"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself, buttoning her jacket probably as she ran. When I returned to the kitchen, Jess and Hendry were still by the fire. Hendry was beating a charred stick into sparks, and his wife sat with her hands in her lap. I saw Hendry look at her once or twice, but he could think of nothing to say. His terms of endearment had died out thirty-nine years before with his courtship. He had forgotten the words. For his life he could not have crossed over to Jess and put his arm round her. Yet he was ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... be hanged!' shouted Caper, breaking through the crowd, and running up-stairs two steps at a time, he nearly walked into the lap of a tall female model, named Giacinta, dressed in Ciociara costume, who was calmly seated on the stair-case, glaring at another female model, named Nina, who stood leaning against the door ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... admiration. Her little black beady eyes stared at the dancing lights that leapt from each burning log in a species of rapt absorption, and it was only semi-occasionally that she turned them back upon the work which lay upon her lap. Mrs. Lathrop (for of course it was Mrs. Lathrop) was matching scraps for a "crazy" sofa-pillow, and there was something as touchingly characteristic in the calmness and deliberation of her matching as there ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... shower gold into her lap," said Mr. Carroll, "only for the accursed conventionalities ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... LAP-EAR. At Washington College, Penn., students of a religious character are called lap-ears or donkeys. The opposite class are known by the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... near the Sister, was Madame de Jonquiere, who had kept her little bag on her lap. She slowly pulled down the blind. Dark, and well built, she was still nice-looking, although she had a daughter, Raymonde, who was four-and-twenty, and whom for motives of propriety she had placed in the charge ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... me, yet remoter Than a star—a blue-eyed, bashful imp: On her lap she held a happy bloater, 'Twixt her lips ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... would have stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow. By right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly. But all this implies a woman of unusual power—extraordinary patience. And this woman was simply human. She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave reasons. Our actions are usually right, but our reasons for them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the king who thought of building the Temple which he was never allowed to rear. 'It is ill that is in thine heart,' says He by whom actions are weighed, to the sinner in purpose, though his clean hands lie idly in his lap. These hidden movements of desire and will that never come to the surface are our true selves. Look after them, and the deeds will take care of themselves. Serpent's eggs have serpents in them. And he that has determined upon a sin has done the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... there used to be children in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called 'The Triumph of Galatea;' [Footnote: This picture which little Ellie loved so was a copy of a famous painting by the great ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... She dropped into his lap and (after he had jerked back his head to save his eye-glasses, and removed the glasses, and settled her in a position less cramping to his legs, and casually cleared his throat) he kissed her ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Leicester. "Besides, our times have seen enough to make men loathe the Crown Matrimonial which men take from their wives' lap. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... to himself, and stared around into the fire as if wondering where he was, and he did not see the tear that rolled down his wife's cheek and fell upon her two hands clasped in her lap. She arose and went over to the piano, which stood in the shadow, and sitting down, with her back to her husband, she played fragments of music nervously. Mr. Hardy lay down on the lounge again. After a while Mrs. Hardy wheeled about on the piano ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... "My gracious me! What sort of poetry can you get up about dogs? I must confess, I don't like them. Unless, of course, they are the nice little lap-dog kind." ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... her lap, James sitting at her feet, and Ruth seated on a small stool by her side, Jean again related the story of the little settlement in the wilderness, the coming of the rangers, how she was carried off at night, and her rescue by Sam and Kitty. She told the story well, ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... all the other fairies who had been playing about the house came down to the floor and joined the new-comers. Such a crowd never was seen! No sooner had the flowers and herbs been heaped in Betty's lap than another troop of fairies came forward with fox-glove bells full of dyes, which they poured over Betty's dress, when in a moment her russet gown was changed to the softest white velvet, her apron to the filmiest lace, edged all round with a delicate fringe ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... down in her little chair, placed the baby carefully in her lap, and left the room. The red rose instantly attracted the little one's attention, and quick as thought the chubby little fingers grasped it, and before Bessie could say, "What are you about?" the rose was crushed and scattered. Bessie was so angry that she struck the baby ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... might have seen that Mary's eyes were heavy and moist, as if she had been weeping, but the strong-minded maiden had emptied her apron, and sat with a large earthen bowl in her lap, beating a dozen eggs tempestuously together, as if they had given her mortal offence, and she were taking revenge with every ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... now to dawn. It was Sunday, and I was desirous of eluding observation. I was somewhat recruited by rest, though the languors of sleeplessness oppressed me. I meant to throw myself on the first lap of verdure I should meet, and indulge in sleep that I so much wanted. I knew not the direction of the streets; but followed that which I first entered from the court, trusting that, by adhering steadily to one course, I should some time reach the fields. This street, as I ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... have attained, or would understand my attaining. After all, what do we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to serve, to live, to commune with our fellowmen and with ourselves; and from the lap of earth to look up into the face of God? All these gifts are mine as I sit by the winding white road and serve the footsteps of my fellows. There is no room in my life for avarice or anxiety; I who serve at the altar live of the altar: ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... little cold hand and laid it timidly in his big brown one, and he held it a moment and looked down at it in great tenderness, closed his fingers over it in a strong clasp, then laid it gently back in her lap as though it were too precious to keep. Her heart thrilled and thrilled ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... back farther under the sofa. Without stopping to think myself, or giving him time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and spits. I can feel the muscles in his body tense up as he gets ready to spring out of my lap. Then he changes his mind and decides to take advantage of the lap. He narrows his eyes and gives Susan a bored look and turns his head to take me in. After he's sized me up, he pretends he only turned around ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... caressed her, and called her by endearing names; she lay quite still, as if unable to hear or feel. Dot's little heart swelled within her, and taking the poor animal's drooping head on her lap, she sat quite still and tearless; waiting in that solitude for her one friend to ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... allowed a drink within a certain radius of the capital; this was all very fine for the publicans of Prague, who no doubt had come to a suitable arrangement with the King, but it fills me with sorrow to reflect on the streams of excursionists and travellers doing the last lap home on a ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... school," said he, seriously. "Making such a fuss that a fellow can't go wrong, if he wants to." And he took Cuff up in his lap, and patted ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... voice is past That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... The town has eight thousand to ten thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits—not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sunset when we arrived in the birthplace of Palladio, which we found a fair city in the lap of caressing hills. There are pretty villas upon these slopes, and an abundance of shaded walks and drives about the houses which were pointed out to us, by the boy who carried our light luggage from the railway station, as the property of ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... very keen interest in the affair and stroked the little rescued creature, which now lay quietly in Moni's lap and looked very pretty, with its white feet, and the beautiful black pelt on its back. It was very willing to ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... beyond anything on earth. When Sebastian had finished his laugh, he came into the room. He had foreseen the excitement, having caught sight of the kittens when Heidi came in. The scene was a very peaceful one now; Clara held the little kittens in her lap, and Heidi was kneeling beside her. They both played happily with the two graceful creatures. The butler promised to look after the new-comers and prepared a bed ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... 'I like you much,—much!' with all Davy's earnestness, though with just so much of her mother's modesty as made her turn pink and shy, and put herself completely over the chair into Seraphael's lap when we laughed at her." And Philippa, and Philippa's conversation, capers, and cat! an impossibility to those who have never experienced her whirlwinds of exuberance,—and to those who have, a reproduction of the drollest days of their existence. Never was there a personage so perfectly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... CASSAQUIN," short dressing-gown, "of red-brown (MORDORE) velvet; black breeches, and boots which came quite up over the knee. His hair was not dressed. Three little benchlets or stools, covered with green cloth, stood before him, on which he had his feet lying [terribly ill of gout]. In his lap he had a sort of muff, with one of his hands in it, which seemed to be giving him great pain. In the other hand he held our Sentence on the Arnold Case. He lay reclining (LAG) in an easy-chair; at his left stood a table, with various papers on it,—and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of ferocity, is now pillowed in the lady's lap[1]. The Cat, the little Tyger of our island, whose natural home is the forest, is equally domesticated and caressed. The Cow, the Hog, the Sheep, and the Horse, are all, for a variety of purposes, brought under his ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... whether the policeman is not demoralizing us; and that in proportion as he does his duty well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete "preservation of body and goods," may not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lap-dog condition in which not conscience, but comfort, doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers had, on the whole, to take care of themselves; we find it more convenient to hire people to take care of us. So ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... babyhood Upon her lap I lay, With infant food She moistened my clay; Had she withheld The succour she supplied, By hunger quelled, Your ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... in a boyish way, 'one of those Misses Carnegy, as you call them, is so charming that you could not resist taking her in your arms and setting her on your lap!' ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Bountiful, is to lie with the right hand. Giving another's to the poor, I should beguile them of their thanks, and cheat thee the true giver. Thus do thieves, whose boast it is they bleed the rich into the lap of the poor. Occasio avaritiae ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... more at that day!) feels for another, whose courage he has proved while vindicating his own. It is like the discovery of a congenial sentiment hitherto latent; and, in a life of camps, often establishes sudden and lasting friendship in the very lap of enmity. This feeling had been ripened by their subsequent familiar intercourse, and was increased on Adrian's side by the feeling, that in convincing Montreal of the policy of withdrawing from the Roman territories, he had obtained an advantage that well repaid ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... So where it would be sailin' to nobody could say; very belike out into the bay below. But sure when it come where the river runs past th' ould church, the strong current that was racin' under it just gave a sort of lap round wid it, and washed it clane up on the flat stones at the gate goin' into the buryin'-ground, and left it lyin' there, same as if the lads had set it down off their shoulders. Bedad now it ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap, And like a lobster boyl'd, the morn From black to red ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... it after all," she said, crumpling the note and tossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother's lap. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... lap. prec. lib. 2. sect. 2. de mat. med. Regum coronas ornant, digitos illustrant, supellectilem ditant, e fascino tuentur, morbis medentur, sanitatem ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... deeds accursed the mind: And those, the fiends, who, near allied, O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside; Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, 20 Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare: On whom that ravening[15] brood of Fate, Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait: Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see, And look not madly wild, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... account he has to render. We must make use of this world as though we were making no use of it at all. We must possess riches as though we had them not, and deal with the things of earth like the dogs on the banks of the Nile, who, for fear of the crocodiles, lap up the water of the river as they run along its banks. If, as the wise man tells us, he that addeth knowledge addeth also labour; much more is this the case with the man who heaps up riches. He is like the giants in the fable who piled up mountains, and then buried themselves ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... given a still better specimen of his effrontery. He had picked up a number of old Harrovians, with whom he had repaired to a tavern for song, supper, and sociability, and as usual in such cases, in the lap of Alma Mater, the babes became sufficiently intoxicated, and not a little uproarious. Drinking in a tavern is forbidden by Oxonian statutes, and one of the proctors happening to pass in the street outside, was attracted into the house by the sound of somewhat unscholastic merriment. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Only for show, and with these glistering shields, T' awake poor shepherds, watching in the fields." He'll "not believe that the least flower which pranks Our garden borders, or our common banks, And the least stone, that in her warming lap Our mother earth doth covetously wrap, Hath some peculiar virtue of its own, And that the glorious ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... mass'—dats da law of Loozyaney. White man strike nigga, folk laugh, folk cry out, 'Lap de dam nigga! lap him!' Nigga strike white man, cut off nigga's arm. Like berry much to 'bleege mass' Edwad, but daren't go to de clearins. White men after Gabr'l last two days. Cuss'd blood-dogs and nigga-hunters out on im track. Thought young ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... covered and kissed, shrouded and decorated; all blemishes were obliterated in the universal whiteness. A tumbledown moss-grown hut by the roadside—now more extravagantly adorned than the richest bride in the world, covered over from heaven's own lap in such abundance that the white snow wreaths hung half a yard beyond the roof; in some places folded back with consummate art. The grey-black wall under the snow wreaths looked like an old Persian fabric. It seemed ready to appear in a Shakespearean drama. The background of mountains ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... seven times, not in swift succession, but with the usual interval between wine at a symposiac. Byron did these things differently, but the author of "Don Juan" is not a safe example for young folks to follow. He pictures Mars lying with his head in the lap of Venus, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... she sought to question hardened under her gaze. Here, too, was a veil. Mrs. Bogardus sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She was motionless, but the creaking of her silks could be heard as her bosom rose and fell. After a moment she said: "Paul's tray is on the table in the dining-room. Will you take it ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell on my little audience. Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and laid her head on her knee; and though Jennie sat up straight as a pin, yet her ever-busy knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint of a tear in her quick, sparkling eye,—yes, actually a little bright bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up actively, and declared that the fire wanted just one more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; and then there was such a raking among the coals, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... to expect, and would, perhaps, have spoken to me more than she did, had not a look of her husband silenced her. Madame Louis Bonaparte was still more condescending, and recalled to my memory what I had not forgotten how often she had been seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll. Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This change did not much surprise ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that I am becoming very amiable,' replied I, hardly knowing what to say, and afraid to look either of them in the face, for your mother, with you on her lap, was standing close by. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... morning I know that mommy is angry and is going to spank me sooner or later that day because she is already thinking how she will spank me, but she never says so out loud. Sometimes she pretends that she's not angry and takes me up on her lap and says I'm her nice little boy but all the time I can hear her thinking that she doesn't really like me even when she tries and she doesn't even want to touch me if she can help it. I can hear her wondering why my hair doesn't grow nice like the Bennet ...
— My Friend Bobby • Alan Edward Nourse
... a little while he asked for water, and to his mother's surprise, was willing to take it from Christie's hands. He even suffered her to bathe his hands and feet, and when he grew restless again, let her take him on her lap. He was quite contented to stay there; and the last object the mother saw before she sank to sleep was her sick boy nestling peacefully in the arms of the little stranger maid. And it was the first object she saw when she waked, some three hours afterwards. Christie ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... meeting spring in the country, although I am a busy, prosaic sort of person, tied to town... I want you to count your first month as beginning from today. My wife and boy have already started, and are probably in Moscow by now. We shall find them in the lap of nature. We will go alone, like two bachelors, ha, ha!" Sipiagin laughed coquettishly, through ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... Win the estates, Max, and win the lady. Many a man with half your capacity has climbed to the pinnacle of fame and fortune, though starting with none of your prestige. Why do you, born a mountain lion, stay mewed up in this castle like a purring cat in your mother's lap? For shame, Max, to waste your life when love, fortune, and fame beckon you beyond these dreary hills and call to you in tones that should arouse ambition in the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... for Matilda's whole and best attention. It was not an easy or a small undertaking. If anybody could have looked in through the closed door those days, he would have seen a little figure seated on a low foot-cushion, with a magnificent lace drapery lying over her lap and falling to the floor. On a chair at her side were her thread and needles and scissors; and very delicately and slowly Matilda's fingers were busy trying to weave again the lost meshes of the exquisite lace. They worked and worked, hour after hour, before she could be certain whether she was going ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... having seen the ease, grace, and dexterity of her performance, forthwith engaged her for the entire season at a salary which when named to the amazed child, seemed like a veritable shower of gold tumbling by rare chance out of the lap of Dame Fortune. The manager was a curt, cold business man, and she was afraid to ask him any questions, for when the words—"I am sure a kind friend has spoken to you of me—" came timidly from her lips, he had shut up her confidence at ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... hung at her side. An expression of serene calmness rendered her venerable features quite attractive, and a graceful smile played on her thin and bloodless lips as she now dropped her knitting upon her lap, and, with her body bent forward, commenced watching the merry play of the cat on the cushion. Suddenly the silence was interrupted by a loud and shrill scream, and a very strange-sounding voice uttered a few incoherent words in English. At the same ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... at the Kid, but his smile did not reach his eyes, and faded almost immediately. He glanced at the Little Doctor, sent his horse past the steps and the Kid, and close to the railing, so that he could lean and toss the mail into the Little Doctor's lap. There was a yellow envelope among the letters, and her fingers singled it out curiously. Andy folded his hands upon the saddle-horn and watched ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... out suddenly from the blackness of the woods to the wind-whipped river, and though the moon was still obscured, the river held a pallid sheen of its own that gave a little light. There was not a sound to be heard but the hurried lap of water against the shore, the suck and pull of Chris's and Mr. Wicker's boots in the mud, and sharp, hair-raising rustles, from time to time, in the reeds. Chris's heart thudded in his throat at ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... to walk on its hands, and I reckon about two cups of it'll rastle you into shape." As she raised the tin mug to her lips he waved a hand and smiled. "Drink hearty!" He set a plate of bread and bacon in her lap, then opened a glass jar of jam. "Here's the dulces. I've got a sort of sweet tooth in my head. I reckon you'll have to make out with this, 'cause I rode in too late to rustle any fresh meat, and the delivery-wagon ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... below this grand composition, appear, to the right, St. John the Baptist, holding the cross, and pointing upwards to Our Saviour; to the left, Abraham seated, a child on his lap, and resting his hand on ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... came in. Directed by Felicity to Lucy in an obscure corner, they found her being talked to by one of the Oddities; he looked rather like an oppressed Finn. He was talking and she was listening, wide-eyed and ingenuous, her small hands clasped on her lap. Peter and Urquhart sat down by her, and the oppressed Finn presently wandered away ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... talking over the extraordinary behaviour of their daughter, who was disporting herself in the snowstorm that raged outside. The woman sighed deeply and said, 'I wish I had given birth to a Fire-son!' As she said these words, a spark from the big wood fire flew into the woman's lap, and she said with a laugh, 'Now perhaps I shall give birth to a Fire-son!' The man laughed at his wife's words, and thought it was a good joke. But he ceased to think it a joke when his wife shortly afterwards gave birth to a boy, who screamed ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... lord with every mark of reverence, came near sixty miles, with his guards, to meet and escort the illustrious visitor, and expressed his deep concern at the displeasure of the English. He even took off his turban, and laid it in the lap of Hastings, a gesture which in India marks the most profound submission and devotion. Hastings behaved with cold and repulsive severity. Having arrived at Benares, he sent to the Rajah a paper containing the demands ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... last year; that women and womanish men take naturally to old absurdities, among which he mentioned the doctrines of the Trinity, "spiritism," and homeopathy. At this I expressed a belief that if, instead of educating women, as Bishop Dupanloup expressed it, "in the lap of the church (sur les genoux de l'eglise)," we educate them in the highest sense, in universities, they will develop more and more intellectually, and so become a controlling element in the formation of a better race; that, as strong men generally have ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... heat it. She might cook vegetables if she chose. And there was the best of tea to be made out of the china caddy, and rich cake in the parlor crock. After one such glad deliberation, she caught her sewing guiltily up from her lap and began to set compensating stitches. But even then her conscience slept unstirred. Old lady Knowles was in no hurry for the work, she knew, and she would make up for her dreaming in the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... The vast fields of ice, two or three feet in thickness, and from twenty feet to a hundred yards in breadth, were crushing and grinding down the river at the rate of four or five miles an hour, turning and twisting about, sometimes jamming their edges together with so great a force that one would lap over another, and sometimes drifting apart and leaving wide open spaces between for a moment or two. One might as well go upon such a river in an egg shell as in the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... replied, "that it is not only the poor and destitute that here support such a retinue. I have repeatedly seen in Lisbon, and elsewhere, young ladies, and among others a young widow of high rank, the sister of the Bishop of Oporto, lying with her head in the lap of her friend, who parted the locks of her hair ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... collars wilted to rags, watching the great hall-clock with the intentness of a man waiting to be hanged. "Still an hour left before closing time!" a speaker's friends would say. And the great orator, like a wearied horse, but a thoroughbred, would find new energy somewhere and start on another lap, round and round, repeating what he had already said a dozen times, summarizing the two ideas he had managed to produce in four hours of sonorous chatter. With duration as the test of quality, no one on the government had yet succeeded in equaling ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... into the bare kitchen, and sat in bare wooden chairs—Mary folding her hands in her lap like a child who has been promised a fairy-story. "Now hurry," said she. "I want to know about this new dress ye're givin' me. Are ye tired of ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... parting soul cries, and greeting again!... O my country! Beautiful is it to fall, that the vision may rise to fulfilment, Giving my life for thy life, and breathing thine air in the death-throe; Sweet to eternally sleep in thy lap, O land ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... lap, a king's ransom in my hand, 100 I will go down to this people, will stand face to face, will stand Where they curse king, queen, and ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... gentleman, who sat at the junction of the tables, and appeared so incommoded by the table-land of one being higher than the table-land of the other—causing his plate to oscillate in a very remarkable manner, and discharge its contents in his lap,—the conjoined legs compelling him either to sit at a fearful distance, and spill the gravy, or to split his kerseymeres, by extending them too much for their frail make:—however, he has at last succeeded in thrusting one knee between them, and the shorter leg of the ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... saw himself torn away from and bereft of all that had usually sustained and supported him, sobbed aloud, and like a frightened birdling seeking protection under its mother's wings, hid his head, amid floods of tears, in Kasana's lap. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... die upon our lips? It is that our host whilst he performs the duties of hospitality, seems to be obeying an irksome necessity of his condition: he treats it as a duty imposed upon him by his situation, not as a pleasure. By the side of the hearth sits a woman with a baby on her lap: she nods to us without disturbing herself. Like the pioneer, this woman is in the prime of life; her appearance would seem superior to her condition, and her apparel even betrays a lingering taste for dress; ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... month of rest and of home nursing Abner undertook a second tour (in Iowa and Wisconsin, this time) to make sure of his re-established health and to build up again his shattered finances,—for sickness, even in the lap ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... place, because I have no ambition, whatever, for a title. I am not nineteen yet, and should greatly prefer to make my own way, than to find myself with nothing whatever to do, except to spend money as it dropped into my lap. ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... open grave, on that day in June so long ago, were pronounced the following words, as true now as yesterday, as they will be henceforth, forever: "Born a hero, whom nature taught and cherished in the lap of innumerable toils and dangers, he was terrible in battle.... But from the amiableness of his heart, when carnage ceased, his humanity spread over the field like the refreshing zephyrs of a summer's evening. ... He pitied littleness, loved goodness, admired greatness, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... squaw gave her bits of maple-sugar and parched rice out of her hand. At last Silvy grew tame, and would suffer herself to be taken out of her house, to sit on her mistress's shoulder, or in her lap; and though she sometimes ran away and hid herself, out of fun, she would not have gone far from the tent of the good Indians, on any account. Sometimes she saw the red squirrels running about in the forest, but they never came very near her; but she ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... be allowed to go over there by the water's edge!" suggested Hal. "It would be fine to sit down there and hear the waves lap up against the shore. I don't want to go in yet, Noll, but I am tired enough to want to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... her a look before replying. She was seated in the shadows of a remote corner, and had so withdrawn herself behind her daughter that I could see nothing of her face. But her hands were visible, and from the force with which she held them clasped in her lap I perceived that the subject we were discussing possessed a greater interest for her than for any one else in the room. "She has heard something of the tragedy connected with this house," was my inward comment, as I prepared ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... eyes which Elizabeth fixed upon him for these words, and she sat for a long while afterwards out in the kitchen with her hands in her lap, silent and angry, thinking over them. A resolution was forming in ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... favourite church is that they may possess 'the grace.' Grace is love exercising itself to inferiors, and to those who deserve something sadder and darker. The gifts of that one grace are manifold. They comprise all blessings that man can need or receive. This angel comes with her hands and her lap full of good. Her name is shorthand for all that God can bestow or man can ask ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the patriarch Job recorded his brilliance. To the extreme north a patch of light lay behind Penllwyd, where the sun, at this season hardly dipping far out of sight, worked his course round to the east again. How quiet it was! The silence was almost oppressive. The gentle lap of the tiny waves on the lake was not equal to the rush of the stream at The Woodlands. Not even a night-bird called. The camp was absolutely ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... on the boundless sea," pursued the seer; "night falls. Day breaks, and a canoe propelled by a slender and pretty but dusky maiden approaches the castaway. She assists him into the canoe and his head sinks on her lap, as with vigorous strokes of her paddle she propels the canoe toward a small ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... stormy evening, when we've had the nicest little dinner together at your rooms, and I've given you some coffee, and bitten your cigar for you, I shall put you down before the fire, and sit down in your lap, as I am doing now, and put my arms about your neck so, and put my cheek so. And then I want you, without my asking to tell me why you told mamma that lie, and all ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... were approaching Richmond a sudden jar of the train threw a small package from her lap to the floor. Prescott sprang forward, picked it up and handed it to her. She received it with a curt "Thanks," and the noise of the train was so great that Prescott could tell nothing about the quality of her voice. It might ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... tale, the change that came over her was most remarkable. When I began she was leaning back placidly in her large chair, with her handkerchief upon her lap; but gradually her face kindled, she sat upright, and she was transformed with a completeness and suddenness which I could not have conceived possible. At last, when I had finished, she put both her hands to her forehead, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... never pricked. Nevertheless, thus far he had been a clean liver and an honest man. Vice, because it affronted his sense of the beautiful and usually led towards death, did not attract him. He lived too deep in the lap of Nature to be deceived by the pseudo-realism then making its appearance in literature, and he laughed without mirth at these pictures from city-bred pens at that time paraded as the whole truth of the countryman's life. The later school was not then above the horizon; the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... sheet of closely-written paper fall upon her lap; her eyes gazed into the child's serene and wise little face. Something impelled her to say words which she ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... only give to the man who could ride up over the hill of glass, for there was a high, high hill, all of glass, as smooth and slippery as ice, close by the king's palace. Upon the tip top of the hill the king's daughter was to sit, with three golden apples in her lap, and the man who could ride up and carry off the three golden apples was to have half the kingdom, and the Princess to wife. This offer the king had posted on all the church doors in his realm; and had given it out in many other kingdoms besides. Now, this Princess was so lovely, that all who ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... her own design, her plump, small hands lying in the blue lap. George compared her, unspeakably to her advantage, with the kind, coarse young woman at the chop-house, whom he had asked to telephone to the Orgreaves for him, and for whom he had been conscious ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... but her face very much to her young compatriot, the one who had spoken and in whose look she perceived a certain gloom of recognition. Recognition, for that matter, sat confessedly in her own eyes: she knew the three, generically, as easily as a schoolboy with a crib in his lap would know the answer in class; she felt, like the schoolboy, guilty enough—questioned, as honour went, as to her right so to possess, to dispossess, people who hadn't consciously provoked her. She would have been able to say where ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own—in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the 'Thing-in-itself—THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"—This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... have fallen after a nobler struggle; others have risen with more exalted strides. Nor are we here to look for eminent heroes, colossal talents, or those marvellous exploits which the history of past times presents in such rich abundance. Those times are gone; such men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement we have suffered the energetic powers to become enervate which those ages called into action and rendered indispensable. With admiring awe we wonder at these gigantic images of the past as a feeble old man gazes on the athletic ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... courtesans. Their conduct is very closely watched by their masters, and they always go out to parties in couples or in bands, so that they may be a check upon one another. Doubtless, however, in spite of all precautions, the shower of gold does from time to time find its way to Danae's lap; and to be the favoured lover of a fashionable singer or dancer is rather a feather in the cap of a fast young Japanese gentleman. The fee paid to singing-girls for performing during a space of two hours is one shilling and fourpence each; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... certainly was not imitation. A female goat very near delivery died; Galen cut out the young kid, and placed before it a bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and a pan of milk; the young kid smelt to them all very attentively, and then began to lap the milk. This was not imitation. And what is commonly and rightly called instinct, cannot be explained away, under the notion of its being imitation" (Lecture xvii. on ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... do as she was told, but one morning as she was cleaning, and the witch was out, she forgot what the witch said, and looked up the chimney. When she did this a great bag of money fell down in her lap. This happened again and again. So the girl started to ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... bishopric, My daily bread, my influence and my state? You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day; Will you find then, as I do hour by hour, Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch— Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring— With much beside you know or may conceive? 910 Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I, Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me, While writing all the same my articles On music, poetry, the fictile vase Found ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... was general among them on the way home, with all but her; she was thinking. She even forgot her strawberries for little Winifred, which she meant to have given her in full view of her cousin. She held her basket on her lap, and looked at the water and didn't ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... in the middle of the field, he would stretch himself out with his head on her lap, under the shelter of her parasol; or else with their faces turned towards the green sward, in the centre of which they rested, they kept gazing towards one another so that their pupils seemed to intermingle, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... ecstatically, in the eye with his sharpest tooth ... "And I thought the world was at an end," he said, "and there were no more people. Oh, I am an ass. I say, did you notice I'd had my hair cut? How do you like my new trousers? I must show you them." He jumped on to my lap. "No, I think you'll see them better on the ground," he said, and jumped down again. "Or no, perhaps you would get a better view if—" he jumped up hastily, "and yet I don't know—" he dived down, "though ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world," she said to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. "So different from where I was born and lived all my life—on the doll, sun-baked plains of the ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... sort of council of war, to which we had been summoned in the saloon. Mrs. Williams had some sewing in her lap. She listened, her hands motionless, her eyes full of desolation. Seraphina's attitude, leaning her cheek on her hand, reminded me of the time when I had seen her absorbed in watching the green-and-gold lizard in the back room of Ramon's store, with her hair falling ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... have plenty of money and no older person by to hamper them. Allison and Leslie were back within the time they had set, looking very meek and satisfied. Leslie carried a small package, which she laid in Julia Cloud's lap. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... once with a little cry. She had been so happy an hour ago, that she could not fail to be weak now. Her face dropped upon the hands on her lap, and were hidden there. The crimson-hearted rose slipped from her hair and fell to ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spaniel; or for the swiftness of his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming in the water, or for drawing snow-sledges, as the rough-haired dogs of the north; or lastly, as a play-dog for children, as the lap-dog; with the changes of the forms of the cattle, which have been domesticated from the greatest antiquity, as camels, and sheep; which have undergone so total a transformation, that we are now ignorant ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... drooped, the red left her cheeks, and she turned white to the lips. She drew away from her father and clasped her hands in her lap, tightly. She was praying for strength to tell the truth. Ah, could she do it? Could she do it! And perhaps cause Richard's condemnation? Had they found him?—that father should ask such a question now, after so long ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... never be forgotten. But beside all this, if England has a Zeal for her own Welfare, she must have a good Will for ours; for she knows and feels every Improvement made in Ireland, that does not directly clash with her Interest, is pouring Treasure into her own Lap, as regularly as what the River gets is returned to the Ocean. 'Tis evident, if we are better cloath'd, peopled, fed, and housed here; if our Wealth be encreased, or our Inhabitants or Country improved, we shall of Course take off more of her ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the other day on the train? I happened to be her seat-mate in the car-thin face, slight little figure—a commonplace girl, whom I took at first to be not more than twenty, but from the lines about her large eyes she was probably nearer forty. She had in her lap a book, which she conned from time to time, and seemed to be committing verses to memory as she looked out the window. At last I ventured to ask what literature it was that interested her so much, when she turned and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the little sister's lap, and Linda chafed the temples with snow. Would the sleigh-bells ever be heard? She longed for help of some sort. As to surgery, there was not a practitioner within thirty miles. What could be done with such a bad hurt as this ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... was carried home by his faithful body servant, Harry, where both lived to a ripe old age. Not so with the unfortunate master. Reared in the lap of luxury, being an only son of a wealthy father and accustomed to all the ease and comforts that wealth and affluence could give, he could not endure the rigor and hardships of a Northern prison, his genial spirits gave way, his constitution and health fouled him, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... smooth, roundish, with a large blunt tooth on the inside; hands somewhat flattened, widest at the base of the claws, with a broad ridge on the inside, the edge of it rough with small papillae; the upper edge of hand rough with small papillae; the claws lap over each other at the tips, and are irregularly toothed on the inside; the fixed claw of the right hand bent at the base, so as to leave a considerable space when the other is closed upon it; upper part of arm, hand, and movable claw pretty thickly spotted with red, epistome orbits and ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... the least pleasant of its four seasons, its character being truly that of "winter lingering in the lap of May." Mr. Effingham, who the reader will probably suspect, by this time, to be a descendant of a family of the same name, that we have had occasion to introduce into another work, had sent orders to have his country residence prepared for the reception of our party; ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... than ane in your behalf, you wald not have craw'd sae crouse this day; and so saying, I could not but think your lordship's Sifflication could not be less than most acceptable; and so I banged in among the crowd of lords. Laurie thought me mad, and held me by the cloak-lap till the cloth rave in his hand; and so I banged in right before the king just as he mounted, and crammed the Sifflication into his hand, and he opened it like in amaze; and just as he saw the first line, I was minded to make a reverence, and I had the ill luck ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in a low chair near a small wood fire, which the chillness of the October day made fully acceptable. She had a book on her lap, but she did not look as if she were reading: her chin was supported by her hand, and her brown eyes were gazing out of the window, with, as Maurice Kenyon could not fail to see, a slightly blank and saddened look. The girl had been now ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... lap of her husband. Hortense sprang into her mother's arms, and encircled the neck of both father and mother in a loving embrace. Eugene caught the contagion, and by his tears and affecting caresses added to this domestic scene of love ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... knew myself again, I was lying with my head in a maiden's lap, and well I could have believed that the fairies had carried me to their own land, as has befallen many, whereof some have returned to earth with the tale, and some go yet ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the jumping-jack into the lap of Skipping Rabbit, and strode out of the lodge with the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... far from Paris?" asked Isabelle, drawing Chiquita up on her lap. "Did you hear any one mention the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... first-rate impression here. It would please you to see this stern ascetic, this despiser of Life and Humanity, with two toddlers on his lap, and Herbert at his knee, all listening open-mouthed to tales of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The boy thinks that one who lives in the woods must be a great hunter, and clamors for bears and wildcats: Jane, in her usual ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... and together with the squalling of brats innumerable, completely spoiled the emotions, which the wild and pleasing scene around them would otherwise have awakened in their breasts. The sheep here are regarded with as much partiality, and treated much in the same manner as ladies lap dogs are in England. Great care is taken to keep them clean and in good condition; they are washed every morning in soap and water; and so greatly are they attached to their masters or mistresses, that they are constantly ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... knees, buried her face, and sobbed. She could not pray: under the rush of solemn emotion in which thoughts became vague and images floated uncertainly, she could but cast herself, with a childlike sense of reclining, in the lap of a divine consciousness which sustained her own. She remained in that attitude till it was time to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the lap of ease, Grow racking pain and foul disease, And nervous whims, a ghastly train, Inflicting more than corp'ral pain: Oft gold and shining pedigree Prove only splendid misery. The king who sits upon his throne, And calls the kneeling world ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... is this: his master and mistress are leaving him. They are going to a part of the world where a fool of a dog with no manners is a nuisance. If Chum could see all the good little London dogs, who at home sit languidly on their mistress's lap, and abroad take their view of life through a muff much bigger than themselves; if he could see the big obedient dogs, who walk solemnly through the Park carrying their master's stick, never pausing in their impressive march unless it be to plunge into the Serpentine and rescue a drowning ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne |
