"Button" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... point of the entertainment everybody voted it a great success; although the wind was slowly rising and blowing from a cold point, and our blanket-tent did not afford the perfect warmth and shelter we had fondly credited it with. The gentlemen began to button up their coats. I had only a light serge jacket on, so I coaxed Dick to sit at my back and keep it warm; for, whilst our faces were roasted by the huge beacon-fire, there was a keen and icy draught behind us. The hot tea was a great comfort, and we enjoyed it thoroughly, and after ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... "Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle," there was told how he became possessed of the machine, after it had nearly killed Mr. Damon, who was learning to ride it. Mr. Damon, who had a habit of "blessing" everything from his collar button to his shoe laces, did not "bless" the motor-cycle after it tried to climb a tree with him; and he sold it to Tom very cheaply. Tom repaired it, invented some new attachments for it, and had a number of adventures on it. Not the least ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... came in good time, and the Bond Street darlings weren't crushed in the least, because I had put them to bed so nicely with sheets and pillows of tissue paper. I decided to wear a pink chiffon, with tiny button roses laid like a dainty frame all round the low neck and where the sleeves ought to have been but weren't. The chiffon's embroidered with roses to match. Can you imagine me in such a dream? I can't. But it suits me, rather. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... found herself even studying the large check of his shooting-coat and the stockings which she had once laughingly admired, and which he had ever since worn. Her eyes rested upon the sprig of heliotrope which, with her own fingers, she had arranged in his button hole, as they had strolled down the garden together just before the start; and the faint perfume which reached her where she stood, helped her to realize that she was in the thrall of no nightmare, but that this thing had really happened. She ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Throughout the State a martial tone resounded. Threats of secession and war were heard on every side. Nightly meetings were held and demonstrations were organized. Blue cockades with a palmetto button in the center became the most popular of ornaments. Medals were struck bearing the inscription: "John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy." The Legislature, reassembling in December, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... answered Mr. Croyden. "The Japanese also gave us the Mandarin china so highly prized by collectors. This is an interesting ware because on it we find the tiny Mandarins pictured in the decoration, wearing their little toques or caps topped with the button denoting their rank. You see when the Thsing victors conquered the Ming Dynasty of China they decreed that many of the old Chinese customs and modes of dress should give place to those of Japan. Among other things they ordered that officials wear the toque ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... communicates with watchman or police in places of this kind. This, after some search, I found in a corner, over the desk of Brake's assistant, and this I touched. My effort brought no reply. I pressed the button again with more force and more desperation; I might say, ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... occurred at a distance. No amount of explanation conveys the idea unless they learn to read. Machinery is equally inexplicable, and money nearly as much so until they see it in actual use. They are familiar with barter alone; and in the centre of the country, where gold is totally unknown, if a button and sovereign were left to their choice, they would prefer the former on account of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... measuring 6 by 3-1/2 inches, is the same on both sides. The ground is all laid, or couched, with silver threads, caught down at intervals by small white stitches. In the centre is a circular silver boss, and out of this grow four lilies worked with silver thread in button-hole stitch; each of these lilies has a shape similar to its own underneath it, outlined with fine gold cord, and filled in with red silk; representing altogether white flowers with a red lining. These four red and white lilies make together the form ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... fingerboard increased the length of the neck to the modern standard. Of course, when fitted into the original space or socket from whence the neck was taken, the rounded part going to or above the button was now too large, this part was therefore cut, filed and finished down to the required ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... gorged on that impossible mixture. We had only Aubrey's pocket-knife, a paper-cutter, and a button-hook to eat with, and rather than to stop and wash out his shaving-cup we drank out ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... photograph of me on the other side ... it had been there all through the war .... You see," she added, after a pause during which her heaving bosom and quivering lip made her maddeningly lovely, "I don't care a brass button for ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... stout, gigantic, left-handed fellow, stepping forward, with a huge blue uniform coat and a plain anchor button, holding his hat in his left hand, and stroking his hair down his forehead with his right. I surveyed this man, as he turned himself about, and concluded, that the tailor who worked for him had been threatened with a specimen ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... recognition, but hardly fame. That he obtained by his next poem, the 'Essay on Criticism', which appeared in 1711. It was applauded in the 'Spectator', and Pope seems about this time to have made the acquaintance of Addison and the little senate which met in Button's coffee house. His poem the 'Messiah' appeared in the 'Spectator' in May 1712; the first draft of 'The Rape of the Lock' in a poetical miscellany in the same year, and Addison's request, in 1713, that he compose a prologue for the tragedy of 'Cato' set the final stamp upon his rank ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... at the visiphone, then impulsively pulled a chair over out of the line of sight of the viewing plate and gently set the little boy on it. She pulled the respirator from her face, pressed the button under the blank visiphone disk. The plate ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... Surely no one would argue that the nose grew to accommodate the name. Is it not more probable—nay, certain— that the name grew to accommodate the nose? Of course when Major Beak was born he was a minor, and his nose must have been no better than a badly-shaped button or piece of putty; but the Major's father had owned a tremendous aquiline nose, which at birth had also been a button, and so on we can proceed backwards until we drive the Beaks into that remote antiquity where historical fact begins and mythological ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... with me, was pursued often for its own sake, and became, though always with a sense of organic relation to the biography, continuous in itself." If a "hasty person" be one who thinks eleven years rather long to have his button held by a biographer ere he begin his next sentence, I take to myself the sting of Mr. Masson's covert sarcasm. I confess with shame a pusillanimity that is apt to flag if a "to be continued" do not redeem its promise before the lapse of a quinquennium. I ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... road upon which they were retreating. I attacked them with two divisions of the Sixth Army Corps and routed them handsomely, making a connection with the cavalry. I am still pressing on with both cavalry and infantry. Up to the present time we have captured Generals Ewell, Kershaw, Button, Corse, DeBare, and Custis Lee, several thousand prisoners, fourteen pieces of artillery with caissons and a large number of wagons. If the thing is pressed ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... singular appearance drew up before my windows. I knew it well enough: it was the vehicle of a handy, convenient man who came along every other morning to pick up odd jobs from me and my neighbors. He could tinker, carpenter, mend harness: his wife, seated in the wagon by his side, was good at a button, or could descend and help Josephine with her ironing. A visit at this hour, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... indicate what is not expected or what is not the natural outcome of what has gone before: "He delved deep into the bowels of the earth and found instead of the hidden treasure—a button." ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... with a wedding-favor in his button-hole opened to her, and, while he went to deliver her urgent message, she peered in wistfully from the dreary world without, catching glimpses of home-love and happiness that made her heart ache for very pity of its own loneliness. A wedding was evidently ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... it for time of need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... suspended from it by a cord, which is called the umbilical cord. When the child is born, the umbilical cord is cut, and the scar or depression in the abdomen where the umbilical cord was attached constitutes the navel or umbilicus (in slang language—button or belly button). The umbilical cord consists of two arteries and one vein embedded in a gelatin like substance and enveloped by a membrane, and it is through the umbilical cord that the blood from the placenta is brought to and carried from the fetus. The blood of the fetus and the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... hen's nest for the hen to lay a new one to; a very little will do, but even the boys know that there must be a germ of increment left, and when they stole the coppers from the Ecce Homo chapel not long since, they still left one centesimo and a waistcoat button on ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... drew to an end in the spring, and she had hurried her aunt back to town earlier in the fall than she would have chosen to come. Margaret had her correspondents among the working-women whom she befriended. Mrs. Horn was at one time alarmed to find that Margaret was actually promoting a strike of the button-hole workers. This, of course, had its ludicrous side, in connection with a young lady in good society, and a person of even so little humor as Mrs. Horn could not help seeing it. At the same time, she could not help foreboding the worst from it; she was afraid that Margaret's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to unbutton—a boy!" said the man, with his pleasant deliberation, as he began on the button that was always catching itself on Diego's hair. Diego cheerfully extended little arms and legs in turn for the disrobing process. Presently a small heap of garments lay on the floor, and the children were quite delicious in baggy blue flannels. All the four were laughing and absorbed, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Marie after she had been merrily criticised for sewing up the "mouth" of a "pocket" so narrowly that a stone could hardly fly out of it; "there are lots of boys who would make a worse job sewing on a button. Don't you remember last winter at a button-sewing contest, Paul Wetzler cast the thread over and over and over the side of the button—and ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... quite annoyed about it, and hustled us about as though we were common thieves, and threatened to run us into their filthy gaol. My word, how things have altered since the days when you could kill a Russian and nobody cared a brass button! But now—well, there's ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... pause in the death-roll," the Widow Criswell observed. She was engaged in sewing a button on a boy's ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... at fairs; And poach'd—and didn't respect gray hairs— Stole linen, money, plate, poultry, and corses; And broke in houses as well as horses; Unfolded folds to kill their own mutton,— And would their own mothers and wives for a button: But not to repeat the deeds they did, Backsliding in spite of all moral skid, If all were true that fell from the tongue, There was not a villager, old or young, But deserved to be whipp'd, imprison'd, or hung, Or sent on those travels which nobody hurries To publish at Colburn's, or Longman's, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Verus. "My story is a true one, and you all ought to be grateful to me for having released you from that tedious philologer who has now button-holed my witty friend Favorinus. I like your Alexandria, Titianus; still it is not a great capital like Rome. The people have not yet learned not to be astonished; they are perpetually in amazement. When I go ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thought of all that. The elevator is an electric one and any person can run it by pushing the button. All you have to do then is to unpack the wireless instrument here in your room, and after you have adjusted it you can certainly arrange in some way to get it on top of ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... followed by a bearded man, bowing very low, and carrying the wire baskets, Madam Liberality's godmother stopped near the toy-stall to button her glove. And when she had buttoned it (which took a long time, because her hands were stout, and Podmore generally did it with a hook), she said to Madam Liberality, "Now, child, I want to tell you that if you are very good whilst you are with me, and Podmore gives me a good report of you, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... looked for quite a long time at some beautiful silver ones, and when he asked his mother why she did not buy them, she had said she had not enough money just then. They were very like the kind on Aunt Anne's blouse, and having noticed that she did not use half of them to button it up, Dick had not seen any reason why they should be left on—although he had meant to tell her what he had done immediately ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... sickly green. From the scrimpy legs of the knickerbockers his knees shone bare and brown. Out of the sleeves, that reached only half-way below the elbows, his arms stuck freely, showing a broad band of untanned wrist between the button-less cuffs and the chubby, sunburnt hand. A pair of sadly-scuffed shoes, which originally had been nut-brown calf, were held upon his feet by one solitary button and a piece of string; while his headgear consisted ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... wore last night. Ah! there it is—this blue velvet, with diamond button. La! Yes, there is the place. It was caught—ha, ha, ha!—in that cursed door; and, egad, as one of Le Prun's confidential advisers has got ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... increased ambition. He describes also an Atlas which he constructed of wrought gold, to be placed upon a lapis lazuli background: this he made in extreme relief, using tiny tools, "working right into the arms and legs, and making all alike of equal thickness." A cope-button for Pope Clement was also quite a tour de force; as he said, "these pieces of work are often harder the smaller they are." The design showed the Almighty seated on a great diamond; around him there were "a number of jolly little angels," some in complete relief. He ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... horse's fodder, for there were sandwiches, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tinned meat, peas, corn, fruit, etc. Behind the saddle was rolled his blanket, inside his section of tent cover,—it takes six of them to make a real tent. They are arranged to button together. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... cattle on the road?" demanded Yasmini, sitting forward out of the darkest corner of the carriage and throwing aside a veil. "He cares nothing for thee!" she whispered. "Didst thou see the jasmine drop into his lap from the gate? That was mine! Didst thou see him button it into his tunic? So, Ranjoor Singh! That for thy colonel sahib! And his head will smell of my musk for a week to come! What—what fools men are! Jaldee, jaldee!" she called to the driver through the shutters, and the man whipped up ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... capital of the Buriats, were two typical Mongols with pigtails and clad in skins. One of them was wearing an official tassel attached to his skin hood, but no official button to show his rank. To-day saw a flock of larks, a hawk and a magpie. From daylight till dark, during which time we travelled a distance of perhaps 300 miles, there was no vestige of either trees, shrubs, banks or hedges, and no cultivation, only the rolling grass lands ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... paper, he undid a button of Benita's blouse and thrust it away there, knowing that thus she would certainly find it should she survive. Then he stepped out on to the deck to see what was happening. The vessel still steamed, but made slow progress; moreover, the list to starboard was now so pronounced ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... if it is," said the other sulkily. "Don't care a damn button not for you nor anythin' you're after! But you give me my two dollars sharp, and don't keep me another half-hour waitin'. That's what I reckoned for, an' I'm goin' to have it." ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Toplady seldom rose much before midday, it was not the mere luxury of repose that kept her in her chamber. As a rule, she awoke from refreshing sleep at eight o'clock. A touch on the electric button near her hand summoned a maid, who appeared with tea, the morning's post, and a mass of printed matter: newspapers, reviews, magazines, volumes, which had arrived by various channels since noon on the previous ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... its nose into the shop window. 'What! No soap? Bosh!' So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing catch-who-catch-can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... were forced to do something that brought them within reach o' the law. We'll put it that, when the thing was done, the one o' this pair felt it heavy upon his mind, but t'other didn' care no more than a brass button; an' the one that took it serious—as you might say— lost sight o' the other for years, an' meantime picked up with a little religion, an' made oath with hisself that all the profits o' the job (for there were profits) should come ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... little under the blow, which had been a heavy one, but her wits were clear, and, moving swiftly to a bell button, the pressure of her finger was answered by a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... you were going to buy the store out," said the waiting girl, impatiently pressing the self starter button ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... feeling, deep affection, or religious love. Fraternal is used less personally and intimately; it normally betokens that the relations are at least in part formal (as relations within societies). "The sight of the button on the stranger's lapel caused Wilkes to give him the cabalistic sign and ask his assistance." "Though the children of different parents, we bear for each other a true devotion." "Because we both are newspaper men I feel a ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... run wild, and start up the coast on their tangled course of a hundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart of this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mere round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous stretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitous cliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between no wider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... breath; now I felt it like the lightest zephyr. And quite unconsciously I had retained the enamel button. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... about appearances, and as sharp as a needle to discover any discrepancies in her attire. He was too polite to put his criticisms into words, but his face spoke volumes, and certain historic occasions, when she had sat smarting beneath the consciousness of a missing button or a crooked tie, had made a lasting impression on the mind of the careless young woman. Nowadays, however fleeting might be her visit to the Grange, she never went without a careful examination of her appearance. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said, quietly, "pretty considerable bad. Charley, you fasten that door;" for the door into the shed, which had been secured only by a button, was wide open. "You get the hammer and two, three big nails, and drive 'em in," he continued. "Maybe more them darn ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... black eyes flashed at Button, who now looked up from the orange he was peeling and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... minutes before triggering time, I reached over and punched the channel button on operations frequency. Immediately the usual operations chatter came rushing out at us from the speaker. Suddenly a voice blasted out saying, "Ready, Sam? Clear, everybody! Eyes off! Ten to go!" ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... over the mountains on foot. Indeed, on the White Mountains now, the ladies best equipped ride up those steep pulls on men's saddles. For that work this is much the safest. Have a simple skirt to button round your waist while you are riding. It should be of waterproof,—the English is the best. Besides this, have a short waterproof sack with a hood, which you can put on easily if a shower comes. Be careful that it has a hood. Any crevice between the head cover and the back ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... (rulers or magistrates) but are known to foreigners as mandarins (q.v.). The mandarins are divided into nine degrees, distinguished by the buttons worn on the top of their caps. These are as follows:—first and highest, a plain red button; second, a flowered red button; third, a transparent blue button; fourth, an opaque blue button; fifth, an uncoloured glass button; sixth, an opaque white shell button; seventh, a plain gilt button; eighth, a gilt button with flowers in relief; ninth, a gilt button with engraved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... be trusted. Accidents happen so quickly that it is over before we know it and the terrible damage is done. Sometimes the trigger will catch on a coat button or a twig, and, bang! an unexpected discharge takes place and if you were careless just for an instant, it may cost some one his life. Especial care must be taken in loading and unloading a gun. It is at this time that a gun is most ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... lying on the floor of his bedroom, flat on his back, his eyes closed, and with one foot resting on an overturned chair; and horrified, as I came closer, to see a large purple bruise on his forehead, and a heavy iron poker lying on the floor beside him. The diamond cuff-button was also gone from his right cuff, but the rays of the morning sun, coming through the east windows, shone on the other glittering bauble, still in his ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... despondently, regaining his breath and blinking the water from his eyes, when something caught to a sleeve button on his tunic made him stare. It was a short piece of black-and-white striped ribbon—the Order of the Iron Cross—which the German had worn in a breast ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... steal through the bushes, and snatch From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood: A button, a loop, or that luminous patch That gleams in the moon like ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... looked down into a silent inner court, deaf to the clatter of the streets, and sleep haunted the very air, distracted, if at all, by the instant facility and luxury of the appliances. Was it really in Spain that a metallic tablet at the bed-head invited the wanderer to call with one button for the camerero, another for the camerera, and another for the mozo, who would all instantly come speaking English like so many angels? Were we to have these beautiful chambers for a humble two dollars and forty cents a day; and if it was true, why ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... of the simplest operations. The same person blows the bellows, stirs or mends the fire as there is occasion, heats the iron, and forges every part of the nail: in forging the head, too, he is obliged to change his tools. The different operations into which the making of a pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them much more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are performed, exceeds ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... him for a moment, unslung the small bag he carried over one shoulder and dipped into it for a tiny, two-way radio. He pressed the buzzer button, then held it up to his mouth. "Jack, Jimmy, Dave. Here we are. Took donkey's years, but I found them. You chaps zero-in here." He left the device on and set it to one side, then yawned and settled himself to the ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... on the other side of the town, would have found two cotton mills near where Whiting's jewelry factory now stands, a third near the site of the "Company's" shop, and still a fourth at Falls Village. Farther on he would have come upon the rude beginnings of the button factory which has flourished so long at Robinsonville; a nail factory at Deantown and another at the Farmers, as well as a cotton mill on the spot where the stove foundry now stands in the same village. Robert Saunderson's forge would ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... are wet!" he exclaimed; "and cold too, without doubt, my poor leetle friend." He fingered the top button of his coat doubtfully, as though wishing to take it off and wrap her in it; but although it was a great-coat there was no other underneath it, and he changed his mind with a little ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... still seems to me to underrate, or rather to shirk, the significance of that most compendious parable which he thus relates in a letter to Mr Henry James:—'Do you know the story of the man who found a button in his hash, and called the waiter? "What do you call that?" says he. "Well," said the waiter, "what d'you expect? Expect to find a gold watch and chain?" Heavenly apologue, is it not?' Heavenly, by all means; but I think Stevenson relished ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... impatiently. "It's nothing more nor less than that I had to ring twice for poor Lydia before she came," she explained to Dundee. "Tracey is full of original ideas about cocktails, and wanted some sort of bitters. He was going to shout for Lydia, but I stepped on the button under the dining table, and the poor thing—in the basement nursing her jaw, probably—didn't hear. Tracey and I got to kidding, as Janet says, and had scarcely noticed how long Lydia was in coming. I rang again, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... election in a California town, one of these men sufferers, mistaking me for a voter, took me by a button of my coat, and poured forth a tale of woe so long that, unable to endure it longer, I cut off the button and fled. He did not notice my departure, and two hours later, there he was holding on to ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How easily with a word could I ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... a button, and the consequent anxiety as to losing a garment, denotes prospective losses ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the girls ever learned their trades thoroughly. Some were taught to make sleeves; others cuffs or button-holes, and so on. The result was that in a short time each one became very expert and quick at one thing; and although their proficiency in this one thing would never enable them to earn a decent living, it enabled Mr Sweater ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Giles and Basil took part with great credit, though neither was fortunate enough to outstrip the winner, a fleet-footed little brother of Charlotte Perry. The obstacle races were voted immense fun, the humorous feature being the performance of such feminine tasks as needle threading or button stitching by the boys, and rapid bean sorting by the girls. Giles and Basil were successful in a three-legged race, and Martin, to his huge delight, won the sack race for visitors under seven. He bore away his prize—an indiarubber ball—with great pride to show to Beatrice. Long jumping and high ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... shaved, you shake the lather off your razor and brush, dab what is left of the original water over the torn parts of your face, seize the opportunity, while you have the mirror before you, of combing your hair with your fingernails, and button your shirt collar. The performance concluded, you are good for forty-eight hours more, having a perfect alibi if anyone comments on your facial growth. You are not, however, in any condition to attend a revival meeting or to bless the power-that-be ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... was a perfectly modern and up-to-date "ascenseur," nicely upholstered and lighted by electricity. Mr. Bond ushered his visitors inside, closed the door, pressed a button, and immediately they shot aloft, landing ultimately in a kiosk in Count Sutri's garden at the top of the cliff. Feeling as if a magician had used occult means to transport them back to safety, the girls gazed round highly delighted to find themselves out of the cove. Their host, to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... are too many necessary chances that have to be taken, in this work." Verkan Vall pressed the button on the hand battery. The globe on the floor flashed and vanished. "Yesterday, five paratimers were arrested. Any or all of them could have had door-activators with them. Stranor Sleth says they were not tortured, but that is a purely inferential statement. ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... advertising, writing, canvassing, and button-holing in England, had kept a newspaper on foot, and was able to point to powerful friends in Parliament and in London mercantile circles. By giving scrip supposed to represent plots and farms in its New Zealand territory, it ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... arctic, and which is the likeliest way, that of Bartison the Hollander, under the Pole itself, which for some reasons I hold best: or by Fretum Davis, or Nova Zembla. Whether [3001]Hudson's discovery be true of a new found ocean, any likelihood of Button's Bay in 50. degrees, Hubberd's Hope in 60. that of ut ultra near Sir Thomas Roe's welcome in Northwest Fox, being that the sea ebbs and flows constantly there 15. foot in 12. hours, as our [3002]new cards inform us that California ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... always melancholy and anything but good society, For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and wringing of hands and shaking of heads: She wouldn't hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it was a work neither of necessity nor of piety, And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlour dinner, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... action, yet no radical change in plans, as the machinery was already prepared and in position. Luck had been with the conspirators when Frederick called in Enright to draw up the will. What followed was merely the pressure of his finger on the button. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... pavilion, but Tisdale excused himself from joining them, and was left alone again with his thoughts. Then he was conscious the other women had remained in the apartment. They had come into the inner room, and Mrs. Feversham, having found an electric button, flooded the interior with light. On the balcony a blue bulb glowed. Tisdale turned a little more and, leaning on the casement, waited for them to ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Potter in front of the Village Library, and invited a purchase of his wares, which at this time included campaign buttons of Col. Roosevelt and Judge Parker, attached to packages of chewing-gum. "Here ye are, Bishop," he cried; "Get a button for your favorite candidate!" The Bishop impartially selected a button of each kind, and pushed the chewing-gum aside. "Take your goom, Bishop, take your goom," urged Brady, as the Bishop moved away. "No, certainly not," was the firm reply. But Doc Brady was insistent, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... to gain her three-and-six a week. The unfortunate girl, having been taught sewing by Frances, made coarse shirts for the common people and the army. For these she received half-a-crown a dozen. They had to be hemmed, stitched, provided with collars and wristbands, buttons, and button holes; and at the most, when at work twelve and fifteen hours a day, she rarely succeeded in turning out more than fourteen or sixteen shirts a week—an excessive amount of toil that brought her in about three shillings and fourpence a week. And the case of this poor girl was neither ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... thinking of Ethelinda and the possible effect the two girls might have on each other. At any rate it was an experiment worth trying. It might prove beneficial to them both. She turned to Mary with a smile, and pressed a button beside her desk. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of apprehension, yet I resolved to show as few signs of fear as possible; and therefore told them, unless my hat was returned to me, I should go no farther. But before I had time to receive an answer, another drew his knife, and seizing upon a metal button which remained upon my waistcoat, cut it off, and put it in his pocket. Their intention was now obvious, and I thought that the more easily they were permitted to rob me of everything, the less I had to fear. I therefore allowed them to search my pockets without resistance, and examine every ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... good-humour. In dress, he was both smart and various; indeed, we feel a difficulty in fixing him in any particular costume, so frequent and opposite were his changes. He had coats of every cut and colour. Sometimes he was the racing man with a bright-button'd Newmarket brown cut-away, and white-cord trousers, with drab cloth-boots; anon, he would be the officer, and shine forth in a fancy forage cap, cocked jauntily over a profusion of well-waxed curls, a richly braided surtout, with military overalls strapped down ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... that swells, the skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward after the same manner as the ears of Wheat and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... was not unlike that of the sun and the wind in the proverbial saw. Viennese suavity induced Bonaparte to take off his coat and show himself as he really was: while the conscientious bluster of Grenville and Pitt made the First Consul button up his coat, and pose as the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... on getting what you want. And, remember, your soul is a center of all-power, and you can accomplish what you will to. "I'll find a way or make one!" is the spirit that wins. I know a man that is now head of a large bank. He started there as a messenger boy. His father had a button made for him with a "P" on it and put it on his coat. He said, "Son, that 'P' is a reminder that some day you are to be the president of your bank. I want you to keep this thought in your mind. Every day do something that will ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... beginnings of the World. The enormous, all-conquering, flame-crowned Host, noble every soldier in it; sacred, and alone noble. Let him who is not of it hide himself; let him tremble for himself. Stars at every button cannot make him noble; sheaves of Bath-garters, nor bushels of Georges; nor any other contrivance but manfully enlisting in it, valiantly taking place and step in it. O Heavens, will he not bethink himself; he too is so needed in the Host! It were so blessed, thrice-blessed, for himself ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... carry arms?—a pistol or a dagger?—one can never tell what may happen. The picture of St. George opens to the right when you press on a button-shaped handle, and when open it just covers Timea's ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... may best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility: with what measure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... livery. Upon their left sleeves was worked the gold monogram "A. D." In their caps both men wore cockades that resembled shaving-brushes. A tiny mop of a lap-dog, imprisoned within the closed body of the car, was barking frenziedly at the throng. He was an animated bundle of cotton, with shoe-button eyes sewed into one end. As for the car itself, Lorelei decided it to be a combination of every absurd tradition of the coach-builder's art. Across the doors, in gold letters an inch high, was the name ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... to have to stand behind counters, sort drawers full of ribands, tape, and reels of cotton, and wait on her townswomen! May could think of no fitting parallel unless the pathetic one of that miserable young princess apprenticed to the button-maker, dying with her cheek on an open Bible, at the text, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... idea—only," she broke off, "I can't think how to do it. It's all so queer. These Professors," she went on, "live in large houses built round grass plots each in a kind of cell by himself. Yet they have every convenience and comfort. You have only to press a button or light a little lamp. Their papers are beautifully filed. Books abound. There are no children or animals, save half a dozen stray cats and one aged bullfinch—a cock. I remember," she broke off, "an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the conservatory ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... rock, awaiting Mr. Slinkton's return. The twilight was deepening and the shadows were heavy, when he came round the point, with his hat hanging at his button-hole, smoothing his wet hair with one of his hands, and picking out the old path with ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... species of the pygmy or ground-rattlesnakes. They attain to a length of only about twenty inches, and present the general characteristics of the true rattlesnakes, with the exception that the rattle is small, consisting of but one single button at the end of the tail. These serpents are exceedingly vicious, and usually bite without warning. Contrary to the general opinion, however, the wounds they inflict are rarely, or never, followed by serious consequences in man. One species ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... the upper button of his pea-jacket so as to give him more breath, and, putting down his peddler's pack to relieve himself as much as possible, the outlaw strode through the hall door, down the steps, and down the evergreen avenue leading ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... twenty by fifteen by twelve inches, replace its cover and front side by bars an inch apart, and make in this front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such [learning by trial and error]. A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... more about that light, than about themselves; but Mr. Powers seemed to me to defy art to lord it over his splendid mechanical genius, the self he managed so well. To prove beyond a doubt that material could not resist him, he would step from the studio into an adjoining apartment, and strike off button-like bits of metal from an iron apparatus which he had invented. It was either buttons or Venuses with ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the Paris police—that's evident," returned the journalist. "They would throw fits on the floor if I were so much as to carry off a coat-button. No, we must hide the coat and stick in the bushes again, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too propitious to ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... who to a certain extent took my place in Therese's favour was the old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground floor. In a tall hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be button-holed in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably with downcast eyes. He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried to edge towards the front door. I imagine he didn't put a great value on Therese's ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the wheel house are most ingenious. For example, should fire break out the captain has only to open a cupboard which tells him where it is, and by touching a button he can flood any one of the six watertight compartments. A fan works automatically in this cupboard every five minutes, and if there is smoke in any compartment it is sucked up its corresponding tube. There are thirty-eight electric clocks on the ship, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... put his finger on the bell button Laura herself opened the door. She was radiant of face and exquisite in ball costume as she threw open the door and stood framed ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... Obed turned a button that none of them had thus far noticed, fastened on the wall Immediately a section slipped down exposing a cavity beyond that proved to be a regular sleeping bunk, fully capable of "housing" any ordinary person. It was plain ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of the body; for, squatting down and being struck in the back, it is naturally on her back that she ought to have fallen. The murderer used a sharp narrow weapon, which was, unless I am deceived, the end of a foil, sharpened, and with the button broken off. By wiping the weapon upon his victim's skirt, the assassin leaves us this indication. He was not, however, hurt in the struggle. The victim must have clung with a death-grip to his hands; but, as he had not taken ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... lighted vestibule of the flats next door. In drawing the key from her bag she dropped it: he picked it up and put it in the lock himself. She led the way without comment up the darkened stairs, and on the landing produced another key, opened the door of her rooms, fumbled for the electric button, and suddenly the place was flooded with light. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ever dream of being, that it is hard to understand the way in which the leaders of the Red Cross in the supreme critical moment when the mere war with Germany was being stupendously precipitated into forty wars of forty nations with themselves, at the very moment when with one touch of a button the new vision of the people could have been turned on instead of the old one and the hundred million people stood there asking them, snapped off the light, dismissed the hundred million people—clapped ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... consist, for a commander, in a placard, which is worn on the coat over the left side of the breast; a large cross hanging from a wide ribbon fastened round the neck; and a small cross, fastened by a narrow ribbon to the upper button-hole, on the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... after he had backed out into the trivial remains of the rain-storm before he could replace with more tranquillizing images the vision of the philosophe reclining among her pillows, in the act of making that uneasy movement of her fingers upon the collar button of her robe, which women make when they are uncertain about the perfection of their dishabille, and giving her inaudible adieu with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... decked out in layer after layer of clothes until he or she has lost all semblance to that beautiful thing that an all-wise Providence has designed us to be. Man will wear under-clothes and outer clothes. He will devise an absurd bit of starch, button-holes and tails called a shirt, in which doubtless he will screw diamond-studs, and over which he will wear a resounding waistcoat embroidered with all sorts of wild-flowers in bloom. Then will come a stiff uncomfortable ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... packet of letters, kissed the crumpled calico rose, the button she had pulled off his coat in a drunken fit and preserved for love, and she even slipped on her wrist the last few pearls that remained of the chaplet she wore when they played at sweethearts in The Lovers' Knot. But after the love-tokens had been put back in the box, and Kate again asked Mrs. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... could say, On a winter's morn, on a stormy day, In a sieve they went to sea. And when the sieve turned round and round, And every one cried, "You'll all be drowned!" They called aloud, "Our sieve ain't big; But we don't care a button, we don't care a fig: In a sieve we'll go to sea!" Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green and their hands are blue; And they went ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... as he crossed to the chair beside Cappy's desk, the old gentleman noticed that his visitor walked with a slight limp, and that his left forearm had been amputated half way to the elbow. To the observant Cappy, the American Legion button in Mr. ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... organizing a new company, and, figuring impatiently, he pressed the button for Mrs. Wald, his secretary. She appeared at once and quietly, her notebook and pencil ready, took a place at his side. "Run this out, please, Mrs. Wald," and an involved financial transaction followed. What he wanted to ascertain was, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as you say. Holidays are not in the least wearisome any more. Plague on it! When a man tells me now that he hates holidays, I find myself getting very wroth. I pin him by the button-hole at once, and tell him my experience. The fact is, if I were at dinner on a holiday, and anybody should ask me for a sentiment, I should say, ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various |
