"Mantel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone mantel-shelf. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... time for you to go home, boy," he answered me, looking at a clock upon the mantel over his large fireplace. "You are still in your evening clothes, I see. But that's easy: you climb into that pink coat and a pair of those corduroy trousers of mine you see hanging in my dressing room. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... everything is remodeled and remodernized. The room from whose windows Willis was wont to look over the Hudson, and where he did most of his charming writing, is now a bedchamber, modern in its every appointment, and suggesting its age only by the high ceiling and curious mantel. Only a few city blocks from "Idlewild" is the house where lived E. P. Roe, the author of so many popular novels, as numerous, almost, in number as the several hundreds of thousands of circulation which they secured. There are ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... she earned into the little tin chimney bank which stood on the mantel shelf in her room. She called it the "ring fund" and to Sarah it seemed that there must be money enough already in it to buy several rings. But Rosemary was positive she still needed ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... their calm domestic bower, They sat together. He in manhood's prime And she a matron in her fullest flower. The mantel clock gave forth a warning chime. She put her work aside; his bright cigar Grew pale, and crumbled in an ashen heap. The lights went out, save one remaining star That watched beside the children in their sleep. She hummed a little song and nestled ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... recognized him at once, although he wore neither uniform nor other insignia of rank. Close beside him stood a colonel of engineers, possibly his chief of staff, while to the right, leaning negligently with one arm on the mantel-shelf above the fireplace, and smiling insolently at ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... to meet Jenkins. She crossed the hall and the dining room and entered the library. She bent over the lounge. It was empty. Her candle was reflected in the face of the clock on the mantel. Its hands ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... chimed from the old French clock over the mantel, and May, all unconscious of Helen's struggle with conscience, still waited to hear any sound that might come from Mr. Stillinghast's chamber: but everything remained quiet, and she was wrapping her shawl around her to go up to bed, when she thought she heard a groan—then ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... of the days on which he worked and those on which his ill health prevented him from working, so that it would be possible to tell how many were idle days in any given year. In this journal—a little yellow Lett's Diary, which lay open on his mantel-piece, piled on the diaries of previous years—he also entered the day on which he started for a holiday and that ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... other apparatus of the gentle sport of heronry. A long massive oak table, with a side board of the same wood and style of construction, and numerous high-backed chairs, completed the furniture of the room, while at the inner end was a huge fire-place, with a mantel-piece high above it, and carved oak seats on either side. The hall was used generally for banquets and other entertainments; smaller rooms leading off it were more ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Club. Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture, bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, holding the reclining ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... another glance. The hall of the "piscine" is a hundred and twenty paces long; that in which the bathers disrobed is eighty feet in height; the whole is covered with marble, and with such beautiful marble that mantel ornaments are now made of its fragments. In the sixteenth century the Farnese Hercules was discovered here, and the Torso and Venus Callipygis, and I know not how many other masterpieces; and in the seventeenth century hundreds of statues. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... who stood silent, staring through the fading light at the faded household gods of the house of Siward. The dim light touched the prisms of a crystal chandelier dulled by age, and edged the carved foliations of the marble mantel, above which loomed a tarnished mirror reflecting darkness. Fleetwood rose, drew a window-shade higher, and nodded toward several pictures; and Plank moved slowly from one to another, peering up at the dead Siwards ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... student snatched hold of the first theme which presented itself. It was suggested by a plate of apples that he happened to spy on the mantel-piece. ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the Czaritza, who received me in the same style of simple friendliness, and then, pointing to a money-box which formed a conspicuous object on the mantel-shelf, he added: ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... fireplace was vast and black save for a small wood fire filling but a quarter of the hearth. Grocer's almanacs brought brave color to the walls, sharing the same with a big dresser where the china made a play of reflected light from the windows. Above the lofty mantel-piece there hung an old fowling-piece, and a row of faded Daguerreotypes, into most of which damp had eaten dull yellow patches. The mantel-shelf carried some rough stoneware ornaments, an eight-day clock, a tobacco jar, and divers small utensils of polished tin. A big ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... over pictures. Both tired out with a day of effort, they had come near tears in a verbal battle over the best place for the sole article remaining unplaced. Gloria wanted it in the hallway; Mrs. Gaynor pleaded for it over the mantel in the living-room. Finally it was Gloria who cried with ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... that the breakfast-room is far cosier. The room, in the first place, is of reasonable dimensions; it is hung with Flemish tapestries from designs by Van Eyck representing the Four Seasons, but the walls and ceiling are panelled in oak, and over the mantel carved in bas-relief the inevitable ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... I may mention, too, that I have visited modern schools, and observed that there is a tendency to hang printed pictures in an untidy and soulless manner on the walls, and occasionally to display on the mantel-shelf a deplorable glass case containing certain objects which might possibly, if placed in the hands of the pupils, give them some practical experience of the weight of a pound and the length of an inch. And sometimes a scoundrel who has rifled a bird's nest or ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... companion with a glance of anguish. Dr. Block asked a few questions. The man answered them, the woman remaining silent. The physician administered something stimulating, and then wrote a prescription which he placed on the mantel-shelf. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... Bobaday into the yard. Here they could not help stopping on the warped floor of the porch to look into the empty house. It looked lonesome already. A mouse had ventured out of the closet by the tall sitting-room mantel; and a faint outline of the clock's shape remained on ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... The Gashwilers were on their accustomed Sabbath visit to the distant farm of Mrs. Gashwiler's father. But as he ate he became conscious that the Gashwiler influence was not wholly withdrawn. From above the mantel he was sternly regarded by a tinted enlargement of his employer's face entitled Photographic Study by Lowell Hardy. Lowell never took photographs merely. He made photographic studies, and the specimen at ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the walls; model ships suspended from the beams overhead; sea-boots, coils of rope, kegs, and handspikes on the floor; and great shells, earthenware ornaments, pagodas, and Chinese idols on the mantel-piece. In one corner stood a child's crib. The hammock swung across the room like a heavy cloud about to descend and overwhelm the whole. This simile was further borne out by the dense volumes of tobacco smoke in which the captain enveloped himself, and through which his ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... corner by the fireless hearth. A sublime symbol met his eyes on the high mantel-shelf above him—a colored plaster cast of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms. Bare earth made the flooring of the cottage. It had been beaten level in the first instance, but in course of time it had grown rough and uneven, so that though it was clean, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... called "constitutions." To these decorous assemblies girls only were invited,—no rough Boston boys. She has left to us more than one clear, perfect picture of these formal little routs in the great low-raftered chamber, softly alight with candles on mantel-tree and in sconces; with Lucinda, the black maid, "shrilly piping;" and rows of demure little girls of Boston Brahmin blood, in high rolls and feathers, discreetly partaking of hot and cold punch, and soberly walking and curtsying through the minuet; fantastic in ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... an odd, little three-cornered room; a room furnished in mahogany and green rep, with a few brightly-bound books on the shining round table in the centre, framed oleographs on the walls, stuffed birds in glass cases on the mantel-piece, and a pervading ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... another Major Bugbee, the great-great-grandson of the first Major. The commission of this gentleman, signed by John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, still hangs in a frame against the wainscot, over the mantel, in the parlor of the great gambrel-roofed house, whose front-yard fence and garden palings form, for almost half the way, the eastern side of the village square. The late master of this dwelling, Doctor Bugbee, who was the eldest son of the Continental major, lies at the end of the long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shelf. Clavel-tack, a mantel-piece, a place where keys (claves) are kept, a shelf for keys. Holmen-clavel, an inn on Blagdon hill, so called from having a ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... parlor mantel," advised Mrs. Pawket. "The twins is comin' up the road. I can hear them hollerin' at that echo down by the swamps. Leave it be; they'll attend ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a sheet the picture of a fireplace. Tack this to the wall and after providing each child with a small stocking and pin, blindfold them in turn, telling them to hang up their stocking at the mantel. Drop a small toy in the stocking of those who succeed before taking the handkerchief from their eyes. Those who fail may have one more turn after all have had ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... seemed to fall into a reverie and took no part in the conversation that ensued. As the party adjourned to the sitting-room, he paused on the rug, and leaned his elbow on the mantel. Louisa lingered and drew near. He passed his arm around her shoulders, and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... which he gazed was very handsomely furnished. The chairs were luxuriously cushioned, a large mirror hung over the mantel, the carpet was of velvet, a crystal chandelier depended from the ceiling, and a bright fire burned in the open grate, before which sat a lady richly dressed, reading aloud to three children, sitting on ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... he broke out sternly, "if it's neither drink, nor a scandal——" There, he stopped; for Hamilton, utterly unconscious of us, moved, rather than walked, automatically across the room. Throwing his hat down, he bowed his head over both arms above the mantel-piece. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... dog, is no more, but his portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the little parlour. Mrs Beazely, the housekeeper, has become inert and querulous from rheumatism and the burden of added years. A little girl, daughter of Robertson, the fisherman, has been called ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... characterized the front hall. They inspected one after another the various rooms. The house was partly furnished. In the showrooms hung heavy red curtains held back by cords with gilt tassels. Each fireplace was framed by a mantel of white marble. But the glory was the drawing-room. This had been frescoed in pale blue, and all about the wall and even across part of the ceiling had been draped festoon after festoon of fishnet. Only this was ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... house was ransacked from top to bottom, and the robber was about to abandon the search, when a sudden thought occurred to him. On the mantel-piece ticked a wooden American clock, about two feet high. The man opened the door in the case, and fumbled about with his finger. Next moment he had drawn out the nugget. He bent over the fire to get a better look at it, and then proceeded to weigh it in the ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... Ernest's socks and her own longest stocking. They were busy fastening them to the ends of the marble mantel when Alice came in. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... not altogether from cold. The sense of the consistency of love and youth, the fine justice with which nature was paying an old debt, had raised her to a stature above her own. She stood there under the mantel, and held by it while she trembled. For the first time, her husband had gone utterly out of her life. It was as ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... in a good humor he turned the most trifling incidents into excuses for amusing the little boy with his stories. One night while he was hunting for a piece of candle on the shelf that took the place of a mantel over the fireplace, he knocked down a tin plate. It fell upon the hearth with ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... Jem," cried the sergeant excitedly, and, a large screw-driver being produced from the tool bag, the screws were attacked, and turned easily, the man rapidly withdrawing them and laying them one by one on the mantel-shelf. ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the gold-embroidered band that hung by the mantel, clinging to it for a moment, then releasing it suddenly. Like a priestess she looked, unconscious, sunk ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and the Harvester lifted the pendant and clasped the chain around her neck. She glanced at the lustrous pearls and then the fingers of one hand softly closed over them. She went through the long, wide living-room, examining the chairs and mantel, stopping to touch and exclaim over its array of half-finished candlesticks. At the door of his room she ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... away I washed my hands with soap, in our bathroom, came back and grabbed the towel off the rack by the range, and started in carefully wiping the dishes, not exactly wanting to, on account of the clock on our mantel-shelf said it was one o'clock, and the gang was supposed to meet on Bumblebee hill right that very minute, with our sleds, and we were going to have the time of our lives coasting, and rolling in the snow, and making huge balls and ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... the corner wide open, showing its empty sides, while at the bottom a man's old hat lay among soiled shirts and hose. Along the walls and on the backs of the chairs hung a ragged shawl, a pair of muddy pantaloons and a dress or two—all too bad for the old-clothes man to buy. In the middle of the mantel between two mismated tin candlesticks was a bundle of pawn tickets from the Mont-de-Piete. These tickets were of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of austerity in the quaint old furniture that was lacking in the bedrooms where modern taste held sway. Nothing had been taken from or added to the Bucks' guest chamber since Grandmother Knight had reverently placed there her best highboy and her finest mahogany bed and candle stand. On the mantel was the model of a ship that tradition said the Norse sailor had carved, and on the walls steel engravings of Milton and Newton—Milton looking up at the stars seeking the proper rhymes, and Newton with eyes cast down searching out the power ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... tears were running down her cheeks. Travis struck another match to light a lamp which had been forgotten and left on the mantel. He attempted to light it, but something huge and black swept by and extinguished it. Helen shrieked again, and coming up timidly seized his arm in the dark. He could feel her heart ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... consisted of a mahogany sideboard, table, and chairs,—ponderous in pattern; and a series of family portraits, in a sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall. The floor was bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrubbing, and the black mantel-piece was a fine specimen of colonial carving in the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... was! Never had the antique andirons on the hearth, the pewter plates and dishes upon the walls, the brass-bound blunderbuss above the mantel seemed so bright and polished before, and surely never had they gleamed upon a merrier company. To be sure, the Imp's remarks were somewhat few and far between, but that was simply on account ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... unusual in Horace's habit. Sonia complained that he never could tell her anything clear or significant of places he had seen. The room which had been secured from the landlord was the parlor of the tavern; long and low, colonial in the very smell of the tapestry carpet, with doors and mantel that made one think of John Adams and General Washington. The walls had a certain terror in them, a kind of suspense, as when a jury sits petrified while their foreman announces a verdict of death. A long ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... against the mantel and looked dejectedly into the fire. After a moment he said, sadly, "I envy you, Miss Walton. I wish I could believe in a personal God who thought about us and cared for us —that is, each one of us. Of course I believe in a Supreme Being—a great First Cause; but He hides Himself behind ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... door, his shoes squeaking hideously. Sometimes there is a woman, usually in deep mourning. Each visitor approaches the long black box, looks into it with ill-concealed repugnance, snuffles softly, and then backs of toward the door. A clock on the mantel-piece ticks loudly. From the street come the usual noises—a wagon rattling, the clang of a trolley car's gong, the shrill cry ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... Stokes's home impressed me, but the one feature of it that eclipsed all else was a marble mantel in his library. In the center of the arch, carved in the marble, was an open book with ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... weather. So that a farmer's life has its seamy side also. But then, to get back of a night! To find a good little wife like Annie waiting for you at the upper gate or by the house door. To eat your supper and smoke your pipe, with your feet on the mantel-piece if you pleased, and no possibility of being ordered into dress clothes to go to some vile theatre or idiotic dance—above all, to know that Catherine knew you were perfectly happy without her—by the bye, I wonder she has not written to me! Not that I want ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... would, but I am to meet a friend uptown at six o'clock. It is so late," he added, looking at the clock on the mantel, "that ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... was of the remarkable fact that something was hung about or wrapped round or draped over everything. There was bright-patterned muslin round the gas-bracket in the middle of the room, round the mirror over the mantel, stuff with ball-fringe along the mantel and casing in the fireplace,—I first saw ball-fringe here—and even the lamp on the little bureau wore a shade like a large muslin hat. The table-cloth had ball-fringe and so had the window curtains, and the carpet was ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... enthroned still upon that funeral couch, as upon a velvet armchair; he had not abdicated one title of his majesty. God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing." A strange sound attracted the young man's attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... broke the silence save the parrot (in a large gilded cage on a marble pedestal in the third window-niche), uttering from time to time a loud scream, or exclaiming in a sharp voice, "Good-morning!" The ticking of the bronze clock on the mantel-piece at the other end of the room could be distinctly heard. Suddenly the old gentleman struck the window-board so violently with his right hand that the panes rattled, the lady gave a start, and the parrot ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... reached the passage leading to Dobree's queer little oak-panelled room, and as the door was open, both the old men entered; Dormeur walking up to the mantel-piece, and fiddling about there with some old china cups, and other little ornaments with which it was adorned. Turned with its face to the wall was a small trumpery frame, containing as it seemed some common-looking picture; and quite absently, and as though he scarcely knew what he was ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... replied the spectre. "I am the ghost of that fair maiden whose picture hangs over the mantel-piece in the drawing-room. I should have been your great-great-great-great-great-aunt if I had lived, Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe, for I was the ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the suburbs of the City of Brooklyn to see a member of the Allen Street Church, and, after reading God's Word and prayer, our conversation turned to a beautiful portrait that hung over the mantel-piece. The lady remarked, "That is the picture of my departed sister, who died in New York. She was faithfully visited during her sickness by Mrs. Knowles." She continued, "I like to think of her, because she used to tell me after she was ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... on the fire and then the two men and two women sat down to their cards. A clock ticked steadily, monotonously, on the mantel-piece, but whether an hour or ten minutes passed while she sat there watching the brilliant, soaring flame of the pine logs Pearl could not have told, when suddenly the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of someone whistling along the road. It seemed ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... his attitude. His left elbow rested on the corner of the mantel, the fingers of his right hand played with ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... where a log burned in a bed of hot ashes, softly purring and ticking to itself, and whilst they stood pressing their hands against the warm fronts of their dresses, as the fashion of women is before a fire, the clock on the mantel began ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... scouring the boards of the kitchen floor until they were soft and white as flax, helping old Anita with the dinner for the men, seeing about the number of new palings for the garden. She had swept every inch of the deep adobe house, had fixed over the arrangement of Indian baskets on the mantel, had filled all the lamps with coal-oil. She was very careful with the lamps, trimming the wicks to smokeless perfection, for oil was scarce and precious in Lost Valley, as were all outside products, since they must come in ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... to plead; to look directly up into his perplexed eyes. He leaned an arm on the mantel, staggered. His eyes followed hers in every word she spoke, and when she ceased he stared ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... where I was born! And there was the selfsame clock that ticked From the close of dusk to the burst of morn, When life-warm hands plucked the golden corn And helped when the apples were picked. And the "chany dog" on the mantel-shelf, With the gilded collar and yellow eyes, Looked just as at first, when I hugged myself Sound asleep with the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... "good fellow;" and then she laid it on the mantel-shelf of the parlor, while she busied herself ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the glowing embers of the great fireplace, slowly said, as the musical chime of the silver bells of the mantel clock sounded ten: ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the front room till I finish dressing. But don't sit in your usual chair. There's pie in it—Meringue. Kappelman threw it at Reeves last evening while he was reciting. Sophy has just come to straighten up. Is it lit? Thanks. There's Scotch on the mantel—oh, no, it isn't,—that's chartreuse. Ask Sophy to find you ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... slumber, and see nothing but the spectral shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws aslant the walls; and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the old nurse in the easy-chair, and the ticking of the clock upon the mantel! Then silence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily. But your thought is active. It shapes at your bedside the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up the whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys and weeks of study or of play group like magic on ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story—and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum puddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and handing over penny whistles to lame newsboys ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... mainly because of the quantity of flowering plants. Every window was filled with them, until the room seemed like a conservatory. Ivy, too, climbed over the pictures, and the mantel-shelf was a cascade of wandering Jew, growing ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the mantel and returned with a flask and two glasses. The quack filled them both and passed one to David. It was the first time in his life that he had ever even smelt an intoxicant. He recoiled a little; but having committed himself to his new life, he determined to accept all that it involved. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... to and fro in the room until I was weary, I thought of trying to divert my mind from the sad thoughts that oppressed it by reading. The one candle which I had lighted failed to sufficiently illuminate the room. Advancing to the mantel-piece to light the second candle which stood there, I noticed the unfinished letter to my mother lying where I had placed it, when Miss Dunross's servant first presented herself before me. Having lighted ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... strange a manner: hammocks slung to the walls, instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo couches, Spanish chairs; pistols, cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended on every peg; silver crucifixes on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks and porringers on the tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf ware of the original establishment. And then the strange amusements of these sea-monsters! Pitching Spanish dollars, instead of quoits; firing blunderbusses ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... feet were in velvet slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantages she came in stepping softly, and put her hands over her husband's eyes. She thought him pensive; he was standing in his dressing-gown before the fire, his elbow on the mantel and one foot on the fender. She said in his ear, warming it with her breath, and nibbling the tip of it with ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... them home to my fine house," said Wee-Wun the gnome, "for they must be lonely lying here. They shall stand upon my mantel shelf, and every morning I shall say, 'Good-morning, little blue shoes,' and every night I shall say, 'Good-night,' and we shall all be as happy ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... Rowland Lytton, whom she knighted; he was buried in the chancel of the little church in the park (see below) in 1582. The room in which Elizabeth slept on these occasions is still shown as "Queen Elizabeth's Chamber," and contains a finely carved over-mantel (oak) and an oaken bedstead of colossal proportions. Among the distinguished guests so often entertained here by Bulwer Lytton were Dickens, ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... thoughtful kindness in sending us those little souvenirs of the dear room where we first met the best and kindest of friends? Indeed, you can never know all the comfort you have given us. We have put the dear picture on the mantel-piece in our room where we can see it every day, and I often go and touch it, and somehow I cannot help feeling that our beloved friend is very near to me.... It was very hard to take up our school work again, as ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the little timepiece on the mantel shelf. A little exclamation of a profane nature broke from Rounceby's lips. He leaned toward ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the instrument in its case, when he was startled by a clock on the mantel, which began to strike the hour of twelve. Involuntarily he counted the strokes as they chimed slowly, and as the vibrations of the last stroke faded away the little needle swung an entire circuit of the dial, returning to its original position. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing, you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward, you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa, which you fall upon, and, finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... instead of a fortalice. Behind the castle the mountain slopes are clothed with young trees. The castle itself is a very imposing building from the outside; grand, strong, rather repellant; inside it has a comfortless; ill-planned, unfinished appearance. The mantel-piece of white marble with the Adair arms carved on it—the bloody hand, the motto valor au mort, the supporters two angels—lies in the hall cracked in two. A very respectable Scotchman, a keeper, I suppose, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... many things to talk about, and such a multitude of questions to be asked and answered on both sides, that the little clock on the mantel struck four different hours before any one thought of going to bed; and then Jack did not go to his own room, but passed the rest of the night with Marcy, for the latter hinted very strongly that he had some things to ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... was very small. Edna's round mahogany would have almost filled it. As it was there was but a step or two from the little table to the kitchen, to the mantel, the small buffet, and the side door that opened out on ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... smile. Her eyes rested on a yellow camphor chest—one of the set brought home by his father—on a severe high range of drawers made of sycamore with six legs, on her brilliant reflection in the eagle-crowned mirror above the mantel, and the sleigh bed ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... got no grapevine, but I've got a wandering-jew-vine in a pot, that I want to set on the mantel." ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... sometimes Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a double rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of pedlars, in honour of George Barnwell, the Prodigal Son, the Sailor's Return, and the Death of Nelson, decorate the walls, and an illuminated Christmas carol is pasted over the mantel-piece: which, among other chattels and possessions, conspicuously bears its own burden of Albert and Victoria—two plaster heads, resplendently coloured, highly varnished, looking with arched eye-brows ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... from the table with her. She did not mention the strawberries. With a little sigh Suzanna obeyed. And now, instead of returning to the garden, the old lady led the way into the parlor, which lay to the right of the hall. She went straight to the picture that hung above a marble mantel. Below the picture in the center of the mantel rested a crystal vase containing sprays of lilies ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... Estelle's touch, walked to the mantel-piece, and, taking a match from the china case, drew it across the heel ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months' bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore, very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness nobody called vanity, and bedecked in her "second day's dress" of azure silk and her bridal ornaments. Her husband ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... come in. I want to talk to you." He closed the door and went to the hearth-rug. There was a photograph of Dick on the mantel, taken in his uniform, and he looked at it for a moment. Then he turned. "All right, my dear. Let's ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of some common wood and painted brown, the sofa was covered with chintz to match the window-curtains, and there was a pale blue paper on the walls. For ornaments, there were two or three pictures on the walls, and on the mantel-piece a great many curious shells and a quaint old vase or two. There was a bookcase of some dark wood in the corner, which was well filled with books, whose bindings were plain and dark, not to say dingy. There were few of Christie's favourites ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... the rival runners, who persisted in getting in his way, and were probably leagued together to prevent him from carrying off the prize. But no matter, he would always be a hero in the eyes of those who loved him, though he might not decorate the family mantel at home with the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... velvet curtains had been drawn to shut out the dreary scene, and only the fire-light lit up the room; Nea, sitting in her favorite low chair, with her feet on the white rug, was looking up at Maurice, who stood leaning against the mantel-piece ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... seemed pinned to the threshold, hypnotized: all the furniture had resumed its usual place! The little table was standing between the two windows, the chairs were on their legs and the clock in the middle of the mantel-piece. The shivers of the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100 Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... glance at the clock on the mantel-piece—right, nearly eight o'clock. But all that was immaterial now. And, staring straight in front of him as though his eyes were fixed on some object, he placed himself ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... beds, and they were hard for a small girl to manage, and the cupboard with its shelves of dishes. There were three stools, and a big chair for the Shepherd, and the great chest where the clothes were kept, and besides all these things there was the wag-at-the-wall clock on the mantel-shelf which had to be wound every Saturday night. If you want to know just where these things stood, you have only to look at the plan, where their places are so plainly marked that, if you were suddenly ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... violent contrast in my bag of colors; but, royal though it was, there was nothing in it they cared for much except the throne-room, which they had to admit was not to be surpassed. There were a few mantel-pieces too, which the Chaperon thought she would accept from the Queen as presents; but as for the carpets, they were no less than tragic, and it would be better to go about opening bridges, or laying dull cornerstones, then stay at ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... many books; books that covered three walls from floor to ceiling; books ranged above and beside the little camp-bed in the corner; books piled on the table and under it. The glimmer fell, too, on the mantel-piece, reflected from the glass above it, right on to the white statuette of the Venus of Milo that supported a photograph of a dancing Poppy—Poppy, who laughed in the face of the goddess with insatiable ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... gave her the letter and stood aside, hat in hand, while she read it. There were candles in their sconces over the mantel and she moved nearer to have the better light. The soft glow of the candles fell upon her shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the pulse throbbing in her fair white neck. And with the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... curious fossils; these not gathered by any means in a single summer or in ordinary ramblings, but treasured long, and standing, some of them, for friendly memories—balanced on the one side a like grouping of shells and corals and sea-mosses on the other, upon a broad bracket-mantel put up over a little corner fireplace; for Miss Craydocke's room, joining the main house, took the benefit of one of ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... toward the bedroom, but it was empty. The open doors through the kitchen showed how she had fled. As she searched frantically for her sister, the little clock on the mantel slowly struck the hour ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... Their house is about as large as madame's, but it has a greater air of carelessness, of disorder in its most charming estate. John Latimer lives all over it, and there are books and papers everywhere, and bric-a-brac in all the corners. The redwood mantel in the sitting-room is shelved nearly up to the ceiling, and tiled around the grate, and is just one picture of beauty. The easy-chairs are around the fire, and softest rugs are laid for your feet. Violet sits down in the glow and feels at home, smiles, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sitting in his pleasantly-warmed study, which was pervaded by a faint, agreeable perfume, gazing now at the logs burning in the beautiful marble mantel-piece, and then at the magistrate, who had brought him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rafter; cantilever, modillion^; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, mainstay. trunnion, pivot, rowlock^; peg &c (pendency) 214 [Obs.]; tiebeam &c (fastening) 45; thole pin^. board, ledge, shelf, hob, bracket, trevet^, trivet, arbor, rack; mantel, mantle piece [Fr.], mantleshelf^; slab, console; counter, dresser; flange, corbel; table, trestle; shoulder; perch; horse; easel, desk; clotheshorse, hatrack; retable; teapoy^. seat, throne, dais; divan, musnud^; chair, bench, form, stool, sofa, settee, stall; arm chair, easy chair, elbow chair, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was alone again I would turn my face so I could watch the little clock on the mantel. It ticked with a far-away, dreamy sound, like a child talking in its sleep, and somehow it had always one story to tell, and never any other;—"You've told—a lie;—you've ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... in oak; the drawing- room, the dining-room, and the library were furnished in solid mahogany; and the chambers were finished in poplar and pine. The great charm of the house was that each and every room, large and small, had its open fire-place, some of them surrounded by beautiful mantel-pieces, with carved wood and mirrors. It was, indeed, an English house, with its comforts set off ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... to like Russia better than I do, if only for the sake of the many good friends I am proud to possess amongst the Russians. A large square photograph I keep always on my mantel-piece; it helps me to maintain my head at that degree of distention necessary for the performance of all literary work. It presents in the centre a neatly-written address in excellent English that I frankly confess I am never tired of reading, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... flowered carpet decked the floor; only a time-toned rug that left the outer edge of the floor untidily exposing its dull stain; no gilt and onyx table bore its sculptured fantasy by the busy Rogers. The mantel and shelves were bare of those fixed ornaments that should decorate the waste places of all true homes; there were no flint arrow-heads, no "specimens," no varnished pine cones, no "Rock of Ages," no waxen lilies, not even a china cup goldenly emblazoned with "Love ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... willow that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. There are wonderful tidies on the chairs, and gay mats on the floor, and books and cards carefully arranged on a round table, and vases of dried grass on the mantel-piece. Between the vases is a cheerful decoration of preserved coffin plates—five in all, pertaining respectively to Janet's father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne, and a hired man who died here once! If I go suddenly insane ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... knife was different. I had put it on the mantel over the stove I was using up-stairs the night before, and hadn't touched it since. As I sat staring at it, Terry took it from Peter and ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... claim; that nevertheless, in the interest of Liberty, he, having still some leisure on his hands, was willing, were a reasonable question asked him, to give reasonable answer. And so, says Montgaillard, he lent his elbow on the mantel-piece, and conversed in an under-tone, with great seeming composure; till the leisure was done, or the Emissary ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... little and afterwards with some enjoyment. He picked the partridges till the bones were clean, and he finished the bottle of wine. Then he rose to his feet with a sigh of something very like to contentment and felt along the mantel-shelf with his hands. O'Toole, however, had foreseen his wants and handed him a pipe newly filled. While Wogan was lighting the tobacco, Misset came back into the room with word that the doctor was out upon his last rounds, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... perceived and understood his embarrassment. He at any rate relieved it by turning to the woman who had received them, and muttering something about No. 14, Bis. The woman took a key from a long range of others, that hung over the mantel-piece, and a wax candle from a bracket in a corner of the room, and having lighted the candle, led the way across the stone-paved hall, and up a broad, slippery staircase of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... precious, and his sorrow is so sacred, that I am hardly willing to let strangers pity him, ever so tenderly. When he was a baby he sprang out of mamma's lap, one day, as she was reaching up to take something from the mantel piece. He fell on the andiron-head and injured his spine so that he could never walk. He is twenty years old now; his head and chest and arms are about as large as those of a boy of sixteen, but all the rest of his poor body is shrunken and withered; he has never ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my first acquaintance with my friend yonder," and he nodded towards the skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide mantel-shelf. "I had trekked from dawn till eleven o'clock—a long trek—but I wanted to get on, and had turned the oxen out to graze, sending the voorlooper to look after them, my intention being to inspan again about six o'clock, and trek with the moon till ten. Then I got into ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... too, that cooled my bare neck and would not cool my head, which was full of thoughts of my days in the old garden in the Isle of Wight and my mother's song and the colored crayon of my father, looking very stern, and hanging over the green old china vases on the mantel. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... shelter of his talk,—he sometimes spoke rather loud,—and was submissively silent. When they got into their own room,—which had gilt lambrequin frames, and a chandelier of three burners, and a marble mantel, and marble-topped table and washstand,—and Bartley turned up the flaring gas, she quite broke down, and cried on his breast, to make sure that she had got him all ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... doors of Gothic design in it; there were inlaid marble mantel-pieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wall-papers, and octagonal, medallioned Wedgwood what-nots, and black-and-gilt Austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that Art had achieved or wealth had bought between 1851 and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... she was an incongruous object in the unhome-like bareness of a bachelor's apartments. "You are not very cordial, monsieur," she remarked in a cold tone, as she stood with her back to him, staring hard at an uninteresting picture above the mantel-shelf; "it seems to be a pleasure to you to receive an evening caller, but not exactly a rapture." She smiled her old imperious smile as she threw herself into a tired-looking chair, while her host, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... ends, hung with threadbare tapestry. A sweet-toned old spinet in good repair stood by the window. There were stands of weapons, some old and dull, others bright and modern, festoons of Indian and Turkish armour over the mantel, two or three good pictures, and a pipe-rack. It was here that we used to come for new sensations in smoking. I doubt if any type of pipe ever existed which was not represented in that rack. When we had selected one, we immediately carried it somewhere ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... mirror about a foot wide and divided into three parts by miniature pilasters of tarnished gilt. The mirror, too, was tarnished here and there, but it had been a good glass and showed undistorted the blue Delft jars on the mantel-shelf, glimpses of flickering firelight in the room, amber hair and the tear-bedewed roses of a flushed young face. Suddenly Milly thrust the jars aside, seized the candle from the table, and, holding it ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the mirror opposite the flowery window, and so made the room a very bower. They fixed a magnificent crucifix of ivory and gold over the mantel-piece, and they took away his hassock of rushes and substituted a prie-dieu of rich crimson velvet. All that remained was to put their blue cover, with its golden cross, on the table. To do this, however, they had to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... enormous stone fireplace with high mantel-shelf of stone and the chimney above. The fire-opening was wide enough for an old Yule log, and on either side of it were double glass doors opening into a long porch room, which also had a fireplace on the opposite side of the chimney, and was completely ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... showing purity was there. The walls were papered with newspapers. That was to keep out the winter's wind, but over the windows were curtains of white muslin, and a scarf of it ran the length of the simple board mantel-shelf, and in season the blossom of some flower swayed there. Within the home, no angry words were heard, but often there was laughter and song, and when the formulas for conduct were not followed, even the words of correction ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... different from the way it is at home. We do not have dinner till supper-time, and there is no mantel or fireplace in my room, although the furniture is grander than anything I ever saw. I set William's photograph on the dresser, and I can tell by the way he looks at me all day long that he would not ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... replied; and then they went on to tell me that at the hour in question Mr. S. and his son, a young man of about twenty, had entered their dining-room together and seen me standing leaning against the mantel-shelf. They were both hard-headed Scotchmen engaged in business in Edinburgh, and certainly not the sort of people to conjure up fanciful imaginings, nor is it likely that the same fancy should have occurred to both of them; and therefore I can only suppose that they actually saw what they ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... by the mantel, and the old look of introspective pain, almost of a surprised terror, crossed his face. Then they knew. But he delayed only a ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... blow-fish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored prints of the "Barque Letty M., 800 tons," decorated the walls; his sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the mantel-piece, on which were many dusty treasures—the mahogany spoke of an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory; a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly There was a score of candles sparkling round the mantel piece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of gilt and bronze and porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca's figure to admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy flowers. She was in a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you I'm going to buy a farm!" He sprang up, went to the mantel and struck it a startling blow with his fist, which appeared to calm him somewhat—for a moment. "I've been thinking of it for a long time. I ought never to have been in this business at all, and I'm going to live in the country. Oh, I'm in my right mind!" He paused to glare ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty. Of her own sorrows she, herself, made no mention. When she spoke from the depths of her bitterness of the war and the ruin it had left, her resentment was general rather than personal. Above the mantel in her room hung the sword of Julius Webb, sheathed under the tattered colours of the Confederate States. At her throat she wore a button that had been cut from a gray coat, and, once, after the close of the war, she had pointed to it before a Federal officer, and had said: ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... to Ray, eyeing him with such a look of contempt and scorn that it smarted like a whiplash in spite of the protecting mantel of his new-found triumph. "Oh, you depraved dogs!" he told them quietly and distinctly. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... brought up. Although September was not yet out, the Squire had a fire lighted in the room, and after the meal was over, and two steaming tumblers of punch were placed upon the table, he took a long pipe from the mantel, filled and lighted it, then filled another, and handed it to the Rector, at the same time holding ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... was over I was intensely nervous. Katie served us our coffee in the living room, and when I took mine my hand trembled so that the tiny cup rattled against the saucer. I rose from my chair and walked to the fireplace, set the cup upon the mantel and stood looking into the blazing logs Jim had heaped against the old chimney. My guests could not see my face, and I hoped to be able ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... appreciation of Katy swept through her heart. Katy had been there before her. The room had been freshly swept and dusted, the rugs had been relaid, the furniture rearranged skilfully, and the table stood at the best angle to be lighted either by day or night. On the table and the mantel stood big bowls of lovely fresh flowers. Linda was quite certain that anyone entering the room for the first time would have felt it completely furnished, and she doubted if even Marian would notice the missing pieces. Cheered ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... being defrauded of his self-justification, and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset Soames like the breath of a cold fog. Mechanically he reached up, took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on the way there, she meant to stop a moment at her mother's; and while she drew on her gloves, he fumbled among the knick-knacks on the mantel-piece for a match to light ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... the brave Roland! False tidings reach'd the Rhenish strand That he had fall'n in fight! And thy faithful bosom swoon'd with pain, Thou fairest maid of Allemain. Why so rash has she ta'en the veil In yon Nonnenwerder's cloister pale? For the fatal vow was hardly spoken, And the fatal mantel o'er her flung. When the Drachenfels' echoes rung— 'Twas her own dear warrior's horn! . . . . . . She died; he sought the battle plain, And loud was Gallia's wail, When Roland, the flower of chivalry, Fell ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... filled with lighted candles, an American flag was draped across the top of the clock, and the little schooner that rocked behind the pendulum seemed fired with the determination to get somewhere to-night if it never did again. Even the owls on each end of the mantel wore a benignant look, and seemed to beam a ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Altogether, he visited some fifteen or twenty suites, in each case trying to fit himself into the rooms, imagining how the window-seat would look in such a window, how the pipe-rack would show over such a mantel, just where on such walls the Assyrian bas-reliefs could be placed to the best advantage, and if his easel could receive enough steady light from such windows. Then he considered the conveniences, the baths, the electric light, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and distributed its contents on the dressing-table. I had carried through all my adventures a folding leather photograph-holder, containing portraits of my father and mother and of John Marshall Glenarm, my grandfather, and this I set up on the mantel in the little sitting-room. I felt to-night as never before how alone I was in the world, and a need for companionship and sympathy stirred in me. It was with a new and curious interest that I peered into my grandfather’s shrewd old eyes. He used to come and go ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... to the parlor but to the music-room, a large room on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing of which presented him seated at the piano, with his ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... silent for a long moment and then with a glance at the clock on the mantel slowly gathered her music, aware of his voice close at ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... which Tom had made always stood on Mother's mantel, and they called it the "Home Bank," because every penny that could be spared was dropped in there for the building of ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... supper got ready. This seemed to lift the gloom a little, and under the influence of the tea they brightened up and gradually got more cheerful. They discussed the sermon and the singing, and the mistake of the sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the large congregation. From the mantel-piece I watched the group. They had waffles for supper,—of which I had been exceedingly fond, but now I saw them disappear without ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all turned very red in the face, and it seemed as if old Nick himself had taken possession of every thing in the shape of a timepiece. The clocks carved upon the furniture took to dancing as if bewitched, while those upon the mantel-pieces could scarcely contain themselves for fury, and kept such a continual striking of thirteen, and such a frisking and wriggling of their pendulums as was really horrible to see. But, worse than all, neither the cats nor the pigs could put up any longer with the behavior of the little repeaters ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with you!" said Beryl, and, rushing to the mirror over the mantel, began to pat her pretty cendre hair flat to her head, in unconscious ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... however, were soon built for the accommodation of the people. At Shelburne, or Port Roseway—anglicised from the French Razoir—a town of fourteen thousand people, with wide streets, fine houses, some of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York, arose in two or three years. The name of New Jerusalem had been given to the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the Loyalists when they found that the ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the room above he took a little longer time. It was a comfortable room, but with rather effeminate indications about its contents. Little pieces of draped silk-work hung about the furniture, and Japanese silk fans decorated the mantel-piece. Near the window was a cage containing a gray parrot, and the writing-table was decorated with two ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... "Robinson Crusoe" shows mo' wear'n tear'n what my Testament does, I'm ashamed to say. I've done give Miss Phoebe free license to buy him any book she wants him to have, an' he's got 'em all 'ranged in a row on the end o' the mantel-shelf. ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the mantel-piece with his elbow and looking down at her. "Stirling said that, did he? I should have thought she would have been better where she ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... respect for the web that was to hold the sacred person of a king. The toilet was of silver and crystal; there was a copy of Eikon Basilike laid on the writing-table; a portrait of the martyred king hung always over the mantel, having a sword of my poor Lord Castlewood underneath it, and a little picture or emblem which the widow loved always to have before her eyes on waking, and in which the hair of her lord and her two children was worked together. Her books of private devotions, as they were ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back to the mantel and applauded after an especially well executed flourish or courtesy; Aunt Ruth looked over her shoulder, smiling, her hands wandering slowly over the keys. At last, the final flourish, the final courtesy. The Marchioness' dress fairly swept the floor, and the Boy bowed so low that—well, Flibbertigibbet ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... when the butler had finished, "would you be kind enough to fetch me that little pistol from the mantel over there?" He smiled outwardly this time. The situation was right again; he was handling things, inch by inch, ...
— The Eyes Have It • James McKimmey |
