"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chasing wild geese; that nut trees would not ever be important commercially in Canada; that 99 per cent of the value of the nut tree was for shade anyhow (as if he meant shade for pigs and cows); and that they were not even ornamental. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... This is the familiar, black-and-white bird that fishes by hovering kestrel-like on rapidly-vibrating wings and then dropping from a height of some twenty feet into the water below; it is a bird greatly addicted to goldfish and makes sad havoc of these where they are exposed in ornamental ponds. The nest of the pied kingfisher is a circular tunnel or burrow, more than a yard in length, excavated in a river bank. The burrow, which is dug out by the bird, is about three inches in diameter and terminates in a larger chamber in which the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... said; "that's what I've been thinking. After Weybridge I went south—thinking. I saw what was up. Most of the people were hard at it squealing and exciting themselves. But I'm not so fond of squealing. I've been in sight of death once or twice; I'm not an ornamental soldier, and at the best and worst, death—it's just death. And it's the man that keeps on thinking comes through. I saw everyone tracking away south. Says I, 'Food won't last this way,' and I turned right back. I went for the Martians like a sparrow goes for man. All round"—he ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... just about the time he was emerging from knickerbockers, he had been madly in love with this golden-haired, hazel-eyed cousin of his, and the lady, who had the advantage of him in years, being unresponsive, he had haunted a very large and very deep ornamental pond in his grandmother's park for several weeks with considerable persistency. Had the disease attacked him in summer it is quite probable that this story would never have been written, for his nature was essentially a high-strung ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... entrance is provided elsewhere. The kitchen and offices are on the lower floor level, and a kitchen yard is conveniently placed at the rear. Red brick, with cut-brick dressings, is the material used throughout for the walls, the upper parts of which are hung with ornamental tiles. The gables are enriched with wide, massive barge boards, and the roof is surmounted with a white wooden cupola over the principal staircase. The terracotta panels along the entrance front, over the principal ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... glorious in the Eyes of Mankind, and ornamental to Human Nature, setting aside the infinite Advantages [which [4]] arise from it, as a strong, steady masculine Piety; but Enthusiasm and Superstition are the Weaknesses of human Reason, that expose us to the Scorn and Derision ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ornamental trinkets of the tree hung tiny net bags of crystallised violets and many large chocolates rolled up in silver paper. The boys, who had subsisted for several days on nothing more exciting than boiled milk, openly rejoiced ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... splendid workmanship; the precious metal had been oxydised to every shade of colour, and was wrought in beautiful Mosaic: the walls and ceiling were entirely covered with the same, in some parts burnished, to reflect as mirrors, in others elaborately carved in ornamental fretwork, as peculiar from the elegance of its design, as from the superiority of its execution. On each side of the throne extending to the door at which we entered, were a row of ladies, and behind them raised on a platform about ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... time as chaplain that Charlton began to receive presents of little ornamental articles, intended to make his cell more cheerful. These things were sent to him by the hands of the chaplain, and the latter was forbidden to tell the name of the giver. Books and pictures, and even little ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... to see the motto which is written, together with a number, on the last space. On the back of the second and fourth divisions are printed the words "nomen" and "signum," denoting that immediately under them are the name and motto of the elector. There are also printed certain ornamental flourishes, the object of which is to render it impossible to see the writing within through the paper. Thus, the schedule, with its top and bottom folds sealed down, can be freely opened so far as to allow the name of the cardinal for whom the vote is given ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... South-Sea islanders tattoo themselves. In other words, they prick a multitude of little holes in their skins, and rub into these some colouring matter, which, when thoroughly fixed, cannot again be washed out. The ornamental devices with which they thus, more or less, cover their persons are sometimes very cleverly and tastefully done, and they would be really admirable if depicted on a piece of wood or a sheet of paper; but when applied to the human body they ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... wonderful memory and learned very quickly. His pronunciation, however, was not good. In a very short time he was able to read short stories out of an ordinary school reader and could write from dictation fairly well. His handwriting was exceptionally fine, while in copying old English and ornamental characters, he was an expert. Her Majesty seemed pleased that the Emperor had taken up this study, and said she thought of taking it up herself as she was quite sure she would learn it very quickly if she tried. After two lessons ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... be Miss Ludington's heir, and any profession which he might adopt would be purely ornamental at most. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... to the police station. The police captain is outraged that the ornamental urn valued at $10,000 should have been used to hold a fire which burned the President's words! His indignation leaves the defendants unimpressed, however, and he becomes conciliatory. Will the "ladies promise to be good and light no more ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... language by foreign decorations. Not even Shakespeare avoids it always. No writer of the time avoids it wholly. The dedication of the King James version shows that these scholars themselves did not avoid it. In that dedication, and their preface, they give us fine writing, striving for effect, ornamental phrases characteristic of the time. Men were feeling that this English language was rough and barbarous, insufficient, needing enlargement by the addition of other words constructed in a foreign form. The essays of Lord Bacon are virtually contemporaneous ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... the old place appear eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... profound and unpretentious art of mixing the useful with the agreeable. Taylor—already mentioned as inferior to Hooker in one respect, however superior he may be in the splendour of his rhetoric—is again and still more inferior to him in the parts that are not ornamental, in the pedestrian body of his controversy and exposition. As a mere controversialist, Hooker, if not exactly a Hobbes or a Bentley, if not even a Chillingworth, is not likely to be spoken of without respect by those who understand what evidence means. If he sometimes ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... extensive—in places almost like some of the old English parks which I had seen on my visits there to distant relatives during the holidays. It was pleasant to think while wandering under the trees, and over the splendid wastes of flowers, and ornamental shrubs, and trees, that in this wide, vast America no one need be defrauded of his portion of mother earth by this immense flower garden; since there was more than sufficient land for every anxious toiler. To me there was an exceeding luxury in this reflection; for often on those lovely Kentish ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... after him, had their own good and profitable reasons for crying up the works of this poet. When I was a very little boy, there was a jubilee in honour of SHAKSPEARE, and as he was said to have planted a Mulberry tree, boxes, and other little ornamental things in wood, were sold all over the country, as having been made out of the trunk or limbs of this ancient and sacred tree. We Protestants laugh at the relics so highly prized by Catholics; but never was a Catholic people half so much duped by the relics of saints, as this ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... It was entitled The Girl's Week-day Book, by Mrs. Copley, and it had been published by the Religious Tract Society, no doubt in her mother's girlhood. The frontispiece, a steel engraving, showed a group of girls feeding some swans by the terraced margin of an ornamental water, and it bore the legend, "Feeding the Swans." And on the title- page was the text: "That our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace. Psalm cxliv. 12." In the table of contents were such phrases ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of economy, for those who from necessity or choice consider it at all, is a very serious one. It has been a fashion to make bookcases highly ornamental. Now books want for and in themselves no ornament at all. They are themselves the ornament. Just as shops need no ornament, and no one will think of or care for any structural ornament, if the goods are tastefully disposed in the shop-window. The man who looks for society in his ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... attention of each one of us; and I adduce them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total absence of social courage in persons otherwise endowed with and illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men and women, that, if they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and indeed, to employ the figure of Bagehot, it comprises the hyphen that joins, the buckle that fastens, the executive and the legislative departments together.[102] As has been pointed out, the uses of the crown are by no means wholly ornamental. None the less, the actual executive of the nation is the cabinet. It is within the cabinet circle that administrative policies are decided upon, and it is by the cabinet ministers and their subordinates in ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... finances, overruled the constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in public affairs, and finally reduced the nominal prince—the doge—to a mere puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... being taken out of the oven, or they will sink and be nothing more than an ordinary pudding; when done take it out, sprinkle powdered sugar over and send the souflee to table in the dish in which it was baked, either with a napkin pinned around or inclosed in a more ornamental dish; serve with wine, cream, raspberry ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... Lancaster house was also a colonial mansion, much after the fashion of Eudora's, but it showed signs of continued opulence. Eudora's, behind her trees and leafing vines, was gray for lack of paint. Some of the colonial ornamental details about porches and roof were sloughing off or had already disappeared. The Lancaster house gleamed behind its grove of evergreen trees as white and perfect as in its youth. The windows showed rich slants of draperies behind their green ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... eatables. This accounts for the singular garb of the Javanese boatmen,—striped shirts, woolen caps and duck trowsers are strangely mingled with portions of the oriental dress, and a sailor's jacket with large brass buttons is considered quite ornamental. Next to clothing they prefer knives, scissors and articles of iron ware. In general the Javanese are pretty good judges of the value of these articles, and mostly contrive to make a more profitable traffic from their fruit and poultry than the ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... last gentleman whom we think proper to describe, was a man of about the age of the first, but utterly unlike him. His head was covered with a black skull cap, (probably to protect his baldness,) beneath which, rose ears more prominent than ornamental, being very little relieved by the hair, which was cropped short. His complexion was florid, and the parts of the face, about the chin and jaws, full and heavy, giving an appearance of great roundness to the countenance. His features were regular, the mouth small and compressed, and on the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... troubles. Tenants are really very disagreeable, and they have no feeling for Art. They have cut down a lot of ornamental trees, and they won't grow the right sort of crops,—I mean from a picturesque point of view. As agriculturists they may be all right, but that's not my point. I did not buy the estate to try how "roots" would thrive. Then they will burn weeds, and hang out clothes to dry—clothes without any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... termed 'haunted.' They have been rather proud of this, as I managed to discover, until quite lately when something very disagreeable occurred, which served to remind them that family ghosts are not always content, as I might say, to remain purely ornamental. ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... it and make rhymes. It is wonderfully rejuvenated, and is a handsome piece of furniture. It was the desk of my great-grandfather, and seemed to me a wretched old wreck when thee took it to Portland. I did not suppose it could be made either useful or ornamental. I wrote my first pamphlet on slavery, 'Justice and Expediency,' upon it, as well as a great many rhymes which might as well have never been written. I am glad that it has got a ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... In his great work, the "Historical Library," it was his object to write a history of the world down to the commencement of Caesar's Gallic wars. He is content to give a bare recital of the facts, which crowded upon him and left him no time to be diffuse or ornamental. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... blessing. But if the opinion of Mrs. Moggs were obtained on that score, it would probably be somewhat different; for be it known that the husband of Mrs. Moggs is of the kind that is neither useful nor ornamental. He belongs to that division which addicts itself mainly to laziness—a species of the biped called husband, which unfortunately is not so rare that we seek for the specimen only in museums. We know not whether Montezuma Moggs was or was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the outermost boundary of the flower-garden, and then returned by another path, which led back, past the side of an ornamental summer-house commanding a view over the fields from a corner of the lawn. A slight noise—like, and yet not like, the chirruping of a bird—caught her ear as she approached the summer-house. She stepped round to the entrance; looked in; and discovered ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... That celebrated garden, associated with the grateful and bright remembrances of all which poetry can lend to wisdom, was, before the time of Cimon, a waste and uncultivated spot. It was his hand that intersected it with walks and alleys, and that poured through its green retreats the ornamental waters so refreshing in those climes, and not common in the dry Attic soil, which now meandered in living streams, and now sparkled into fountains. Besides these works to embellish, he formed others to fortify the city. He completed the citadel, hitherto unguarded on the south side; and it ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... drawing-room with high ornamental walls and all the air about it of dignity, peace and ease, that were so recently gone; only just, as it might have been, stepped through the double doorway; skirts, as it were, of ladies only just trailed out of sight; and then turn in fancy to that great ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... where they put on plays worth seeing is closed just now, but there's a new dancer at the nearest hall and we might look in. I hope my churchwarden patrons won't disapprove if they hear of it, because they talk about building an ornamental mission room." ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... good many people lived there; but when the procession had passed through these it came upon a broad plain covered with gardens and watered by many pretty brooks that flowed through it. There were paths through these gardens, and over some of the brooks were ornamental glass bridges. ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... are not only useful in a mountainous country, but highly ornamental. How serenely beautiful their noiseless flight; a flake of snow is not winnowed through the air more softly-silent! Gliding along the dark shadows of a wood, how spiritual the motion—how like the thought of a dream! And then, during the hushed midnight hours, how jocund the whoop and hollo ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... with its dusters for the hearth of buffalo tail and wild-turkey wing, with iron pot hung by a chain from the chimney hook, with pewter or wooden plates from which to eat with horn-handled knives and iron spoons. But yet are we so modern that we have fine new houses with bay windows, ornamental cupolas, and porches raving woodenly in that frettish fever which the infamous scroll-saw put upon fifty years of our land's domestic architecture. And these houses are furnished with splendid modern ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... kitchen. But the kitchen was called dining-room, or even parlour at need; for the cooking-range lent itself to concealment behind an ornamental screen, the walls displayed pictures and bookcases, and a tiny scullery which lay apart sufficed for the coarser domestic operations. This was Amy's territory during the hours when her husband was working, or endeavouring to work. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... silk, silk coats with the lining of purple, white gloss silk, and coloured silk coats without the badge were not to be worn at random; that coming down to retainers, henchmen, and men-at-arms, the wearing by such persons of ornamental dresses such as silks, damask, brocade, or embroideries was quite unknown to the ancient laws, and a stop must be put to it; that all the old restrictions as to riding in palanquins must be observed; that retainers who had a disagreement ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... "Father of vertu in England." It was founded in 1849, and its purpose is to diffuse more widely, by means of suitable publications, a knowledge both of the history and true principles of Painting, Sculpture, and the higher forms of ornamental design, to call attention to such masterpieces of the arts as are unduly neglected, and to secure some transcript or memorial of those which are perishing from ill-treatment or decay. The publications of the Society have been ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... Fr. herce harrow, portcullis. In early English the word is used in the sense of 'harrow' and also of 'triangle,' in reference to the shape of the harrow. By-and-by it came to be used variously for 'bier,' 'funeral carriage,' ornamental canopy with lighted candles over the coffins of notable people during the funeral ceremony, the permanent framework over a tomb, and even the tomb itself. Cp. Spenser's Shep. Cal., ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... with fingers deft as a sailor's, secured the prince. The single silken band did not suffice; other cords, diverted from the ornamental to a like practical purpose, were wound around and around his excellency's legs and arms, holding him so tightly to the chair he could scarcely move. Having completed this task, Mr. Heatherbloom next, with vandal hands, whipped from the wall a bit of priceless embroidery, threw ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... of thinking that she had a womanly taste and touch in making a room pretty. She was accustomed to survey with pride her mother's drawing-room, which she had garnished with cheap cretonnes, Japanese paper fans, and knick-knacks in ornamental pottery. She felt now that if she slept once in the bed before her, she could never be content in her mother's house again. All that she had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament, and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical paraphrase of the ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... form, because they can be more thoroughly and economically distributed, and they adhere to the foliage better. The best general fungicide is the bordeaux mixture. It is generally, however, not advisable to use the bordeaux mixture on ornamental plants, because it discolors the foliage and makes the plants look very untidy. In such cases it is best to use the ammoniacal copper solution, which ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... windows looking upon the street; a tiny square of carpet in the middle of the floor; boards highly waxed and polished; a tea-table squeezed up in one corner; a somewhat ancient-looking, spindle-legged cottage piano behind the door; a mirror and an ornamental clock over the mantelpiece; and a few French lithographs, colored in imitation of crayon drawings, hanging ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... however, and some even in late times, have been sadly mutilated and destroyed, to a greater or less degree, by human hands, and converted to the most base uses. The stone at Hilton of Cadboll, remarkable for its elaborate sculpture and ornamental tracery, has had one of its sides smoothed and obliterated in order that a modern inscription might be cut upon it to commemorate "Alexander Duff and His Thrie Wives." The beautiful sculptured stone of Golspie has been desecrated in the same way. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... that exhilarating ride towards the City of the Sun the aspect of the landscape became subtly modified; the farms became more extensive, the farmhouses larger and more elaborate in their style of architecture, ornamental and decorative features became increasingly conspicuous in every building encountered, until finally the aspect became distinctly suburban, the farmhouses gave place to country residences, the farms gradually merged into pleasure gardens, gay with flowers ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... groves, farm houses, gardens, wind mills, roads, and other elements of rural scenery, that Rollo found it extremely beautiful. The fields were very green where grass was growing, and the foliage of the trees, and of the little ornamental hedges that were seen here and there adorning the grounds of the farm houses, was very rich and full. As Rollo looked out at the window, a continued succession of the most bright and beautiful pictures passed rapidly before his eyes, ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... following what appeared to be the drive. It was not difficult to do so, because of the moonlight that sifted down through the bare branches of the neighboring ornamental ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... paper coloured or covered with gold or silver leaf, and embossed with various patterns, are used for covering books, and for many ornamental purposes. The figures upon these are produced by the same process, that of passing the sheets ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... some time. Mrs. Ripon was picking flowers, for she had a dinner party that evening, and she enjoyed getting her flowers, and arranging her vases, herself. Presently she looked round, but Tom was missing. There were many clumps of ornamental shrubs on the lawn, and Mrs. Ripon thought nothing ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... and of pedantry. It is easy to forget that the transparent obviousness of his style was attained only after many years of groping. We may well believe that "there is a research in the choice of a plain, as well as of an ornamental or learned style; and, in fact, a great deal more."[106] Though he did not go in pursuit of the word to the extent of some later refiners of style, he had a clear realization that the appropriate word was what chiefly gave vitality ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of such heavy fabrics of glass for ornamental purposes and for curiosities is no new thing; nor, in our estimation, does comparative success in such experiments warrant the enthusiastic claims of the Pittsburg manufacturers touching the adaptability of glass for wearing apparel. Unless it is in their power to change the nature of ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... and men of science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homes down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers, arsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party put also some ragged flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both, annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call "knowing what to do ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... shield hanging on his breast, the armorial bearings are defaced by time, and a few worn-out letters may be read at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan—de Hamel,—or Johan—de Lamel—And it is also true, that of another tomb, richly sculptured with an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition can only aver, that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose, and ruder rhyme, the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... or with the features of the Northern development, was the fertile mother of art. In the exterior equipment of the temple, instead of the Shint[o] thatch, the tera or Buddhist edifice called for tiles on its sweeping roof, with ornamental terra-cotta at the end of its imposing roof-ridge, or for sheets of copper soon to be made verdant, then sombre and then sable by age and atmosphere. Outwardly the edifice required the application of paint and lacquer in rich tints, its recurved roof-edges ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... him?" he asked when the note had again come down into the ornamental lap, which was the upper line of his range of vision. "And thoughtful. But then everybody has been so wonderfully kind to me. I think I shall remember Hunston as altogether the kindest town ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... be solid silver," he remarked, as he laid on a chair beside her a curious little statuette of a horse, trapped and decorated in Indian graving, and having its whole surface covered with an involved and rich ornamental design. Its eyes were, or seemed to be rubies, and saddle and bridle and housing were studded with small gems. There was little merit in the art of it beyond the engraving, but Cosmo saw the eyes of the lady fixed upon it, with a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her folly, rather than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful, characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" sex. She was to be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent intelligence—or as a wife, mother, companion, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Fig. 81, impressed upon a fragment of clay from Arkansas, has been made of coarse, well-twisted cords. An ornamental border has been produced by looping the cords of the woof, which seem to have been five in number, each one passing over four others ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... the Eskimo women are of the useful rather than the ornamental kind. The handling of the native lamp, for instance, requires great skill. If the lamp is well trimmed, it is as clear and smokeless as our own lamps; if it is neglected, it smokes and smells vilely. As the Eskimos are not highly romantic, a woman's ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... the person of the useful and ornamental domestic animal who is popularly supposed to furnish the material for sausages. The accidental discovery of a suspender-button, or the claw of a kitten, in the sausage, gave rise to some doubt as to the composition of this favorite edible; but statisticians usually admit that hogmeat forms the ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... Ornamental additions to the costume are very rare. In the whole assembly I only noticed four women who were dressed differently from the others. The cords which fastened their spencers, and also their girdles, were ornamented with a garland ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district, and as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... to the same process of examination? If the work of retraction were to begin he would have a lot to do." And then came the passage which has already passed into Parliamentary history. "If we are to stand in white sheets, my right hon. friend would have to wear that ornamental garment standing in a very ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the flower-pod before it opens of the above shrub, and is only kept as an ornamental plant here. I am induced to notice this plant, as I have known some things used in mistake for capers that are dangerous. I once saw an instance of this, in the seed-vessels of the Euphorbia Lathyris (which is a poisonous plant) being ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... days except to kill bears and birds, I say they're stifled by wealth: and he at least would have made an Admiral of mark, or a General: not of much value, but useful in case of need. But he, like a pretty woman, was under no obligation to contribute more than an ornamental person to the common good. As to that, we count him by tens of thousands now, and his footmen and maids by hundreds of thousands. The rich love the nation through their possessions; otherwise they have no country. If they loved the country ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they reached all but the very summit, where they stopped. Tricksey-Wee and Buffy-Bob could see above them a great globe of feathers, that finished off the mountain like an ornamental knob. ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... of this the most ornamental of all native milkweeds set dry fields ablaze with color. Above them butterflies hover, float, alight, sip, and sail away - the great, dark, velvety, pipe-vine swallow-tail (Papilio philenor), its green-shaded hind wings marked with little white half moons; the yellow and brown, common, Eastern ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... glossy transparent coating of the nature of paint, applied as a protective, or ornamental coating ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... great wealth and position, such as Mme. Sazerat, M. Swann, M. Legrandin and Mme. Goupil, to persons of the 'same class' as my aunt, and who would naturally 'mix with her,' seemed to Francoise to be included among the ornamental customs of that strange and brilliant life led by rich people, who hunted and shot, gave balls and paid visits, a life which she would contemplate with an admiring smile. But it was by no means the same thing if, for this princely exchange of courtesies, my ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... our "tin hats" which had recently been shorn of their questionably ornamental or useful sandbags, with which we had been ordered to keep them covered, were painted a dull green, with, for some curious reason, the Transport sign (dark blue square), and narrow light green stripe on the left (denoting 8th Battalion) painted on the side. The change was ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... baker sweats in his hot bakery, plainly you who eat must do something in your turn. It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the point of the inquiry; and you must first have BOUGHT THE SIXPENCE. Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a secretary for Primrose, in the first place. A very beautiful one was found, very perfect also, of some light- coloured ornamental wood, finely inlaid, price three hundred dollars. On the other hand, Rollo got one, a larger one, and equally good, for Arthur Maryland, for just half the money. One for Prim was to be had for a third of the money; but it was unadorned ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... pincushions, a snuff box, a small looking glass, 2 china boxes, a china inkstand, 5 china cups and saucers, a china basket, 2 china jugs, a scent bottle, a boa ring, 20 shells, a boy's cap, a pair of snuffers and stand, a little basket, a pair of screen handles, 3 ornamental pens, 5 artificial flowers, 5 glass plates, 5 counter plates, 3 pairs of card racks, a comb, a pair of watch pockets, 12 table mats, 8 paintings, 4 drawings, 2 fans, a pair of garters, 3 pairs of gloves, 3 pairs of silk stockings, 3 ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... of them and boil the other. But as Soto sent another kind message to him, he consented to visit Soto accompanied by five hundred warriors gaily adorned after their fashion, and was received with much civility and presented with such ornamental trinkets as pleased him much. He was greatly astonished at the appearance of the Spanish troops, and asked pardon for his rude and threatening expressions, promising to make amends by his future good conduct. This cacique, named Vitacucho, was about thirty-five ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the right kind of watch for a little girl like you," admired the Doctor; "neither too large nor too ornamental." ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... I feel about it so long as the higher cravings of his own nature are satisfied? But I resent it—I resent it bitterly. I object to having my head look like a real-estate development with an opening for a new street going up each side and an ornamental design in fancy landscape gardening across the top. If I permit this I won't be able to keep on saying that I was twenty-seven on my last birthday, with some hope of getting away with it. So I insist that he put my front hair right back where ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mr. Spener had himself originated more than half of them. Then presently he began to suggest designs, and at the end of an hour he found himself at a table in Spener's office drawing shapes for baskets and chairs and tables and ornamental devices, and making Spener laugh so at some remark as to be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... and subtle glow. From his shoulders there hangs behind him, to his heels, something that might be a cloak, except that it does not cloak him. It does not envelop him; rather does it stand behind him in ornamental background, with a certain sculptural effect. And it is white, a wondrous gleaming white, against which the whiteness of his skin seems rosy. Starting from his shoulders, it goes out and up in gentle undulation to either side, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... beets are commonly [71] included in four subspecies. The two smallest are the salad-beets and the ornamental forms, the first being used as food, and ordinarily cultivated in red varieties, the second being used as ornamental plants during the fall, when they fill the beds left empty by summer flowers, with a bright foliage that ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... chanting (sine tono), alternately (ummeschicht)." The Wittenberg Liturgy provided: "Before the early sermon on Sundays or on festival-days the boys in the choir, on both sides, shall read the entire Catechism in Latin, verse by verse, without ornamental tone (sine tono distincto)." (477.) Accordingly, when Luther began to preach on the chief parts in German, he was said to conduct "German Catechism." And since German services with German instruction were instituted ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... et derechef mise en son entier, selon nostre vulgaire moderne et usite, par Jean Maugin, dit l'Angeuin. With 45 large spirited woodcuts (some being nearly full-page) representing duels, battles, etc., and 132 large ornamental initial ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... information concerning the character and style of tapestry in Egypt during the rule of the Pharaohs. MM. Perrot and Chipiex, in their "Histoire de l'Art dans l'Antiquite," publish a painting containing a hanging of purely ornamental design formed of circles, triangles, and palm leaves reversed. Wilkinson describes an Egyptian hanging—an original, not a reproduction—found in an English collection: "In the centre, on a green ground, stands a boy ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... place in a republic and conducive to unrest in the masses, it was quite otherwise with women. They were for men to shelter, and it was their sole duty to be useful in the home, and, wherever possible, ornamental in public. Nor had he the least ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... as we entered the house, a small streamlet glided away, grapes, oranges and limes were clustering together on its borders, and under the shade of two large myrtle bushes, a marble scat with an ornamental wooden back was placed, on which we were told, the lord passed many of his evenings and nights till twelve o'clock, reading, writing, and talking to himself. "I suppose," said the old man, "praying" for he was ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... we traversed following the road to the south. Here they appear frequently as remarkable groupings of stones firmly embedded in the ground. Only the tops of the stones (the total length of which is about one foot) are seen above the surface, much as stones are used in parks and gardens for ornamental purposes. They are arranged in circles or in rectangles. I saw two circles close to each other, each six feet in diameter. One rectangle measured fifty feet in length by half that in width. Low walls divided it into three indistinct partitions. There was never any wall ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... man like Clay as any opinions could be. This was perfectly well known to those who chose him for Vice-President. But while the President lives and exercises his functions the Vice-President is in America a merely ornamental figure. He has nothing to say in regard to policy. He is not even a member of the Administration. He presides over the Senate, and that is all. Consequently there has always been a strong temptation for American wire-pullers to put forward as candidate for the Vice-Presidency ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... metropolis of the luxury and wealth of the North. Here we passed a jeweller's shop, the whole window aglow with the dull gleam of gold and ivory—the terrible nugget jewellery so much affected in these parts and the walrus ivory which is Alaska's other contribution of material for the ornamental arts. Here we passed a veritable department store, its ground-floor plate-glass window set as a drawing-room, with gilded, brocaded chairs, marquetry table, and ormolu clock, and I know not what costliness of rug and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... or even twenty feet, and planting rows of flowers like spokes of a wheel along the hour lines. It may be possible even to select such as are likely to open at or near the indicated hour. The entire semicircle of pegs will also make a pretty finish with tall ornamental ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... luxury, and convenience. And they are of such a character as, far more than in the western world, involves the consumption of the precious metals. Along with the national desire to adopt that which is useful and ornamental, a highly mimetic nature prompts them to seize upon and adapt with singular readiness that which is brought to their notice as being useful and constituting a salient ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... one, with a brass knocker and a brass plate, both of which ornaments, owing to verdigris, were anything but ornamental. The plate was almost useless, being nearly illegible, but the knocker was still fit for duty. The street was narrow—as Ned observed with a feeling of deep depression—and the house to which the green door belonged, besides being dirty, retreated a little, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... built in the style, a sort of mild and tepid Gothic (what I call grocer's Gothic, for it always reminds me of brown sugar and arrowroot), common around watering-places; small gables sticking out everywhere, till it looks like a cluster of dog-kennels; walls faced with ornamental tiles and lath and plaster; small shrubberies round, and a name on the gate. There were two especially beautiful ones. The General had one and we had the other. Ours was quite new. There was no furniture in it; but this, as we had been so long without it, we did ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... with a cloth reproducing in crude aniline colours, trying to the complexion, but gratifying to the patriotic soul of Mevrouw Kink, the red, white, and blue stripes of the Vierkleur, with the green staff-line carried all round as an ornamental border. "And I'd not wonder but you were right." He stuck his thumbs in his belt, and asked, with his hatted head on one side and a jeering grin on his bold red mouth: "So, now, and what did you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Florence, the aged S. Onofrio again recalls his wooden statue of S. Jerome in Faenza, and finally the motive of the cut flowers in glasses is borrowed from the triptych of Hugo van der Goes in the Gallery of Santa Maria Nuova, Florence. The ornamental accessories are singularly fine and careful in finish, and it would seem as though Signorelli had been inspired in this, not only by the great tryptych, but also by the followers of the Paduan Squarcione. In the last chapter ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... disorders and remedying the evils of society, which, like war and revolution, call forth the highest powers of man, whether for good or for evil. If there is little misery, there is little room for benevolence. Useful public institutions we may suppose to be created, but not such as are merely ornamental. Elegant arts can be little cultivated, for there are no means to reward the artists; nor the higher literature, for no one will have leisure or means to cultivate it for its own sake. Those who acquire what may be called liberal education, will do so in order to employ ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Victorian compromise; and sincerity is never undignified. He really did hold a great many of the same views as Queen Victoria, though he was gifted with a more fortunate literary style. If Dickens is Cobbett's democracy stirring in its grave, Tennyson is the exquisitely ornamental extinguisher on the flame of the first revolutionary poets. England has settled down; England has become Victorian. The compromise was interesting, it was national and for a long time it was successful: ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... and glanced through it, but concluded that one had to be a female saint, or at least an aspirant, to appreciate it. Then there were things made out of dried flowers, out of hair, out of shells, out of pine-cones. There were vases and other ornamental bits of china and glass, also Victorian, looking as if they were meant to be continually washed or dusted by the worn, busy fingers of the female saints. As I came to fuller realization of all these relics, my resolution flickered out and there fell upon me a strange ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... carefully. Both are portions of some smooth, stout reed. There is a long, thin stick—about six inches long—and a thicker piece only three inches in length. The longer piece has a little scrap of red paper stuck on at the end; apparently a portion of a label of some kind with an ornamental border. The other end of the stick has been broken off. The shorter, stouter stick has had its central cavity artificially enlarged so that it fits over the other to form a cap or sheath. Make a careful note of those facts and try to think what they ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... single columns; but the later and more numerous are in the shape of cones or circular mounds, resembling domes, rarely exceeding one hundred feet in diameter. Around the apex of each was a balustrade, or some ornamental work, about six feet in diameter. These topes remind one of the Pantheon at Rome in general form, but were of much smaller size. They were built on a stone basement less than fifty feet in height, above which was the brickwork. In process of time they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... had no privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn't stand murder. It made short work of the experimenter—and of his family, too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up among the ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so much as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of isolated, scattered wooden houses, of some size and of much scroll and jigsaw work. Some of them had little ornamental iron fencelets running along their ridgepoles, or lightning rods on the chimneys or at the corners, although thunderstorms were practically unknown. The clerk at once began to talk of these as "mansions." He drew up before one of them, hitched the horse, and invited his clients ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... function of life successfully performed—and he nodded gayly to a pretty woman three rows away. He was handsome and gray-haired, long a widower, and evidently considered weddings to be an attractive, ornamental feature of social life. Mrs. Price, the bride's mother, intent upon escaping with the Colonel by the side door and rejoining the bridal party at the house before the guests arrived on foot, scarcely heeded the amiable Senator's remarks. This affair of her daughter's ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and pleasure-grounds of the late Poon-tin-qua, a distinguished and rich Chinaman, were visited, and proved to be typical of all Chinese pictures. Here were airy summer-houses, pavilions, bridges, rockeries, and ornamental sheets of water, as we see these things represented on lacquered ware, decorated China dishes, and fans. It was really very curious and amusing, and showed much of luxurious life,—even a private theatre being contained in the establishment. Though all seem ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... a girdle," said the shirt-collar, "a sort of under girdle. I see that you are useful, as well as ornamental, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... practising the "Cavatina" for about the two-hundredth time—was perhaps the most fascinating nook in the whole house, inasmuch as it contained a little bit of everything, arranged with that perfect attention to detail which makes each object, small and great, appear not only ornamental, but positively necessary. In one corner a quaint old jar overflowed with the brightness of fresh yellow daffodils; in another a long, tapering Venetian vase held feathery clusters of African grass and fern, . . here the medallion of a Greek philosopher ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... trees. The water-works, organized in 1867, supply good water; gas is furnished at reasonable rates, and the city has nearly completed a system of sewerage, which adds to the comfort and health of the people. The public buildings are commodious and ornamental. Churches of pleasing architecture, of many religious denominations, appropriate school buildings and good schools, spacious and elegant private mansions, a well-organized fire and police department, a public library, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... point of view, this solicitude rather to captivate the imagination of the student, than to exercise and discipline the understanding, is equally unprofitable and inconvenient. It puts him off with ornamental illustration, instead of solid argument, and leads to a sort of half information, which is often much worse than no information at all upon the subject." There is some force in these remarks; yet, too many great lawyers have begun their studies with ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... construction of our asylums. Those who formed his acquaintance on the occasion of this visit may remember his mixed feelings on visiting them, how he demurred on the one hand to what he regarded as too costly and ornamental, while, on the other hand, he liked the English arrangement of the buildings better than the Esquirol-Desportes system. I need not point out that those who have had the planning of the county asylums in England have objected, as well as Parchappe, to the distribution ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... reward and promotion were essential to Harry's success. He was not one to keep up the strain of effort a long time. Unless, then, tangible results came and came quickly, he was liable to relapse into old habits. Therefore he must succeed and succeed at once. She would have preferred a less ornamental position than the ambassadorship, but there were no other openings. The Alabama senators were firmly seated for at least four years and the Governorship had been carefully arranged for. A term ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... entered, wishes to have the advantage of taking lessons with you in English; she is not a pupil of the house; she is, indeed, in one sense, a teacher, for she gives instruction in lace-mending, and in little varieties of ornamental needle-work. She very properly proposes to qualify herself for a higher department of education, and has asked permission to attend your lessons, in order to perfect her knowledge of English, in which language she has, I believe, already made some progress; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... craftsmen who knew how to achieve beauty by restraint lined the straggling single street of a forgotten farming town. Despite weatherbeaten clapboards and sagging roofs, the fine ornamental detail of doorways and window frames assured similar ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... grace! I took a few lessons of a wandering minstrel, out home, but I don't know the technique of it, as you and that ornamental captain do." ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... discovered a "patch" of the bushes. They were full of berries of a bright scarlet, resembling somewhat in form the common raspberry, but in some other respects they were quite different. They were very beautiful. If the plant would bear domestication it would be highly ornamental. Having filled a "poke" with the raspberry leaves, we set out to return to the place where we had left our horses. I doubt exceedingly whether I could have found the spot; but his familiarity with the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... are!" We alighted, and advanced to the entrance of an expanse of ornamental grounds, with a cement pathway leading up to an extensive fortified structure—a wall thirty feet high sweeping to right and left from the tall steel gateway, with the summits of stone towers emerging beyond. I stepped out briskly, in advance of the others; ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Glandulina, Polystomella, Amplistegina, &c. Corals are very abundant, in many instances forming regular "reefs;" but all the more important groups are in existence at the present day. The Red Coral (Corallium), so largely sought after as an ornamental material, appears for the first time in deposits of this age. Amongst the Echinoderms, we meet with Heart-Urchins (Spatangus), Cake-Urchins (Scutella; fig. 238), and various other forms, the majority of which are closely allied to ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... dried, as we do bladders. It is then split longitudinally, and the pieces sewed together, each seam being set with tufts or rather fringes of purple feathers; so that the vest is light, impervious to rain, and highly ornamental from its rich purple stripes. There is another entirely of rich Mazarine blue feathers; a sceptre most ingeniously wrought of scarlet feathers; and a cap of bark, with a long projecting beak in front, and a quantity ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Dallas. His sudden leap into prominence aroused curiosity among the wives and families of the latter, and he became the recipient of some social attentions. He accepted every invitation, and so well did he carry himself in company, so ornamental and engaging was he as a dinner guest, that he was soon in great demand. He possessed accomplishments, too, that increased the respect of his masculine acquaintances. For instance, he displayed a proficiency at golf quite unusual in men of athletic training, and they argued that any ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... so much to find expression, as to mock him with his childish incapacity adequately to use the very tools he loved. He would hang for hours over some scene in nature, caught in a woodland spell, like a nympholept of old; but when he tried to put in words what he had seen, what a poor piece of ornamental gardening the thing was! There were trees and birds and grass, to be sure; but there was nothing of that meaning look which they had worn, that look of being tiptoe with revelation which is one of the most fascinating tricks of the visible ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... walls, once crowded with merchants and seamen, are now only opened for the Carnival balls and other festivals sanctioned by religion. It is a square edifice, with light Gothic towers at the corners, displaying little ornamental sculpture, but nevertheless a taste and symmetry, in all its details, which are very rare in Spanish architecture. The interior is a single vast hall, with a groined roof, resting on six pillars ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... black pots, one containing a savoury stew, the others beans and vegetables, which he transferred to a deep platter, and proved himself no mean trencherman. The earthenware is of native make, by no means ornamental, but useful because it retains the heat; it resembles the produce of the Gold Coast, and the "pepper-pot" platter of the West Indies. His cup was filled as fast as he drained the palm wine, and, at times, he passed a huge mouthful to a small son or daughter, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... calls charity the "bond of perfectness;" alluding to the girdle of the Orientals, which was not only ornamental and expensive, but was put on last, serving to adjust the other parts of the dress, and keep the whole together. It is a bond which holds all the Christian graces in harmonious union, and, by keeping them together, secures a permanent completeness ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... placed there eventually, not because it was in any way necessary for their worship, but because it was customary. The small Tulsi plant, the common object of devotion amongst women, was the only visible indication of idolatry. This plant was growing in one of the courtyards on the sort of ornamental pedestal of brick and plaster which is the usual arrangement. It was allowed in condescension to the prejudices of the minority, and I was assured that it was only the few who ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... self-improvement combined with an unfriendly criticism of life as it goes on in our societies; it is there that he best displays the freshness and surprising trenchancy of his intellect; it is there that his style becomes plain and vigorous, and therefore, according to his own formula, ornamental. Yet he did not care to follow this vein singly, but must drop into it by the way in books of a different purport. "Walden, or Life in the Woods"; "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"; "The Maine Woods,"—such are the titles he affects. He was probably reminded by his delicate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Indian spoke, as if he felt that a splendid prospect of decorative, ornamental, and other delights was opening up to her. Nootka returned the glance as if she felt that a splendid opportunity of securing such delights for her was opening ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of old Egypt such as that of Khufu (Cheops) in the Bulak Museum were drilled by means of diamonds. AthenFus tells us (lib. v.) that the Indians brought pearls and diamonds to the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and this suggests cutting, as nothing can be less ornamental than the uncut stone. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... is easily grown and very fragrant. As ornamental as orange or lemon and very free flowering. Give almost no water in winter, or store in cellar. Plants ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... country towns, as the occasional residence of a set of idle superficial young men, whose only occupation is gallantry, and whose polished manners render vice more dangerous, by concealing its deformity under gay ornamental drapery. An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery, and proves that the soul has not a strong individual character, awes simple country people into an imitation of the vices, when they cannot catch the slippery ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... hard, sometimes three hours in the day, with notable advancement; at the suggestion of my cousin Pilrig, who was an apt musician, I was put to a singing-class; and by the orders of my Miss Grant, to one for the dancing, at which I must say I proved far from ornamental. However, all were good enough to say it gave me an address a little more genteel; and there is no question but I learned to manage my coat-skirts and sword with more dexterity, and to stand in a room as though the same belonged to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prandial fried fish, these trencher-men took from the dainties wherewith the ornamental plates were laden and gave thereof to their offspring. Now this was only right and proper, because it is the prerogative of children to "nash" on these occasions. But as the meal progressed, each father from time to time, while talking briskly to his neighbor, allowed his hand to stray mechanically ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... love me, they'll love my wife, and rejoice in my happiness," Leopold went on, sharply. "If they complain, why, we shall see who's master; whether or not the Emperor of Rhaetia is a mere figurehead. In some countries Royalty is but an ornamental survival of a picturesque past, a King or Queen is a mere puppet which the nation loads with luxury to do itself honor. That's not true of Rhaetia, though, as I'm ready to prove, if prove it I must. But I believe I shall be spared the trouble. We Rhaetians love romance; you are perhaps the one ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... with nothing on but an old shirt, and cotton trousers rolled up to the knees. Some had red shirts and blue trousers, others considered that a shirt was an effective outer garment. Some wore highly ornamental, dandified shirts, and trousers tucked into high, rusty, mud-covered boots. A few young men were in white straw hats, white shirts, and white trousers, with crimson leis round their hats and throats. Some had diggers' scarves round their waists; but the most effective costume was sported ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... unlocked by Mrs Jarley, who, attended by George and another man in velveteen shorts and a drab hat ornamented with turnpike tickets, were waiting to dispose their contents (consisting of red festoons and other ornamental devices in upholstery work) to the best advantage in ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... but he had made it a point to show himself the next morning, as if nothing had happened. Helen Darley knew nothing of it all until she had risen, when the gossipy matron of the establishment made her acquainted with all its details, embellished with such additional ornamental appendages as it had caught up in transmission from lip to lip. She did not love to betray her sensibilities, but she was pale and tremulous and very nearly tearful when Mr. Bernard entered the sitting-room, showing on his features traces of the violent shock he had ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... brilliancy with which they are lighted up. The natural language of the passions is, indeed, often figurative and fantastic; and with none is this more the case than with that of love. Still there is a limit. The feelings should, indeed, have their ornamental garb; but, like an elegant woman, they should be neither muffled nor exposed. The drapery should be so arranged, as at once to answer the purposes of modest concealment and judicious display. The decorations ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there were rabbits in abundance; while joining Brineweald to Hedlinge there was a small fast-running stream, called the Sprigg, which at certain points in its course, fell in picturesque cascades, surmounted by rockeries and ornamental foot-bridges. In the neighbourhood of these, on either bank, Sir Joseph had also built seats and bowers, and in the summer these resting-places were the coolest in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... were taken from the park pales and set to work at the parish stocks. Then came the painter and coloured them a beautiful dark blue, with white border—and a white rim round the holes—with an ornamental flourish in the middle. It was the gayest public edifice in the whole village, though the village possessed no less than three other monuments of the Vitruvian genius of the Hazeldeans,—to wit, the almshouse, the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have been by later systematists separated from the genus Otis. India, too, has three peculiar species, the smaller of which are there known as floricans, and, like some of their African and one of their European cousins, are remarkable for the ornamental plumage they assume at the breeding-season. Neither in Madagascar nor in the Malay Archipelago is there any form of this family, but Australia possesses one large species already named. From Xenophon's days (Anab. i. 5) to our own the flesh of bustards has been esteemed as of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in the house of the Discalceated Sisters of Mt. Carmel, or of the archbishop, or of St. Augustine's Church, that a certain priest of exceptional taste, Beloiseau's father confessor, dropped in on him to order an ornamental wrought-iron grille for the upper half of a new door. While looking at ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... Judge Hunt is conceded to have done, then our judiciary and not our criminals is our dangerous class. With such judges as Hunt, who has attempted to crush out the trial by jury, and make of the jury merely an ornamental tail to his judicial kite; with such teachers as the Albany Law Journal, which, while acknowledging Hunt's outrageous illegality of action, yet calls it "a mistake," and speaks of him as "a good and pure" man, the administrators and the expounders of law have become the most ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her strong brown face; and sat among us, eating or smoking her cigarette, quite cut off from all society, or only now and then included through the intermediary of her son. It was a position that might have been ridiculous, and she made it ornamental; making believe to hear and to be entertained; her face, whenever she met our eyes, lighting with the smile of good society; her contributions to the talk, when she made any, and that was seldom, always complimentary and pleasing. No attention was ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Windsor, in which the queen takes a very practical interest, regulating the books and studies, and paying frequent visits to it during the time of her sojourn here. The young girls are instructed in fine needlework; but the queen discourages embroidery and ornamental work, meaning to make practical, efficient wives for laboring men. These particulars, with regard to this school, were related to me by a lady living in the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the expense of engraving this most subtle example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and imagination in religious ornamental work of the time.] ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... gate emerged Basilio, grown fat and sleek, with an elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his jet-black, coarse hair plastered down smoothly. Stooping carefully behind an ornamental clump of bushes, he put down with precaution a small child he had been carrying on his shoulder—his own and Leonarda's last born. The pouting, spoiled Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa Gould had been married for ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... presents worthy of the plighted fair, And nuptial robes his busy train prepare— Robes wherewith Livia was herself attired, And those bright dames that to the beds aspired Of emperors. Yet the celestial maid Requires no earthly ornamental aid To give her faultless form a single grace, Or add one charm to her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and square Roman forms, took particular pride in avoiding horizontal lines entirely at the tops of their towers, as they did at the tops of their letters. Wherever they so occur, they are insignificant,—rather ornamental than constructive. Not so with the English; they kept the square tops to their towers, and contented themselves with the pointed superstructure. Let us see how Teutonic stubbornness arranged the matter. Each separate face of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... reinforcement for the police but it decreases accidents and has come to be looked upon as an advertising medium. In the downtown districts the high-intensity "white-way" lighting is festive. The ornamental street lamps have possibilities in making the streets attractive and in illuminating the buildings. However, it is to be hoped that in the present age the streets of cities and towns will be cleared ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... shinny clubs and bats, marbles and a kite. Sister Lizzie was the recipient of more than a quart of various colored beads taken from Aunt Lib's Jenny Lind waist. Ida Belle, the baby was remembered with a big Dutch doll that rolled its eyes, the mother with an ornamental sugar bowl and Lin with a pair of puff combs. A pair of skates and a bow and arrow ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... described as "the most venerable symbol employed in ornamental art and the favourite and most highly decorative motif in artistic design". It has been the inspiration of much, if not most, of the world's great literature in every age and clime, and the nucleus around which a wealth ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... letters, very much like those of the manuscript rolls of Herculaneum, and has three columns to the page, which is of the quarto size. Originally it had at the end of particular sections a small empty space of the breadth of a letter or half a letter, but no ornamental capitals, marks of punctuation, or accents, though some of these have been added by later hands. The divisions into sections made by the empty spaces above named are peculiar to this codex, not agreeing with those of any other system. Of these Matthew has 170; Mark, 62 (so ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... ancient masters of the world. They are six miles in circumference, and the remains are considerable, though not very distinct, but it is very easy to perceive that they are the ruins of a villa, or a collection of ornamental and luxurious buildings, and not of a town, which from their size they might be. Almost all the ruins of antiquity that adorn Rome were found here, or in Caracalla's Baths, which latter were supplied from this stock—all the Albani collection, most of the Museo Borbonico at Naples, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... important use of boxwood is for engraving purposes, it must be borne in mind that the wood is also applied to numerous other uses, such, for instance, as weaving shuttles, for mathematical instruments, turnery purposes, carving, and for various ornamental articles, as well as for inlaying in cabinet work. The question, therefore, of finding suitable substitutes for boxwood divides itself into two branches, first, directly for engraving purposes, and, secondly, to supply its place for the other uses to which it is now put. This, to a certain extent, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... its doors in such a time. When the confederates began to fight amongst themselves the class-rooms were reopened, intermittently at first, but after 1515 the teaching seems to have been continuous. Still the prevalent turmoil and poverty rendered it necessary to curtail all the mere honorary and ornamental adjuncts of the schools, and for several years no Rector was appointed, for the good and sufficient reason that no man of due position and wealth and character could be found to undertake the rectorial ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... to dream of seeing ostrich and other ornamental feathers, denotes that she will advance in society, but her ways of gaining favor ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... ere this moment of our embarkation the wide stone street facing the water had become suddenly deserted. The curious-eyed heads and the cotton nightcaps had been swallowed up in the hollows of the dark, little windows. The baker's boy had long since mounted his broad basket, as if it were an ornamental head-dress, and whistling, had turned a sharp corner, swallowed up, he also, by the sudden gloom that lay between the narrow streets. The sloop-owners had linked arms with the defeated captains, and were walking off toward their respective ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... points to the fact that she was bred to be an ornamental rather than what is called a useful member of society. This is all very well so long as fortune favors those who are chosen to be the ornamental personages; but if the golden tide recedes and leaves them stranded, they are more to be pitied than almost ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... may have held about his country's course. His duty to his post made it just as imperative that he set forth to the President the facts exactly as they were. And this the Ambassador now proceeded to do. For the mere ornamental dignities of an Ambassadorship Page cared nothing; he was wasting his health in his duties and exhausting his private resources; much as he loved the English and congenial as were his surroundings, the fear of being recalled for "disloyalty" or insubordination ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... to hear Jesse Bulrush read. He was a born sentimentalist, and this became by no means subtly apparent to Kitty during Crozier's illness. Whenever Nurse Egan was on duty Jesse contrived to be about, and to make himself useful and ornamental too; for he was a picturesque figure, with a taste for figured waistcoats and clean linen—he always washed his own white trousers and waistcoats, and he had a taste in ties, which he made for himself ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that is, retained, not for intrinsic use, but from their imaginative attraction upon an uncultured and rude population. All such elements tend to diminish simple efficiency. They are like the additional and solely-ornamental wheels introduced into the clocks of the Middle Ages, which tell the then age of the moon or the supreme constellation; which make little men or birds come out and in theatrically. All such ornamental work ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... in American towns are strong wire ropes, running high up across the street, from which, in the centre, depends, generally in ornamental wire-scroll letters, the name of the shopkeeper on one side and a resume of the articles he sells. In some cases these are illuminated at night, and then have a pleasing effect, besides helping to light the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money |
