the two looms the original shows a man spinning coarse thread into finer(?) using two spindles at once; the threads pass through rings fixed in the ceiling as in a picture at Beni Hasan. Behind him two girls are breaking up the flax and two others are making coarse threads of the fibres, almost exactly like those in the tomb of Daga (No. 103) a couple of hundred ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... occasionally bursts through. The southern part of the island has an undulating surface, and is covered either with an open forest or with high ferns. In general the soil is extremely fertile, and where it is naturally drained a rich vegetation of fern and flax occurs. On the north-west are several conical hills of basalt, which are surrounded by oases of fertile soil. On the south-western side is Petre Bay, on which, at the mouth of the river Mantagu, is Waitangi, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... side-street a draycart came jogging along. Half a score of labourers lay tugging in the shoulder-strap or leant with all the force of their bodies against the cart, which rolled on toilsomely. 'Twas a load of flax, packed tightly in great square bales standing one against the other, the whole cart full. The dray caught its right wheel in the grating of an open gutter and remained stock-still, leaning aslant, as though planted there. The workmen ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... we met: and after long pursuit, E'en so we joined; we both became entire: No need for either to renew a suit, For I was flax and He was flames of fire. Our firm united souls did more than twine; So I my best beloved's am; so ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... sewing, etc., and feeding them on bread and water to effeminate them (canto 4). When she overthrew Sir Artegal in single combat, she imposed on him the condition of dressing in "woman's weeds," with a white apron, and to spend his time in spinning flax, instead of in deeds of arms. Radigund fell in love with the captive knight, and sent Clarinda as a go-between; but Clarinda tried to win him for herself, and told the queen he was inexorable (canto 5). At ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... writing of that ancient prophet of Israel who, in his vision of the restoration of his city and his land and the healing of its waters, saw a man with a radiant face, a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed. And wherever this man of radiant face measured he caused the waters to run in dry places and deep rivers to course where the waters were but ankle-deep; fish to swarm again in the rivers and ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... comfort, with its big wooden presses full of linen, and the pot au feu hung over the cheerful fire,—came the real work, perhaps embroideries for the Church, perhaps only good stout shirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the boys, and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women. "Asked if she had learned any art or trade, said: Yes, that her mother had taught her to sew and ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... in the village, and it was controlled by a Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacher was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of the colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head. But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and when she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with great rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... conceive an appropriate meaning or use, it follows that whatever is of such a species that it cannot be taken in any plural sense, must naturally be named by a word which is singular only: as, perry, cider, coffee, flax, hemp, fennel, tallow, pitch, gold, sloth, pride, meekness, eloquence. But there are some things, which have in fact neither a comprehensible unity, nor any distinguishable plurality, and which may therefore be spoken of in either number; for the distinction ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... working till dark, making candle-wicks. When she came to get tea, she tied the white fleecy rolls together, a great bundle of them, and hung them up in the cellar-way, over the stairs, to be out of the way. They were extra fine wicks, being made of flax for the company candles. "I've got a good job done," said Mrs. Dorcas, surveying them complacently. Her husband had gone to Boston, and was not coming home till the next day, so she had had a nice chance to work at them, without ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... from the smoke-misted houses, came a peasant running. In his arms he carried a little girl. Her hair was light as flax, and crested with a knot of very bright red ribbon. Hair and gay ribbon caught the eye, as soon as they were borne out of the doomed houses. The father carried the little one to the bridge at the foot of our street, and began crossing towards us. The barbed ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... going to begin spinning some very fine flax next week," said Mara; "and have I shown you the new pattern I drew for a counterpane? it is to be morning-glories, leaves and flowers, you know,—a pretty ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of meeting They keep a home and shrine. Your angel twists a purple flax, Then weaves a ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Martha replied to her brother, "but tell me whether the kittuna of this Rabbi is wool or flax, or ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... worthy son of Abraham! I sell neither hops, nor eider-down, nor honey, nor wax, nor hemp-seed, nor salt meat, nor caviare, nor wood, nor wool, nor ribbons, nor, hemp, nor flax, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... valley were covered with fragrant tassels, and the old women and children sat all day on door-stones and by the wayside stripping the long, white wands for basket-making. Flax fields were blooming in the meadows, and acres of buckwheat, with its rosy stems and snowy blossoms, whitened the uplands with a fair ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... ounces, or at most by the pound. And the pound of wheat cost a maraved and a half, and that of barley a maravedi, and that of painick a maravedi and a quarter, and of pulse a maravedi, and of flax-seed three parts of a maravedi, and of cheese three dineros, and of honey three, and of figs one; and the panilla of oil was eight dineros, and the pound of colewort five, and the ounce of carobs three parts of a dinero, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... where hemp and flax cannot be readily procured, the "watap" is of great value. You may say that deer are plenty, and that thongs of buckskin would serve the same purpose. This, however, is not the case. The buckskin would never do for such a use. The moment it becomes ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... swaying branches of the tallest elms, making no attempt at concealment, but satisfied if the position be high and the branch pendent. This nest would seem to cost more time and skill than any other bird structure. A peculiar flax-like material seems to be always sought after and always found. The nest when completed assumes the form of a large, suspended gourd. The walls are thin but firm, and proof against the most driving rain. The mouth is hemmed ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... than sixteen—choked, reddened, held down his head, studying the marshal's face anxiously from beneath lowered flax-coloured brows. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... When his friends nominated him as a candidate for the legislature, his enemies made fun of him. When making his campaign speeches he wore a mixed jean coat so short that he could not sit down on it, flax and tow-linen trousers, straw hat, and pot-metal boots. He had nothing in the world but ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... cases the same burrow was a little enlarged at two or three points one beneath the other; and all the burrows terminated in a rather large chamber, at a depth of 7 or 8 feet from the surface. These chambers contained many small sharp bits of stone and husks of flax-seeds. They must also have contained living seeds, for on the following spring Mr. Carnagie saw grass-plants sprouting out of some of the intersected chambers. I found at Abinger in Surrey two burrows ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... itself, many trades and occupations require for their proper carrying on methods and surroundings absolutely destructive to health. In all preparation of hemp and oakum dust is excessive; far beyond that of the cotton-mill, which itself breeds consumption. In the spinning of flax great heat and water are both necessities. "Nothing is more wretched," writes Jules Simon, "than a linen-spinner's surroundings. Water covers the brick floor. The odor of the linen and a temperature often exceeding twenty-five ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... called over the rim of the world Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy, And yet had been great bodied and great limbed, Fashioned to be the mother of strong children; And she'd had lucky eyes and a high heart, And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax, At need, and made her beautiful and fierce, Sudden and laughing. O unquiet heart, Why do you praise another, praising her, As if there were no tale but your own tale Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound? Have I not bid you tell of that great queen ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... lead the young convert by still waters, and establish him in holy feeling; but the flock of the other goes out often into families where every soul would gladly break the bruised reed and quench the smoking flax. He can sympathize with Paul in his anxiety in behalf of those for whom he had ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... and water glyceria; the green locks of the barren bromus; the tapered plumes of the agrosits, called wind-ears; violet-hued hopes with which first dreams are crowned, and which stand out on the grey ground of flax where the light radiates round these blossoming herbs. But already, higher up, a few Bengal roses scattered among the airy lace of the daucus, the feathers of the marsh-flax, the marabouts of the meadow-sweet, the umbellae of the white chervil, the blond hair of the seeding clematis, the neat ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... one time, my good Jean," the cure answered mildly; "no, no, surely they do not all go to perdition. If they know any thing of the love of Christ, they must be Christians, however feeble and ignorant. He does not quench the smoking flax, Jean. Did you not hear madame say, 'Help me, for the love of Christ?' Good! There is the smoking flax, which may burn into a flame brighter than yours or mine some day, my poor friend. We must make her and the mignonne as welcome ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... from his papers and smiled, which was all the answer the Englishman seemed to expect, for he stormed on, "Here have we better fleeces than Spain, better wheat than France, finer cattle than the Netherlands, the tin of Cornwall, the flax of Kent and Durham, and our people starve or live rudely because of the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... flax nodded to them from the canal bank; and once, they saw a stork fly over a mossy green roof, to her nest on the chimney, with a frog in ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... purvey many thinges that be gode and profytable, as ornaments of holy church chalets, bokes, vestmentes [etc.] . . . also for howsold, as vytell for the tyme of Lent, and other Stuff, as Lynen Cloth, wolen Cloth, brasse, pewter, beddyng, osmonde, Iren, Flax and Wax and many other necessary thinges."[1] The chief fairs for the sale of books were those of St. Giles at Oxford, at Stourbridge, Cambridge, and St. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... not come to pass, we must make the best of our state, join our chief towns with railways, put quays to our harbours, mills on our rivers, turbines on our coasts, and under restrictions and with guarantees set the steam engine to work at our flax, wool, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... improvement of the breed of cattle, a number of country banks, mostly of the Raiffeisen type, co-operative associations of rural industries, principally lace, and societies for the sale of eggs and fowls, the dressing of flax, and general agriculture. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... discoursing to me in this manner until I reached the cabin of my father, when she bid me good night and departed. I entered the cabin and found my father, who was bent with age, sitting by the great fire-place, mending his nets. My mother was at her wheel, spinning flax. She was a tidy little body, of the old school. Her notions of the world in general were somewhat narrow and antiquated; while the steeple-crown cap she wore on her head so jauntily, and her apron ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... primal goad to growth, Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, Idly the flax-wheel spun Unridered: starving ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... English barrows, of the Danish kitchen middens, of the Swiss lake dwellings. The men who lived in it had domesticated the dog, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and the invaluable pig; they had begun to sow small ancestral wheat and undeveloped barley; they had learnt to weave flax and wear decent clothing: in a word, they had passed from the savage hunting condition to the stage of barbaric herdsmen and agriculturists. That is a comparatively modern period, and yet I suppose we must conclude with Dr. James Geikie that it isn't to be measured by mere calculations of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... wounds, which past unhappy disputes have left still in some degree open; to unite the French and English, the civil and military, in one firm body; to raise a revenue, to encourage agriculture, and especially the growth of hemp and flax; and find a staple, for the improvement of a commerce, which at present labors under ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... charm for you. There is a long, thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in his waistcoat-pocket, and who leads the choir. His position is in the very front rank of gallery benches facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... seems to be, If Hob is allowed nothing more than a smock-frock of coarse hemp, he will not come again either to thresh corn or to beat flax. ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... It was now the evening of the 4th of August. The garrison, utterly exhausted by two days and two nights of incessant conflict, aware that their ammunition must soon be exhausted, and knowing not from what quarter to hope for relief, were in despair. The Indians now filled a cart with hemp, flax, and the resinous boughs of firs and pines. They fastened to the tongue a succession of long poles, and then, setting the whole fabric on fire, as it rolled up volumes of flame and smoke, pushed it back against the log house, whose walls were as dry as powder. Just then, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... small chap 'bout three or fo' years old when my folks 'cided to come to Georgia to raise cotton. You see we didn't raise no cotton in Virginia—nutten' 'cept wool and flax. De people in Virginia heerd 'bout how cotton was growed down here and how dey was plenty o' labor and dey come by the hund'eds to Georgia. Back in dem days dey warn't no trains, and travel was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... say that his sister's accomplishments were innumerable. After only a few months on the border she could prepare the flax and weave a linsey dresscloth with admirable skill. Sometimes to humor Betty the Colonel's wife would allow her to get the dinner, and she would do it in a manner that pleased her brothers, and called ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... thought of how I was to make wicks bothered me. I could not spare my clothes. At last, after trying different things, I found that some of the grass was very tough. I put a bundle of this in a pool, and let it lay there for a week; for I was a North of Ireland boy, and knew how they worked flax. At the end of that time I took it out, let it dry, and then bruised it between flat stones, and found that it had a tough fibre. I thanked God, and picked a lot more of it and put it to soak. You may guess I tried the experiment that night; I made six big ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... making judicious and incessant exertions for the relief of the poor and the improvement of the people in their neighbourhood. It is very extraordinary that, in the part of the County of Monaghan to which Mr. Strickland went last week for flax seed for the poor tenants in his neighbourhood, he found that there is plenty of everything—no distress felt. The famine seems to have been as capricious as the malaria in passing over some places and settling upon others. Here we go on in our parish without having ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... quiet dame, Who plies with rack and spindle, The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother, When British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel in its track, His worship's bench has crumbled, ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... dedicated to death, and to the corruption of mortals. To death, by being used for snares and nets for birds, animals and fish; to corruption, by the flaxen sheets in which the dead are wrapped when they are buried, and who become corrupt in these winding sheets.— And again, this flax does not separate its fibre till it has begun to steep and putrefy, and this is the flower with which garlands and decorations for funerals ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of spirits of nitre, one teaspoonful paregoric, one wineglassful of camphor water. Mix thoroughly, and give a teaspoonful in half a teacupful of water every two hours. To relieve the cough, if troublesome, flax seed tea, or infusion of slippery-elm bark, with a little lemon juice to render more palatable, will be ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... materials for clothing, shelter, machinery, etc. The farm lands supply, besides food, a large part of the raw materials for many other goods, such materials as cotton, flax, wool, hides, feathers, lumber, and firewood. The farm woodlots compose about 200,000,000 acres, and the large forests, public and private, about 350,000,000 acres, a total of about one-fourth the area of the country in forests, containing about one-half of the lumber that ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... that land which panted to produce. To be sure, we grew some sod-corn, and some sod-potatoes, and sowed some turnips and buckwheat on the new breaking; but after my hair was gray, I found out, for the first time as we all did, that a fine crop of flax might have been grown that first year. Dakota taught us that. But the farmer of old was inured to waiting—and so we waited until another spring for the sod to rot, and in the meantime, it grew great crops of tumble-weeds, which in ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... fearful noise, and besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding to the natural pressure of the foot. In wearing them one presented an exceedingly awkward appearance. The most trying ordeal that I was forced to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax shirt. In the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use flax as part of the clothing for the slaves. That part of the flax from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which, of course, was the cheapest and roughest ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... founded San Jose and Los Angeles, and wrote a set of laws for the two Californias of his time. That wise ruler, Governor Borica, ordered schools opened and tried to get the Indians to farm their lands and to raise hemp and flax. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... passing through valleys, at other times scrambling over rocks and hills. The country in general was destitute of trees, but they passed through groves of wormwood, eight and ten feet in height, which they used occasionally for fuel, and they met with large quantities of wild flax. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... scenes, in which she herself always played a part, she got on but lamentably in real and every-day life. The head in which so many splendid pictures and grand schemes were agitating, looked generally something like a bundle of flax; she never noticed the holes and specks in her dress, nor her ragged stockings and trodden-down shoes; she forgot all her little, every-day business, and whatever she had in her hand she either lost ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Monaghan, and Tyrone, and has an area of 8560 sq. m.; became an English settlement in 1611, and was largely colonised from Scotland; it is the most Protestant part of the island, though the Catholics predominate, and is the most enterprising and prosperous part; the land is extensively cultivated, and flax growing and spinning ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... relationship. But she falls into error as to the giver of her meat and drink and clothing, supposing them to come from the idols, and not from Jehovah. "She hath said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Doth she then not know that it is I (Jehovah) who have given her the corn and the wine and the oil, and silver in abundance, and gold—out of which she maketh false gods? ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... "burning-off," with loads of fencing-posts and rails and palings out of steep, rugged gullies (and was happier then, perhaps); I've carried a shovel, crowbar, heavy "rammer," a dozen insulators on an average (strung round my shoulders with raw flax)-to say nothing of soldiering kit, tucker-bag, billy and climbing spurs—all day on a telegraph line in rough country in New Zealand, and in places where a man had to manage his load with one hand and help himself climb with the other; and I've helped hump and drag telegraph-poles up cliffs ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... purchased several tons of hay of a neighbouring farmer, for the use of his cattle, and it had to be stowed into the same barn with some flax and straw that belonged to Uncle Joe. Going early one morning to fodder the cattle, John found Uncle Joe feeding his cows with his master's hay, and as it had diminished greatly in a very short time, he accused ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... not our object. Fruit, grain, pulse, herbs, flax, and other vegetable products, receiving assiduous attention, will afford ample manual occupation, and chaste supplies for the bodily needs. It is intended to adorn the pastures with orchards, and to supersede the labor of cattle by the spade and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea; and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... for the past evil of their lives; and I have an idea, gentlemen, that though, in giving them such a chance, we might not be acting in accordance with man's idea of strict justice, we should be following pretty closely upon God's idea of it. He breaks not the bruised reed nor quenches the smoking flax; and if He thus declares his readiness to give even the most doubtful and unpromising of His creatures another trial, I really do not see that we are called upon to be more strict than He is. My proposal, therefore, is that we should accept these men's proffered ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... stream in the whole island, but they drink rain-water. The merchants who come from India and the islands encamp there with their wares. Moreover, men from Shinar, El-Yemen and Persia bring thither all sorts of silk, purple and flax, cotton, hemp, worked wool, wheat, barley, millet, rye, and all sorts of food, and lentils of every description, and they trade with one another, whilst the men from India bring great quantities of spices thither. The islanders act as middlemen, and earn their livelihood thereby. ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... descent or lateral progress, [Footnote: For a full account of the Greek five, see Gibbon, chapter 53] In sieges, it was poured from the ramparts, or launched like our bombs, in red-hot balls of stone or iron, or it was darted in flax twisted round arrows and in javelins. It was considered as a state secret of the greatest importance; and for wellnigh four centuries it was unknown to the Mahomedans. But at length the composition was ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... stout, about such a man as my Brother or Rickman—but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the cables of the British Navy.—Miss Dawe is about a portrait of sulky Fanny Imlay, alias Godwin: but Miss ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... little gardens as houses in it, there was a house occupied by several poor people, in one end of which, consisting just of a room and a closet, an old woman lived who got her money by spinning flax into yarn for making linen. She was a kind-hearted old creature—widow, without any relation near to help her or look after her. She had had one child, who died before he was as old as Willie. That was forty years before, but she had never forgotten her little Willie, for that was his ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... cheerful surroundings, she would soon rally as other children had, who came to me in a similar broken-down condition. Still the cough and pain continued. I dosed her with various restoratives, such as flax-seed, and slippery elm, etc., but all were of no avail. She steadily grew worse. Every week I could see she declined. Her appetite failed; night sweats came on; and she was so weak that most of the day she lay in bed. The children, all of whom loved Laura, she was so ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... hoe and the spade. "In spite of Emerson's habit of introducing the names of agricultural objects into his writing ('Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood' is a line from one of his poems), his familiarity therewith is evidently not so great as he would lead one to imagine. 'Take care, papa,' cried his little son, seeing him at work with a spade, 'you ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... industry of the Chinese most populous countries, not a beggar or an idle person to be seen, and how by that means they prosper and flourish. We have the same means, able bodies, pliant wits, matter of all sorts, wool, flax, iron, tin, lead, wood, &c., many excellent subjects to work upon, only industry is wanting. We send our best commodities beyond the seas, which they make good use of to their necessities, set themselves ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in the morning, but on this occasion we left Pompo and his cart behind, as we had not far to go—only a short distance down the stream, where Cudjo knew a large pool in which the fish were plenty. We took with us lines, made out of the wild flax that grows in the valley, and which, Mary tells us, is found in all countries that border upon the Rocky Mountains. Our rods were long tapering canes such as grew in abundance around us. For hooks we used pins bent into the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... length to dispose of than my neighbours, and I knew they remarked me the more for it; and then my hair never would remain in curl for half an hour together. My mother could put it up safely, but since I had left her it was always coming down, like flax from a distaff; and though I had in general a tolerably fresh and rosy complexion, heat outside and agitation within made my whole face, nose and all, instantly become the colour of a clove gillyflower. It had so become every afternoon on the journey, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... advises him to do to his wife as she had done to him, and imparts the secret to him. As soon as he returns home he fills the bottle with water from the bucket, says the words he had learned, and throws the water over his wife, who becomes a mare. He drives her out of the house and beats her as flax is beaten. To every one who asks why he is thrashing the mare he tells his story, and the people say, "Serve her right!" This goes on for some time. At last, when the husband sees that his wife has voided enough foam from the mouth, with another dash of water he changes her back to her ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... tall, and spare; his eyes bleared and filmy; his hair red, and so scanty withal, that it seems like a few stripes of blasted flax ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... not yet your squire. But all things considered, what good can it do the lady Aldonza Lorenzo, I mean the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, to have the vanquished your worship sends or will send coming to her and going down on their knees before her? Because may be when they came she'd be hackling flax or threshing on the threshing floor, and they'd be ashamed to see her, and she'd laugh, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Town and City shall be appointed Storehouses for flax, wood, leather, cloth, and for all such commodities as come from beyond seas. These shall be called General Storehouses, whence every particular Family may fetch such commodities as they want, either for their ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... the Feast of Lovers, called the Buscou,{4} on the last day of the year, where, in a large chamber, some hundred distaffs were turning, and boys and girls, with nimble fingers, were winding thread of the finest flax. Franconnette was there, and appointed queen of the games. After the winding was over, the songs and dances began to the music of a tambourin. The queen, admired by all, sang ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... about Phormiun tenax (New Zealand flax), which I see is imported to San Francisco in large quantities yearly for making cordage and binder twine, and is said also to be the best of bee pasture. Can I get the plants on the coast, and is California soil and climate adapted ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... the bottom of the globe lamps us'd at Vauxhall[91] have in keeping them clean, learn to have such holes in their street lamps. But, these holes being made for another purpose, viz., to communicate flame more suddenly to the wick by a little flax hanging down thro' them, the other use, of letting in air, seems not to have been thought of; and therefore, after the lamps have been lit a few hours, the streets of ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... some flax, and from the fibre made coarse linen fabrics, supplementing these by skins of wild animals and the hides of cattle. With the introduction of sheep by the British settlers wool became an important product, and homespun garments provided additional ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some of them wore men's hats. ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... the subject of military affairs. The Marquis della Valle withdrew himself to Cuernavaca, where he had immense estates, and busied himself with agriculture. He was the means of introducing the sugar-cane and the mulberry into Mexico, he also encouraged the cultivation of hemp and flax, and the breeding, on a large scale, of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Star," by the same master; Troyon's "Cattle Drinking"; Diaz's "Storm" and "Autumn Scene in the Forest of Fontainebleau"; Rousseau's "Le Givre"; Decamps's "Suicide"; Daubigny's large "Sunset on the Coast of France"; Delacroix's "Christ on the Cross"; and Millet's "Breaking Flax." One of the finest Millets I have ever seen is here, lent by Mr. Walters. This is the "Sheepfold at Night," which with several others of Mr. Walters's paintings here shown, was in the exhibition of "One Hundred ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... things; from tragic poetry down to whiskey-punch. He snuffed and smoked cigars and drank liqueurs, and talked in the most indescribable style.... He is a broad sincere man of six feet, with long dishevelled flax-coloured hair, and two blue eyes keen as an eagle's ... a being all split into precipitous chasms and the wildest volcanic tumults ... a noble, loyal, and religious nature, not strong enough to vanquish the perverse element it is ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... most brilliant blue-black dye from the bark of the Eno, which is in great abundance. Some of the borders of the native mats, of a most magnificent black, are dyed with this substance. It has been tried in New South Wales; but, as with other local dyes, although found well suited for flax, hemp, linen, or other vegetable productions, it could not be fixed on wools or animal matter. Dr. Holroyd, of Sydney, some time since, imported a ton of it for a friend near Bathurst. It is of great importance that chemical science should be applied to devise some ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the merry green wood; Like flax was each tress on her temples that stood; Her cheek like the rose-leaf that perfumes the air; Her form, like ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... I ken, Full of little gentlemen; Little caps of blue they wear, And green ribbons, very fair. (Flax.) ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... cow and the calf are there, fine lands are there without heath and without bog. Ploughing & seed-sowing in the right month, plough and harrow prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay it. There is oats and flax & large eared barley. There are beautiful valleys with good growth in them and hay. Rods grow there, and bushes and tufts, white fields are there and respect for trees; shade and shelter from wind and rain; priests ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... bestowed. That class of laborers whose toil and skill are exerted in modifying the forms of matter, succeed generally in proportion to the narrowness of the range to which each individual's attention is confined. It is possible (the writer has known it to be a fact) for the same person to sow the flax, to pull and rot it, to break it, hatchel it, spin it, warp it, weave it, dye or bleach it, and finally make it into clothes. I say this is possible, for I have seen it done, and I dare say many of my readers have seen the same. But how coarse and expensive is such a product, compared with that ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... remarked, a portion of the departments of the Nievre and the Yonne, lying between vine-clad Burgundy and the mountains of the Nivernois. Its productions are various; in the plains are grown wheat, rye, hemp, oats, and flax: on the mountain side the grape is largely cultivated; and in the valleys are rich verdant meadows, where countless droves of oxen, knee-deep in the luxuriant grass, feed and fatten ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... her best years. And she could live with me, we two together, and never caring about anyone else. Keep house together—and she should be my friend and sister—and all else! I know just what she would look like. Tall and slender, with fair hair, light as the flax at home, and all curling down over her shoulders. And she would carry her head high—not vain and proud, but noble and stately. And her eyes all fire and mischief. Deep eyes, with a reflection of strange worlds, and none could face them with ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... hemp, a piece of rope, a piece of string, a piece of bagging, a piece of sacking, a piece of canvass, a piece of hessian, a piece of Scotch sheeting, a piece of unbleached linen, a piece of bleached linen, a piece of diaper linen, a piece of dyed linen, a piece of flax, a piece of thread, a piece of yarn, a piece of ticking, a piece of raw silk, a piece of twisted silk, a piece of wove silk, figured, a piece of white plain sills, and a piece of dyed silk, a piece of ribbon, a piece of silk cord, a piece of silk ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... bank near Lake Placid. Good grass grows upon the hillsides, and in the valleys are found excellent potatoes, oats, peas, beans, and buckwheat. The corn is small, but seems prolific, and occasional fields of flax, rye, barley, and even wheat, present a flourishing appearance. Lumber, charcoal, and iron ore of an excellent quality are, however, the present staples of this mountain region. Bears and panthers are found in some secluded localities, and the farmer ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... (Trophy that was to be of life long pain), The thread no other skill can ever knit again. 'Twas so with him, for he was glad to live, 'Twas doubly so, for he left work begun; Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive Till all the allotted flax were spun? It matters not; for, go at night or noon, A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too soon, 460 And, once we hear the hopeless He is dead, So far as flesh hath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... talked to earls and barons, and now clucks to a wheen o' hens; me that once had my coach and pair, and now have only an ass with a creel o' turf; and no care of money once on me, and now all I have is my spinning-wheel, and the flax not what it used to be, but getting coarser. And my eyes going out, that were the delight of many ... I hope you're better off nor me at the end of the hard and dusty road, wee Shane. I ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
