"Mantelshelf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curtain, one of us looked out. Herd was standing there in the bright moonlight, bareheaded, with roughened hair. He came in, and seeming not to know quite where he went, took stand by the hearth, and putting up his dark hand, gripped the mantelshelf. Then, as if recollecting himself, he said: "Gude evenin', sir; beg pardon, M'm." No more for a full minute; but his hand, taking some little china thing, turned it over and over without ceasing, and down his broken face tears ran. Then, very suddenly, he said: "She's gone." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Comfort and simplicity were in all its arrangements; a little fire burning for her; Eleanor's trunks in a closet. When Mrs. Caxton had shewed her all that was necessary, she set down her candle on the low mantelshelf, and took Eleanor in her arms. Again those peculiar, gentle firm kisses fell upon her lips. But instead of "good ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... as quietly as possible to bed. Then Mathieu took up the lamp and entered the children's room to kiss them and make sure that they were comfortable. It was seldom they awoke on these occasions. Having placed the lamp on the mantelshelf, he still stood there looking at the three little beds when Marianne joined him. In the bed against the wall at one end of the room lay Blaise and Denis, the twins, sturdy little fellows six years of age; while in the second bed against the opposite wall was Ambroise, now nearly four and quite ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... her poor husband lived on crackers, Bought at wholesale from a baker, eaten from the mantelshelf; If the men of Madagascar, And the natives of Alaska, Had enough to sate their hunger, let him look out for himself. And his coat had but one tail And he used a shingle nail To fasten up his galluses when he went out to his work; And she used to spend ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... himself but drank two cups of tea, smoking the while innumerable cigarettes. Miss Craven chatted easily until the tea table was taken away and Craven had withdrawn to his usual position on the hearthrug, lounging against the mantelshelf. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... lifting the end of it with a strength worthy of the blacksmith's daughter, pushed them with her foot into the hollow between the bottom of the wardrobe and the floor of the room. This done, she looked at the timepiece on the mantelshelf, saw it was one o'clock, and sat down to recover her breath. But the next moment she was on her knees, sobbing. By and by she rose, wiped the hot tears from her eyes, and went carefully about the room, gathering up this and that, and putting it into her box. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... I was alone. I listened; the doors were being closed, I heard a carriage roll along the road; the flame of the two candles placed upon the mantelshelf quivered silently and were reflected ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... pile of five or six nibbled-looking volumes in dingy covers resting upon one corner of the low mantelshelf. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... adventure of searching out the wounded that broke the monotony for the Belgian ambulance men. At first they were not hard to find—they were crowded upon the straw in cottage parlours, cleared of all but the cheap vases on the mantelshelf and family photographs tacked upon walls that had not been built for the bloody mess of tragedy which they now enclosed. On their bodies they bore the signs of the tremendous accuracy of the enemy's artillery, and by their number, increasing during the day, one ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... crossed in the fireplace, with shovel and tongs to match, the big Bible on the table under the glass, a waxwork on the high mahogany desk in the corner, and a few shells and other ornaments upon the mantelshelf. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... very depraved, Cissy," Vera would answer, indignantly, "but I have not yet sunk so low as to desire that every draper's assistant may have the privilege of buying my likeness for a shilling to stick up on his mantelshelf, with a tight-rope dancer on one side, and a burlesque actress ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... as she had never seen before, except in the hands of the little Cupids in the pictures in the drawing-room. Mother Bunch had said that the little brown boys in India looked like the bronze Cupid who was on the mantelshelf, but this little boy was white, or rather sallow-faced, and well dressed too, in a tight, round, leather cap, and a dark blue kind of shaggy gown with hairy leggings; and what he was shooting at was some kind of wild-duck or goose, that came tumbling ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... way through a hall into a sitting-room and left me there. The place was a perfect museum of art treasures, old Dutch and Italian masters on the walls, some splendid Florentine chests, a fine old dresser loaded with ancient pewter. On a mantelshelf was an extraordinary collection of old keys, each with its label. "Key of the fortress of Spandau, 1715." "Key of the Postern Gate of the Pasha's Palace at Belgrade, 1810," "House Key from Nuremberg, 1567," were some of the descriptions ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... supported in front of her by a stool. The warmth of the fire had dried the mud on her habit and on her boots. Her doeskin gloves and the little peaked cap with its green veil and a whip lay on the table where she had flung them. She looked sometimes at the old Boule clock which stood on the mantelshelf between the candelabra, perhaps to judge if her four conspirators were asleep, and sometimes at the card-table in front of the fire where Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre, the cure of Cinq-Cygne, and his sister were playing a ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... your Grandma Carruthers' room, the General's grandma, and she was the high-headedest lady of the whole family. That am her portrait over the mantelshelf. You is jest like her as two peas in the pod and I reckin I'll have to take a stick to you like I did to yo' father when he was most growed up and stole all the fruitcake I had done baked in July fer Christmas," she said with a wide ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and gossip at the stile, and put the letters unopened on the mantelshelf—a pile of bills over his head where he slept calmly after dinner. Iden could plant potatoes, and cut trusses of hay, and go through ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... extinguished gas lamps. His companions in misfortune resumed a fragmentary disconnected conversation. They touched now on one aspect of the disaster and now on another, and there were intervals of silence. More or less empty cocoa cups were distributed over the table, mantelshelf and piano, and in the middle of the table was a tin of biscuits, into which Mr. Rumbold, sitting round-shoulderedly, dipped ever and again in an absent-minded way, and munched like a distant shooting of coals. It added to the solemnity of the affair that nearly all of them were in their ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... thing," she declared, "I shall go in the side entry and take down the garden shears and cut the roses to put in the Dresden vases on the marble mantelshelf in the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... groped for the glass on the mantelshelf, but he continued to look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the glass. Terror was the word, the terror of a man who finds—unawaited, ambushed in his being—depths and capacities unguessed and appalling. A blank, horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands before his ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... which it had been offered. And, warned by experience, she did not lock it up in the obscurity of a cabinet, nor contrive that some convenient accident should befall it, wisely preferring "to bear those ills she had than fly to others," etc. And so it still remains a permanent eyesore on her mantelshelf. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... down a candle from the mantelshelf, lit it and set it on the table; then, picking up the cork of an empty bottle, held it to the flame for two seconds or so and began to operate on ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... frightful scene the evening before leaving for Paris. On his return here, he found the house empty, and me staying at Dutheil's, by permission of the President of La Chatre. He also found a summons awaiting him on the mantelshelf. He had to make the best of it, for he knew it was no use attempting to fight against the result of his own folly, and that, by holding out, the scandal would all fall on him. He made the following stipulations, promising to adhere ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... presided over the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself. It was filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels. The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, and sinking ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... that I remember was climbing upon a chair to reach for my grandfather's musket, which hung across the chimney. I got at last upon the mantelshelf, and my hands were on the weapon, when the door opened, and my grandfather and my father entered. I was so busy I did not hear them till I was caught by the legs and swung to a shoulder, where I sat kicking. 'You see his tastes, William,' said my grandfather to my father; 'he's white ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church candies of yellowish wax. He had thrust his chest out, supporting his shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large patent-leather foot. As Archer entered he was smiling ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... wandered to a framed photograph which stood on the mantelshelf, showing the likeness of a white-haired man standing among a group of full-flowering roses, with a smile upon his wrinkled face,—a smile expressing the quaintest and most complete satisfaction, as though he sought ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... last brought back his cough with real violence, and he was sent to bed; Albinia went up with him to see that his fire burnt. He set Mr. Ferrars's drawing of the alms-houses over his mantelshelf. 'I shall nail it up to-morrow,' he said. 'I always wanted a picture here, and that's a jolly one ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... letter to Sir William Patterson, and added a postscript to it. "What I have since done will explain everything." That was all she added, and on the following morning, about noon, she put the letter on the mantelshelf. Late at night she took herself to bed, and was surprised to find that she slept. The key of the old desk was under her pillow, and she placed her hand on it the moment that she awoke. On leaving her own room she stood for a moment at ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... appointments for which the gipsy appearance of Mrs. Duveen had not prepared them. There were several unframed drawings in pastel and water-colour, of birds and animals, upon the walls, and above the little mantelshelf hung a gleaming German helmet, surmounted by a golden eagle. On the mantelshelf itself were fuses, bombs and shell-cases, a china clock under a glass dome, and a cabinet photograph of a handsome man in the uniform of a sergeant of Irish Guards. Before the clock, and resting ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... built over a fireplace to catch the smoke, and at a later date to the decorative framework, often carried up to the ceiling. "Chimneypiece" or "mantelpiece" is now the general term for the jambs, mantelshelf and external accessories of a fireplace. For many centuries the chimneypiece was the most ornamental and most artistic feature of a room, but as fireplaces have become smaller, and modern methods of heating have been introduced, its artistic as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... let this come back to its own beautiful colour," I had said, as I nodded to a little phial labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen" on her mantelshelf. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china candle-sticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid—an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper—and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well I stood round with my ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... affects to smile, and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs. Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... All this time he had been sitting on the edge of the table, while I occupied a chair at its end. He sat there in careless fashion, swinging a foot to and fro. Now he sprang to the floor, and drew up a chair, placing on the table a blank sheet of paper. Then he took from the mantelshelf a packet of letters, and I was astonished to see they were held together by two bits of cardboard and a rubber band similar to the combination that had contained the folded bank notes. With great nonchalance he slipped off the rubber band, threw it and the pieces ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... still at the house. An inquiry whether he had delivered my letter met with the amazing response that they had given him no letter, and when I rushed into the house to ask what had become of it, there it was, on the mantelshelf of the bar-parlour, just where I had left it. Never did a man meet with a worse blow. I knew then that Miss Dolly was done for, and I did not believe that the day could pass and keep the police ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... her room up-stairs. The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could move once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantelshelf. Then Coira O'Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low couch, and knelt beside him, looking into his face. The man stirred, and moved his head slowly. Half-articulate words came from his lips, and she made out that he ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... all suitable among the weapons,—I could hardly for such a purpose use the hatchet; the drawer in question was such a little one that to have done so would have been to shiver it to splinters. On the mantelshelf, in an open leather case, were a pair of revolvers. Statesmen, nowadays, sometimes stand in actual peril of their lives. It is possible that Mr Lessingham, conscious of continually threatened danger, carried them about with him as a necessary protection. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... to the other, they had killed a man, and played an atrocious comedy in order to be able to love in peace, and they sat there, one on either side of a mantelshelf, rigid, exhausted, their minds disturbed and their frames lifeless! Such a denouement appeared to them horribly and cruelly ridiculous. It was then that Laurent endeavoured to speak of love, to conjure up the remembrances of other ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... flower vases; at the smart little fire snapping in the grate; at the cheerful reds and blues and ochres and sombre blues and purples and greens of the books in the open bookshelves; at the squat clock on the mantelshelf; at the gorgeous splashes of black and gold glimpsed through the many-paned window. "You've got everything you really want right here"—his gesture seemed, somehow, to include himself—"if you only ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... for him. She, too, made herself promises as she stood after his departure, taking a long breath over her discovery; she was not afraid in looking forward. All that she was afraid of—and it was of this that she was thinking as she now stood leaning her arm upon the mantelshelf and looking into the fire,—all that she was afraid of was of looking back. It was for Gerald that she was waiting and it was Gerald's note that hung from her hand against her knee, and since that note had come, not long after ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... concealed behind a screen, which, if it did not provoke a start and a scream from some fair visitor, had attention drawn to it by the playful question, 'Who is that behind you?' There was a funny pair of spectacles on the mantelshelf, which Canon Wrottesley would playfully place upon his handsome nose, and to small visitors he would accompany the action by a frolicsome 'wowf-wowf.' He loved juvenile parties when he could wear a coloured paper cap on his head or tie a paper apron round his waist, and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... came up to help, and when I returned from a stroll she had garnished it. Two chairs, on which in my innocence I sat, were draped with antimacassars. Some portraits of drab people, stiffly posing, had been placed on the mantelshelf, and some dusty wool mats, set off with wax flowers, were lighting the chest of drawers to sudden beauty. In my then mood the false ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... a word, but he walked to the fireplace, set the candle down upon the dusty mantelshelf among the boxes and bottles, and, drawing forward a chair upon the other side of the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... looked at his reflection in the glass above the mantelshelf. The pallor of his face surprised him, and the look of passionate ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... this lavish supply was Jacquotte's doing—Jacquotte who had formerly been the cure's housekeeper—Jacquotte who always said "we," and who ruled supreme over the doctor's household. If, for instance, there was a brightly polished warming-pan above the mantelshelf, it probably hung there because Jacquotte liked to sleep warm of a winter night, which led her incidentally to warm her master's sheets. He never took a thought about anything; so she was ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... kept in the rack, barrels to the front, with dress hats on the shelf, and a mirror in the middle of the mantelshelf. Accoutrements and forage saps were hung on certain hooks, and clothing and other things allowable and necessary were always to be kept in an unvarying order on a set of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... was gone as she opened the tea-room door. She was hot and tired and hurried. The little clock on the mantelshelf said a quarter to twelve as she closed the door behind her and then she saw that there was a customer at a far table in the corner and realized how late she was. A short, fat little woman was sitting tensely on the edge of a chair, looking about ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... discovered a sufficient rather than satisfactory explanation. The Doctor had taken his pipe into his bedroom, and had seated himself, in sulky mood, upon the higher bar of a large and deep old-fashioned grate with a high mantelshelf. Here he had {177} tumbled backwards, and doubled himself up between the bars and the back of the grate. He was fixed tight, and when he called for help, he could only throw his voice up the chimney. The echo from the cloud was the warning which ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... mantelshelf as if it were winter and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in two armchairs that matched, one on each side of the center-table, stared in front ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... starting up from my chair. "Leave her out of the question! We need not discuss her," and I walked to the mantelshelf to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... touching here a bit of gold lacquer, there a Venetian mirror or an ivory statuette. The fire purred and crackled softly; there was no other sound. The tiny figure in the ebony chair was as motionless as one of the Indian idols that grinned at her from her mantelshelf. ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... the mantelshelf struck five, and Nell, worn out at last, and still apparently far away from any solution of the problem which she had set herself, flung herself on the bed. She had scarcely closed her eyes before a way of helping Lady Wolfer ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... made, like the cupboard and table, of old carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel office-chair before the desk. The room looked costly but very bare. Almost the only portable objects were a great porcelain bowl of a wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar boxes on the mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... pictures and hangings; at Desmond's well-worn chair, and the table beside it with his pipe-rack, a photo of his father, and half a dozen favourite books; at the graceful outline of Evelyn's figure where she stood by the wide mantelshelf arranging roses in a silver bowl, her head tilted to one side, a shaft of sunlight from one of the slits of windows, fifteen feet up the wall, turning her soft ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... a little apartment at the back of the house, furnished comfortably but in execrably bad taste. A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, the flue of which had been ingeniously diverted by Sin Sin Wa so that the smoke issued from a chimney of the adjoining premises. On the mantelshelf, which was garishly draped, were a number of photographs of Mrs. Sin ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... modern deal dressing-table skimpily draped with muslin, and surmounted by the smallest of looking-glasses. There were a couple of chairs and a three-cornered washhand-stand. There was neither sofa nor writing-table. There was not an ornament on the high wooden mantelshelf, or a picture on the panelled walls. Vixen shivered as she surveyed the ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... at the little station at which I was to alight, and my heart beat very fast as I saw his handsome face, surmounted with a soft wide-awake, and which I knew by a photograph long since enshrined upon my mantelshelf, scanning the carriage windows as the train rolled up. He recognized me as infallibly as I had recognized him; he appeared to know by instinct how a young American of an aesthetic turn would look when much divided between eagerness and modesty. He took me by the hand, and smiled at me, and said: ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... off the ugly, blue spectacles which he had adopted of late, and laid them upon the mantelshelf. He did not need them in the flickering firelight, which alone illumined the dimness of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Jack." The good Monk was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his cousin, having-though the son of a military man-a contempt for the pomp and circumstance of war. He marvelled to see Jock affectionately hook up his sword over the photograph of Engelberg above his mantelshelf; and he hesitated to join the volunteers, as his aunt wished, by way of compelling variety and exercise. Jock, however, decided on so doing, that Sydney might own at least that he was ready for a call to arms for his country. He did not like to think ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it," said Mrs Steele, walking to and fro in her drawing-room. She ceased wringing her handkerchief, and came to a halt confronting the Vicar, who stood moodily leaning an arm on the mantelshelf. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... you have been drinking. I smell the whiskey above everything. Ah, there is the bottle!" His sharp eyes had seen it behind the tea caddy on the mantelshelf. He took it and flung it upon the shingle as far as his ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... for two people gleamed bright from the cheeriest corner. A fire crackled beneath the marble mantelshelf. The latest evening paper lay upon a chair; and, brushing it carelessly with her costly dress, the woman he had so basely deserted ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... a quick glance over my shoulder at Foe—against whom the hound evidently stiffened, as a pointer at its game. Foe, white as a sheet, was leaning back, his shoulders propped against the edge of the mantelshelf. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... M. Termonde. I felt that my courage was exhausted. I knew that, if accused, I should not have moral strength to defend myself, for my weariness was so overwhelming that I did not suffer any longer. The only thing I had strength to do was to watch the swing of the pendulum of the timepiece on the mantelshelf, and to mark the movement of the hands. A quarter of an hour elapsed, half an ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... fever. Such a sparing meal as they made—for neither had much appetite—was made in silence. At last Sir Oliver rose, and with slow, heavy steps, suggestive of his humour, he crossed to the fire-place. He threw fresh logs on the blaze, and took from the tall mantelshelf his pipe and a leaden jar of tobacco. He filled the pipe pensively, then with the short iron tongs seized a fragment of glowing wood and ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Stevenson was fitted into a niche over the mantelpiece in the living-room, where Mrs. Stevenson spent much of her time seated before the great fireplace with the haughty Kitson on her lap. On the mantelshelf there was a curious collection of photographs—one of Ah Fu, the Chinese cook of South Sea memory, side by side with that of Sir Arthur Pinero, famous playwright—silent witnesses to the wide extent of her acquaintance and the broad ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... within but what was shed by the fire and two tallow candles that gutter'd on the mantelshelf. The remaining candlesticks lay in a pool of wine on the floor, amid broken glasses, bottles, scattered coins, dice boxes and pewter pots. In the corner to my right cower'd a potboy, with tankard dangling in his hand, and the contents spilling into his shoes. His wide terrified eyes ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... hearth, facing audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British lieutenants, mere lads, whose scarlet cloaks, exaggerated lace wrist ruffles, and brilliant gold braiding make a fine showing. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... smile for me again?" he asked her, after a long half-hour during which he had stood as still as stone, his arm along the pine mantelshelf, looking at her from the shelter of a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... rather grimly, leaning his head on the mantelshelf, and looking into the fire, 'any other way I can only be an expense for years upon years, even if I ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ways, for Nance had trained a creeping plant so well that one side of the room was nearly covered by it, and, besides this, there was a kind of rockery in one corner with smaller plants growing in its crannies. The furniture, though plain and strong, was of quaint, uncommon shapes, and on the high mantelshelf stood some queer pieces of china, more rarely to be seen in those days than now, when the curiosities of the East can be bought by any one for very little. Rosamond knew more about such things than the boys, as her ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... destroy it; she believed she had done so; but the fact was, it had fallen from her hands on the floor, and she never thought of it again. Her maid, thinking it might be of consequence, picked it up and laid it on the mantelshelf. Only God knows what would have become of Lady Atherton but ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... rafters hung down straps, riems, old boots, bits of harness, and a string of onions. The bed was in another corner, covered by a patchwork quilt of faded red lions, and divided from the rest of the room by a blue curtain, now drawn back. On the mantelshelf was an endless assortment of little bags and stones; and on the wall hung a map of South Germany, with a red line drawn through it to show where the German had wandered. This place was the one home the girls had known for many ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... open French window into the Doctor's drawing-room. A wonderful room it was, as everything in the house was wonderful, a spacious, airy room, furnished in white and gold, with Dresden figures on the mantelshelf; Venetian mirrors, dainty water-colours sunk into the panels, cases of rare books (among them, as I remember, a set of the Cabinet des Fees, bound in rose-coloured morocco and stamped with the Royal arms of France), stands of music, and a priceless ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... this condition, and had found it very bare and cold. One night, past midnight, when he sat writing and still had writing to do that must be done before he went to bed, he found himself out of coals. He had coals down- stairs, but had never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laundress, she lived among the coal-waggons and Thames watermen—for there were Thames watermen at that time—in some unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... grandfather, stop one moment! Our castle, Arnold, shall be, first of all, the most beautiful studio in the world for you. You shall have tapestry, blue china, armor, lovely glass, soft carpets, carved doors and painted panels, a tall mantelshelf, old wooden cabinets, silver cups, and everything else what one ought to like, and you shall choose everything for yourself, and never get tired of it. But you must go on painting; you must never stop working, because we must be proud of you as well that you like. Oh, but ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... was just trying the glasses." Then I put them down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... to say, the walls had been decorated by Mr. Whistler, and there was not a piece of furniture in the room that had not belonged to this or that poet deceased. Priceless autograph portraits of all the leading actors and actresses littered the mantelshelf with a reckless prodigality; the two or three choice etchings were, of course, no less conspicuously inscribed to their illustrious confrere by the artists—naturally, the very latest hatched in Paris. There ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... to go out to dinner, and as he stood in his cosy bachelor rooms—a pleasant, artistic little place with soft crimson carpet, big, comfortable, leather arm-chairs, and a profusion of photographs, mostly of the fair sex, decorating mantelshelf and walls—his brows were narrowed and he blew big clouds of cigarette smoke from ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... In the whirl of excitement, with late nights and later mornings, and never-ending frivolity, my very letters had lain on my mantelshelf unopened! ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... compliments, and a thousand excuses, but a book of hers was left on the mantelshelf in this room. She cannot ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the mantelshelf had given place to candelabra, no doubt to deprive me of the pleasure of filling them with flowers; I found them later in my own room. When my servant arrived I went out to give him some orders; he had brought me certain things I wished to place ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac |
