"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watch with its flowery, ornamental dial from the recesses of an ample bosom. She drew it out by the chain and, once free, it swung violently to and fro till ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... love of a Tahitian for a sailor's trunk. So ornamental is it held as an article of furniture in the hut, that the women are incessantly tormenting their husbands to bestir themselves and make them a present of one. When obtained, no pier-table just placed in a drawing-room is regarded with half the delight. For these reasons, then, our coming ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... parsnips and cakes are eaten, and nuts and apples roasted. A "puzzling jug" holds the ale. In the rim are three holes that seem merely ornamental. They are connected with the bottom of the jug by pipes through the handle, and the unwitting toper is well drenched unless he is clever enough to see that he must stop up two of the holes, and drink through ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... Patterson's foundry was called Lewis. He had special charge of the iron castings designed for architectural and ornamental purposes. He was a man of great taste and artistic feeling, and I was able even at that time to appreciate the beauty of his designs. One of the most original characters about the foundry, however, was Johnie Syme. He took charge of the old Boulton and Watt steam-engine, which gave ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... painting themselves was practised by both sexes, perhaps it was at first introduced as a defence against the venomous insects, so common in tropical climates, or possibly they considered the brilliancy of the colour as highly ornamental." These Charaibes had other ways of deforming themselves, some of which resembled what we shall find described in the course of this work. They made deep cuts on their cheeks, and stained them black; and painted white and black circles round their eyes. The tatooing which Mr Barrow ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... exploration, Girdlestone was standing by the door to receive her with a sardonic smile upon his thin lips. "How do you like the grounds, then?" he asked, with, the nearest approach to hilarity which she had ever heard from him. "And the ornamental fencing? and the lodge-keeper? How did ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... placed upon the work of the monk, who, with slow and painful effort, gave fantastic life to his solemn thoughts in the gloom of this old quarry, from which stone had been taken to build the church. He was a rude artist, such as might have belonged to the darkest age, but certain ornamental details of the bas-relief indicate that he was a man of the sixteenth century. The walls of the cavern have been blackened by the damp, and these awful shapes reveal themselves but slowly to the eye, so that they look like a vague and dreadful company of ghosts advancing ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... practically a nearly flat surface or plafond held in its place by the arches surrounding it; though, for effect, it is often treated otherwise in external appearance, being decorated by pendants giving a reversed curve at this point, but which of course are only ornamental features hung from the roof. If we look again at Fig. 104, we shall see that this was a very natural transition after all, for the arrangement of the ribs and vaulting surfaces in that example is manifestly suggestive of a form radiating round the central point of springing, though ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... in every way weaker; he is wanting in agility; he has lost the prehensile feet; he has lost teeth fitted for fighting or crushing or tearing; he has but little sense of smell; he has lost the hairy covering, and is obliged to help himself by clothes.[1] If this loss was ornamental it is quite unlike any other development in this respect, since no other creature has the same; for ornamental purposes the fur becomes coloured, spotted, and striped, but not lost. It is easy to reply that man being intelligent, his brain ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... missed, and of years devoted, how unprofitably, to other kinds of usefulness! The truth is that most of us who have any ambitions at all, do not start in life with a hope of being useful, but rather with an intention of being ornamental. We think, like joseph in his childish dreams, that the sun and moon and the eleven stars, to say nothing of the sheaves, are going to make obeisance to us. We want to be impressive, rich, beautiful, influential, admired, envied; and then, as we move forward, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fingers; the widow looked at the stranger from under her eyelashes, and her voice thrilled through him till he began to think of magnolias and mocking-birds and other ornamental things which soften a man's feelings down to the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... value upon the former, to understand the right use of ornament, and also cultivates the aesthetic taste upon classic lines. An enormous number of jerry built articles are sold, which the public readily buy simply on account of their ornamental appearance. If the ability to distinguish between good and bad work were more universal it would go ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business aspects of the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot water. Mr. Cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late, ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for gold-fish cases, but really for a private purpose that will be better explained later. The next day Mrs. Cave found that the crystal had been removed from the window, and was lying ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Spain, I, 115, 310. In the patriarchal age of the Jews, there was a relatively very large quantity of ornamental objects in gold and silver: Michaelis, De Pretiis Rerum apud Hebraeos, in the Comm. Soc. Goetting., III, 151 ff., 160. Conservative Sparta, in the middle age of its history, was certainly not rich, and yet it had more gold and silver than any other Grecian state: Plato, Alcib., I, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... opened upon a lawn covered with orange, magnolia, and other ornamental trees. The house was low on the ground, and it was not more than three feet from the window-sill to the lawn. Without explaining any thing, Captain Passford took his daughter's trunk, carried it to the window, and then dropped it upon ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... just wound up his confidential discourse by speaking to me of a joiner's business which he had hoped to buy, and work to good account with Robert's help. The present owner had made a fortune by it, and, after thirty years of business, he was thinking of retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city, a usual retreat for the frugal and successful workingman. Michael had not indeed the two thousand francs which must be paid down; but perhaps he could have persuaded Master Benoit to ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... long-styled. These grandchildren grew vigorously, and soon exceeded in height two other lots of illegitimate seedlings of different parentage and one lot of equal-styled seedlings presently to be described. Hence I expected that they would have turned out highly ornamental plants; but when they flowered, they seemed, as my gardener remarked, to have gone back to the wild state; for the petals were pale-coloured, narrow, sometimes not touching each other, flat, generally deeply notched in the middle, but not flexuous on the ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... the time being, these original churchwardens having been long out of the office before my appointment. After the restoration of the church my co-warden and I, with the Vicar's consent, levelled the rough places in the neglected churchyard, sowed it with grass seeds, and planted various ornamental shrubs; we had the untidy southern boundary carefully dug over, and set a man to plant a yew-hedge. He was thus employed when a parishioner appeared in some excitement, and objected to the planting of yew on account of possible damage to sheep grazing in the churchyard, claiming the right—which, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... were to begin he would have a lot to do." And then came the passage which has already passed into Parliamentary history. "If we are to stand in white sheets, my right hon. friend would have to wear that ornamental garment standing in ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... only partially repaired,—all indicated the movements of hostile armies. In those places where the gentry were attached to the Stuart cause, their houses seemed dismantled or deserted, the usual course of what may be called ornamental labour was totally interrupted, and the inhabitants were seen gliding about, with fear, sorrow, and dejection on ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... indicate the place where a plant naturally grows, as in swamps or upon dry hillsides. Under the head of "Horticultural Value," the requisite information is given for an intelligent choice of trees for ornamental purposes. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... serving a life-sentence in the penitentiary at San Quinten; and a mechanical canarybird in a gilded cage, acquired at the Philadelphia Centennial,—a bird that had carolled its death—lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound up too hard and its little insides snapped. In the parlour a few ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the centre-table with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the "sitting-room" were a steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln striking the shackles from a kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... for a lady is a nice piece of artificial hair, as, when not absolutely necessary, it is always useful and ornamental."—Advt. in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... thoroughly insular climate, he may cross to the picturesque island of Santa Catalina. All along the coast flowers bloom in the winter months, and the ornamental semi-tropical plants thrive; and there are many striking headlands and pretty bays and gentle seaward slopes which are already occupied by villages, and attract visitors who would practise economy. The hills frequently come close to the shore, forming those valleys in which the Californians ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... the middle of the 16th Century, the use of tobacco was confined to the American Indians. In 1560 the Spaniards began to cultivate tobacco as an ornamental plant, and Jean Nicot, the French Ambassador at Lisbon, introduced it at the court of Catherine de Medici in the form of snuff. Smoking subsequently became a custom which spread rapidly throughout the world, although often vigorously ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... go to the expense of engraving this most subtle example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and imagination in religious ornamental work of ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... probably answered her boy in the form of cakes and "goody," for there were none of her letters among this set; but a whole collection of the rector's, to whom the Latin in his boy's letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse. I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an ornamental language, but not very useful, I think—at least to judge from the bits I remember out of the rector's letters. One was, "You have not got that town in your map of Ireland; but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is easily grown and very fragrant. As ornamental as orange or lemon and very free flowering. Give almost no water in winter, or store in cellar. Plants ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... there is a 'new style' of catch on one, and of bows and buckles on the other. Do you hear me, Mary? don't leave a rag of my French finery behind. Let the examination be sufficiently complete this time. Don't forget the Indian shawl and the opera cloak and hood, nor that ornamental comb, named after the last popular danseuse; and tell Miss Julia she will please excuse me—another time I will try to see her. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Among his latest works were the pendentives of the Farnesina, with the story of Cupid and Psyche—works painted and even drawn by his pupils, coarse in types and heavy in color but altogether astonishing in freedom and variety of design. The earlier painters covered their vaulting with ornamental patterns in which spaces were reserved for independent pictures, like the rectangles of the Stanza della Segnatura. It was a bold innovation when Michelangelo discarded this system and placed in the pendentives of the Sistine his colossal figures of the Prophets and the Sibyls, each ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... unsymmetrical, but bettered always by increasing degrees of symmetry; as in star figures, wherein there is a circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for the plan and ground of ornamental designs; so also it is observable that foliage in which the leaves are concentrically grouped, as in the chestnuts, and many shrubs—rhododendrons for instance—(whence the perfect beauty of the Alpine rose)—is ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... be," she said, between laugh and sigh, "if only it could be kept out of the newspapers! I see it from here under the Fashionable Intelligence. 'The beautiful Princess Zobraska was observed in a boat on the ornamental water in Regent's Park with the well-known—tiens—what are you?—politician, say—with the well-known young politician, Mr. Paul Savelli.' Quel ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... an ornamental color, should be below all others, for artistic effect. An artistic dressmaker places the dark or black plaids or stripes beneath the others. This natural correspondence is almost universally recognized among enlightened nations in clothing for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... one of the best-known kinds, having been extensively cultivated as an ornamental greenhouse plant till within the last few years. It was grown by several nurserymen for Covent Garden Market about eight years ago; small plants, about 1 ft. high, and bearing each from two to six flowers, finding much favour among the costermongers, as the plants could be bought at ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... amongst whom on this occasion was Marriott, sallied to the water and hired boats. Marriott was one of the six old cricket colours—the others were Norris, Gosling, Gethryn, Reece, and Pringle of the School House—who formed the foundation of this year's Eleven. He was not an ornamental bat, but stood quite alone in the matter of tall hitting. Twenty minutes of Marriott when in form would often completely alter the course of a match. He had been given his colours in the previous year for making exactly a hundred in sixty-one minutes ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... a matter of course, to become the mate of the conqueror. In many other cases pairing seems to be the result of accident; the two sexes pair as they happen to meet each other. The great points on which Mr. Darwin rests his argument are that in some cases, on the approach of breeding-time, certain ornamental appendages become more highly developed or more brilliantly coloured, [Footnote: Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 80.] and that in many cases the males, when courting the females, are observed to display their ornaments before them. [Footnote: Ibid. vol. ii. p. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... he chewed on a twig: "All the same, the incident shows what I've always maintained about Molly: that she is, like 'most everybody, lamentably miscast. Molly's spirit oughtn't to have taken up its abiding place in that highly ornamental blond shell, condemned after a fashionable girl's education to pendulum swings between Paris and New York and Lydford. It doesn't fit for a cent. It ought to have for habitation a big, gaunt, powerful man's body, and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Flora Dietetica; or, the History of Esculent Plants: 8vo. 1785. Also, a Dictionary of Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, and ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... meridian heats of a July sun. The natives were gentle and amiable, graceful in figure, agile in movement, and exhibited unusual taste, dressing their hair in a variety of twists and braids, intertwined with ornamental feathers. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the deer clustered beneath their umbrageous branches, with their spacious flower-terraces and long avenues of limes, arching chestnuts, or venerable oaks, reaching from the house to the distant road, and terminating in snug little ivy- covered lodges and heavy ornamental iron gates with massive stone piers, moss-grown, and surmounted by time-worn and weather-stained stone sculptures of the arms of the family; the drowsy chime of the church- clocks; the barking of dogs; the lowing of cattle; the voices of herdsmen or ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to the height of one story only, formed of a row of pillars engaged half-way up in a wall divided into panels in such a manner as to form around the house a shelter closed to the sun and the gaze of the outer world. All these buildings, enlivened by ornamental paintings,—for the capitals, the shafts, the cornices, and the panels were coloured,—produced a delightful and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... friends. Tim O'Rooney had managed to conceal a second knife about his person when bargaining with the Indian—one made on the liberal ideas that was displayed in the construction of his watch, and far more useful than the ornamental trifles that the ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... parts—parts, that is, retained, not for intrinsic use, but from their imaginative attraction upon an uncultured and rude population. All such elements tend to diminish simple efficiency. They are like the additional and solely-ornamental wheels introduced into the clocks of the Middle Ages, which tell the then age of the moon or the supreme constellation; which make little men or birds come out and in theatrically. All such ornamental work is a source of ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of the Sun—poured into the big room through an enormous window of clear glass which formed the entire north wall. Round the other walls from floor almost to lofty ceiling were books in solid rows; not books with ornamental bindings, but books for use, books that had been and were being used. By way of furniture there were an immense lounge, wide and long and deep, facing the left chimney piece, an immense table desk facing the north light, three great chairs ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the worthless scabbard had only lasted out till, on some grand field-day, the word was given, "Draw swords?" Some felt this, doubtless; but the most part, I imagine, were possessed with a comfortable assurance that their short life had been useful, if not ornamental; and so, to a certain extent, they had their reward. At any rate, their ending was to the full as glorious as that of some other friends of ours, who crawl away from the battle-ground of the Viveurs to die, or to ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... are scarcely imaginable in the later ages of a nation; but in Bede's day a people accepting the 'glad tidings' was glad; and, unambitious as his style is of the ornamental or the figurative, it is brightened by that which it so faithfully describes. His chronicle is often poetry, little as he intended it to be such; nay, it is poetry in her 'humanities' yet more than in her distinctively spiritual province, and better poetry than ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... than genius sends; the hope of profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be worthy. The paintings of Italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy religion, and Rome is the general storeshop of Europe. The arts owe much to Popery, and Popery owes much of its universality to the arts. The French have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art; in Holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... temperature of cordiality the moment that Mrs. Plaistow returned that worsted. Outwardly and publicly friendly relationships had been resumed, and as the coolness had lasted six weeks or so, it was probable that the worsted had already been incorporated into the ornamental border of Mrs. Plaistow's jumper or winter scarf, and a proper expression of regret would have to do instead. So the nearer Mrs. Plaistow approached, the more invisible she became to Miss Mapp's eye, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... as they were out of sight Bob went off for a pike, and his father, first new-flinting his firelock, proceeded to don his uniform, pipe-claying his breeches with such cursory haste as to bespatter his black gaiters with the same ornamental compound. Finding when he was ready that no bugle had as yet sounded, he went with David to the cart- house, dragged out the waggon, and put therein some of the most useful and easily-handled goods, in case there might be an opportunity for ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... as well as all the constructive skill, are due to Huguet his successor, who may perhaps have travelled in France and England, and had come back to Portugal with increased knowledge of how to build, but with a rather confused idea of the ornamental detail he had ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... legislation, and, although he convoked them to vote new taxes, he established the rule that the old taxes were to be considered as granted in perpetuity and as constituting the ordinary revenue of the crown. He treated the nobles as ornamental rather than useful, retiring them from royal offices in favor of lawyers and other subservient members of the middle class. All business was conducted by correspondence and with a final reference to the king, and the natural result ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... this phenomenon, for the tower, so far as I could see, had been merely built with the mistaken idea of being ornamental. Though new, it was intended to present the effect of being ruinous, having little dark chinks in ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... simple force and straightforward ring; and not in virtue of any subtle charm of sound and rhythm, or overmastering splendour of diction or thought. Ornament vanishes, and soberness and simplicity increase, as we proceed in the editions of the sonnets. Drayton's chief attempt in the jewelled or ornamental style appeared in 1595, with the title of Endimion and Phoebe, and was, in a sense, an imitation of Marlowe's Hero and Leander. Hero and Leander is, as Swinburne says, a shrine of Parian marble, illumined from ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... westward they desired to have their place—I won't say of worship, but their place of meeting, nearer to their homes. Moreover, moved by the advancing spirit of the age, they wished for a more important and ornamental looking edifice than the extremely plain, I might say ugly, structure which their fathers had attended. Unitarians may appear to be rather rigid and frigid, but they have an intelligent appreciation of art ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... subsequently the protege and employee of Fouche, with whom he is to be associated in the police department, keeps the throng of women in check which daily resorts to the Tuileries to beg for bread. He is well adapted for this duty, being tall, chubby, ornamental, and with vigorous lungs. He has taken his office in the right place, in the attic of the palace, at the top of long, narrow and steep stairs, so that the line of women stretching up between the two ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... enthusiasm on the subject; he said there was but one garden that he knew of in the whole neighbourhood of Darien, and that was our neighbour, old Mr. C——'s, a Scotchman on St. Simon's. I remembered the splendid gardinias on Tunno's Island, and referred to them as a proof of the material for ornamental gardening. He laughed, and said rice and cotton crops were the ornamental gardening principally admired by the planters, and that, to the best of his belief, there was not another decent kitchen or flower garden in the State, but the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... This car was a roadster. Its side curtains were up, completely enclosing the single seat. It had evidently been used since the rainy weather started. It was not altogether free from damage, one of the fenders was bent, the bumper in front almost touched the ground on one side, an ornamental figurehead had been broken off the radiator cap, and the face of the radiator was dented. This car was equipped with a searchlight fastened on one end of the windshield, and as Gilbert Tyson handled this it lighted, sending ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... ornamentation of any kind. The walls are left untouched by either the painter or the lacquerer. In the Buddhist temples, on the contrary, the Japanese artist has had afforded him full scope for the exercise of his ornamental ingenuity. Numerous courtyards have to be traversed before reaching the temple itself. These courtyards contain many small buildings, bronze or stone lanterns, belfries, pavilions, pagodas, &c., &c., all elaborately decorated. Amongst the supplementary ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... vegetables should be put down, and the kinds most suitable to the locality, and the best method of growing them should also be noted, as well as the most suitable kinds of fruit, and the most desirable kinds of ornamental trees. The rainfall register should also be given, as well as any other information of interest, as for instance, a list of ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... alone together, and Jennie saw that Gretlich was not the least ornamental appendage to the handsome suite of rooms. Gretlich was an excellent example of that type of fair women for which Vienna is noted; but she was, as the Princess had said, extremely downcast, and Jennie, who had a deep sympathy for all who worked, spoke kindly ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Ashley, through thinking of my father, but I reflected that it could not be long now ere I saw him again. In the middle of the day we stopped at a tavern. And at length, in the abundant shade of evening, we came to a pair of great ornamental gates set between brick pillars capped with white balls, and turned into a drive. And presently, winding through the trees, we were in sight of a long, brick mansion trimmed with white, and a velvet lawn before it all flecked with shadows. In front of the portico was a saddled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Park Downs, and then he had overlooked them as, with the said branches and with waterproofs laced together in pairs, they had erected sleeping shelters for the officers under the imperfect shelter of the sole tree within the precincts of the camp. From these purely ornamental occupations he had returned in a condition approximating to collapse, without desire and without hope. The invincible cheerfulness of unseen men chanting music-hall songs in the drenched night made no impression on him, nor the terrible staccato curtness of a N.C.O. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... floors of halls and apartments were many of them faced with polished slabs of marble, jasper, obsidian, and white tecali; lofty columns of the same fine stones supported marble balconies and porticos, every inch and corner of which was filled with wondrous ornamental carving, or held a grinning, grotesquely sculptured head. The beams and casings were of cedar, cypress, and other valuable woods profusely carved and put together without nails.... Superb mats of most exquisite finish were spread upon the marble floors; the tapestry that draped the walls ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... is built, the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... ornamental leg or stand for table or sideboard (abacus). See picture in Rich's Dictionary ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... fonts, now used as holy-water stoups, are probably of anterior workmanship. Cut out of solid blocks of stone, their carving shows all the interlacing lines and exquisite finish of detail, purely ornamental, that marks the pre-Gothic period in the South of France, when the artistic spirit of Christianity was still confined to the close imitation of Roman and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... statues of old Egypt such as that of Khufu (Cheops) in the Bulak Museum were drilled by means of diamonds. AthenFus tells us (lib. v.) that the Indians brought pearls and diamonds to the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and this suggests cutting, as nothing can be less ornamental than the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... direct contradiction to all my resolutions, and, I think, inconsistently with my character. But such is the nature of man! and I was doomed to make a fool of myself, even in the very temple of Minerva. Among the various ornamental buildings in the grounds at Ormsby Villa, there was a temple dedicated to this goddess, from which issued a troop of hoyden young ladies, headed by the widow O'Connor and Lady Kilrush, all calling to us ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the prevailing colour of the paper and hangings, nothing like an opinion on the subject could be drawn from her. The influence of fresh objects and fresh air, however, was of great use in dissipating these embarrassing associations; and, having reached the ornamental part of the premises, consisting of a walk round two sides of a meadow, on which Henry's genius had begun to act about half a year ago, she was sufficiently recovered to think it prettier than any pleasure-ground ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Imperial Library there were 3123 volumes of the Classics and commentaries thereupon; 2705 on Philosophy; 1318 of Poetry; 2528 on Mathematics; 868 on Medicine; 790 on the Science of War. His gardens at Changan were famous; he had collectors wandering the world for new and ornamental things to stock them; very likely we owe many of our garden plants and shrubs to him. He consecrated mountains and magnificent ceremonies; and for the sake of the gods and genii appeared as flaming splendors over Tai-hsing and the other sacred heights. For the light of Romance falls on ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... gloomy pettifoggers, by Infantas with childish faces and the hollow skirts of a Virgin's image on an altar; the others bringing as a merry, unconcerned retinue, a rabble clad in bright colors, wrapped in scarlet capes or lace mantillas, crowned with ornamental combs or masculine hats—a race that, without knowing it, was sapping its heroism in picnics at the Canal or in grotesque amusements. The lash of invasion aroused them from their century-long infancy. ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... palace with his gleamy rays. It was a pile which the immortal Inigo had raised in sympathy with the taste of a noble employer, who had passed his earliest years in Lombardy. Of stone, and sometimes even of marble, with pediments and balustrades, and ornamental windows, and richly-chased keystones, and flights of steps, and here and there a statue, the structure was quite Palladian, though a little dingy, and, on the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... of sentiment, and light literature, and elegant embellishments of useful and ornamental art, Godey's Lady's Book takes the lead of all works of its class. We have seen nothing in it offensive to the most fastidious taste."—Church ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... cross, no crown;" "The Lord reigneth, let His people rejoice;" and "Great is our Lord, and of great power." Over the arched window behind the ten Melchisedec pulpits, and just beneath the vertical modillion which forms the keystone of the ornamental wooden arch, is the text, "Holiness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... said to be solid silver," he remarked, as he laid on a chair beside her a curious little statuette of a horse, trapped and decorated in Indian graving, and having its whole surface covered with an involved and rich ornamental design. Its eyes were, or seemed to be rubies, and saddle and bridle and housing were studded with small gems. There was little merit in the art of it beyond the engraving, but Cosmo saw the eyes of the lady fixed upon it, with a strange ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to the door. Sometimes the summer showed here a growth of marigolds, with sweet peas and china asters, for Andy was fond of flowers, and when he had leisure he did a little floral gardening; but this year, owing to Richard's absence, there had been more to do on the farm, consequently the ornamental had been neglected, and the late autumn flowers which, in honor of Ethelyn's arrival, were standing in vases on the center table and the mantel, were contributed by Melinda Jones, who had been very busy in other portions of the house ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... but on every side he beheld grinning men of swarthy countenance, and at sight of his terror the hellish merriment broke forth anew, until the whole place thundered with it. Facing him, upon an ornamental balcony, stood the Moor, and beside him, with elbows on the balustrade and face alight with sinister enjoyment, stood ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... just about the time he was emerging from knickerbockers, he had been madly in love with this golden-haired, hazel-eyed cousin of his, and the lady, who had the advantage of him in years, being unresponsive, he had haunted a very large and very deep ornamental pond in his grandmother's park for several weeks with considerable persistency. Had the disease attacked him in summer it is quite probable that this story would never have been written, for his nature ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... or so later Bruce arrived at the temple. Day after day he had hung to the trail, picking it up here and losing it there. He found Rajah, the elephant, the howdah gone, and only the ornamental headpiece discovered to Bruce that he had found his rogue. Rajah was docile enough; he had been domesticated so long that his freedom ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... of the tobacco plant were first brought to Europe by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo, who introduced it into Spain, where it was first cultivated as an ornamental plant, till Monardes[22] extolled it as possessed of ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... reduced scale. But the true sense of miniature is something painted in minium, red lead. Florio explains miniatura as "a limning (see p. 63), a painting with vermilion." Such paintings were usually small, hence the later meaning. The word was first applied to the ornamental red initial capitals in manuscripts. Vignette still means technically in French an interlaced vine-pattern on a frontispiece.[58] Cotgrave has vignettes, "vignets; branches, or branch-like borders, or flourishes ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... country, the appearance of which he describes very graphically. As a botanist, he had a keen eye for everything which promised to enlarge our knowledge of the Chinese flora, and discovered many useful and ornamental trees and shrubs, some of which, such as the funereal cypress, will one day produce a striking and beautiful effect in our English landscape, and in our cemeteries. Of social and political information relative to the Celestial Empire, the book is quite barren; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... SIR,—I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the stones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself" [he ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... cane may be very ornamental, but it's of no earthly use, and we would rather you would not carry it when ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... beautiful monuments rose on the rock of the Acropolis as on a gigantic pedestal. There were two temples of which the principal, the Parthenon, was dedicated to Athena, protecting goddess of the city; a colossal statue of bronze which represented Athena; and a staircase of ornamental character leading up to the Propylaea. Athens was from this time the most ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... which seems characteristic of the whole county, and not limited to farm-houses, or even semi-genteel villas, no sooner does a man fix on a nice situation—a rising knoll beside a river—a gentle slope—or beautiful level green—no sooner does he rear a modest, or perhaps an ornamental, mansion on the site, than his next care is to plant as thick round it as the trees will stand. Elms, poplars, oaks, and larches, in a few years block up the view; and arbutus, rododendrons, and enormous Portugal laurels, stand as an impenetrable screen before every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... most important use of boxwood is for engraving purposes, it must be borne in mind that the wood is also applied to numerous other uses, such, for instance, as weaving shuttles, for mathematical instruments, turnery purposes, carving, and for various ornamental articles, as well as for inlaying in cabinet work. The question, therefore, of finding suitable substitutes for boxwood divides itself into two branches, first, directly for engraving purposes, and, secondly, to supply its place for the other uses to which it is now put. This, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... manners. This description of Queen Marguerite cannot be dismissed without observing, if only for the sake of keeping the fashion of the present times with her sex in countenance, that, though she had hair, as has been already described, becoming her, and sufficiently ornamental in itself, yet she occasionally called in the aid of wigs. Brantome's words are: "l'artifice de ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ornamental waters with ice, and gave opportunity for the healthy and exhilarating exercises proper to the season. Those who ventured before the ice was well formed ran considerable risks, and many persons were immersed; but the only disastrous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sound should be functional; that is, it should never be developed for its own sake alone, but also to intensify, through re-expression, the mood of the thoughts. The sound-values are too lacking in independence to be purely ornamental. Poetry does indeed permit of embellishment—the pleasurable elaboration of sensation—yet should never degenerate into a mere tintinnabulation of sounds. The rimes in binding words should bind thoughts also; the tonalities or contrasts ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... richest architectural achievement of our time, devoid as it is and must be of decorative sculpture. For to get decorative sculpture, you must have your sculptors; and they, you know, are wanting. Where are the men who will model capitals and panels in clay, with some sense of ornamental effect? We have the men who can make a copy in relief of an architect's drawings: but then the architect, even if he have the sense of ornamental effect, in the first place can never draw out, full size and with care, all the work required in a rich building, and, in second place, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... garden in front of it. The owner of the villa to which it belonged,—a mansion with park, gardens, aviaries, hot-houses, and lawns—took a fancy to put the little dwelling more in keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he reconstructed it on the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided this cottage from his own lawn, which was bordered and set with flower-beds and formed the terrace of his villa, by a low wall along which he planted a concealing hedge. Behind the cottage (called, in spite of all his efforts to prevent ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... led us lengthwise through the wonderful Santa Clara country, straight up a wide box plait of valley tucked in between an ornamental double ruffle of mountains. I suppose if we passed one ranch we passed a thousand—cattle ranches, fruit ranches, hen ranches, chicken ranches, bee ranches—all the known varieties ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... material defences were weak, the human defenders were weaker still. The regular soldiers were needed for the Castle; Hamilton's dragoons, stationed at Leith, were of no use in the defence of a city, the town guard was merely a body of rather inefficient policemen, the trained bands mere ornamental volunteers who shut their eyes if they had to let off a firearm in honour of the king's birthday. As soon as it seemed certain that the Highland army was approaching Edinburgh, preparations, frantic but spasmodic, were made to put the city in a ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... together by the flexile branches of the vine and bitter-sweet, which climbed to a height of fifteen feet [FN: Solatnum dulcamara,—Bitter-sweet or Woody nightshade. This plant, like the red-berried briony of England, is highly ornamental. It possesses powerful properties as a medicine, and is in high reputation among the Indians.] among the branches of the trees, which it covered as with a mantle. A pure spring of cold, delicious water welled out from beneath the twisted roots of an old hoary-barked cedar, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... di Genzano, "The Flower-Festival of Genzano." It takes place on the eighth day of the Corpus Domini, and receives its name from the popular custom of spreading flowers upon the pavements of the streets so as to represent heraldic devices, figures, arabesques, and all sorts of ornamental designs. The people are all dressed in their effective costumes,—the girls in busti and silken skirts, with all their corals and jewels on, and the men with white stockings on their legs, their velvet jackets dropping over one shoulder, and flowers and rosettes in their conical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... things any kind of a lady ought to have," he said— "all the things that would make any one feel comfortable and as if they'd got plenty? Useful things as well as ornamental ones?" ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 1763), there was laid the foundation of what they call the NEUE PALAIS; New Palace of Sans-Souci: [Rodenbeck, ii. 219.] a sumptuous Edifice, in the curious LOUIS-QUINZE or what is called "Rococo" style of the time; Palace never much inhabited by Friedrich or his successors, which still stands in those ornamental Potsdam regions. Why built, especially in the then down-pressed financial circumstances, some have had their difficulties to imagine. It appears, this New Palace had been determined on before the War broke out; and Friedrich said to himself: "We will build it now, to help the mechanical ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was dressed, we went down into the drawing-room, which was crowded with tables loaded with every variety of ornamental articles. "Now this is what my wife calls fashionable. One might as well be steering through an ice-floe as try to come to an anchor here without running foul of something. It's hard-a-port or hard-a-starboard every minute; and if your ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... professor, and unshaded by the almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloated on the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They were irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco, but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not unworthy mediaeval Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the high poops of ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... fell to castle-building as he rode along. It was evident that he had a very large castle in hand. All day long he was running towers up, taking towers down, adding a wing here, putting on a battlement there, looking to the walls, strengthening the defences, giving ornamental touches to the interior, making in all respects a superb castle of it. His preoccupied face so clearly denoted the pursuit in which he was engaged, that every cripple at the post-houses, not blind, who shoved his little battered tin-box in at the carriage ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... * We can commend this book to every one who would know the main facts of Mr. Jefferson's public career, and those of his private life. It is the best work respecting him that has been published, and it is not so large as to repel even indolent or careless readers. It is, too, an ornamental volume, being not only beautifully printed and bound, but well illustrated. * * * Every American should own ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... city, in a beautifully fenced grove, the traveller came across a small group of servants, both male and female, carrying baskets. In their midst, carried by four servants in an ornamental sedan-chair, sat a woman, the mistress, on red pillows under a colourful canopy. Siddhartha stopped at the entrance to the pleasure-garden and watched the parade, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, saw the sedan-chair and saw the lady ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... its own prejudices, even to the extent of preventing trial by jury, as Judge Hunt is conceded to have done, then our judiciary and not our criminals is our dangerous class. With such judges as Hunt, who has attempted to crush out the trial by jury, and make of the jury merely an ornamental tail to his judicial kite; with such teachers as the Albany Law Journal, which, while acknowledging Hunt's outrageous illegality of action, yet calls it "a mistake," and speaks of him as "a good and pure" ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... earth-born: it is rich in earthly desire. His symbols were not wings to enable the soul to escape into a divine world of beauty. They were the playthings of a grown man, loved for their owft beauty more than for any beauty they could help the spirit to reach. Rossetti belongs to the ornamental school of poetry. He writes more like a man who has gone into a library than like one who has gone out to Nature, and ornamentalism in poetry is simply the result of seeing life, not directly, ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... right, against the wall, stood two handsome walnut-wood wardrobes, with ornamental locks; they were placed one on each side of the window; both were empty, and the contents scattered about on all sides. There were clothing, linen, and other effects unfolded, tossed about, and crumpled. At the end of the room, near the fireplace, a large cupboard used for keeping the crockery ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... buggy-horse, a magnificent iron-gray, and Persimmon, her cousin's riding-horse, a beautiful cream-colored mare with black, flowing mane and tail, and Green Persimmon, her colt, which was like its mother, and scarcely less beautiful. Besides, there were horses and mules which, if not so ornamental, were indispensable. Oh, these must be run off and saved,—but how? Goaded by these thoughts, and upon the impulse of the moment, the girl ordered a sidesaddle to be put upon old "Whitey," and, hastily mounting, belabored the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... church nor churchgoing inhabitants. I have since lived in great towns, and seen the ways of churches and of worship, and I am old enough now to distinguish between what is essential in religion, and what is merely formal or ornamental. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... females, only encountered in romance, who dwell on the brink of exaltation, and never eat bread and butter without seeming to fly in the face of Divine Providence.' But this feebly expresses the worn-out ornamental piety of the work. It would require but very little alteration to become one of the most intensely amusing books ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mature life; and serious and discreet men, senators and judges, toiling painfully through elements, vocabularies, and rules of pronunciation, to acquire an amount of speech sufficient to attract ridicule, and produce inconvenience, but very inadequate to any useful or ornamental purpose.—Ibid. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... response than a loud laugh." But there has also been, and still is, some opposition to its general introduction in this country. Only a few months ago the St. Louis press urged its removal from the schools on the ground that it is one of the "ornamental" studies, and that more time is in that city, for instance, devoted to it than to the practical subjects of geography and arithmetic. This last objection has not much force. All that is really practical and generally useful in geography ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... born in the same year with Cicero, and was now twenty-three. He was a high—spirited ornamental youth, with soft melting eyes, as good as he was beautiful, and so delightful to women that it was said they all longed to bite him. The Pompeys had been hardly treated by Cinna. The father had been charged with embezzlement. The family ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... laid in rows on the window-sills; there were neat piles heaped in the corners, along the walls, and on every shelf, while the cabinet-organ, of Jersey manufacture, with its ornamental rows of false stops and keys, which was the distinguishing feature of the office, had "spec'mins" on the bristling array of stands which stood out from it in ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... turban; Joan a sportsman in her gymnasium knickers; Sheila, in a tricolor cap, represented France; and Lorna was draped with the Union Jack; Jess with a plaid arranged as a kilt made a sturdy Highlander; Mary was an Irish colleen; while Delia, in a wrapper ornamental with fringes of tissue paper, stood for "Carnival." A white dressing jacket trimmed with green leaves, and a garland of flowers were waiting for Peachy, and when the latter was popped on her head she was promptly ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... office. Mr. Grainger, soon after the marriage, persuaded the Dalstons to leave Rock Cottage, and take up their abode in a picturesque village in Cumberland, where he had purchased a small house, with some garden and ornamental ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... odds at once turned in favour of Jackson, who thenceforward had matters all his own way. Even if Mendoza had worn a wig, he probably would have succumbed to Jackson, who was a more powerful man with a longer reach, and as scientific, though not so ornamental, a boxer. In 1803 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... that one makes the acquaintance of a skeleton; and with regard to such a thing—thing, shall one say, or person?—there is a favorable presumption from beforehand; which is this: As he is of no use, neither profitable nor ornamental to any person whatever, absolutely de trop in good society, what but distinguished merit of some kind or other could induce any man to interfere with that gravitating tendency that by an eternal nisus is pulling him below ground? Lodgings are dear in England. True it is ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... exactly resembled them. Deprived of this advantage, however, Isabel's visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanour, and of having, as she thought, eyes like the balanced basins, the circles of "ornamental water," set, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... you have anything bitter and derogatory to say about women, say it and I will listen eagerly. But if you merely wish to gibber about the ornamental exterior of some dashed girl you have been fool enough to get attracted by, go and tell it to the captain or the ship's cat or J. B. Midgeley. Do try to realise that I am a soul in torment. I am a ruin, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... embarrassment was perceiv'd by his Lordship; he rose from his seat, and walk'd up and down.—How did his manly form struggle to conceal the disorder of his mind!—Every movement, every look, every word, discover'd Honour in her most graceful, most ornamental garb: when could it appear to such advantage, surrounded with a cloud of difficulties, yet shining out and towering ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... with the kitchens branching away from it, led by a wooden staircase directly to the first floor of the house. It came out upon the landing opposite to a second more ornamental stair which came up from the front hall. Out of this landing opened the drawing-room and several bedrooms, including those of Mr. Cunningham and his son. Holmes walked slowly, taking keen note of the architecture of the house. I could tell from his expression that ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the ornamental water of a park, elbowed here, run against there, crowded into a narrow limit, and abortively trying to cut figures upon a few square feet of dirty, trampled ice, full of holes, dotted with stones thrown on by mischievous urchins to try whether it will bear, and being so much ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the Middle Ages were the retreats of multitudes of natures who did not wish to live in a state of perpetual warfare and offence, and all the elegant arts flourished under their protecting shadows. Ornamental gardening, pharmacy, drawing, painting, carving in wood, illumination, and calligraphy were not unfrequent occupations of the holy fathers, and the convent has given to the illustrious roll of Italian Art some of its most brilliant names. No institution in modern Europe had a more established ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... contracted, gazing steadily at Beverley while he was untying the halyard, which had been wound around the pole's base about three feet above the ground. The American troops in the fort were disposed so as to form three sides of a hollow square, facing inward. Oncle Jazon, serving as the ornamental extreme of one line, was conspicuous for his outlandish garb and unmilitary bearing. The silence inside the stockade offered a strong contrast to the tremendous roar of voices outside. Clark made a signal, and at the tap of a drum, Beverley shook ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... required to intermix imperceptibly, or slide into each other, these should not be chosen; as they might by contrast appear too glaring or tawdry. These gradations and contrasts of colours have been practically employed both by the painters of landscape, and by the planters of ornamental gardens; though the theory of this part of the pleasure derived from visible objects was not explained before the publication of the paper on ocular spectra above mentioned; which is reprinted at the end of the first part of ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... hill-side, covered all day with sheets and yellow blankets, and with long lines of underclothing fluttering between the battered posts. There were any number of cheap prints, and a drawing by one of "her children," and there were flowers in the window, and a sickly canary withered into consumption in an ornamental cage. The bed, with its checked coverlid, was in a closet. A great Bible lay on the table; and her drawers were full of "scones," which it was her pleasure to give to young visitors such as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artillery; thus early betraying that jealous vigilance which has ever distinguished the people of New-England. The last, and most lofty, was still a barren waste, descending into the humid fens which are now converted into a beautiful common, the only ornamental promenade which ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... red partridges. In return Lafayette dispatched by request some special breeds of wolf hounds and a pair of jackasses; also, strange trees and plants, together with varied gifts such as Paris only could devise. The visitor to Mount Vernon finds in the family dining room Lafayette's ornamental clock and rose jars, and his mahogany chair in Mrs. Washington's sitting room. The key to the Bastille, which he sent in 1789, is shown under a glass cover on the wall by the staircase in the entrance hall, ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... was these, no doubt, which had prevented the ill-fated vessel from going to the bottom, but they were of such a size as to make it impossible for us to extract them. Besides these, there were a few fancy goods, such as a number of ornamental birds for millinery purposes, and a hundred cases of preserved fruits. And then, as I turned over the papers, I came upon a short note in English, which arrested ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a highly ornamental timber gateway, erected in 1620, leading to the Council House, the temporary residence, during feudal times, of the Lords President of the Marches. Continuing along this street, we pass the Raven Hotel, recently rebuilt at a cost of nearly ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... honor'd as his own. Him Teucer pierced beneath his ear, and pluck'd His weapon home; he fell as falls an ash Which on some mountain visible afar, Hewn from its bottom by the woodman's axe, 220 With all its tender foliage meets the ground So Imbrius fell; loud rang his armor bright With ornamental brass, and Teucer flew To seize his arms, whom hasting to the spoil Hector with his resplendent spear assail'd; 225 He, marking opposite its rapid flight, Declined it narrowly and it pierced the breast, As he advanced ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... How they grew in grace and in education, both of the practical and the ornamental! How fine in health and figure, from the free life, from the grace learned in dancing, the repose at early hours, the simple diet and the mind filled every day with pleasant thoughts and ideas. I do not know of any one who was not in fine, robust health. They all, without exception, developed ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Dorn watched the swarming of men and women of which he was a part. Faces like a flight of paper scraps scattered about him. Bodies poured suddenly across his eyes as if emptied out of funnels. The ornamental entrances of buildings pumped figures in and out. Vague and blurred like the play of gusty rain, the crowds ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... from indicating the full extent of the decline in the rental value of purely agricultural land, as they include ornamental grounds, gardens, and other properties, and do not take into account temporary remissions of rent. Sir James Caird, as early as 1886, estimated the average reduction on agricultural rents at ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... indulged his day-dreams in Lord Ostermore's garden. He sat within the cool, fragrant shade of a privet arbor, interlaced with flowering lilac and laburnum, and he looked out upon the long sweep of emerald lawn and the little patch of ornamental water where the water-lilies gaped their ivory chalices to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... mutual aversion as bitter as ever separated one people from another, the two kingdoms which compose our island have been indissolubly joined together. Of the ancient national feeling there remains just enough to be ornamental and useful; just enough to inspire the poet, and to kindle a generous and friendly emulation in the bosom of the soldier. But for all the ends of government the nations are one. And why are they so? The answer is simple. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has a stately chateau, now abandoned to the poor and cut up into small habitations. There is in it a grand stone staircase with ornamental plaster ceilings on the several landings; one represents a boar hunt, the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... view the city; so you take an umbrella, an overcoat, and a fan, and go forth. The prominent features you soon locate and get familiar with; first you glimpse the ornamental upper works of a long, snowy palace projecting above a grove of trees, and a tall, graceful white dome with a statue on it surmounting the palace and pleasantly contrasting with the background of blue sky. That building is the capitol; gossips will tell you that by the original ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the poop, and found myself in a small vestibule, the arrangement of which I could not very well see, as it was unlighted, save for the lamplight that issued from the open door of the saloon; I caught a glimpse, however, of polished panels of rare, ornamental woods, with gleams of gilded mouldings and polished metal handrails, and found my feet sinking into the pile of a soft, thick carpet, which gave me a hint as to the luxurious appointments of the ship. From this vestibule I passed into the saloon itself by a partially open ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... sat practising the "Cavatina" for about the two-hundredth time—was perhaps the most fascinating nook in the whole house, inasmuch as it contained a little bit of everything, arranged with that perfect attention to detail which makes each object, small and great, appear not only ornamental, but positively necessary. In one corner a quaint old jar overflowed with the brightness of fresh yellow daffodils; in another a long, tapering Venetian vase held feathery clusters of African grass and fern, . . here ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ornamental flags were hung, which should serve for signs from the street: this was young Swift's design. In the middle window, Columbia responded, should be the George Washington flag. Yes, and to the left Lafayette, with Franklin for the right. Even so. Then above the middle window ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... quality, occasioned by the same causes. The mulberry, fig, and guava, succeed better; they are both abundant and good, but there are not any plantains or bananas. On the higher lands, that is, above the general height of the vineyards, the walnut and chesnut grow most luxuriantly, and are both ornamental and useful. The chesnuts are so plentiful that, in the fruit season, they form a considerable article of food amongst the lower orders of the people. The fine old forest trees, the original occupiers of the soil, are ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... and much more, Melrose! Ceremony and show, if judiciously thrown in, absolutely necessary for the bulk of mankind, both in religious and civil matters.—Dine.—Go to my friend Smith's at Avon printfield—find nobody but Mrs. Miller, an agreeable, sensible, modest, good body; as useful, but not so ornamental as Fielding's Miss Western—not rigidly polite a la Francais, but easy, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Park facade on the New York Library. The Woolworth building is a notable example of the complete co-ordination between the structural framework and its envelope, and falls short of ideal success only in the employment of an archaic and alien ornamental language, used, however, let it be said, with a fine understanding of the function ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... some conventual buildings, the remains of which could be seen in what was called the Abbey Close. The house itself, embosomed in honeysuckles and creeping roses, was an ornament to the whole village, nor were its internal arrangements less exemplary than its outside was ornamental. Report said that Mrs Pontifex starched the sheets for her best bed, and I can ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... would take the trouble to copy some of the Algerian municipalities in this respect, or—better still—obtain professional advice from the Agricultural Institute at Tunis, which could furnish them with a large list of ornamental timber and shrubs that would thrive equally well, and convert Metlaoui into a veritable garden city. The plants suffer at first from the strong winds, but they acclimatize themselves ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... wore handsome fur garments nicely made and embroidered with ornamental patterns such as people on earth now wear. Man got the patterns, and when he came back to earth he showed his people how to make the handsome garments; and the patterns have been retained ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... should have a fit." A year later, on the 19th of March 1799, to give the exact date, the oratorio was first heard publicly at the National Theatre in Vienna, when it produced the greatest effect. The play-bill announcing the performance (see next page) had a very ornamental border, and was, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden |
