"Tortoise-shell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which comes up to us from the town with its population of a hundred thousand souls. As to the products of this locality, they are mostly figured porcelain, embroidered silks, japanned goods, ebony and tortoise-shell finely carved and manufactured into toy ornaments. Every small, low house has a shop in front quite open to the street; but small as these houses are, room is nearly always found in the rear or at the side for a little flower-garden, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... molasses, and walked the little one off to school. What school was Patty had no idea. She had heard a great deal about the new "mistress," and wondered what sort of a creature she could be. She soon found out. Miss Judkins was merely a fine-looking young lady, with a tortoise-shell comb in her hair, not quite as large as a small chaise-top. She looked like other people, and Patty was sadly disappointed. There was an hour-glass on the desk full of dripping sand, and Patty wanted to shake ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... caretta, whose hooked and notched beak so completely recalls the warlike bill of a hawk, that it is usually known by the name of the "Hawk's-bill Turtle." You ought to know about this tortoise, for it is the one which furnishes tortoise-shell, that nice material which is so smooth to the touch, so pretty to look at, and so very fragile, that it seems only fit for the use of ladies' hands. I could hardly speak of tortoises without saying something of this one, out of whose back was carved the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... fancy." Pictures, books, coins, jewels, engravings, gems (over 8,000), tapestries, and furniture were all alike precious to Madame de Verrue. Her snuff- boxes defied computation; she had them in gold, in tortoise-shell, in porcelain, in lacquer, and in jasper, and she enjoyed the delicate fragrance of sixty different sorts of snuff. Without applauding the smoking of cigarettes in drawing-rooms, we may admit that it is less repulsive than steady applications ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... following Berry into her room, any more than had the fact that no one of us was ready for breakfast. I had no coat or waistcoat: so far as could be seen, Jonah was attired in a Burberry and a pair of trousers: a glance at Adele suggested that she was wearing a fur coat, silk stockings, and a tortoise-shell comb, while Jill was wrapped in a kimono, with her fresh fair hair tumbled about ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Who has not some faithful black Topsy, Tortoise-shell, or Tabby, or rather succession of them, whose biographies would afford many a curious story? Professor Bell[122] has well defended the general character of poor pussy from the oft-repeated calumnies spread about it. Cats certainly get ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... vulgarity, is not only an ambition but an ideal. It must always be grasped that this vulgarity is an ideal even more than it is a reality. It is an ideal when it is not a reality. A very quiet and intelligent young man, in a soft black hat and tortoise-shell spectacles, will ask for an interview with unimpeachable politeness, wait for his living subject with unimpeachable patience, talk to him quite sensibly for twenty minutes, and go noiselessly away. Then ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... display of all the luxuries of the toilet and adornment which Doggie had left behind at home. There were pots of [v]pomade and face cream, and nail polish; bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash; half a dozen gleaming razors; the array of brushes and combs and [v]manicure set in [v]tortoise-shell with his crest in silver; bottles of scent; the purple silk dressing-gown; a soft-fronted shirt fitted with ruby and diamond sleeve-links; the dinner jacket and suit laid out on the glass-topped table, with tie and handkerchief; the silk socks, the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... singing the burden of the last catch he had trolled with his fellows at the ale-house, all on a sudden he stumbled into a circle of sorcerer-cats squatting around a cross of stone. They were of immense size and of all colours, black, grey, white, tortoise-shell, and when he beheld them seated round the crucifix, their eyes darting fire and the hair bristling on their backs, his song died upon his lips and all his bellicose feelings, like those of Bob Acres, leaked out at his finger-tips. On catching sight of him the animals set up a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... that ran through the house was a large tortoise-shell cat. She had a prettily marked face, and she was waving her large tail like a flag, and mewing kindly to greet her mistress. But when she saw me what a face she made. She flew on the hall table, and putting up her back till it almost lifted her feet ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... not allowed the minutest deviation from daily routine and ritual. She would tell her friends—she ran over their names one by one—exactly what measures she had taken against the lace cover on the radiator-top and in regard to her two tortoise-shell hair brushes and the comb at right angles. How she had set everything in order—everything in order. She roved further afield as she wriggled her toes luxuriously on the hot-water bottle. If it pleased our dear God to take her to Himself, and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... won't," sobbed Submit. She looked across, and there beside Sarah's face in the window was another beautiful smiling one. It had pink cheeks and sweet black eyes and black curls, among which stood a high tortoise-shell comb. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... to me for ingratitude that I was glad to be back. I was still a boy, under twenty. My pockets bulged with the bank notes into which I had converted Mrs. Rushworth's cheque, and I found myself master of infinite delight. I presented Blanquette with a tortoise-shell comb and Narcisse with a collar, and I electrified my intimate and less fortunate friends by giving them a dinner in the dismal entresol at Didier's which was superbly styled the "Salle des Banquets." Fanchette and ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... chair. A sham tortoise-shell hairpin dropped from her untidy hair on to the floor with a little clatter. Her veil parted at the top from her hat. Little Alfred, terrified by an angry frown from the cornet player, was hastily returning fragments of partially ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for sovereigns and other great men to keep and to caress them, we shall see camels as variegated as cats, which in the woods are all of the uniformly-streaked tabby—the males inclining to the brown shade—the females to blue among them;—but being bred down, become tortoise-shell, and red, and every variety of colour, which domestication ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea how to ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... patterns, the ends of the ribbons falling down in large tassels. Under this belt is stuck the end of the enormous nambas, also consisting of red grass fibres. Added to this scanty dress are small ornaments, tortoise-shell ear-rings, bamboo combs, bracelets embroidered with rings of shell and cocoa-nut, necklaces, and thin bands bound under the knees and over ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... is different from that of the Philippines, and resembles that of the Marianas Islands. Their manner of pronouncing words is something like that of the Arabs. The woman who appears to be of highest station has many rings and necklaces of tortoise-shell, that are called here carey; and others of a material that is unknown to us. This material, which somewhat resembles ambergris, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... shown a great tortoise-shell, which was the cradle of Henry IV. Carved chests, dressing-tables, tapestries, clocks of that day, the bed and arm-chair of Jeanne d'Albret, a complete set of furniture in the taste of the Renaissance, striking and somber, painfully labored yet magnificent in style, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... at the farm here now. Papa's favorite is a little tortoise-shell kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little spotted one "Fannie." It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat procession; it was formed in this way. Old Minniecat headed, (the mother of all the cats) next to her came aunt Susie, then Clara on the donkey, accompanied by a pile of cats, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... consulted St. George through her tortoise-shell glasses, tilting her head high to keep them on her nose and perpetually putting their gold chain over her ear, which perpetually ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... they had protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of lofty mirrors, and The tables, most of ebony inlaid With mother of pearl or ivory, stood at hand, Or were of tortoise-shell or rare woods made, Fretted with gold or silver:—by command, The greater part of these were ready spread With viands and sherbets in ice—and wine— Kept for all comers at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... reading a paper on the wide porch—a young man then, with a big frame and a habit of looking out very solemn from under his eyebrows and over big tortoise-shell glasses. But he had boyish, joking ways of speech, as you know. He came down the walk between the plats of grass that looked like two peaceful, green rugs spread in the midst of all the noise and bustle of the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... of tortoise-shell, i.e. black and yellow cats. The tortoise-shell with very rare exceptions is female, the corresponding male being yellow, without any black colour. Doncaster found that a yellow male mated to a black female produced black male offspring and tortoise-shell females. When a black male ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... lying down, half sitting on the edge of one of the bunks, nursing the big stray tortoise-shell tom-cat which had shared his lodgings in the forepeak, and he had mistaken it for a rat as it crept up and down the chain-pipe to see what it could pick up in the cook's galley at meal-times, which it seemed to know by some peculiar instinct of its own; and although thus ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... lady's husband, Mr. Macfarlane, was agent in Scotland for Balhaldie. To him Balhaldie wrote frequently on business, sent him also a 'most curious toy,' a tortoise-shell snuff- box, containing, in a secret receptacle, a portrait of King James VIII. Letters of his, in April 1753, show that James Mohr was so far right; Balhaldie WAS living at Bievre, in a glen three leagues from Paris, and was amusing himself by the peaceful ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... have. She sat on a bench against the wall wondering, for the lovely clean stillness of the room encouraged thinking, and the clink of her father's hammers on the pipes fell presently into the regular tink-tink-a-tink of tortoise-shell rattles, keeping time to the shuffle and beat of bare feet on the dancing-place by the river. The path to it led across a clearing between little hillocks of freshly turned earth, and the high forest overhead was bursting into tiny green darts of growth like flame. The rattles were ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... which is either white or untidy, well-gloved or otherwise, he twirls his moustache, or his whiskers, or picks his teeth with a little tortoise-shell toothpick. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... at his visitor. The latter took a pinch of snuff from a tortoise-shell box, and flicked away a few wandering grains which settled upon the front ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... . "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall be glad to answer it." A soft thump. Old Jolyon had let the report and accounts fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell glasses ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her coral-rose breast-pin, and a tortoise-shell comb thrust through her knob of ginger-colored hair added to her dignity and height; while Miss Vi and Miss Rosie Snow were buttoned into their stylish princess gowns, with large red bows sprouting back of each ear. In truth, the dress of each member of the family bore some little touch which hinted ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... the friction of a tortoise-shell comb will electrify the hair and make it cling to the teeth. Sometimes persons emit sparks in pulling off their flannels or silk stockings. The fur of a cat, or even of a garment, stroked in the dark with a warm dry hand will be ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... hands and drew the burning brazier close to his feet; then, suddenly, from a sleeve of his robe he took a little box of the sacred tortoise-shell, pressed his lips to it, opened it, poured its contents upon the flame, leaned over with his face close to the brazier and inhaled the little puff of smoke that came ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... home to a hair," squeaked a little finicking personification of a modern Peruquier, sidling up to him, picking his teeth with a tortoise-shell comb. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... What lady carries snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!—ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an old tortoise-shell cat. He had a crumpled ear. He had a great scar across his nose. He had a broken leg ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Corinthian, which was richly decorated; the dipluviatum, where the roof, instead of sloping inward, sloped outward and threw off the rain-water into the street; the testudinatum, in which the roof looked like an immense tortoise-shell, etc. But these forms of roofs, especially the last mentioned, were rare, and the Tuscan atrium was almost everywhere predominant, as we ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... of the downright vulgarity of phrase in the last stanza, Wordsworth invents an impossible tortoise-shell, and thus robs his story of the reality which alone gave it a living interest. Any extemporized raft would have floated the boy down to immortality. But Wordsworth never quite learned the distinction between Fact, which suffocates the Muse, and Truth, which is the very breath of her nostrils. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better than many ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... from Tabasco, we arrived opposite to a town called Aguayaluco, which we named la Rambla, where we observed many of the inhabitants armed with shields of tortoise-shell, which the soldiers believed to have been gold, from being polished and shining in the sun. We came next to the mouth of the river Farole, which we named St Antonio. Whence we continued our course by the mouth of the great river Coatzacualco, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... portion bordering the Old Bahama Channel, and also opposite the Isle of Pines, which Columbus named Evangelista,—on this south shore, large numbers of turtles are taken annually, which produce the best quality of tortoise-shell. It is strange that the habits of these creatures down here in the Caribbean Sea should so closely resemble those of the tiny tortoises described by Thoreau as frequenting Walden Pond. The female ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... every animal that came in his way. Two half-grown llamas, which are naturally as quiet and timid as sheep, bit each other very furiously, until they foamed at the mouth. And, lastly, a large mastiff made his appearance, walking in a slow, measured gait, with a sleek tortoise-shell cat on his back; and she, in turn, was surmounted by a mouse, which formed the apex ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Then he holds the kitchen door open, and he calls, 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' and that great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing round his legs, and all the other cats followed after. I shut the door before these last ones got into the parlor." Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and various stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly black cat, which sat glaring at her with ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pregnant with suggestions of the past—colour, atmosphere, the subtle fragrance and flavour of other days. We read that James Anderson of Broadway has just arrived from London "in the brig Betsy" with a load of "the best finished boot legs." Another gentleman urges people to inspect his "crooked tortoise-shell combs for ladies and gentlemen's hair, his vegetable face powder—his nervous essence for the toothache, his bergamot, lemon, lavendar ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled by nature with that interesting and ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... of telling his hopes to a mixed but assuredly interested company. As he walked by the Lunn house, on his way to and from the harbor side, he looked at it with a feeling of relationship and love; he admired the clean white curtains at the windows, he envied the plump tortoise-shell cat on the side doorstep; if he saw the composed and pleasant face of Maria glancing up from her sewing, he swept his hat through the air with as gallant a bow as Longport had ever seen, and blushed with joy and pride. Maria Lunn owned to herself that she liked him ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... antique style, with oak panelling, and heavily carved bedsteads, of Queen Elizabeth's time, or of the Stuarts, hung with rich tapestry curtains of similar date, and with beautiful old cabinets of carved wood, sculptured in relief, or tortoise-shell and ivory. The very pictures and realities, these rooms were, of stately comfort; and they were called by the name of kings,—King Edward's, King Charles II's, King Henry VII's chamber; and they were hung with beautiful pictures, many of them portraits of these kings. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ripening tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... only comfortable chair in the house, by the way—had, in his less distinguished days, been his throne. In it he would sit all day long, cutting and whittling, filing and polishing curious trinkets of tortoise-shell for watch-guards and tiny baskets made of cherry-stones, cunningly wrought and finished. He was an expert, too, in corn-cob pipes, which he carved for all his friends; and pin-wheels for everybody's children. When it came, however, to such matters as a missing ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... shells, seaweeds, and fossils; all the ancient native weapons, such as bows, arrows, swords, and spears—now, alas! no longer procurable—sling-stones, and stones used in games, back-scratchers, hair-ornaments made of sharks' teeth, tortoise-shell cups and spoons, calabashes and bowls. There were some most interesting though somewhat horrible necklaces made of hundreds of braids of human hair cut from the heads of victims slain by the chiefs themselves; from these braids was suspended a monstrous hook carved from a large whale's ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... not so certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her tortoise-shell box (the companion of her whole married life, as she acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were still sitting over their wine and peaches; passing by Marion, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... to open the tortoise-shell box, and give Mr Merdle the tortoise-shell knife. On his doing so, his wife said to the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... each cranny and creek; In vain was their search After aught in the church, They caught nothing but weeds, and perhaps a few perch. The Humane Society Tried a variety Of methods, and brought down, to drag for the wreck, tackles But they only fished up the clerk's tortoise-shell spectacles. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... light overcoat on one arm and a heavy suitcase suspended from the other. He was compactly built without being too heavy, his smooth-shaven face wore an expression of good nature, and his eyes looked out on the world from behind tortoise-shell glasses with a friendly twinkle that concealed something of their sharpness. They had an inquiring expression now as ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... ground, as well as of the light and shadow through the leaves, chequering the ground as the fawn is dappled. Similarly the spots on the nebris of Dionysus, thought of sometimes as stars (apo tes ton astron poikilias, Diodorus, I. 11), as well as those of his panthers, and the cloudings of the tortoise-shell of Hermes, are all significant of this light of the sky broken ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... through a series of apartments filled to overflowing with the loot of European shops—ornate brass beds, inlaid bureaus and chiffoniers, toilet-sets of tortoise-shell and ivory, washbowls and pitchers of Sevres, Dresden and Limoges, garnish vases, statuettes, music-boxes, mechanical toys, models of all ships and engines, and a thousand other useless and inappropriate articles, for, when the late Sultan paid his periodic visits to Europe, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... went the pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... lost his balance and fell ignominiously to the ground. That would not of itself have been so bad, for, like children learning to walk, baby pigeons must have many a disaster before the art of flying is completely mastered, but, by some strange chance, it happened that a lean tortoise-shell kitten was prowling about one of the side streets and at that moment poked her head into St. Mark's Square. Now, in Venice, there are very few cats—in fact, because of the esteem in which pigeons are held, they are not popular pets. More ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... mouth. Above the nose there was a sort of bump, from which the low forehead slightly retreated to the curves of strong white hair. The ears were large but well shaped. In order to read he had put on pince-nez with tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, from which hung a rather broad black riband. His thin figure looked stiff even in an arm-chair. His big brown-red hands held the book up. His legs were crossed, and his feet were strongly defined by the snowy ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... gold embroidery, and wore the national red fez as a hat. The Japanese Minister wore dark clothes magnificently embroidered in gold. The Coreau Minister had a loose robe of sea-green silk with a tortoise-shell belt. The Austrian Minister wore the beautiful Hungarian costume, with the short cloak hanging ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is not company. He is simply a permanent institution and can go on dropping in as usual all summer if he likes. Ann-stasia adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandalwood rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair of real tortoise-shell combs not two months ago? And of course Maria Maxwell will not object; why should she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly know that he is in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... usually of ebony inlaid with tortoise-shell, and incrusted with arabesques in metals of various kinds. The incrustation had to be very exact, and to get it so, the artist clamped together two plates of equal size and thickness, one of metal, the other of tortoise-shell, ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... encircling a table all mosaicked with tarsia, and carved by Maestro Giacomo of Florence," a worker of considerable repute. One of the first to adopt the use of ivory, pearl, and silver for inlay was Andrea Massari of Siena. In this same way inlay of tortoise-shell and brass was made,—the two layers were sawed out together, and then counterchanged so as to give the pattern in each material upon the other. Cabinets are often treated in this way. Ivory and sandal-wood or ebony, too, have been sometimes thus combined. In Spain cabinets were ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... which Mr. Parr had glanced at Langmaid, who had never failed to respond. He was that sine qua non of modern affairs, a corporation lawyer,—although he resembled a big and genial professor of Scandinavian extraction. He wore round, tortoise-shell spectacles, he had a high, dome-like forehead, and an ample light brown beard which he stroked from time to time. It is probable that he did not believe in the immortality ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Duc de Grandlieu's, in the costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led to the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the "number" ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... see, from our old friend Moreno, at Havana," said Captain Brand, as he sat down on the settee, and with a pretty tortoise-shell knife cut round the seals. "Ah! what says he? 'Happy to inform you,' is he? 'Packages of French silks seized by custom-house on account of informal invoice and clearance.' Why didn't the fool forge others, then? Well, what next? 'Schooner "Reel," from Barbadoes, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... varnish or japan, clean well the substance which is to be japanned; then lay vermillion, tempered with shell-lac varnish, or with drying oil, very thinly diluted with oil of turpentine, on the places intended to imitate the more transparent parts of the tortoise-shell; when the vermillion is dry, brush the whole over with black varnish, tempered to a due consistence with the oil of turpentine. When set and firm, put the work into a stove, where it may undergo a very strong heat, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... are on show in the waiting-hall of the Palace of Justice. Why, I went there myself. You go through a swing door into a big place that, for cheerfulness, is no better than a monster coal cellar, and there you behold, laid out on a little black table, Mrs. Williams' woollen shawl, your Senorita's tortoise-shell comb, that had got entangled in it somehow, and my old cap that I lent you—you remember. I assure you, it gave me the horrors to see the confounded things spread out there in that dim religious light. Dash me, if I didn't go queer all over. And all the time swell carriages stopping before the portico, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... regarded her a moment over his tortoise-shell rimmed glasses. Then, "I believe you could," he had said, quietly ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... on the broad, luxurious couch that marked the precise centre of the semi-circle and was evidently intended to be the section of honour. Mr. Bingle leaned back, stretched out his slender legs, crossed his feet, and looked over his tortoise-shell glasses with a fine assumption of tolerance. He was still trying, after many years, to enjoy his own importance. Sad to relate, he still expected to wake up and find that he had but half an hour in which to eat his breakfast and get across town to the bookkeeper's stool he had occupied ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Morning. Fontange, the Tire-woman, her Account of my Lady Blithe's Wash. Broke a Tooth in my little Tortoise-shell Comb. Sent Frank to know how my Lady Hectick rested after her Monky's leaping out at Window. Looked pale. Fontange tells me my Glass is ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Tortoise-shell hooks capable of holding large kingfish and fair sized sharks are common among the natives of Darnley Island, Torres Straits. During the process of cutting and paring the hooks to the size and design required, the shell is frequently immersed in boiling water, which temporarily overcomes ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... depth of atrocity, but as far as enquiry of the Government at Sydney can make out, unconnected with labour traffic, but with the tortoise-shell trade. Skulls, it will be remembered, were the ornament of old Iri's house at Bauro, and skulls are still the trophies in the more savage islands. It seems that some of the traders in tortoise-shell ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But in summer the great inland sea was white with sails. Great fleets brought corn from Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, Africa, Sicily, and Egypt. This was the most important trade. But a considerable commerce was carried on in ivory, tortoise-shell, cotton and silk fabrics, pearls and precious stones, gums, spices, wines, wool, oil. Greek and Asiatic wines, especially the Chian and Lesbian, were in great demand at Rome. The transport of earthenware, made generally ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the yard lay; the sail being of mats, and the ropes of that kind of stuff of which fig-frails are made in Spain. Their only furniture consisted of a few fishing-hooks, the upper part of which was of stone, and the other of bone, tortoise-shell, or mother-of-pearl. They had no water on board, instead of which they satisfied themselves with the liquor of a few cocoa-nuts; in default of which they drank sea-water, which even the children did heartily. The Dutch ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... Sanders[45] were made with 600 pupae of Vanessa urticae, the "tortoise-shell butterfly." The pupae were artificially attached to nettles, tree-trunks, fences, walls, and to the ground, some at Oxford, some at St. Helens in the Isle of Wight. In the course of a month 93% of the pupae at Oxford were killed, chiefly by small birds, while at St. Helens 68% perished. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Nannie's story a great tortoise-shell tomcat appeared in the Earnest home. No one thought of asking Mrs. Earnest if she had brought him there, and the others knew nothing about him. More curiously still, when Mr. Earnest began to grow sulky or ugly, Sir Tortoise Shell would often walk ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... him at once into an adjoining room: the door of which was open. It was a large room, with a great window. Behind a desk, sat two old gentleman with powdered heads: one of whom was reading the newspaper; while the other was perusing, with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small piece of parchment which lay before him. Mr. Limbkins was standing in front of the desk on one side; and Mr. Gamfield, with a partially washed face, on the other; while two or three bluff-looking men, in ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... savages on the coast of New Guinea. He belonged to a small trading vessel from Ceram, or one of the neighbouring islands, which are accustomed to visit that coast to barter fire-arms, calico, and ironwork, for slaves, nutmegs, trepang, tortoise-shell, and edible birds' nests. She had been driven out of her course by a gale, and found herself on a part of the coast with which no one on board was acquainted. Before she could make good her retreat, she was perceived by some of the inhabitants. The inhabitants ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... impart solidity to the prospect of dinner. Mrs. Percival travelled in the hope of meeting her American acquaintance, or of making acquaintance with such Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood, in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over exhaustively every night before she ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... fear for the chair," I said, for it creaked under me very fearfully, having legs not so large as my finger; "if the chair breaks, Annie, your fear should be, lest the tortoise-shell run into me. Why, it is striped like a viper's loins! I saw some hundreds in London; and very cheap they are. They are made to be sold to the country people, such as you and me, dear; and carefully kept they will last for almost half ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... black-velvet cushions that brought out the watery reflections of old Sheraton as even the ancient horsehair had not done; the silver candlesticks, the miniatures, and on the mantel those two royal flower-pots whose precarious existence was to his aunt a very fearful joy. Even the tortoise-shell cat, sprawled between the two figures like a tiny tiger-skin, was in the picture. It was a room that gently put you into your place. Hugh recalled with a faint grin certain meetings here of philanthropic ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... women whom he knew. There in the mountains young girls did not wear them, save of the "circular" variety, designed to hold back "shingled" tresses. But from underneath a box of faded gum-drops and the store's one carton of cigars, came some of imitation tortoise-shell, gilt ornamented, of the sort old ladies sometimes stuck into their hirsute knots for mountain "doings" of great elegance, and the best of these Madge bought. Also she bought lace—great quantities of it, although, even after she had made the purchase, she had some doubt of just ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... instance, Tom, and if the poor brute was killed and skinned he'd look exactly like a white cat or a tortoise-shell." ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... as she accepted her discharge. And Mrs. Ogilvie, descending the broad staircase of the house with her air of magnificence, her jewels, and her red hair, rapped her fan suddenly and sharply on the palm of her hand, so that the delicate tortoise-shell sticks were broken. 'Why does she look at me like that?' she said fiercely below her breath. 'I am glad I dismissed her, and I am glad she cried! Why should not some one else suffer as well ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... tables, set with jasper, blood-stone, and lapis-lazuli, their feet carved into the claws of lions and eagles; screens of old raised Oriental Japan; massive musical clocks, richly chased with ormulu and tortoise-shell; ottomans superbly damasked; Persian and other carpets, with corresponding hearth-rugs bordered with ancient family crests and armorial ensigns in the centre, and rich hangings of English tapestry. The carved chimney-pieces were adorned with the choicest bronzes and models in wax ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... over me for the first time in my life. I took out the two great tortoise-shell pins that held it up, and let my hair tumble down around me. It falls in heavy waves ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... and I settled in Alexey's study," she said in answer to Stepan Arkadyevitch's question whether he might smoke, "just so as to be able to smoke"—and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he would smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigar-case and took ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... paintings, morocco bound volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax, alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered about ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... coarse linen, glass bottles, brazen vessels, brass for money, and iron for weapons of war and hunting; and they received back ivory, rhinoceros' teeth, Indian steel, Indian ink, silks, slaves, tortoise-shell, myrrh, and other scents, with many other Eastern articles of high price and little weight. The presents which the merchants made to the petty kings of Arabia were chiefly horses, mules, and gold ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Place, where the Ladies' Kennel Club had made their vast grand-stand, were a number of pitiful vestiges of the Waterloo of women-kind. There was a shattered Elswick bicycle, about sixteen yards and a half of nun's veiling, and fifty-three tortoise-shell side-combs. I gazed on the debris with apathy mingled with contempt. My movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I knew that I wished to avoid my wife, but had no clear idea how the ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... wouldn't own it," Ethel retorted, playing with a tortoise-shell paper-cutter she had picked up from the table by which she sat; "but your manner was not to be mistaken. It betrayed you in ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... heroic days are gone, and Nassau is given up to a sleepy trade in sponges and tortoise-shell, and peace is no name for the drowsy tenor of the days under the palm trees and the scarlet poincianas. A little group of Government buildings surrounding a miniature statue of Queen Victoria, flanked by some old Spanish cannon and murmured over by the foliage ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... you are very kind," Donald replied. Miss Bascom had adjusted her tortoise-shell lorgnette, and was surveying Donald ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... dull-green carpet neither stared one out of countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it. It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, "Walk on me all you want to, and don't be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs." A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur. The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little breeze. Wade, seated ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... think it probable that a trade might be opened with this hitherto perfectly unknown people and country."* The people inhabiting the islands fronting the coast, Captain Blackwood found to be highly inclined to trade, readily bartering a valuable species of tortoise-shell for European articles ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... superintend the process of securing their awakening, for it is an ungrateful task to criticise even a mistakenly generous person; and man being by nature prone to thoughtless judgments, the critic of a philanthropist who spends a million of dollars to provide tortoise-shell combs for bald beggars would shortly find himself in hot water. Therefore let us discuss not the causes, but some of the results of the system which has placed upon suburban shoulders such seemingly hopeless philanthropic ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the waist by a simple black ribbon, betrayed to advantage the graceful elegance of her figure. Her black eyes were large and soft; her complexion had the creamy pallor of a white camellia; and her beautiful dark hair, carelessly held together by a tortoise-shell comb, fell in a profusion of soft curls upon her exquisite neck. She was Madeleine, M. Fauvel's niece, of whom he had spoken ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... consider what play was possible under the present circumstances— beginning they hardly knew how, by dodging one another round and round the table, making snatches at one another, gradually assuming the characters of hunter and Red Indian. Only when the hunter had snatched up Aunt Jane's tortoise-shell paper-cutter to stab with, complaining direfully that it was a stupid place, with nothing for a gun, and the Red Indian's crinoline had knocked down two chairs, she recollected the consequences in time to strangle her own war-whoop, and suggested that ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and ragged before her lover joins her. She sniffs at the young lavender and calls. Her call is answered by the black tom-cat which appears, broad-backed like a marten, on the neighbour's fence; but the gardener's tortoise-shell approaches from the cow-shed and the fight begins. Handfuls of the rich, black soil are flying about in all directions, and the newly-planted radishes and spinach plants are roughly awakened from their quiet ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... in the kitchen had been put in command of colours, as well as of dough, and if the paste would have taken the colours, we may be sure her mice would have been painted brown, and her cats tortoise-shell; and this, partly indeed for the added delight and prettiness of colour itself, but more for the sake of absolute realization to her eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of the most accomplished ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Usher of the Black Rod carried, on a cushion placed on a seat of the carriage, a black portfolio stamped with the royal crown. At Brentford, the last relay before London, the carriages and escort halted. A four-horse carriage of tortoise-shell, with two postilions, a coachman in a wig, and four footmen, was in waiting. The wheels, steps, springs, pole, and all the fittings of this carriage were gilt. The horses' harness was of silver. This state coach was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... blue sky at its edges, the sunny park beyond; the warm-hued carpets on the marble pavement; the wicker chairs, with their bright cushions; the table, with its books and bibelots—the yellow French books, a tortoise-shell paperknife, a silver paperweight, a crystal smelling-bottle, a bowlful of drooping poppies; and the marble balustrade, with its delicate tracery of leaves and tendrils, where the jessamine ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... forgave the brutal fellow for his blundering, and she extricated herself from Father's arms, the colour slowly stealing back to her lips and cheeks. She shook her head a little, and the two braids, stuck full of tiny tortoise-shell hairpins, tumbled over her breast. Captain March nearly ate her up with his eyes, and then, through their windows, his soul might be seen worshipping, and begging the goddess's pardon on ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... build a new house. One has some acquaintance with everybody, from the clergyman to the loafer; few are the faces that one does not know. Even the four-footed animals of the neighbourhood are not strangers: this is the Doctor's Newfoundland dog; that is some old lady's tortoise-shell cat. One knows the horses, as well as the little urchins who ride them to water; the cows, and those who milk them. And then, country-folks are nature's freeholders; they enjoy a full portion of the earth, the air, the sky, with the thousand charms an ever-merciful ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Neapolitan fashion, called me thou in her very first compliment of welcome. Her daughter, then only ten or twelve years old, was very handsome, and a few years later became Duchess de Matalona. The duchess presented me with a snuff-box in pale tortoise-shell with arabesque incrustations in gold, and she invited us to dine with her on the morrow, promising to take us after dinner to the Convent of St. Claire to pay a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fire-screen. It represented a parroquet intensely crimson, on a background uniformly emerald; and the eyes of the melancholy lover dwelt wistfully upon the snowy hands selecting the different colors from a tortoise-shell work-box filled with spools ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... laughed at the tops of their voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in their ears. Old Bosc had never budged an inch—he was totally indifferent. That sort of thing no longer interested him now. He was stroking a great tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on the bench. He did so quite beautifully and ended by taking her in his arms with the tender good nature becoming a worn-out monarch. The cat arched its back and then, after a prolonged sniff at the big white beard, the gluey odor ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... tuck, flounce, nor anything of the kind. Necklaces and ear-rings are worn, but I am glad to say the nose in Ceylon seems to be preserved from the indignity of rings. The men's dress is rather scanty, their weakness being a large tortoise-shell comb, which every one wears; it reaches from ear to ear, and the hair is combed straight back and confined by it. Women are denied this crowning ornament, and must content themselves with a pin in the hair, the head of which, however, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... several objects of interest in Henry IV.'s room, in which he is said to have been born 13th December, 1553, including the magnificently carved bedstead; but the chief attraction is the tortoise-shell cradle, which as a rule Frenchmen come only to see. Why they should come is quite a different matter, seeing that although a tortoise's shell might make a very comfortable cradle for even such an illustrious infant as was Henry IV., yet as he never had anything ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... only exquisitely appointed, but stood prepared for use at a moment's notice; the bed itself was beautifully dressed; the dressing-table was decked with all manner of scent-bottles, mirrors, and trays, together with every conceivable toilet implement in tortoise-shell with a silver-inlay monogram—apparently A-M-S; the rugs were silken, princely, priceless; elusive wraiths of seductive perfumes haunted the air like memories ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... is black, and beautifully ornamented with small leaf-shaped spots of a delicate straw-colour. There are several other very pretty birds in this homely family; but the finest of all is Thripodectes flammulatus, the whole body being tortoise-shell colour, the wings and tail bright chesnut. The powerful tanager-like beak of this species seems also to show that it has diverged from its timid shade-loving congeners in another direction by becoming a ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Major Campbell, turning to look at Aunt Mary, who was beginning to show signs of embarrassment under so much scrutiny. He took off his eye-glasses, but immediately replaced them by a pair of large round tortoise-shell spectacles through which he ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... "be more aptly described than by comparing them to a white fowl drawn down a sooty chimney; it is, however," adds Mr. Layard, "a remarkable fact that a male bird of the pure sooty variety is almost as rare as a tortoise-shell tom-cat." Mr. Blyth found the same rule to hold good with this breed near Calcutta. The males and females, on the other hand, of the black-boned European breed, with silky feathers, do not differ from each other; so that in the one breed, black skin and bones and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... a tortoise-shell dagger just here, and gave her head an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair uncoiled itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy spiral. It was a sight to induce covetousness, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... frequently, and that others rarely, coexist without our being able to assign any reason. What can be more singular than the relation in cats between complete whiteness and blue eyes with deafness, or between the tortoise-shell colour and the female sex; or in pigeons, between their feathered feet and skin betwixt the outer toes, or between the presence of more or less down on the young pigeon when first hatched, with the future colour of its plumage; or, again, the relation ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the oil-cloth. Then Mopsey bounded into the room with three empty spools strung upon her tail. The spools were removed with great difficulty, especially the last one, which fitted remarkably tight. After that, Mopsey never saw a work-basket without arching her tortoise-shell back, and distending her tail to three times its natural thickness. Another child would have squeezed the kitten, or stuck a pin in it, or twisted her tail; but it was reserved for the superior genius of Johnny to string ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Florentine, ivory statuette attributed to Michael Angelo, representing Pan discovering a woman under the skin of a young shepherd, the original of which is in the royal palace of Vienna. On either side were candelabra of Renaissance design. A clock, by Boule, on a tortoise-shell stand, inlaid with brass, sparkled in the centre of one panel between two statuettes, undoubtedly obtained from the demolition of some abbey. In the corners of the room, on pedestals, were lamps of royal magnificence, as to which a manufacturer had made strong remonstrance against adapting ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... direction of his tail, as much as to say he should seat himself upon it. So he climbed up, and in the twinkling of an eye he was down on the ground, and the dragon had disappeared. He then went on until he found a tortoise-shell full of beautiful pearls. But they were magic pearls, for if you flung them into the fire, the fire ceased to burn and if you flung them into the water, the water divided and you could walk through the midst of it. The youth took the pearls out of ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Slave Ship; the color is absolutely perfect,' to the frank disapproval of our own George Innes, when he says that it is 'the most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted. There is nothing in it. It is not even a fine bouquet of colors.' Some one said it looks like a 'tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.' The lurid light that streams through the mist of the angry sea intensifies a ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... ends, and he purchased a French silk hat with a broad and curving brim. Having satisfied himself that the effect was good, he laid in a stock of similar articles, and further adorned his appearance with a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and a green umbrella. For possibly cool or rainy weather he provided himself with a coffee-coloured overcoat that had a velvet collar and tails ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... glanced at her over the tortoise-shell rims of her eye-glasses, but sat very quiet, lest she should delay the opening. She would like to know what could be in that very business-like looking despatch, and Laura would be sure to tell her. It must be something pretty positive, one way or another; ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and they all sat down on the floor to make a selection. Reba chose a quaint, silver buckle, Reliance selected a mother-of-pearl card-case, Edna decided upon a tortoise-shell comb. ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... sometimes felt as if I were a larger sort of helpless mouse in these moments, but sometimes Polly would be more friendly, and even jump into our laps, when it was a pleasure to pat her hard little head with its exquisitely soft, dark tortoise-shell fur. No matter if she almost always turned and caught the caressing hand with teeth and claws, when she was tired of its touch, you would always be ready to pat her next time; there was such a fascination about her that any attention on her part gave a thrill ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... wherever her claws chanced to touch left little, buttery fleurs-de-lis on the floor. She escaped the disastrous fire, not, like a dozen other fowls, by seeking refuge in the wind-break, but because she was in the coal-shed carrying on a hand-to-hand conflict with the tortoise-shell cat, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... dead. 'Tis but a polished tortoise-shell, of which the living inhabitant has long since crumbled to dust; but it still gleams in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... resources and a soil capable of producing the most varied vegetation of the tropics, a liberal policy is all that the country lacks. The products of the Philippine Islands consist of sugar, coffee, hemp, indigo, rice, tortoise-shell, hides, ebony, saffron-wood, sulphur, cotton, cordage, silk, pepper, cocoa, wax, and many other articles. In their agricultural operations the people are industrious, although much labour is lost by the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... introduced from America in the time of Queen Isabella and Queen Elizabeth, but ages before that period the Aztecs at their banquets had the "fragrant weed" offered to the company, "in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver." The smoke after dinner was no doubt preliminary to the siesta or nap of "forty winks." It is not known if the Aztec ladies, like their descendants in modern Mexico, also appreciated the yetl, as the Mexicans ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... bamboos, about twelve feet long, with lines of the same length made of twisted banana fibre as fine as silk, and equally as strong. My hook was an ordinary flatted Kirby, about half the size of an English whiting hook; Nalik preferred one of his own manufacture, made from a strip of tortoise-shell, ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the Red Sea, and the port of communication with Axuma, was, in the age of the Periplus, subject to the same prince, who possessed the whole coast, from Berenice. The exports from this place were confined to ivory, brought from the interior on both sides of the Nile; the horns of the rhinoceros, and tortoise-shell. The imports were very numerous, forming an assortment, as Dr. Vincent justly observes, as specific as a modern invoice: the principal articles were, cloth, manufactured in Egypt, unmilled, for the Barbarian market. The term, Barbarii, was applied to the Egyptians, to the whole ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... that he was obliged to stoop as he entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peasant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and in a doorway just beyond an elderly peasant woman ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seen before. But Archie was too busy trying to locate the man at the back to pay much attention to him. He detected him at last, owing to the fact that the eyes of everybody in that part of the room were fixed upon him. He was a small man of middle age, with tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. He might have been a professor or something of the kind. Whatever he was, he was obviously a man to be reckoned with. He had a rich sort of look, and his demeanour was the demeanour of a man who is prepared to fight it out on these lines ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... disinterred was carefully scrutinised; but, alas! no more golden images or nuggets of the precious metal gladdened our eyes! Nothing came in view but sand and lava, lava and sand, varied occasionally by the sight of some fragment of half-fossilised tortoise-shell, or the chalky bones of cuttlefish and similar debris of the deep, washed up by the sea, and buried a fathom deep and more amid ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dinner, being rather tired with my day's work, I was lying on the couch with a book in my hand, when gazing upwards I saw a large mass of something overhead which I had not noticed before. Looking more carefully I could see yellow and black marks, and thought it must be a tortoise-shell put up there out of the way between the ridge-pole and the roof Continuing to gaze, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot; and I could detect his head and his bright eyes in the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... exhausted. She had not the means of refreshing it with pretty novelties and sentimental toys in that line,—with albums and valentines, fancy portfolios and pocket-secretaries, pearl paper-knives and tortoise-shell cardcases, Chinese puzzles and papier-mache checker-boards. Nor was the Library replenished "to keep up with the current literature of the day"; its last new novel was a superannuated dilapidation; not one of its yearly subscribers but had worked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... gone!' he said. 'They had been gone but a few hours, for the fires were still burning, but no trace of them was to be found. I found, however, in a deserted rancho,—this!' and he held up a delicate comb of tortoise-shell." ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... and kind attention to her wants. And when the supper was at length over, Mrs. Van Brunt declared a little colour had come back to the pale cheeks. The colour came back in good earnest a few minutes after, when a great tortoise-shell cat walked into the room. Ellen jumped down from her chair, and presently was bestowing the tenderest caresses upon pussy, who stretched out her head and purred as if she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Hermes had on his tortoise-shell instrument is a much disputed question. Some say there were but three and that they represented the three seasons—spring, summer, and winter—into which it was the custom of the Greeks to divide their year. ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... put her handkerchief to her face, and her neck shake a minute convulsively. Duff Salter here sneezed loudly: "Jericho! Jerichew! Je-ry-cho-o!" He produced a tortoise-shell snuff-box, and Podge took a pinch, for fun, and sneezed until the tears came to her eyes and her hair was shaken down. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... wearily, and began to shake out the masses of her black hair, that was as the thickness of night spun fine. And as she drew out the thick tortoise-shell pins that bore it up, it rolled down heavily in a soft dark flood and covered her as with a garment. Then she leaned back and sighed again, and her eyes fell on a book that lay at the corner of her dressing-table, where she had left it before dinner. It was the book ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... great ladies surveyed me as I stood in the centre of an open space, surveyed me through tortoise-shell glasses on the end of a long handle, and beckoned ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... sustain the loud parts, then linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over her forehead, her cheeks, and her ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... about this third, or in fact, this fourth Nile? These animals, covered with scales as hard as the tortoise-shell the Spaniards under Columbus found in that river, and which, as we have said, caused them to name that stream Los Lagartos, are certainly crocodiles. Shall we declare that these Niles rise in the Mountains of the Moon? Certainly not, Most Holy ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... bands. Her waist was bare. She wore long pink drawers of silk, and for girdle she had the blue buds of the lotus, which are symbols of virginity. She was young and exquisitely formed. In her face you read strange records, and on her lips were promises as rare. Her eyes were tortoise-shell, her hair was black ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... listened to the ticking of a clock in the ticket office, but could not see its face; wondered how late it was, and how long she had been absent. Feeling very lonely and restless she closed the door, and sat down in the deserted waiting-room, glad of the companionship of a tortoise-shell cat which was curled up on a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... counsel, after citation of cases, after the applause of Market Street at some incidental obiter dicta of Judge Van Dorn's about the rights of property, after the court had put on its tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, which the court had brought home from its recent trip to Chicago to witness the renomination of President Taft, after the court, peering through its brown-framed spectacles, was fumbling over its typewritten ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... simplest dress seem all that can be desired. There was a knowing look to each little detail, from the slender silver bangles which appeared beneath the loose wrinkled wrists of their very long gloves to the tortoise-shell pins with which their hats were fastened to the tightly braided hair coiled low down on the nape of the neck. Candace's hair fell in curls to her waist. She had always worn it so, and no one had ever thought anything about it; but now, all in a moment, ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... lived happily together, in a fine house, a tortoise-shell Cat and a pretty white Dog: the Cat's name was Tittums; the Dog's, Fido. In course of time the pretty Dog fell in love with the Cat, and only waited for a good chance to disclose his affections. This came one day, when Tittums had put her paws on ...
— The Faithless Parrot • Charles H. Bennett
... the assurance, ran off at full speed to the cottage where his father resided, at the end of the village. The dominie, who was an old man, wore the huge tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... looked at Tom with amused curiosity through her tortoise-shell spectacles, which had slid rather farther down her nose than usual. "I forget. Didn't you use to see a good deal of Nancy at one time?" ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... bracelets, tassels, and combs among the draperies. Then she went back to her stool and began to paint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale; they made a curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane, with the reddish lumps of stone and peacocks' feathers and clear pale tortoise-shell ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... had been quite right in supposing that the air would be windless here, and full of great content he sat down with his back to the house wall. A tortoise-shell butterfly, encouraged by the warmth, was flitting about among the Michaelmas daisies that bordered the path and settling on them, opening its wings to the genial sun. Two or three bees buzzed there also; ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... we still have several varieties of the domestic cat, such as the tortoise-shell, which is the most prized, but when the above-mentioned cats became wild, after a while the several varieties disappeared, and left but one wild kind. Those which are now so often seen in the forest, and which do so much mischief about houses and enclosures, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it measured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that the thin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses of Time, were moving as ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole |
