"Mat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the establishment of the sanctity of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested[405] that the four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks helped in the process of determining the four-sided form ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... signs of wakefulness made themselves heard from within, and then dart away into the shadows whence he had come, and so back to bed. He gave Aline credit for the intelligence that would enable her, on finding a tongue, some bread, a knife, a fork, salt, a corkscrew and a bottle of white wine on the mat, to know what to do with them—and perhaps to guess whose was the loving hand that had ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... long time," replied the Chinaman. "See plenty litty mat lice; too muchy plenty litty mat lice; sixty ton litty mat lice. I think all-e-time perhaps plenty opium ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... how to receive the 'ava cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "O susunga, lau susunga fo'i," on entering a strange house; how to pull the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join in the chorus of "Maliu mai, susu mai" when others entered after him; how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... passed since my father, returning from the scene of Cummins' murder, related the circumstances. With Mat Bailey, the stage-driver, with whom Cummins had traveled that fatal day, he had ridden over the same road, had passed the large stump which had concealed the robbers, and had become almost an eye-witness of the whole affair. My ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... dull letter? I have a cursed headache with drinking with Mat and some more overnight, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chopper. Add one and one-quarter cups of water. Bring to a boil and cook slowly until the lemon rind is very soft. This usually takes about one hour. Now add one and one-half cups of sugar and stir to dissolve the sugar. Cook until thick like marmalade. Place an asbestos mat under the saucepan to ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... nor would he speak a word in bed. Though there were on the table nothing but coarse rice and vegetable soup, he would always reverently offer some of it to his ancestors. If his mat was not straight he would ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... who had done the shooting. He came across the room, shoving his gun back into the holster, a rather thickly built man but well-knit and there was a soft spring in his slowest movements which suggested snake-like quickness. He was dark-eyed, and his hair was a mat of close black curls. The cattle-buyer nodded, to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... save teeth in many cases as well or better than gold. Put a mat of tin at the cervical wall of proximate cavities in molars and bicuspids, and it makes a good filling which has a therapeutic effect on tooth-structure that prevents the recurrence of caries, probably because the infiltration ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... the room. He carefully rubs his feet on the mat as he enters. Then he advances to the table. MAGGIE dries her eyes with the back of her hand. JESSIE is standing with her arm ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... of the fall a mat of weeds had grown. On this he stayed. The cliff arched out blue-white over him like the inside of a shell. There ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... the two, who could not bear to leave his side, divided the night watches between them. Amar Singh, his chin between his knees, crouched dog-like on the mat outside the door, presenting himself, from time to time, with such dumb yearning in his eyes that Honor devised small services for him in pure ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... still. In the distance, under the palms, he saw Batouch laughing with Ouardi. Near them Ali was reposing on a mat, moving his head from side to side, smiling with half-shut, vacant eyes, and singing a ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... testing the temperature of your morning tub; you, satisfied only with faucets of hot and cold water and a mat to stand on—you know nothing about the joy of bathing. Your bath is a mere part of the daily routine of existence. Try the trenches and get itchy with vermin; then you will know that heaven consists of soap ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... to go! There are certain things required of you when you go: perhaps you are too lazy or too dirty in your habits, to like doing them! I have known some refuse to scrape their shoes, or rub them on the door-mat when they went in, and then complain loudly that they were refused admittance. A fine house would such make to their father, were they allowed to run in and out as they pleased! such a house, in fact, as would very soon drive their father himself out of it! for they would make it unfit ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... this. But if it must be delayed until to-morrow—well, it must, I suppose. But I'll take jolly good care that nobody gets a chance to come within touching distance of the pater—bless him!—until you do come, if I have to sit on the mat before his door until morning. Here's the address on this card, Mr. Headland. When and how shall I expect to see you again? You'll use an alias, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Perez started as if a bullet had reached his heart. Like lightning he turned, his face, frozen with fear, that was scarcely yet comprehended, his eyes like darts. From that white filthy face in its wild beast's mat of hair, his brother's ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Literature and Science delivering a most undeserved eulogium on myself, with a more rightly directed one on Arnold, Swinburne, and the old pride of Balliol, Clough: this was cleverly and almost touchingly answered by dear Mat Arnold. Then the Dean of Westminster gave the Fellows and Scholars—and then—twelve o'clock struck. We were, counting from the time of preliminary assemblage, six hours and a half engaged: fully five and a half nailed ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with a cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep upon the mat. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Mr. Rhys's hand included. Through the whole length of the house, and of course through the middle apartment, ran a double row of columns, upholding the roof. If Eleanor's eye followed them up, there was no ceiling, but the lofty roof of thatch over her head. Under her foot was a mat, of native workmanship; substantial and neat, and very foreign looking. And here were aunt Caxton's cups; and if she lifted her eyes—Eleanor felt most strange then, although ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Verona eccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped on the mat, and slid against the tub. He said "Damn!" Furiously he snatched up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent slapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheeks with a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... doctor, with all his virtues, tried the patience of his wife sometimes beyond its limits, by his excessive carelessness. He would forget to hang his hat in the hall, and toss it on the bright, polished mahogany table. He would forget to use the scraper by the steps, or the mat by the door, and leave tracks on the clean floor or nice carpet. These little things really worried her; I could see they did. She never said any thing; but she would get up, take up the hat, brush the table with her handkerchief, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... metheglin, as for lying and trying to deceive him. I do not think I danced a horn but I did step around lively, maybe, a little on tip He said, he thought he had cured me up, that the application he gave would make me well. I crawled into bed very much pleased indeed to think the mat was settled, as far as I was concerned. John S. had crawled into bed while I was paying the penalty. Father excused him because he was so young; he said I was the one to blame, and must stand it all. I thought as all young Americans do that it was rather hard to get ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous). "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... had, by this time, had two or three fainting fits, and had already long ago been changed his mat. As soon as Pao-y realised the situation, he felt unable to repress himself from bursting forth aloud. Li Kuei promptly reasoned with him. "You shouldn't go on in this way," he urged, "you shouldn't. It's because Mr. Ch'in is so weak that lying flat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... master, and tell him that in a month's time I would be ready and that he could come for me. This pleased my father, and although at night time I always slept between the two women, as is customary for a taupo, with a mat over me, and they lay on the outside, one on each side, yet in the day time I often met my lover in the forest, ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... about all of the guests were present. They formed two or three groups in the spacious room of fifty mats. The alcove in this room, in harmony with its magnificence, was very large. The alcove in the fifteen-mat room which I occupied at Yamashiro-ya made a small showing beside it. I measured it and found it was twelve feet wide. On the right, in the alcove, there was a seto-ware flower vase, painted with red designs, in which was a large branch of pine tree. ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... tattooed only on the breast, which had been executed in a neat vandyked form; the ears, as also the septum narium, were perforated, and in them were worn tortoiseshell rings; around the waist was worn a narrow piece of native cloth (died either of a dark red or yellow colour), or a small narrow mat formed from the bark of a tree, and of fine texture; some of these had neatly-worked dark red borders, apparently done with the fibres of some dyed bark. They rub their bodies with scented cocoa-nut oil as well as turmeric. The canoes were neatly constructed, had outriggers, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... moderate expenditure had converted it into a rustic boudoir of no mean pretensions. Cretonne hangings concealed the rough walls, and a few small pictures served to confine their bright folds to the uneven surface of earth and rock. The earthen floor was covered by a mat. A couch of the light, portable kind was daintily spread. A shelving rock, covered with a mat of Japanese print, held a never-failing lamp, and two camp-chairs completed the furniture, which had been conveyed into the cave with the utmost care and secrecy. A few books and a number of papers ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... mat," is treated in a bath of Barium salts which form compounds with the wood and which are said to make the ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... proceed with the building; and, when they thought it time to lay another floor, they laid the ends of the beams, covered in by the outer bricks in like manner as in the first story, and from that story they again raised the uppermost floor and the mat-work. In this manner, securely and without a blow or danger, they raised it six stories high, and in laying the materials left loop-holes in such places as they thought ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... or groups of little farms, huddled all together, with wilderness and brush and trees, or the wide open green grass lawn between. The houses were very large and neat-looking. They were constructed quite ingeniously from coco branches. Each branch made one mat. The leaves were all brought over to the same side of the stem, and then plaited. The resulting mat was then six or seven feet long by from twelve to sixteen inches broad, and could be used for a variety ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... clean sand." A tuft of soft green grass furnished a ready mat, on which she wiped her small foot, not invisible to Burr while he modestly inspected the mussel shells and polished pebbles washed ashore by the plashing ripples. From the beach he picked a bone-like fragment resembling milky quartz. This he brought to the lady, who had chosen a mossy ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... I must have been tried for a murder years ago, for I know it was loaded since I was a child, but that the lock has for the same space of time not been on speaking terms with the barrel. While, then, thus confirmed in our suspicions of mischief by Mat's warlike aspect, we both rose from the table, the door opened, and a young girl rushed in, and fell—actually threw herself into papa's arms. It was Nina herself, who had come all the way from Rome alone, that is, without any one she knew, and made her way to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... snow by an open fire, where Shorty and two young Indians, squatted on their hams, were broiling strips of caribou meat. Three other young Indians, lying in furs on a mat of spruce-boughs, sat up. Shorty looked across the fire at his partner, but with a sternly impassive face, like those of his companions, made no sign and went ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... happened to a friend of mine, skipper of the Flower of the Ocean brig. Brown his name was, an' he had a wooden leg. The day his son an' heir was born, he dropped into a gin-mill to celebrate, an' his stump stuck in a rope mat. He swore a bit, but he chanced to see on one of the half doors the name 'Nosmo,' an', on the other, 'King.' 'Dash me,' says he,' them's two fine names for the kid—Nosmo King Brown'—a bit of all right, eh? So he goes home an' tells the missus. After the christenin', he took ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the skill of man could produce! Even the photograph cannot equal their miracles. The closer you look, the more minutely true the picture is found to be, and I doubt if even the microscope could see beyond the painter's touch. Gerard Dow seems to be the master among these queer magicians. A straw mat, in one of his pictures, is the most miraculous thing that human art has yet accomplished; and there is a metal vase, with a dent in it, that is absolutely more real than reality. These painters accomplish all they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... share of his meal. His master one day, pretending to be angry, and shaking his stick at him, said: "You wretched little sluggard! what shall I do to you? While I am hammering on the anvil, you sleep on the mat, and when I begin to eat after my toil, you wake up and wag your tail for food. Do you not know that labor is the source of every blessing, and that none but those who work ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... did not look at them until he had scrupulously wiped his feet on the husk mat, and stamped them anew. Then he turned down the legs of his trousers, and carefully examined the lank green carpet-bag he ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... his name, then rubbed her eyes. It took her several minutes to realise that it was all a dream. She was in her own little room in the brown house, and the sun was peeping through the shutters. The holes in the rag carpet, the cheap, cracked mirror, the braided mat in front of her washstand, and the broken pitcher ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... showing a bound captive; the large stock of painted model vases in limestone in a box in chamber 20; the set of perfect vases found in chamber 21; a fine piece of ribbed ivory; a piece of thick gold-foil covering of a hotep table, patterned as a mat, found in the long chamber west of the tomb; the deep mass of brown vegetable matter in the north-east chamber; the large stock of grain between chambers 8 and 11; and the bed of currants ten inches thick, though dried, which underlay the pottery ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... weatherbeaten of aspect. The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... throughout the building. When retained within the womb by closure of its mouth and similarly in cases in which the protruded part has rotted off, the decomposition continues and the fetid products escaping by the vulva appear in offensively smelling pools on the floor and mat together the hairs near the root of the tail. The septic materials retained in the womb cause inflammation of its lining membrane, and this, together with the absorption into the blood of the products of putrefaction, leads to ill ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... young fraud," he went on—the position of both head and miniature pleased him now—"do you remember the time I hauled you out from under the table when the hucksters were making a door-mat of your back; and the time I washed you off at the pump, and what you said to the gendarme, and—No, you never remembered anything. You'd rather sprawl out on the grass, or make eyes at Gretchen or the landlady—fifty, ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... took it up as, apparently out of delicacy, he fairly failed—"whose father used to take the measure, down on his knees on a little mat, as mamma says, of my grandfather's remarkably large foot? Yes, we none of us mind. Do you think we ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the edge of which is a trough into which they put the barley for the animals. This is the "medhwad" or manger, such as the infant Jesus was laid in. We will now accept Im Hanna's kind invitation to supper. The plates are all on a small tray on a mat in the middle of the floor, and there are four piles of bread around the edge. There is one cup of water for us all to drink from, and each one has a wooden spoon. But Abu Hanna, you will see, prefers ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Rubicon of a door-mat and stood in the unlighted hall. At the far end he saw light coming from a door that he ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... The beaver-mat camp is a new one and, under favorable conditions, a good one. Cut your poles the length required for the framework of the sides, lash them together with the green rootlets of the tamarack or strips of bark of the papaw, elm, cedar, or the inside bark of the chestnut (A, Fig. 22); ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... I didn't—I dessay because when I saw him doing his mind-readin' tricks outdoors he was blindfolded, which some concealed his natural scenery. Well, he hadn't more'n tripped over the Embury 'Welcome' mat, than I was onto him. Me thinker woiked light lightnin' and I had him ticketed and pigeonholed ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... always active and obliging, readily stayed from play, and was carrying in a heavy flower pot, when his mistress crossed the hall. "What a terrible litter!" said she, "you are making here—why don't you wipe your shoes upon the mat?" Jem turned to look for the mat, but he saw none. "Oh," said the lady recollecting herself, "I can't blame you, for there ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... finished her work about the house. After she had set things to rights in the dining-room and elsewhere, she took the child by the hand, and together they went to Uncle Remus's cabin. The old man was making a door-mat of shucks and grass and white-oak splits, and Daddy Jack ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... wrong. A score of petty vexations, not one of which was of any moment, worked me up to desperation. I threw my book across the room, to the astonishment of my children, and determined to go out, although it was raining hard. My dog, a brown retriever, was lying on the mat just outside the door, and I nearly fell over him. "God damn you!" said I, and kicked him. He howled with pain, but, although he was the best of house-dogs and would have brought down any thief who came near him, he did not growl at me, and quietly followed me. I am not ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... ju-ry box and saw that in her haste she had put the Liz-ard in head first and the poor thing was wav-ing its tail in the air, but could not move. She soon got it out and put it right; "not that it mat-ters much," she thought; "I should think it would be quite as much use in the tri-al one way ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... strange sail was near enough to enable us to see that she was a large double canoe, such as is used by some of the islanders of the South Pacific, in their trading voyages. It had two masts, with large triangular mat-sails, and appeared to contain six or seven persons only, whom we supposed to be natives of some neighbouring island. As soon as they were within speaking distance, one of them, to our great astonishment hailed us in French. Arthur undertook to answer in the same language, when the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... seems to have been 'the other one'; he was rather shy. He sat down on a mat of reeds that was spread beside a corridor near the gateway; and, gazing up at the sky, meditated for some moments in silence. The chrysanthemums in the gardens were in full bloom, whose sweet perfume soothed us with its gentle influence; and round ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... tried a tender strain that melted in our ears, Thet brought up blessed memories and drenched 'em down 'ith tears; An' we dreamed uv ol' time kitchens, 'ith Tabby on the mat, Uv home an' luv an' baby days, an' ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... mat, as if of yore, How lifelike sits he here; With the same aspect that he wore When life to him was dear. But where the right arm's strength, and where The breath he used to breathe To the Great Spirit aloft in air, The peace-pipe's lusty wreath? And where ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... turning now into the broader highway and at last reaching the river road that led straight to Mat son's Ford, beyond which the road ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... him. Weisspriess was chilled by a more curious revulsion from this sort of engagement than he at first experienced. He had become nervously incapable of those proper niceties of sword-play which, without any indecent hacking or maiming, should have stretched Angelo, neatly slain, on the mat of green, before he had a chance. Even now the sight of the man was distressing to an honourable duellist. Angelo was scored with blood-marks. Feeling that he dared not offer another chance to a fellow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... musical instruments made of pipes and small gourds, and at the time of another visit to Werowocomoco Smith was witness to a very charming scene in which Pocahontas was again the leading actor. While the English were sitting upon a mat near a fire they were startled by loud shouts, and a party of Indian girls came out of the woods strangely attired. Their bodies were painted, some red, some white, and some blue. Pocahontas carried ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... two boys, and Laura's brother Mat and his chum, Hugh Bonner, were called upon, and after some grumbling on their part and as much coaxing on the part of the girls they "came in to help the Happy-Go-Luckys out," ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... where he might perform his devotion. The Patriarch bade him pray where he was; but this he positively refused. Then taking him out from thence, the Patriarch went with him into Constantine's Church, and laid a mat for him to pray there, but he would not. At last he went alone to the steps which were at the east gate of St. Constantine's Church, and kneeled by himself upon one of them. Having ended his prayers, he sat down and asked the Patriarch if he knew why he had refused ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... aunt, 'we shall go to Weadmere on Saturday and you shall have a good look round. It is wise to prepare in plenty of time, for I shall be sending a box to your mother very soon, and the Christmas presents can go in it. By the bye, how is the lamp-mat you are making for ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... seeds were sown about the first of May. They germinated well, and the little trees grew thriftily, the catalpa reaching a height of eighteen inches before the Fair closed. A bed of Norway pine showed the plants on half the bed crowded together in a thick mat as if grown from seed sown broadcast; on the other half arranged as if from seed sown in rows across the bed, both methods of sowing seed being followed in actual practice. Four beds were given to two-year-old ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... the door, the sound of a letter falling on the mat, and Fanning the postman passed on. George leaned back quickly so that he might not see him. Mr Griffith fetched the letter, opened it with trembling hands.... He gave a ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... my sleeve, jerked me into my familiar cell. I hadn't thought to be glad to get back to that dim, frozen, damp-chilled little hole; with its hateful stone walls, stone ceiling, stone floor, stone bed-slab, and stone table; its rope mat, foul stable-blanket, its horrible sense of eternal burial, out of sound, out of sight under a mined mountain of black stones. It was so tiny that the turnkey, entering after me, seemed to be pressed close up to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... any friends. But anyhow, I could keep him over night, for mother would think it was all right, now father had said so. So I took him to the shed-chamber and gave him a good supper,—how he did eat!—and I found an old mat for him to lie on, and got a basin of warm water and some soap, and washed him as clean as I could and rubbed him dry, and made him warm and comfortable: and he licking my hands and face and wagging his stump of a tail and thanking me ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... end, into seven or nine bands, and plaiting these together. But it takes a beginner just ten times as long to plait a girth as to weave it, and, therefore, for making more than one girth, it is well worth while to set up a rude loom. Do this as though you were making a mat. (See "Mat.") Girths need not be buckled; they ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... got to be rational, and planned that I should tap at her bedroom door and lay the letter on the mat outside and wait on the upper landing for what might happen, and never was gunpowder cannon-balls or shells or rockets more dreaded than that dreadful letter was by me as I took it to ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... the landing the commissioner stopped to look at the brown stain which, running under the door, spread over the tiling, as Caffie never had had a mat. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... medicine-man, one day stepped softly into the lodge of the giant chief, sat down opposite him on a mat of plaited rushes, accepted a lighted calumet, and, after the silence of a decent hour, broken at length by the warrior's intimation that "the ear of Raging Buffalo listened for the voice of his brother," ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, and was able to go to the mat with him. I explained that the spelling was an essential part of the political ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Christ, that such "had never been born." You who are created again in Jesus Christ, it most of all concerns you to ask, Why am I made? And why am I redeemed? And to what purpose? It is certainly that ye may glorify your heavenly Father, Mat. v. 16; Ps. lvi. 13. And you shall glorify him if you bring forth much fruit, and continue in his love, John xv. 8, 9. And this you are chosen and ordained unto, ver. 16, and therefore abide in him, that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... this room lay a mat, on which stood a wooden head-prop, indicating that the naturalist was in the habit of sleeping ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the compound is a large bungalow, surrounded by a slightly raised porch. Seated on a mat at one end of this is Mahmoud Yusuph Khan, and ranged in two long rows down the porch are his chiefs and officers. They are all seated cross-legged on a strip of carpet, and attendants are serving them with tea in little porcelain cups. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... king sent him cooked meat, he put his mat straight, and tasted it first; when he sent him raw flesh, he had it cooked, and offered it to the spirits; when he sent him a live beast, ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... do you want?" came out through the window; and I stepped forward, catching one peculiar look from the injured man again, and noticing that the other syces salaamed to me as I passed out of the glare of sunshine, into the comparative darkness of a mat-hung passage, and from thence into a comfortable room well-furnished with cane chairs, gay Indian rugs, and curtains, and with a light table, on which stood a cigar-box, a bottle or two, and glasses. Between them lay a stout, silver-topped malacca cane, evidently the instrument ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... and the servants' wing, the rest of the house was all Elsie's. She was always a restless, wandering child from her early years, and would have her little bed moved from one chamber to another,—flitting round as the fancy took her. Sometimes she would drag a mat and a pillow into one of the great empty rooms, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, coil up and go to sleep in a corner. Nothing frightened her; the "haunted" chamber, with the torn hangings that flapped like ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at some time, I suppose, with a sense of disaster And gazed at a picture resembling an egg on a mat, Or a sideslip of squares in the mode of a Pimlico master?— Well, Binks's "Rebellion" and "Afternoon Tea in my Flat" Were extremely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... you tell me they were in there, Jerusalem?" she asked, as she tossed the afghan to Alan, and then settled herself on a sweet-grass mat at her mother's feet. "Aunt Jane is reading aloud a report of something or other, and Mr. Baxter looks so bored. He yawned like a chasm when ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... terms, Maurice went into the side-room, where the KNEIPE was to be held, and sat down before a long, narrow table, spread with a soiled red and blue-checked tablecloth. He felt cold and sick again, and when the wan PICCOLO set a beer-mat before him, he sent the lad to the devil for a cognac. The waiter came with the liqueur-bottle; Maurice drank the contents of one and then another of the tiny glasses. A genial warmth ran through him and his nausea ceased. He leaned his head on his hands, closed his ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... leaving him there for some seconds, reappeared carrying a lantern. Bonivon now saw for the first time the face of his conductor—it was that of a werwolf. With a shriek of terror Bonivon turned to run, but, catching his foot on a mat, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... gangway itself. It was made of thin resilient steel, and the handrails were of soft white rope, almost like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ten million francs. And the next thing that impressed her was ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... other.... What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and the undivided twentieth part of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... to get at you through me. They're always asking me to tea to meet people in the hope that I'll ask them back to meet you. I'm worn out with keeping them off you. Some day all Harmouth will come bursting into your drawing-room over my prostrate form, flattened out upon the door-mat." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... viper and foster its young, would not be the acts of rational beings. Though the clouds pour down the water of vegetation, thou canst never gather fruit from a willow twig. Exalt not the fortune of the abject, for thou canst never extract sugar from a mat ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... fair hold of the box, filling it with smoke, and the tiger begins his retreat, his berth becoming rather warm. Presently, his hind quarters appear issuing through the sliding doorway, its covering of mat readily yielding to the pressure: by degrees, his hind feet gain firm footing outside, and his whole body is soon displayed. On appearing, he seemed rather confused for a few seconds, and, laying himself quietly down, looked all round upon his foes, and gave a roar ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... white shirtsleeves, bent to his wheel. He had worn no hat, and the rain fairly rebounded as it dashed on his thick mat of soaking ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... cried the old chief, "thou wast my son! Thou makest thyself an enemy! Thou lovest us not, though we saved thy life! Wouldst kill me, too?" Then, with a rough push to a mat on the ground, "Chagon—now, be merry! It's a merry business you've got into! Give him something ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... temple, which now rises like a Phoenix from the ashes of the Magnolia, is virtually the free gift of H. J. York, Esq., of Sandy Bar, who purchased the lot and donated the lumber. Other buildings are going up in the vicinity, but the most noticeable is the 'Sunny South Saloon,' erected by Captain Mat. Scott, nearly opposite the church. Captain Scott has spared no expense in the furnishing of this saloon, which promises to be one of the most agreeable places of resort in old Tuolumne. He has recently imported two new, first-class billiard-tables, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... at the house we found Romata sitting on a mat, in the midst of a number of large bales of native cloth and other articles, which had been brought to him as presents from time to time by inferior chiefs. He received us rather haughtily; but on Bill explaining the nature of our errand, he became very condescending, and ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... together, but in subdued tones, so that I could not catch their words, although standing within fifteen yards of the grave. The uncoffined corpse, which seemed that of a full-grown man, was covered with a white cloth, and rested on a thick straw mat, provided with handles along the sides. On these things, however, I bestowed but a hasty glance, so profoundly absorbed had I become in watching the group of living human beings before me; for they were certainly utterly unlike any fellow-creatures ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... beyond the table Anne's very pale face. She laughed a little hysterically, out of the deep shadows between the gloomy mat walls. 'Ha! ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... offer would not for a moment be entertained by the other two sisters, who insisted that the square carpet should be so cut that each should get a square mat of exactly ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... from proceeding from extreme fatigue; they found the names of persons written at the farthest part. There are numbers of rooms as they are called, which are yet unexplored. In one of these, a few miles from the entrance, there was discovered many years since, a female figure sitting with a mat wrapped round her shoulders; she was quite dried to a mummy, and has for many years been exhibited in a caravan, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... patient, now once more plunged in narcotic stupor, was carried downstairs by two male nurses, Dr. Angus presiding. Marcella stood in the doorway and watched the scene,—the gradual disappearance of the helpless form on the stretcher, with its fevered face under the dark mat of hair; the figures of the straining men heavily descending step by step, their heads and shoulders thrown out against the dirty drabs and browns of the staircase; the crowd of Jewesses on the stairs and landing, craning ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on this side of the border; but you must learn those on the other side, as well. They are, indeed, of even greater importance in case of pursuit, or for crossing the border unobserved. Hitherto, I have forbidden you to cross the line, but in future Mat Wilson shall go with you. He knows the Scotch passes and defiles, better than any in the band; and so that you don't go near the Bairds' country, you can traverse them safely, so long as the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... circulation, Or of thoughts in the process of fabrication, By a spinning-jennyish operation, It's hard to say what buzzing it is. However, except that ghost of a sound, She sat in a silence most profound - The cat was purring about the mat, But her mistress heard no more of that Than if it had been a boatswain's cat; And as for the clock the moments nicking, The dame only gave it credit for ticking. The bark of her dog she did not catch; Nor yet the click of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... primitive little houses upon their stilt-like posts, and the ladies had spent some time in watching a quaint little native mother making efforts to at once ply the queer sticks which helped her in a strange sort of mat-weaving, and keep an eye upon a preternaturally solemn-faced infant, who, despite his gravity, seemed capable of quite as much mischief as the average enfant terrible of ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Billy knew it all by heart as well as he knew the table of sevens in the multiplication table—he said, "Now let's play Robinson Crusoe." First he called the old open cellar Crusoe's cave, and scooped out a place between some stones and made it clean, and I braided a little mat and a curtain out of some long grass for it, and there he put his old copy of Robinson Crusoe, and for days and days, after school was out, and in vacation, we ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wronging Comrade Parker in thinking that this was a scheme of his for getting me out of the way. At any rate, somebody gave the tip, and at about three o'clock this morning I was aroused from a dreamless slumber by quite a considerable hammering at my door. There, standing on the mat, were two policemen. Very cordially the honest fellows invited me to go with them. A conveyance, it seemed, waited in the street without. I disclaimed all connection with the bad gambling persons below, but they replied that they were cleaning up the house, and, if I wished to make any remarks, ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Hennessey, leaning forward and gazing into Malkiel's long and excited face round which the heavy mat of pomaded hair vibrated. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... Making Huts, Lean-to, Shacks Grass Mat Weaving Map Making Knot Tying Fire Lighting Boat Management Boat and Canoe Building Canoeing Fishing Camp Cooking Week-end Camps Indian Camps Over-night Camps Hikes, Tramps, Walks, ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... personages we have before had a glimpse. When the Duchess of Queensberry passed, and Mr. Wolfe explained who she was, Martin Lambert was ready with a score of lines about "Kitty, beautiful and young," from his favourite Mat Prior. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fell, the hushed attention of the big crowd being drawn to him. Just before reaching the life net, Joe straightened out and fell into the meshes feet first, bouncing out on a mat and from there bowing his thanks ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... enough to keep us awake? I am told that there were people who slumbered peacefully through the San Francisco earthquake, merely stirring drowsily from time to time to tell an imaginary person to leave it on the mat. Yet these ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... must have loaded this basket with cobblestones," cried Mat with a groan, leaning sideways almost ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... said the startled Jane to herself. She dropped her disconcerted vision to the door-mat. Then she saw that the man wore knee-breeches and black ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... consists of a circular, thick mat of straw, from two to four feet in diameter, covered with canvas, painted in a series of circles. The inner circle is a gold color, then comes red, white, black, and the outer circle white. The score for a gold hit is nine; ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... the whole sitting. Their wooden shoes ('Klompen'), scrubbed for the occasion to a brilliant white with the help of a good layer of whitening, might have been seen in a row standing on the door-mat, for no well-educated farmer would ever have dreamed of entering a room with shoes on his feet, and he would have taken his 'pruim,' or quid of tobacco, which every farmer chews even when smoking, out ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... continues to spread, assumes control of the lawn, with but little of the June grass in sight. Each struggles for possession and does the best it can, and to some extent one supplements the other, with the result that at all times from spring to fall there is a close mat of living green which delights the eye and is pleasant to the feet that tread upon it. In soft ground, with plenty of room, a bit of quick or quack grass, or Bermuda, will extend in a year three to five feet ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... a mat facing each other, knees bent perpendicularly, toes touching opponent's. Pass stick under knees and clasp your hands in front of knees. When the signal is given, attempt to get your toes under opponent's ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... should be about 1 inch wide, and there should be an inch between two strips. This rack will support the jars and will admit the free circulation of boiling water about them. Young willow branches, woven into a mat, also make a good bed for ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... and lifted a coarse mat, with which he covered me when I got into the sleigh, and then ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... glued in an upright row at equal distances apart to the back of the match-box, will cause them to stand up above the top of it about a third of an inch. On the tops of them then lay another match to make a little railing. Cover the box as you did the dressing-table. Put a little mat of oil-cloth on the top of the box, and make another large one to lay in front of it. Proper jugs and basins will, of course, have to be bought, but an acorn cup or small shell makes a ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... troop to troop, from squadron stables on to squadron stables, until six hundred men were ready for all contingencies. A civilian might not have recognized the difference, but Kirby's soldier servant awakened from his nap on the colonel's door-mat and straightened his turban in a hurry, perfectly well aware that there was something ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... Allegra, after long delay, were at length buried in the church, just under the present door mat, over which the congregation enter the church; but no memorial tablet or other record of her appears on the walls ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles |
