"Homespun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... homespun clothes, and riding sorry steeds, Calhoun and Emory played their part to perfection. Their entrance into the little place caused no comment, and excited no suspicion. Sauntering into the depot, they gazed ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... going to visit the first lady of the land, they thought that they should dress themselves in their finest clothes. Arrayed in silks, satins, and ruffles, they were shown into the presence of Mrs. Washington, and were utterly amazed to find her wearing a striped homespun apron, and busily engaged in knitting stockings. She received them, however, with as much dignity and courtesy as if she had had a crown on her head and a scepter in her hand; and in the course of conversation she said that it was the duty of every one to try to do without the things which ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... He was subdued by the novelty of his surroundings,—the hillocky, sloping pastures, and the shadowy solemnity of the forest. Moreover, he perceived, in his dim way, a kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing, grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ancestors thrilled toward the wild pastures. The glances which, from time to time, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... their own specialities upon those of Western lands. Witness their Constitution, their Parliament, their 30,000 schools in active operation; witness their museums and hospitals; witness their colleges and universities. 'But,' you would also have said, 'give us a race whose women are homespun and refined, courteous and winsome, not tottering on tortured feet, nor immured in zenanas and harems, but who freely mingle in social life, and adorn all they touch;' and such, without controversy, are the women of Japan. Above ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... Burns: men rude and rough Pressed round to hear the praise of one Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff, As homespun as their own. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... front, and also contrasted Lawyer Wilson's appearance with that of her father; the former, well dressed in the style of a gentleman of the time, in broadcloth, with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of ridicule these dozen years. (The Deacon would be buried in two coats, Jed Morrill always said, for he owned just that number, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of these huts, at work in the fields, under the direction of the overseer, a strong, spare man, in a suit of homespun, who rode about among them on horseback, carrying in his hand a cowhide whip, which he had exhibited to me with a smile, and the remark that 'that was the thing the Yankees made so much noise about.' It was a sufficient instrument of punishment, I thought and said, adding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... prepared for its condemnation. Before it stood John Bull, burly, dogged and determined not to be humbugged—his judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. Nothing disconcerted, the brown, rough, homespun Yankee in charge jumped on the box, starting the team at a smart walk, setting the blades of the machine in lively operation, and commenced raking off the grain in sheaf-piles ready for binding,—cutting a breadth of nine or ten feet cleanly and carefully as fast as a span of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While those great caves of night, her eyes, faced mine, Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs: At last she spoke as one who must be heeded. Truly I ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... have rehearsed a scene in which she would be called upon to soothe a stricken woman and speak comfort to a breaking heart. She had supposed that love was the same the world over, whether it went in silk brocade or coarse homespun. She had apt phrases ready to meet the expected, plenty of well-prepared sympathy to bestow, but she had no answer for this quiet, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... been overlooked: so, squatting down on the grass, I devoted myself to a passionate absorbing of every detail. At the end of five minutes there was not a button on him that I could not have passed an examination in; and the wearer himself of that homespun suit was probably less familiar with its pattern and texture than I was. Once he looked up, nodded, half held out his tobacco pouch,—mechanically, as it were,—then, returning it to his pocket, resumed his work, and I my ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... vivid and trim. The hussars wore sky-blue jackets braided with white, yellow breeches, high boots, and tall caps with a white plume at the side. They made a great impression on the country people, who had seen their own men, dressed in homespun clothes, mount their rough farmhorses and ride away, just as they were, to the war. The duke himself was friendly and pleasant and popular with his new neighbors. He lived in a house lent him by David Trumbull, ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... prevented me in an attempt to which I find myself in all Respects but too unequal. Yet relying on your good Sense and Candour, I venture to lay at your Feet a few well-intended Sentiments, which tho' in a plain homespun Garb, I hope will not offend. I am convinced that at this present it is not only in your Inclination and Will, but also in your Power, to effect more in favour of your Country, than an Army of an Hundred Thousand Men; and indeed more than all the armed Men ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... nights in the snug farm-house kitchen, after the day's work was done, John Camm and his young wife together carved their initials on the 'brideswain,' a tall oak chest that held the goodly stock of homespun linen and flax brought by Mabel Camm to her new home. John Camm was something of an artist. His was the design of the interlaced initials. All his life he had been a skilful carver with his tools on the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... feeling which, it seemed, would not down: that he was never to be done with Aunt Anne's deeds, so often demanding, as they did, a reciprocal action from him. What he wanted, he realized grimly, was to have his cake and eat it, if he might use so homespun a simile for a woman who had persistently lived for him and in him and then had made clear spaces about him by going away in the dignity of death. He wanted to breathe in the space she had left, and he also wanted to be spared the indecency of recognizing his relief. But ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... not to be depended on where he was likely to be a material loser. A particularly "fluent" man, accomplished in gestures such as form an ingredient in all French conversation, he was in Zotique's Sunday afternoons a zestful contestant. His clothes were of homespun, dyed a raw, light blue, and he was proud of his choice of the ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... as lord of the moving manor, Jacob's raiment was of homespun; the economic envoy's plain coat and hose, who has ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... continuity of experience recovered. Often these clashes may be settled by an individual for himself; the area of the struggle of aims is limited and a person works out his own rough accommodations. Such homespun philosophies are genuine and often adequate. But they do not result in systems of philosophy. These arise when the discrepant claims of different ideals of conduct affect the community as a whole, and the need for readjustment is general. These ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Keys, and Kirk Maughold, and Port y Vullin. Here at the Lague lived ADAM FATSISTER, the Deputy Governor, who had been selected for that post because he owned five hundred hungry acres, six hungrier sons, a face like an angel's in homespun, a flaccid figure, and a shrewd-faced wife, named RUTH. Hither came STIFFUN, to beg shelter. The footman opened the door to him, but would have closed it had not ADAM, with a lusty old oath, bidden him to let the man in. Hereupon STIFFUN's face softened, and the footman's dropped; but ORRORS, with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... of his liege lady. Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... was standing before him, not a mendicant, but a landowner—and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a long pause. It seemed that the girl was slowly undressing herself before them: travel and money and gold bag and scented linings slipped from her like so many petticoats and left her thin and cold between them, warm as they were in their solid homespun of kin and hearth. Lean and empty, a houseless, flitting, little shadow, she had scoured the world and sat now, envious, by a kitchen fire. ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... smiling lazily. Granny was so amusing in her energy and precision, and her turns of speech, so deliberately homespun, as if she—than whom none could better use a stiff and polished phrase, or the refinements of the French language—were determined to take what liberties she liked. To the girl, haunted still by the feeling that she could fly, almost drunk ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... consists in a fitness, a propriety of words, actions, and even looks, adapted to the infinite variety and combinations of persons, places, and things. It is a mode, not a substance; for what is good-breeding at St. James's, would pass for foppery or banter in a remote village; and the homespun civility of that village would be considered ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... folks up at the summit. I saw a mighty smart, fash'n'ble gal cavorting round. Hed no end o' style and fancy fixin's. That's my kind, I tell you. I just weaken on that sort o' gal," he continued, in the firm belief that he had awakened Flip's jealousy, as he glanced at her well-worn homespun frock, and found her eyes suddenly ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... at socks and stockings, in coarse, bright-coloured wool. Such articles are never bought, the home-made substitute being much more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An old woman in the village ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question of her education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... enough to her credit to finish her education. When the happy parents return to see their daughter graduated, after six or seven long years, their faces are radiant because of their realized hopes. When they see their white-robed daughter transformed from the girl they brought here clad in the homespun of the old days, and receiving her certificate, the tears come unchecked, and the moving lips no doubt ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... mother was to be taken to the church and buried. Many people came to the house that day,—among them Jacob in a bright new suit of gray woolen homespun; and there was a feast for them all, and everything was very still and solemn. Even the schoolmaster came; and oh, how beautifully he sang when Lars Svehaugen and three other men carried mother out through the door and set her ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... course, was stout, ruddy, grey-eyed Rusha, in her tight round cap, and stout brown petticoat with the homespun apron over it; the other was like a fairy by her side; slight and tiny, dressed in something of mixed threads of white and crimson that shone in the sun, with a velvet bodice, a green ribbon over it, and a gem over the shoulder that flashed in the ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... purpose of illustrating what he calls the "pure Natural Dialect" of Yorkshire; above all, he delights in the proverbial lore of his native county and never misses an opportunity of tagging his conversations with one or other of these homespun proverbs. The poem is too long for our anthology,(2) but I cannot forbear ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... but notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, sleep did not come to him. Through the partition he could hear the clear, sonorous voice of Reine singing her father to sleep with one of the popular ballads of the country, and while turning and twisting in the homespun linen sheets, scented with orrisroot, he could not help thinking of this young girl, so original in her ways, whose grace, energy, and frankness fascinated and shocked him at the same time. At last he dozed off; and when the morning ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... make room for the pieces of old-fashioned furniture. The tapestry carpets were taken up and stowed away in the garrets, the lace curtains were pulled down. In their stead were the old sanded bare floors and curtains of homespun linen trimmed with hand-knitted lace. Emily's nice Marseilles counterpanes were laid aside for the old blue-and-white ones which our grandmothers spun and wove, and her fine oil paintings gave way to old engravings of Webster death-bed scenes and portraits of the ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun. There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the expression of gentleness and easy good-nature. It was ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... days. He left all sorts of apologies for not being at home to receive you. He will be home before dinner. Here is mamma,' as Lady Palliser came sailing out, in a forty-guinea gown from Jay, all glitter of bugles, and sheen of satin, putting Mrs. Wendover's homespun travelling dress to shame. There was a dinner-gown with the luggage, but a gown which, in comparison with Lady Palliser's satin and jet, would be like the cloudy countenance of Luna on a November night, as compared with the glory of Sol on a ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... road here had a thrifty look; the men wore homespun coats; the pinned-up dresses of the women showed petticoats which were homespun of warm madder red, well dyed, good and comfortable looking. Of course the majority of the women were barefoot, but they were used ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Voltigeurs, they were untrained in war; and their muskets and fowling-pieces were much inferior to the rifles of the regulars. Their victory, it must be said, reflected great credit upon them; although their losses had been twice as great as those of the soldiers,[1] these peasants in homespun had stood their ground with a courage and steadiness which would have honoured old campaigners. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about some of their leaders. Papineau and O'Callaghan were present in St ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... casements in a way that would have prevented a town-bred child from sleeping, and up in those bare rooms there was cold enough to pinch you black and blue; but Elsie and Duncan had never thought much of that, for they had been accustomed to it from babyhood, and only threw on their thick homespun ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... baskets one in the other, and stowed them away in the cart. She had sold everything but a few bundles of beans, and was well content. So she trudged off to buy some yarn and some homespun tweed where she could get the most for ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the circuit-riders as they are now called, who lived as Elijah did, whose temper was very much the temper of Elijah, in whose exalted narrowness of devotion, all that was stern, dark, foreboding—the very brood of the forest's innermost heart—had found a voice. Their religion was ecstasy in homespun, a glory of violent singing, the release of a frantic emotion, formless but immeasurable, which at all other times, in the severity of the forest routine, gave no sign ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... color shows black and prominent against the spotless background of glittering ice-field and snow-covered cliffs. Risk and his partner wore over their ordinary clothing long frocks of white flannel, with white "havelocks" over their seal-skin caps, and their gray, homespun pants were covered to the knee by seal-skin Esquimaux boots—the best of all water-proof walking-gear for cold weather. Risk carried the single ducking-piece before mentioned, but Davies had a Blissett breech-loading double-barrel. They had chosen their location to the north ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... glimmer of dawn they were on the march again, passing all day through the desolate flat country, where the women ran weeping to the doorways, and waved empty hands as they went by. Once a girl in a homespun dress, with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair, brought out a wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and passed it ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... brown homespun dress—that is to say, the materials had been woven by the deft fingers of her mother, with the aid of the old spinning wheel, which in those days formed a part of every household. The dark stockings were knitted ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... of rye or Indian meal, milk, and a very limited variety of vegetables, constituted the food throughout the year. When night came on his light was derived from a few candles of home manufacture. The farmer and his family wore homespun. If linen was wanted, the flax was sown and weeded, pulled and retted, then broken and swingled, for all of which processes nearly a year was required before the flax was ready for the spinners, bleaching on the grass, and making and wearing. If woolens ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... plenty of reindeer. The ladies, therefore, were very anxious to display these powerful attractions to the greatest advantage; and the best rooms in the house, instead of being adorned with caricatures of Dame Nature, in water-colors and needlework, were always hung round with abundance of homespun garments, the manufacture and the property of the females; a piece of laudable ostentation that still prevails among the heiresses of our ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... for I do not, like our newspapers, and such admirers, fall in love with heroes and heroines who make war without a glimpse of provocation. I do like our makincy peace, whether we had provocation or not. I am forced to deal in European news, my dear lord, for I have no homespun. I don't think my whole inkhorn could invent another paragraph; and therefore I will take my leave, with (your lordship knows) every kind wish for ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... that you need say that to me, Jack! As for respectability, that homespun word hardly applies; we do have lineage here, and in the European sense, even if without the European power. But that's no matter. It's the pressing down on me of this alien standard, whether expressed or not, that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... new clothes. He felt them an intolerable burden. He did not mind his new homespun, home-made flannel check shirt of mixed red and white, but the heavy fulled-cloth suit made by his Aunt Kirsty felt like a suit of mail. He moved heavily in it and felt queer, and knew that he looked as he felt. The result was that he was in no genial mood, and was on the alert for any ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... gay flies, Gilded i' th' beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes— But to poor shepherds, homespun things, Whose wealth 's their flocks, whose wit 's to be Well read in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of the frontier was suited to the plainness of the habitations where they lived and the furniture they used. Homespun, linsey-woolsey and buckskin were the primitive materials out of which their everyday dresses were made, and only on occasions of social festivity were they seen in braver robes. Rings, broaches, buckles, and ruffles were ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... about on chairs and sofas, or helping themselves to tea at the table. On the hearth, with his back to the fire, stood a great, burly man with a short, grizzled beard and tumbled gray hair, rather bald, dressed in a rough suit of light-brown homespun, with huge shooting boots, whom I saw at once to be my host. The talk stopped as I entered, and I was aware that I was being scrutinised with some curiosity. Father Payne did not move, but extended a hand, which I advanced and shook, and said: ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from two to four street costumes, a fur coat, another long coat, a dozen hats and from four to ten house dresses. In this day of week-ends in the country, no trousseau, no matter how town-bred the bride, is complete without one or two "country" coats, of fur, leather or woolen materials; several homespun, tweed or tricot suits or dresses; skirts with shirt-waists and sweaters in endless variety; low or flat heeled shoes; woolen or woolen and silk mixture stockings; and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... a single suspender that made a wet line over a sweaty cotton shirt: the man, tall, lean, swarthy, grim; the boy grim and dark, too, and with a face that was prematurely aged. At the man's cabin a little girl in purple homespun was hurrying in and out the back door clearing up after the noonday meal; at the boy's, a comely woman with masses of black hair sat in the porch with her hands folded, and lifting her eyes now and then to the top of the spur. Of a sudden the man impatiently threw ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... ring up the sleeping past! If I were a dove and dwelt in the monstrous chestnuts, where the bees murmur all day about the flowers; if I were a sheep and lay on the field there under my comely fleece; if I were one of the quiet dead in the kirkyard—some homespun farmer dead for a long age, some dull hind who followed the plough and handled the sickle for threescore years and ten in the distant past; if I were anything but what I am out here, under the sultry noon, between the deep chestnuts, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... in their turn had begun to leave the church. Young or old, pretty or ugly, nearly all were well clad in fur cloaks, or in coats of heavy cloth; for, honouring the Sunday mass, sole festival of their lives, they had doffed coarse blouses and homespun petticoats, and a stranger might well have stood amazed to find them habited almost with elegance in this remote spot; still French to their finger-tips in the midst of the vast lonely forest and the snow, and as tastefully dressed, these peasant women, ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... States, the whole annual expenditures of which did not exceed $2,500,000, being about sixty cents per head of the population. Not a single steam engine had yet been built or erected on the American continent; and the people were clad in homespun, and were characterized by the simple virtues and habits which are usually associated with that primitive garb. I need not tell you what the country now is, and what the habits and the garments of its people now are, or that ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... he would come. See, she was laying out his clothes for him! He had sent to Sweetwater, at her request, two valises full, packed by Manasseh; and she had conveyed them hither with the rest of the furniture. Carefully now she made her selection from the store: coat, breeches of homespun and leather, stout boots, moccasined leggings such as the Indians wore, woollen shirts—but other shirts also of finest cambric—with underclothes of silk, and delicate nightshirts, and silken stockings that could be drawn like soft ribbons between the fingers. She thrilled as she handled them ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,—but it lay there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the odd old family names, particularly those of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... I have for sale Casks of brown October ale, Brewed to make humanity hilarious; Here's a suit of homespun brave Fit for honest man or knave; Here's a ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... grain, dry goods. silk, satin; muslin, burlap. [Science of textures] histology. Adj. structural, organic; anatomic, anatomical. textural, textile; fine grained, coarse grained; fine, delicate, subtile, gossamery, filmy, silky, satiny; coarse; homespun. rough, gritty; smooth. smooth as silk, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... same period, by Ronsard and his Pleiad. Lyly failed in prose, where Ronsard succeeded in poetry, because he endeavoured to go back upon tradition, while the Frenchman worked strictly within its limits. The attempt to throw Court dress over the plain homespun of our English prose might have been attended with success, had our literature been younger and more easily led astray. As it was, prose in this country, when euphuism invaded it, could already show seven centuries of development, and, moreover, development along the broad and national ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... shelter, and was just going in at the door, I was sorely started to feel a great warm hand on my shoulder, and a loud, cheery voice saith, 'Dolly Jennings, whither away so fast thou canst not see an old friend?' I looked up, and there was dear old Farmer Ingham, in his thick boots and country homespun; but I declare to you, child, that in my trouble his face was to me as that of an angel of God. I brake down, and sobbed aloud. 'Come, come, now!' saith he, comfortably; 'not so bad as that, is it? I've ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... Against so homespun a background the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. Major Amberson bought two hundred acres of land at the end of National Avenue; and through this tract ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... delight! And thou too, Dalica, so many years Weaned from the bosom of thy native land, Returnest back and seekest true repose. Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh When laying down your burden at the gate, And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace The cool and quiet of a homespun bed." "Alas," said Dalica, "though all commend This choice, and many meet with no control, Yet none pursue it! Age by Care oppressed Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave. The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth: Frenzied Ambition and desponding Love Consume Youth's ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... likely I shall be riding from the west next Thursday (the fifth day of the week)." "Would you do an errand for me?" said Thorhalla. "I have a kinsman west at Whitedale and Saurby; he has promised me half a mark's worth of homespun, and I would like you to claim it for me, and bring it with you from the west." Kjartan promised to do this. After this Thorarin came home, and betook himself to the journey with them. They rode westward over Saelingsdale heath, and came to Hol in the evening to the brothers and sister there. There ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... after he uttered his complaint, Robert saw a middle aged man, not remarkable of appearance, talking with Braddock. His dress was homespun and careless, but his large head was beautifully shaped, and his features, though they might have been called homely, shone with the light of an extraordinary intelligence. His manner as he talked ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... anti-slavery agitation David Irish and his sister "made their protest against slavery by abstaining as far as possible from slave-made products; and together they made maple, to take the place of cane sugar, and used nothing but linen and woolen clothing (largely homespun)."[15] This later Quaker, possessed of the spirit of the community of his fathers, shows his inner conflict with the ideals of a competitive age in the expression "so far as possible." It was not as practicable in 1855 to "abstain from slave-made products," ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... negroes were not at work, of course; and, early as it was, we found their quarters all alive with merriment and expectation. Some of the younger men, dressed in their best clothes—generally suits of plain, substantial homespun, white or check shirts, and felt hats—went from house to house, wishing the inmates the compliments of the season, blended with obstreperous, broad-mouthed laughter; in some instances carrying nosegays, received, in common with the givers, with immense delight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... forth: "Velvets must go up, and homespun must come down;" and the question is "How does the coat fit?"—not, "Who wears it?" The power that bears the tides of excited population up and down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all nations, Transatlantic and Cisatlantic, is—clothes. It decides the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... smiling. The courtesy of the Judge was one of his most beautiful traits. It was the spontaneous exhibition of the simple and kindly emotions of his heart. Pure benevolence and philanthropy displayed itself in every word which he uttered. He gave his hand to the plain yeoman clad in homespun as courteously and sincerely as to the greatest personage in the country. He had the same simple smile and good-humored jest for both, and seemed to recognize no difference between them. It was instructive to estimate in the good Chief Justice the basis and character ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... around the river. A hot, rustic station of two or three rooms, an abandoned factory building—tall, empty-windowed and haunted-looking—gone clean out for want of commerce, like a lamp for lack of oil. Opposite the station a pretty homespun tavern trellised with grapes, a portrait of General Lee in the sitting-room, and a fat, buxom Virginia matron for hostess. All this quiet scene was once the locality of the hot hopes and anxieties of genius, and it is for this reason we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... but they are like so few, good illustrations of Bunyan. Their spirit, in defect and quality, is still the same as his own. The designer also has lain down and dreamed a dream, as literal, as quaint, and almost as apposite as Bunyan's; and text and pictures make but the two sides of the same homespun yet impassioned story. To do justice to the designs, it will be necessary to say, for the hundredth time, a word or two about the masterpiece which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no more with my chat," said his hostess, with kindly good humor, and slipped away upstairs. She lighted a great wood fire in the bedroom, and laid the bed and the blankets all round it, and opened the window, and took the homespun linen sheets out of a press, and made the room very tidy. Then she went down again, and the moment Henry saw her, he said "I feel your kindness, miss, but I don't know your name, nor where in the world I am." His hostess smiled. "That is no secret. I'm ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... level, curious gaze upon him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... hanging down upon his shoulders. His face, of a highbred and strongly marked type, emphasised by age, had the hawk-like contour, that is supposed to betoken extreme acquisitiveness. His faded eyes were turned toward a woman, dressed in a homespun frock and a muslin cap, who sat bolt upright, in a straight-backed chair, at the other end of the piazza, with her hands folded on her lap, looking fixedly toward her vis-a-vis. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to the colonel, and when the old man rose, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... in March, 1905, there entered the writer's office in the Criminal Courts Building, New York City, a ruddy, stoutly-built man, dressed in homespun garments, accompanied by an attractive and vivacious little woman, who, while unable to speak a single word of English, had no difficulty in making it obvious that she had a story to tell of the most vital importance. An interpreter ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... of homespun. De women done all de spinning and de weaving but Miss Betsy cut out all de clothes and helped wid de sewing. She learned to sew when she was away to school and she learnt all her women to sew. She done all the sewing for de children. ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... of living—what does it amount to? How important is it? Does it matter whether we missionaries sleep on spring beds, or those made of boards (I prefer the latter myself!), whether we eat with chopsticks, or fingers, or forks; whether we wear silk or homespun; whether we sit on chairs or on the floor? Does it matter whether we are poor or rich? Does it matter whether we eat rice or potatoes? Does it matter whether we live in the way to which we are accustomed, or adopt the way of living of those to ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... of three quarters of a mile. For a moment I was highly amused, standing by his foot, which swelled up like a hill, and straining my neck backward to get a look up along the precipice of his leg, which, curiously enough, I observed was clothed in rough homespun, the woolly knots of the cloth appearing of tremendous size, while it bagged at the knee like any terrestrial trousers' leg. His great head and face I could see far above me, as it were, in the clouds. Yet I was not ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... giant is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide. Am I stating it ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... had been worked out for the various classes. They were adapted both to the purse and to the pursuit. They were fitting—that is, silk was not worn in huts or homespun in palaces; slippers were for carriages and sabots for streets. The garments of a class were founded on good sound principles on the whole—but they marked the class. Democracy sought to destroy outward distinctions. The ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... openings under the eaves gaped windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from a July sun, enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing fragrance from their own fields and gardens. They seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun and hickory; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked, was not lacking. They sat on benches arranged in circles around a central platform which held the Prophet's chair and table. This was his simple plan for making his world ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... homespun gown and a blue sunbonnet came up the road and unlatched the little gate. She had upon her arm a small basket such as the mountain folk weave. "Good-mahnin', Mrs. Cole. Good-mahnin', Mr. Cole. It cert'ny is fine weather ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... "we leave this place to-morrow morn." And at her nod of assent the house-father looked deeply grieved, the house-mother began to clamour about ingratitude. "Not so," answered Ebbo, fiercely. "We quit the house as poor as we came, in homespun and ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He was always without a jacket, except on grand occasions; usually his sole garments were a pair of blue linen trousers, heavy shoes, and a striped velvet waistcoat, over which he wore an apron of homespun linen when at work in the cafe or billiard-room. This apron, with strings, was the badge of his functions. The fellow had been hired by Socquard at the last annual fair; for in this valley, as throughout Burgundy, servants are hired in ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... came near to Perez, and looked up at him with a questioning face, in which anxiety was struggling with timidity. She was a rosy cheeked lass, of about sixteen, well grown for her age, and dressed in coarse woolen homespun, while beneath her short skirt, appeared a pair of heavy shoes, which evidently bore very little relation to the shape of the feet within them. Her eyes were gray and frank, and the childishness, which the rest of her face was outgrowing, still lingered ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... masterful theologian of Mount Olivet's particular faith. It is reported how he defended his theology with his splendid oratory, and how when this failed he resorted to his fists. His oratory was said to be simply overwhelming. They recounted how, in his oratorical frenzies, he used to fling his homespun coat in the air and crack the heels of his red-topped boots together with an emphasis that would stop the mouth of the most impudent gainsayer. They told how by this masterful eloquence opposers were silenced, heretics were brought to orthodoxy, and infidels were converted. Preacher Crookshank ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... and ground were littered with garments and furs and weapons, and odds-and-ends of spoil, as if a ship had been overturned on the spot. The lean little man whom Rolf had pointed out stood in the midst of it all, examining and directing. He was dressed in coarse homespun of the dingy colors of trading vessels, gray and brown and rusty black, which contrasted oddly with the mantle of gorgeous purple velvet he was at that moment trying on. His little freckled face was wrinkled into a hundred ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... aggravating halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of these worthies ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Poets are always amazing us, and some day Robert Frost may astonish me by writing a romantic ballad. It would surely be a surprise, for with his lack of operatic accomplishment, and his fondness for heroes in homespun, he would seem almost ideally unfitted for the task. This feeling I find strengthened by his poem called An Equal Sacrifice, the only one of his pieces where anything like a ballad is attempted, and the only one in all three books which seems to be an undeviating ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... posts of the bedstead. There were of course none of the little dainty luxuries about it with which I was familiar in my mother's bedroom. A long, low window opposite the head of the bed threw a strong light upon it. There were check curtains drawn round it, and a patchwork-quilt, and rough, homespun linen. Every thing was clean, but coarse and frugal—such as I expected to find about my Sark patient, in the home of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... square, ruddy-faced man of sixty, with neatly trimmed, snow-white whiskers. He had on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a modishly cut gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an opal pin, wore tan gloves, and had slung over one shoulder by a narrow black strap ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... found traces of an oblation and a lock of hair; from which circumstance he conjectured that Orestes had been there. We have then an allusion to the means which Aeschylus had employed to bring about the recognition, namely, the resemblance of the hair, the prints of feet, as well as the homespun-robe, with a condemnation of them as insufficient and absurd. The probability of this part of the drama of Aeschylus may, perhaps, admit of being cleared up, at all events one is ready to overlook it; but an express reference like this ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... them by kindness, he gazes on the motley garden-plots, the soft bedding, the showy toys, the delicate keep of the children of Phaedra, who turn curiously to their half-brother, venture to touch his long strange gown of homespun grey, like the soft coat of some wild creature who might let one stroke it. Close to their dainty existence for a while, he regards it as from afar; looks forward all day to the lights, the prattle, the laughter, the white [174] bread, like sweet cake to him, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... rapidly at a few out of the many literary forces of our day in which we may see the various reactions from Carlyle. First, there was the Early Victorian time, the eighteenth century in homespun. It was not great and pompous like that century, but it lived by formality, propriety, and conventionality. It was horribly shocked when George Eliot published Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede in 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... corn-stalks, the new remedy of inoculation, 'Common Sense' and its author, the children's handwriting, the state of Harvard College, the rate of taxes, the most helpful methods of enlistment, Chesterfield's Letters, the town elections, the higher education of women, and the getting of homespun enough for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the little American army, with fifes shrilling out the notes of "Yankee Doodle," comes marching down to the fort. No gay trappings, scarlet or gold lace about these soldiers, but ragged suits of homespun and homely flint-lock muskets, whose barrels are better burnished within than without. They march quickly to the water-front, and halt. The captain looks at the British squadron, now getting under way, and then, with true soldierly ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of many women who did full duty through the darkest days the nation ever knew—saints in homespun, martyrs uncanonised save in ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Street close packed with the stuff of human life, homespun and drab enough, but not altogether profitless, may be, to turn over and examine. So close packed was it that there was scarce breathing space. It was only at immemorial intervals that our pauper alien made a pun, but one day ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... matter of fact, Aunt Vic has become so absorbed in her little circle of old French royalist noblesse that she can't see anything to admire outside the rue de l'Universite and chateau life in Normandy. She does admit that there's an element of homespun virtue in the old families of Boston and Waverton; but that's only because she belongs ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... drives them to the great cities or across the seas, for many peasant families, I was told, have a fortune of at least 40,000 francs. The lads go forth pricked with the spirit of adventure and the desire to rise in life, and leave their homespun elders grumbling and wondering over the event. Once, at a village called Laussonne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a drake who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great press against the wall, and as she spoke, as if by chance, she swung the door open, so that I had a glimpse of the mighty piles of homespun cloth and linen, her pride, which lay therein, Truly she had to spare, and ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... into the open air. She saw a number of canvas-covered wagons drawn up in front of the cabins; the vehicles were dusty and the wheels encrusted with yellow mud. The grizzled frontiersman who had smiled at Nell stood leaning on his gun, talking to three men, whose travel-stained and worn homespun clothes suggested a long and toilsome journey. There was the bustle of excitement incident to the arrival of strangers; to the quick exchange of greetings, the unloading of wagons and unharnessing of horses ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the door of No. 16 and lowered the stretcher, the old man put down his carpet sack and grimly watched the nurse uncover the patient. Under the worn homespun coverlet, stained with the dull dyes of barks and berries, lay an emaciated figure, just as it had been brought into the hospital. One long coarse garment covered it, and the bare feet with their prominent ankle bones and the large work-hardened ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... chilled her, though she had felt vaguely their splendid pulse and swing. This was the girl's first venture from a sheltered life. She had not rubbed elbows with the world enough to find that Truth may be rough, unshaven, and garbed in homespun. The book confirmed her ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... oft o' standin' In my homespun pantaloons— On my face the bronze an' freckles O' the suns o' youthful Junes— Thinkin' that no mortal minstrel Ever chanted sich a lay As the ol' tunes we was ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... boy— there's no denying it!—and yet I liked him; he looked very sensible and straightforward, and there was a vigorous ring in his voice. He had nothing to boast of in his attire; it consisted simply of a homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather uninteresting; it was a long face, with short-sighted eyes and a hook nose; it expressed a kind of dull, fretful uneasiness; his tightly- drawn lips seemed rigid; his contracted brow ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... own clothes, or so poor and miserable that they had to wear the cast-off rags of their more fortunate neighbors. The women and girls sheared the sheep, carded the wool, spun the yarn, wove the homespun cloth, and made the clothes. In the haying season they amused themselves by joining in the raking of hay, in which they had to be particularly active if rain was threatened; but any man would have lost caste who allowed wife or daughter to engage in heavy work ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... paid sudden respect to the homespun citizen of an older day, and a great happiness came into his heart—it was like the unfolding of one of the roses. Not that he was to lunch with the President, though Dale's was the village estimate of human greatness. A vaster issue was before him, and this was a token of success—a ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... Cattarina wrote him billets-doux, I fear Aunt Bernstein would have bade him accept the invitations: but the lad had brought with him from his colonial home a stock of modesty which he still wore along with the honest homespun linen. Libertinism was rare in those thinly-peopled regions from which he came. The vices of great cities were scarce known or practised in the rough towns of the American continent. Harry Warrington blushed like a girl at the daring talk of his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... guessed that her name was Idyl—the slender, angular little girl of thirteen years who stood in her faded gown of checkered homespun on the brow of the Mississippi River. And fancy a saint balancing a bucket of water on top of ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... other playmates soon turned up. Bert was at first not very much inclined to be sociable with them. Not only did they seem to have no shoes and stockings, but their entire clothing was usually limited to a battered straw hat, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a pair of rough homespun trousers; and the city boy was inclined to look upon the country lads with some contempt, until his Aunt Martha cured him effectually one day by a remark made ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... called, is composed of rather homespun material, to say the least, of it. There may be some fifty individuals dubbed with the title of marquis, and as many more with that of count, most of whom have acquired their wealth and position by carrying on extensive sugar plantations. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east: we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... white woman wearing a homespun dress and slat-bonnet, came down the road from the other side of the creek, and lifting her skirts slightly, waded with bare feet across the shallow stream. Reaching the clay-bank she stooped and gathered from it, with the aid of a convenient stick, a quantity of the clay which she pressed ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... homespun frieze, with flint-lock muskets and stout cartridge boxes at their belts, were drawn up at the roadside, and were being supplied with ammunition, previous to following ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... horseback. There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests, but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather picturesque ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... doeskin, priests in their black robes, soldiers in the white uniform of the French king, gathered on the banks of the St. Lawrence. English grenadiers in red coats, Scotch Highlanders in plaids and colonial troops in homespun rallied from all the frontiers; and again this great gateway knew the horrors of a long, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... retort delicate without doubt," says Frank. "Beware of the homespun brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you'll see who's an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly nasty when the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought she must still be dreaming; for, standing a little way down the path, was a tall man leaning on a musket. He wore a flannel blouse, and his homespun trousers were tucked ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... road running through a bog," he writes in "In West Kerry," "with a smooth mountain on one side and the sea on the other, and Brandon in front of me, partly covered with clouds. As far as I could see there were little groups of people on their way to the chapel at Ballyferriter, the men in homespun and the women wearing blue cloaks, or, more often, black shawls twisted over their heads. This procession along the olive bogs, between the mountains and the sea, on this gray day of autumn, seemed to wring me with the pang of emotion one meets ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... which these neighbors of my companion were casting ears of corn as fast as they could shuck them. Cheerfully they performed their task. The men were large and hardy; the damsels plump and rosy, and all dressed in good warm homespun. The sheriff informed me that he owned about two thousand acres around his dwelling, and that his farm was worth about one thousand dollars or fifty ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the mother-bear. True to her New England instincts, she shook her homespun apron and ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... but a man stricken with extreme old age, white-bearded and withered, who stretched out groping hands and moaned with feeble and bitter cries. And his crimson cloak and yellow silken tunic were now but coarse homespun stuff tied with a hempen girdle, and the gold-hilted sword was a rough oaken staff such as a beggar carries who wanders the roads from ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... he seen wending from the woods, in every direction of the compass, flaxen-headed boys and girls, clad in homespun, brushing away the early dews, as they hied to the place, where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the severe or loving humor ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... table stood in one corner of the room, a mahogany gateleg occupied the centre, its beauty largely concealed by a cover of yellow and white checked homespun linen, upon which rested a glass oil lamp with a green paper shade, a wide glass dish filled with pictures, an old leather-bound album with heavy brass clasps and hinges. A rag carpet, covered in places with hooked ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... made of honest homespun, uniform in colour, and with a wide hem to allow for shrinkage; but guaranteed to stand all weathers and ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... among them; others grew rather to dislike them: most felt merely a vague sentiment of distrust and repulsion, alike for the haughty British officer in his scarlet uniform, and for the reckless backwoodsman clad in tattered homespun or buckskin. They remained the owners of the villages, the tillers of the soil. At first few English or American immigrants, save an occasional fur trader, came to live among them. But their doom was assured; their rule was at an end forever. For a while they were still to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... called because unmarried daughters worked at spinning and weaving for the household, making 'homespun' cloth ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... good as I wanted," was the hesitating reply; "but 'peared to me they were men, all right. And they seemed to be dressed in gray homespun, too, like some of the farmers ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... There was a soft light over you shed by a kindly sun. That was a time in which joy ran a golden thread through the gray homespun of every-day life. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... in the midst of a strange, wild scene: his clothes, originally of some homespun cloth, now patched so freely with dressed deerskin as to leave little of the original material; moccasins on his feet, a beaver cap upon his head, his leather belt stuck round with hunting knives, and the pistol ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... instantly and with her light deft fingers soon disembarrassed him of the homely garment. When it was taken off a noticeable transformation was effected in his appearance. Clad in plain dark homespun, which was fashioned into a suit somewhat resembling the doublet and hose of olden times, his tall thin figure had a distinctly aristocratic look and bearing which was lacking when clothed in the labourer's garb. Old as he was, there ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the state of specie to pay for them, while they drank Madeira wine and dressed their wives in fine velvets and laces. So said the farmers; and city ladies, far kinder than these railers deemed them, formed clubs, of which the members pledged themselves to wear homespun,—a poor palliative for the deep-seated ills of the time. In such mood were many of the villagers when in the summer of 1786 they were overtaken by the craze for paper money. At the meeting of the legislature in May, a petition came in from Bristol ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... fairly started on my travels—in a customary suit of plain gray homespun, with worsted hose, knit for me by Mistress Pennyquick, a pair of stout shoes, a round hat, and a stout staff in my hand. I carried a few extra garments in a knapsack strapped to my back, and my few guineas were safely stowed in a wallet ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... army began to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... self-confident man. Remembering how his first appearance had fluttered this dovecote and awakened a severe suspicion in the minds of the two principals, he had discarded his usual fashionable attire and elegantly fitting garments for a rough, homespun suit, supposed to represent a homely agriculturist, but which had the effect of transforming him into an adorable Strephon, infinitely more dangerous in his rustic shepherd-like simplicity. He had also shaved off his silken mustache ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... And equal sharers With homespun wearers In home-made joys; You made us princes No plea convinces That spirit winces At dust ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... was a great clamour, and I found that "The Battle of the Books" had begun raging anew. Two figures entered in lively dispute. One was dressed in plain homespun and the other wore a scholar's gown over a suit of motley. I gathered from their conversation that they were Cotton Mather and William Shakspere. Mather insisted that the witches in "Macbeth" should be caught and hanged. Shakspere replied that the witches ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... form, and face, and motions, His homespun habit, and his silver hair,— And hear the language of his trite devotions Rising behind the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... have contrived to mix oil and vinegar," said I. "A landed gentleman and republican simplicity. I'll warrant you wear silk-knit under that gray homespun, and have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and the troopers withdrew to the outhouse, leaving La Boulaye in sole possession of the cottage hearth. And there, in a suit of the absent farmer's grey homespun, his legs encased in coarse woollen stockings and sabots upon his feet, sat the young Deputy alone with his unpleasant thoughts. The woman had brought him a pipe, and, although the habit was foreign to him as a rule, he had lighted it and found the smoking somewhat soothing. Ruefully ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the Northern Lights came to Edinburgh but he was entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my grandfather sat down delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers." ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... he said, "and in them are homespun and jeans. One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... care and toil, while his rugged, yet well-formed hands conveyed the impression of the unceasing war he had waged against the gigantic trees of this Western land. He was habited in a hunting-frock of grey homespun, reaching about half way down to his knee, and trimmed with a full fringe of a somewhat darker hue. His trowsers were of the same material, and both were girt around his loins by a common belt of black leather, fastened by a plain white buckle, into which was thrust a sheath ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... with ample elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. People still lived who regretted the unhappy separation from the mother island. . . The hooks were to be seen from which swung the hammocks of Burgoyne's captive redcoats. If memory does not deceive ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... was, in her homespun dress and her rough shoes and with a cap on her head, but for all her mean clothing she was as pretty and fine as a flower, and the King was not slow to see it. Still he wanted to make sure for himself that she was as clever as ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... his irony with a slow wink when he was sure you were not deceived. He knew much about the gentry around, those bored and weary youths in check coats, riding breeches, and large pipes, and the young ladies in pale homespun costumes who had rude and familiar words to all they judged were their equals, and were accompanied ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... short cropped hair and profiles like birds of prey, all clad in dark steel armor, and some displaying the white Maltese cross. From portrait to portrait the countenances grew more refined, but without losing the prominent forehead and the imperious family nose. The wide, soft collar of the homespun shirt became transformed into starched folds of plaited ruffs; the cuirasses softened into jackets of velvet or silk; the stiff broad beards in imperial style changed to sharp goatees and to pointed mustaches, which, with the soft locks falling over the temples, served as a frame for the face. Among ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Hansel—who, by the way, was a fat boy with wooden shoes and a tiny homespun jacket and trousers of the same stuff, the trousers being very floppy about the ankles. "I am Everychild," he said. "And if I were you I'd not try to go home to such a father and mother. You know, they still had half a ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... performed this service with a gravity that would move some people to the same sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of a trained chimpanzee. But Craig—the wild man, the arch foe of effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw—Craig accepted the service with heartfelt thanks in his ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips |
