"Hempen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little strand of hempen rope, and how I watched it there, With all around a hell of sound, and darkness and despair; A little strand of hempen rope, I watched it all alone, And somewhere in the dark behind I heard a woman moan; And somewhere ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... is now a notable innovation, which marked the advent of a new age. Instead of the prevailing hempen cables with which these cruisers had been supplied and had been in use for centuries among our ships, these cutters were ordered to be furnished with chain cables "in order that the vessels may have the less occasion for going to a King's Port to refit or make purchases." If a man were injured ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... tend the breeding cattle in the hamlet. In Nimar they generally rented a little land in the village to give them a footing, and paid also a carrying fee on the number of cattle present. Their spare time was constantly occupied in the manufacture of hempen twine and sacking, which was much superior to that obtainable in towns. Even in Captain Forsyth's [226] time (1866) the construction of railways and roads had seriously interfered with the Banjaras' ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... morning, when the Harvester had completed his work at the cabin and barn and breakfasted, he took a mattock and a big hempen bag, and followed the path to the top of the hill. As it ran along the lake bank he descended on the other side to several acres of cleared land, where he raised corn for his stock, potatoes, and coarser ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... out of his pocket Raskolnikov's old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. "I did not go empty-handed—they took the size from this monster. We all did our best. And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that. Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable front.... Well now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles twenty-five copecks the suit—together three roubles five copecks—a rouble and a half for the boots—for, you see, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Who deals with dead men, Once cut up a fellow whose spirit had fled, man, Who (the fellow) perchance Had indulged in that dance Performed at the end of a hempen thread, man; And the cut-up one, (A sort of a gun!) Like Banquo, though he was dead, wasn't done, Insisted in very positive tones That he'd be ground to calcined manure, Or any other evil endure, Before he'd give ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... by after this. Many times did the bell in the market place ring out to call the judges together. Many wrongs were righted, many ill-doers were punished. At last the hempen rope was almost worn out. The lower part of it was un-twist-ed; some of the strands were broken; it became so short that only a ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... [Greek: koile te pharanx, kai trechees agmoi], and other passages. The manner of hunting the purple fish is thus described by Pollux, i. 4, p. 24. They plat a long rope, to which they fasten, like bells, a number of hempen baskets, with an open entrance to admit the animal, but which does not allow of its egress. This they let down into the sea, the baskets being filled with such food as the murex delights in, and, having fastened the end of ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... him how in ancient days three warriors came from Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and Lochow,—how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,—how Diarmid O' Duin, i.e. son of "the Brown," slew with his own hand the mighty boar, whose ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last; O were his lips to mine but joined so fast! With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground, And turn me thrice around, around, around. As Lubberkin once slept beneath a tree, I twitch'd his dangling garter from his knee; He wist not when the hempen string I drew. Now mine I quickly doff of inkle blue; Together fast I tye the garters twain, And while I knit the knot, repeat the strain: Three times a true-love's knot I tye secure, Firm be the knot, firm may his love endure. With my sharp heel I three times mark ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... to kneel at Fairchild's side a moment later with a hempen strand, as he tied the man's hands behind his back. There was no need to worry about Harry. The yells which were coming from farther along the stope, the crackling blows, all told that Harry was getting ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... glowing fire, I have fled as a spear-head, of woe to such as has a wish for it; I have fled as a fierce hull bitterly fighting, I have fled as a bristly boar seen in a ravine, I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat, On the skirt of a hempen sheet entangled, That seemed of the size of a mare's foal, That is filling like a ship on the waters; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless sea I was sent adrift; Which was to me an omen of being tenderly ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... her hands from the yellow meal and dusted them on a hempen towel, and was ready to ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... loftiest place is that seat of grace For which all worldlings try: But who would stand in hempen band Upon a scaffold high, And through a murderer's collar take His last look at ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... I am o'erwhelmed with wonder! What prodigy was this? what subtle devil Hath raz'd out the inscription? the wax Turn'd into dust, Made nothing! do you deal with witches, rascal? There's a statute for you which will bring Your neck in a hempen circle; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... other Idolaters who are not of this sect call these people heretics—Patarins as we should say[NOTE 16]—because they do not worship their idols in their own fashion. Those of whom I am speaking would not take a wife on any consideration.[NOTE 17] They wear dresses of hempen stuff, black and blue,[NOTE 18] and sleep upon mats; in fact their asceticism is something astonishing. Their idols are all feminine, that is to say, they have women's ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... off, he looked around upon this and upon that, determining where to begin. Conscious he had nothing to fear, and least of all from the owner in the chair, he was slow and deliberate. From his robe he drew a number of bags of coarse hempen cloth, and a broad white napkin. The latter he spread upon the floor, first removing several of the urns to obtain space; then he emptied one of the vessels upon it, and from the sparkling and varicolored heap before him proceeded to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the government agent received a bribe from the owners to pass the vessels on survey. We were now fitting out under difficulties, and working at a task that should have been accomplished months before. Sailcloth was scarce; hempen ropes were rarities in Khartoum, where the wretched cordage was usually obtained from the leaves of the date-palm. The highest prices were paid for everything; thus a prearranged delay caused an immense expense for the expedition. I studiously avoided any purchases ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... There was only my trade left. I saw these advertisements about harpooners, and high wages, so I went to the shipping agents, and they sent me here. That's all I know, and I say again that if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... particular description of my own mechanics; let it suffice to say, that in six weeks time with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos, well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; and I likewise provided myself with four paddles. I laid in a stock of boiled flesh, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... it is long, a part of it may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. In most towns, too, a very small fine is sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. The weavers of linen and hempen cloth, the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them, wheel-makers, reel-makers, etc. may exercise their trades in any town-corporate without paying any fine. In all towns-corporate, all persons are free ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... satin, velvet, linen, or woollen cloth, and sewed upon the grounding of the article.... Sometimes the cut work done in this way is framed, as it were, with an edging either in plain or gilt leather, hempen or silken cord, like the leadings of a stained-glass window." Gold and silver starlike flowers, sewn on applique embroideries, were common to Venice and also southern ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... afternoon I had coiled and stowed safely away more good hempen rope and cordage than I could ever want. This accomplished I found time to praise my companion's diligence; but finding her all wearied out with such rough and arduous labour, grew mighty vexed with my heedlessness, reproaching ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... walls: dusty files of newspapers, an empty bird-cage, old boots, a case of medical books, a pair of dilapidated trousers filled up one side of the room. A pot of clove-pinks in the window struggled to drown with spicy fragrance the odor of stale tobacco smoke. There was a hempen carpet, inch deep with mud and dust, on the floor. Seated round an empty fireplace, on cane chairs and in solemn circle, were about forty followers of the Inner Light. McCall perceived Maria near the window, the dusky twilight bringing out with fine effect her delicate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... paper would have been enough, Dunn thought, to place a harsh hempen noose about the soft white throat he watched where the little pulse still fluttered up and down. But now it was burnt and utterly destroyed, and no ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... her. He also provides firing and other necessaries for that purpose: and the ships do commonly hire of the merchants here each 2 cables to moor by all the time they lie here, and so save their own hempen cables; for these are made of a sort of hair that grows on a certain kind of trees, hanging down from the top of their bodies, and is very like the black coir in the East Indies, if not the same. These cables are strong and lasting: ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... the Pathan had shown of any kind, but men of his race would rather be tortured to death than hanged in a merciful hempen noose. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... one sees most fearful things In the crystal of a dream, We saw the greasy hempen rope Hooked to the blackened beam And heard the prayer the hangman's snare Strangled ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of hempen fields, where I Once played with insects floating by, And joyed alike in sun and rain, Unconscious of approaching pain. I dwell upon my later lot, Where, swung in some secluded spot Between two tried and trusted trees, All summer long I wooed the ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blacksmiths' shops, ringing with the hammer of the busy smith on ploughshare or horseshoe; its implement agencies, with rows of gaudily-painted wagons, mowers, and binders obstructing the thoroughfare, and the hempen smell of new binder twine floating from the hot recess of their iron-covered storehouses; a couple of banks, occupying the best corners, and barber shops and pool-rooms in apparent excess of the needs of the population. All these he might have found in ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... on the ground by way of libation. At every step he falls, rolls in the mud, and feigns to be a prey to the most shameful drunkenness. His poor wife runs after him, picks him up, calls for help, arranges his hempen locks, which straggle forth in unkempt wisps from beneath his filthy hat, sheds tears over her husband's degradation, and pours forth ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Caesar's all-protecting arm; For these at point of sword, and those with fire (24) He forces back, and though besieged he dares To storm th' assailants: and as lay the ships Joined rank to rank, bids drop upon their sides Lamps drenched with reeking tar. Nor slow the fire To seize the hempen cables and the decks Oozing with melting pitch; the oarsman's bench All in one moment, and the topmost yards Burst into flame: half merged the vessels lay While swam the foemen, all in arms, the wave; Nor fell the blaze upon the ships alone, But seized ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... whose guilty spear Profaned the steed and pierced the sacred side. 'On with the image to its home,' they cried, 'And pray the Goddess to avert our woe'; We breach the walls, and ope the town inside. All set to work, and to the feet below Fix wheels, and hempen ropes around the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the best hempen cord,' said Villiers, 'just as it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... rose as straight as though of masonry. Along the brink grew stunted bushes of greasewood and of sage. Here and there the tap root of a greasewood was half exposed for its entire length, just as it had been left by the falling earth. Many of these yellow-brown roots, tough as hempen rope, descended quite to the bottom of the arroyo, for the greasewood perseveres astonishingly in its search ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... body with a dozen turns of hay-rope, twisting both the ends in under at the bottom of my breast, and winding the hay on the skew a little, that the hempen thong might not slip between, and so cut me in the drawing. I put a good piece of spare rope in the sledd, and the cross-seat with the back to it, which was stuffed with our own wool, as well as two or three fur coats; and then, just as I was ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... miles above the earth's surface. Professor Langley has been following these experiments with great interest, and has furnished Mr. Eddy with a special quality of silk cord which, it is believed, will give better results in meteorological observation than the ordinary hempen twine or rope. The great difficulty that Mr. Eddy finds in the way of making his kites reach great altitudes, is the pull on the cord, which increases greatly as the kites rise higher. It is probable that a tandem of fifteen or twenty big kites, reaching to a mile ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... that they entertained some concern lest it trickle down their heated faces in disfiguring rivulets. Mary's white dress rustled as crisply as did her mother's petticoat and her hair, crimped and ironed until it was fuzzy as a bushman's, drifted out behind her, a hempen whirlwind. New flowers on her hat and accompanying pink streamers afforded her tranquil satisfaction as did also the string of coral beads Uncle Frederick had once sent from Naples, a gift worn only on ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... use of Wheat for bread and other domestic purposes, large quantities are every season consumed in making starch, which is the pure fecula of the grain obtained by steeping it in water and beating it in coarse hempen bags, by which means the fecula is thus caused to exude and diffuse through the water. This, from being mixed with the saccharine matter of the grain, soon runs into the acetous fermentation, and the weak acid thus formed by digesting on the fecula renders it white. After ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... girl, where did you get that spiteful look? What, you want to be sharper than your mother! It won't take me long, I tell you, to send you into the kitchen to boil the kettles. Shame, shame on you! Ah! Ah! My holy saints! I'll make you a hempen wedding-dress, and pull it on over your head directly. I'll make you live with the pigs, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... the men laughingly making way for him to pass as they tugged against rather a swift current, for the tide was setting toward the opening in the reef; and the next minute he was examining a nondescript affair made of two ship's fenders—the great balls of hempen network used to prevent injury to a vessel's sides when lying in dock or going up to a wharf or pier. These were placed, one inside an old pea-jacket, the other in a pair of oilskin trousers, and all well lashed together so as to have some semblance ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... halter got, Made of the best strong hempen teer, And ere a cat could lick her ear, Had tied it up with as much art, As DUN ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... water, and the next roller pounded them back upon the marble-hard sand. There came the sound of splitting wood, and then a group swarmed in waist-deep and bore out a dripping figure. It was a hempen-headed seaman, who shook the water from his mane and grinned when his ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... cross sticks to a silken handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. To the upright stick was affixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the appearance of a thunder-gust approaching he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing the ridicule ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... life. A picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... not desist from expressing his opinion, to Heinz, and assuring him that his place was on a battle charger, with his sword in its sheath or in his hand, rather than in a monastery with a rosary hanging from a hempen girdle. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... trophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... appeal to the generosity of his countrymen, he was able to set out for Boac and Batangas in the little steamer Castellano to carry supplies to the prisoners detained in those localities. On his journey he distributed to them 500 cotton suits, 290 pairs of shoes, 100 pairs of alpargatas (a sort of hempen shoe or sandal made in Spain), 14,375 packets of cigarettes, and P1,287. Several subsequent expeditions carried supplies to the prisoners, the total amount of material aid furnished to them, in goods and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... hempen ground carried them to the north, from whence the material came, the inhabitants of the frozen world, their manners and their customs, the climate and their cities, their productions and their sources of wealth. Its ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... great deal, principally because he knew Greek. For some alleged slight offered against the rules of the convent, they wreaked their vengeance upon him by condemning him to the prison cell, and to a diet of bread and water. They also applied their hempen cords thoroughly, and this course of treatment soon reduced Rabelais to a very weak condition. His friends were by this time powerful and they obtained his release, and a license from the Pope for him to pass from this convent to another. But he ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Teutonic fringe and fanfaronaded on the captivating frizziness of Joanna's hair. The wonder is that Hedwige did not run hatpins into me. The murderer's widow of Prague was built of sterner stuff; she cared not a hempen strand for Joanna, a pale consumptive doxy, according to her picturing, who had jilted me for an eminent ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... riches by common roguery, he sought out the basest instrumentalities as more congenial to his real disposition. His chief riches were obtained by dark and murderous transactions; and had he a score of necks, with hempen necklaces well adjusted, I doubt whether he could pay the full forfeiture to ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... embark on his homeward voyage, and he was followed by their cheers and benedictions. Wonderfully different was the treatment he received on his arrival in his own country. Not long afterwards he was dragged through Boston streets by a hempen rope about his body, and was assigned to a prison cell, as affording the most ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... opinion;—it is your middle classes that have utterly destroyed good manners, and have made the prevalent mode of the day a union of boorishness and servility, of effervescence and of apathy—a court suit, as it were, worn with muddy boots and a hempen shirt. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sailing frigate, of fifty-two guns, with huge spars—one of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... of all cloths and of all colours; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the former case, they sometimes invert the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... form from the floor; "but I have had your betters, Master Michael Lambourne, under the little turn of my forefinger and thumb, and I shall have thee, before all's done, under my hatches. The impudence of thy brow will not always save thy shin-bones from iron, and thy foul, thirsty gullet from a hempen cord." The words were no sooner out of his mouth, when Lambourne again ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... shark-hook," observed Dick, putting on a large bait, and fastening it to the end of a thick rope. "Nothing frightens the fish in these seas; and if we were to lower down a hempen cable with a baited hook, they would bite as freely as they would if we were ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... there smocks hempen wear; Of Holland not an ell in, No, not a rag, whate'er your brag, Is found ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... of the gentleman becomes a hewer of wood and drawer of water; he learns to chop down trees, to pile brush-heaps, split rails for fences, attend the fires during the burning season, dressed in a coarse over-garment of hempen cloth, called a logging-shirt, with trousers to correspond, and a Yankee straw hat flapped over his eyes, and a handspike to assist him in rolling over the burning brands. To tend and drive oxen, plough, sow, plant Indian corn and pumpkins, and raise potatoe-hills, are among some ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... properly can only be learnt by observation and actual practice. By using two marline-spikes, the hempen heart is removed and the ends of the wire strands forced into the place it occupied, making a ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... the man, gruffly. "It may be useful—and a lantern. We shall want it at least;" and as he spoke the words he pulled out of the chest over which he had been stooping a coil of hempen rope. He then took a little lantern from a ledge and lit it. "Now I am ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... he obtain the bowstring? Whence a cord to match the weapon? Sinews from the elk of Hiisi, And the hempen cord of Lempo. Thus at length the bow was finished. And the stock was quite completed, 40 And the bow was fair to gaze on, And its value matched its beauty. At its back a horse was standing, On the stock a foal was running, On the curve ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... we cut a circle ten feet in diameter out of a piece of calico, and divide its circumference into ten or twelve equal parts. At each point of division we attach a piece of fine hempen cord about three feet in length, and connect these cords with each other, as well as with the suspension chain, by ligatures that are protected against the fire by means of balls ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various |
