"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they may claim a position next-door to that of the present volume I beg to say that it has no connection with them whatever. Schopenhauer does not attempt to teach the art of making bricks without straw. ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... bamboo clumps, straw-stacks and stores of cordage would provide raw material; and as for labour, all you have to do is to order some of your ryots (tenants) who are behindhand with their rent to ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... planked passage ran through the cottages, with a door at the other end opening on to a small field, with the usual cow-house, peat and straw stacks, and a little shed inhabited by a few scraggy cocks and hens which, with "ta coo" herself, are the household property of all, even the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had been standing quietly watching the young stranger while she skilfully handled her brushes. He now stepped forward, took off the little straw hat of his own braiding, and bowed, ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was lsa majestas, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... pounded as fine as possible, sufficient to cram it absolutely to the top; the rest of the box was then filled with the birds, displayed in regular rows, with heads and tails alternating, and a thin coat of clean dry wheaten straw between each layer, until but a few inches' depth remained between the noble pile and the lid of this extempore refrigerator; this space being filled in with flannel packed close and folded tightly, the box was locked and thrust into the accurately fitting boot by dint of the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... therefore at the posadas are not only very large, but the best part of the building, and is the lodging-room of man and beast; all the muleteers sleep there, with their cloaths on, upon a bundle of straw: but while your supper is preparing, the kitchen is crowded with a great number of these dirty fellows, whose cloaths are full of vermin; it would be impossible, therefore, for even a good cook to dress a dish with any decency or cleanliness, were such a ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... with the transportation and the stores that he needs and has called for, he ought to protect himself and his own reputation by referring respectfully to that fact in his report of the campaign, so that, if any of his bricks are imperfect for lack of straw, the people may know that he was not supplied with straw and had no means whatever of getting it in the field to which he was sent. The importance of this point will become apparent when an attempt is made to ascertain the causes and fix ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... and they obeyed, following his lead till they reached the spot where the clear waters of the fall glided into the dingy stream, and then followed the latter up and up for quite half an hour before Saxe stopped short, and took off his straw hat to wipe his steaming forehead, as he gazed up at the end of the glacier; he was now so low down that the surface was invisible, and facing him there was a curve rising up and up, looking like a blunted set ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... time passed not unpleasantly, until, on happening to turn her head, Nancy perceived at a distance the approaching figure of Mr. Lionel Tarrant. He sauntered over the grass with easy, indolent step; his straw hat and light lounge costume (excellent tailoring) suited the season and the place. Jessica, who regarded the young man with something of awe, stood up to shake hands, but Miss. Lord kept her place in the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... remembrance. I believe, however, so religiously scrupulous was Louis upon a point of honour that, had he lived, I should have had nothing to complain of. As it was—but I anticipate! Montreuil disappeared from Paris, almost as suddenly as he had appeared there. And, as drowning men catch at a straw, so, finding my affairs at a very low ebb, I thought I would take advice, even ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... French governess, came down at this point, saying she had had a dream about a hat with pink roses. The peace-making lady said, "Bad little thing, she's quite frisky this morning." Hilary, to whom Mademoiselle was the last straw, left the room. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumult and gold ornaments; also ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... a sickening anguish at the knowledge that he was not able to offer one smallest saving straw to the girl in the ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... should be sucked through a straw, and not allowed to come in contact with the teeth, as otherwise the latter organs will be injured by their effects; or should the acid come in contact with the teeth, the mouth should be immediately rinsed with a solution of saleratus or soda, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... had only enveloped the shades of night, when I banished sleep, and the hour being yet too early to leave my bed, I lay listening to the growls of Sailor, as he remonstrated with Jacko for coming too close to him; while Jacko, in a low, murmuring twitter, pointed out how scantily the straw was spread in the hutch, and how chilly felt the Northern air to him, a little Indian ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... but rob and steal enough, Are punishment and court-of-justice proof, And need not fear, nor be concerned a straw In all the idle bugbears of the law; But confidently rob the gallows too, As well as other sufferers, of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... cream!" exclaimed Curly, the little piggie boy, one morning, as he hopped out of his bed in the clean straw and ran to the head of the stairs to see if breakfast was ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... how nice you look today. That's a new hairdo, isn't it? A permanent? Yeah, what kind?" ... What a microbe! Looks like pink straw, her hair does, and of course she thinks it's beautiful.... "I'd better get down to my station. Old Liverlips will be ranting again. You oughta be glad you have Eddie for a lead man. Eddie's cute. So's Dave, over in ...
— The Very Secret Agent • Mari Wolf
... formed along the wayside. Seated on the straw they finished their afternoon meal, touching mugs, and joking together. Near them the artillerymen greased and verified their axles; others brushed and curried the horses. In one spot a hair dresser had set up his tonsorial parlor in the open, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... of the straw-bottomed arm-chairs in the middle of the room where they were sitting with the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... years before; unsightly and squalid enough it appeared, now that her fancy had begun to conjure up the stately buildings of the town. Close and ill-smelling, the floor littered with manure and foul straw, the pump in one comer that was so hard to work and set the teeth on edge with its grinding; the weather-beaten outside, buffeted by wind and never-ending snow—sign and symbol of what awaited her were she to marry one like Eutrope Gagnon, and accept as her lot a lifetime of rude toil ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... and tatters, and once Akiba was moved to exclaim: "Oh, that I had a fitting ornament for thee: a golden image of Jerusalem the Holy City!" Both indeed were nearest his heart. Once a man came to the door of their hut and asked for some straw, saying that his wife was confined to child-bed and he had no couch for her. "Ah, see," said Akiba to his wife, "there are those even poorer than we. This man has not even straw to lie on." This seeming poor man, the Rabbis say, was ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... ordinary tension devices, inasmuch as it may be said to be automatic. The feeder, too, on these machines is of excellent design, while the arrangements that have been introduced into the Willcox & Gibbs straw hat sewing machine are surprisingly effective in spinning up a hat from a loose roll of braid. Speaking of straw hat machines, mention should be made of Wiseman's hand stitch apparatus, as improved by Messrs. Willcox & Gibbs, and shown here this evening. This machine employs two needles, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... deceived me and done wickedly; but never again shall he beguile me with fair speech—let this suffice him. Let him begone in peace; Zeus the lord of counsel hath taken away his wits. Hateful to me are his gifts, and I hold him at a straw's worth. Not even if he gave me ten times, yea twenty, all that now is his, and all that may come to him otherwhence, even all the revenue of Orchomenos or Egyptian Thebes where the treasure-houses are stored fullest—Thebes of the hundred gates, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... the stable, on removing a heap of straw he found a low door, which opened with a key he produced from his pocket. Going through it, he ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... not dressed in the customary Chinese clothes, as in California, but were in a garb more like that which American laborers wear. They had on overalls, loose blouses or jumpers, heavy leather shoes and straw hats. ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... the stable street. Captain Jack and the filly were in a compartment at the end of the string of stalls. The one next to it, back toward the grandstand, was unoccupied, and adjoining that was a hay room. Gyp stopped opposite the open door of the compartment in which the bales of hay and straw were piled. He paused a moment and turned ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... saw the poor baby last night; hadn't anything on but dirty cotton rags. It was lying asleep in a cold cellar on a little heap of straw. The woman had given it something, I guess, by the way it slept. The petticoat had gone, most likely, to Sam McFaddon's. She spends everything she can lay her hands on in policies ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... he should see a man running for a temporal life, if he should so much neglect his own well-being in this world as to venture, when he is a-running for his life, to pick up here and there a lock of wool that hangeth by the way-side, or to step now and then aside out of the way for to gather up a straw or two, or any rotten stick, I say, if he should do this when he is a-running for his life, thou wouldst condemn him; and dost thou not condemn thyself that dost the very same in effect, nay worse, that loiterest in thy race, notwithstanding thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... blindly the workings of his own appointed fate, without any sense or knowledge of it himself,—went up the ladder also and sat beside him, thinking him asleep. But Nicanor put out a hand and slid it into hers, and shuffled in his straw until he was close against her. She gathered him into her arms, his shaggy head upon her breast, and rocked him to and fro in the darkness. To-morrow he would go where this fate of his called him; but this last night he must be hers, all hers, who had borne him only to give him up. Nicanor, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... expected to go north. Spent a whole fortnight in taking the single castle of Cahir; lingered about the Limerick woods in pursuit of a nephew of the late Desmond, derisively known as the "Sugane Earl," or "Earl of Straw," who in the absence of the young heir had collected the remnants of the Desmond followers about him, and was in league with Tyrone. A few weeks later a party of English soldiers were surprised by the O'Byrnes in Wicklow, and fled shamefully; while almost at ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... sat in the deep straw chair, hatless, with bare white hands that held her work. Her thick flaxen hair, straightly parted and smoothed away from its low growth on the forehead, half hid small fresh ears, unpierced. Long lashes, too white for beauty, cast very faint ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... thickly plaited in front, which has been worn from time immemorial by people of his calling. Our trunk and bags were put in; we shook hands with Uncle Kelson, and having taken our seats just inside in the front part, with plenty of straw for our feet to rest on, the waggoner whipped up his four sturdy horses, and we began to move on. My dear wife pressed closer to my side, and we began to breathe more freely; she thought I was safe from the pressgang. We were just ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Chum emerged all over straw. We had an anxious moment, but the two of us got him down and put the lead on him. Then Chum and I went off for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge Peskad, within three miles of Bedford; and tells you "It is Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat." To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... seemed a bit embarrassed as he approached, chewing a straw nervously. He ignored several of the circus performers, Joe and Helen among them, who were grouped about Jim Tracy, and, addressing the ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... "As bees in spring-time, when The sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of this straw-built citadel, New-nibb'd with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the very crowd Swarm'd and were straiten'd."—"Paradise ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... been detailed to act as his guide and interpreter during the fighting before Termonde. This man took Thompson into a wine-shop where a detachment of soldiers was quartered, gave him food, and spread straw upon the floor for him to sleep on. Shortly after midnight a forty-two centimetre shell struck the building. Of the soldiers who were sleeping in the same room as Thompson nine were killed and fifteen more who were sleeping upstairs, the ex-waiter among ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... Where no such quotations are noticed it will be understood that I am responsible for the fairness with which I have represented the opinions which are examined. It is not my design to fight men of straw. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... single expression, may cost its author. The wits used to say that Ropers,—the poet once before referred to, old Samuel Ropers, author of the Pleasures of Memory and giver of famous breakfasts,—was accustomed to have straw laid before the house whenever he had just given birth to a couplet. It is not quite so bad as that with most of us who are called upon to furnish a poem, a song, a hymn, an ode for some grand meeting, but ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and do yn the branne and grynd hem thanne togedere and and seth hem togeder' and tak flour of rys other amydoun and lye it that yt be charchant and do therto sugur a god parti and a party of wyt grees and boyle yt and wan yt ys don in dyschis straw upon blank poudere and do togedere blank de sury and manmene [4] in a ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... had a basket filled with apples, oranges, nuts and candies. Sydney, wearing an old cloak and straw hat, had a basket on her arm in which were needles, tapes, buttons, pins, and other small wares such as are often hawked about ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... below the site of the present neglected country palace of the Sultan. Up on the heights he turned left of Pera, and after half an hour's rapid movement was trending northward parallel with the Bosphorus, reaches of which were occasionally visible through cleftings of the mountainous shore. Straw-thatched farmhouses dotted the hills and slopes, and the harvest spread right ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Has he lost his mind? I must hurry to stop him from going out. Ah! Ah! This is the last straw! I see nothing but shame ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... go on making up to her any more. She doesn't care a straw about me, and she sees through it, of course. I've done what you asked me. Won't you be ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... new topics. They have all threshed over old straw for many years. There is one new subject, to my thinking worth all the old ones: the new impulse in American life, the new feeling of nationality, our coming to realize ourselves. To my mind there is greater promise in democracy than men of any preceding period ever dared dream of—aggressive ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... a stuffed man of straw," whispered Lady Dashfort to Lord Colambre, "and the captain so like the king of spades, putting ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... upon which the men were laid down, were so arranged that their chests rested on the upper portions, the head in consequence being raised several inches from the ground. The idea in this was to make things easier for the executioner; the same reason also explaining why the straw rope was tied to each man's top-knot; for in this way another man could hold him fast to the stool when the decapitation was to take place. A somewhat closer examination of the first body in the illustration will at once show how distorted ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... guests had all arrived, and when they were accommodated with seats, one of the brothers made a little speech of explanation, ending with the remark that he would apply a torch to the heap of chopped straw and wool beneath the platform. The smoke arising from these different kinds of fuel formed, when combined, he said, the most suitable gas for raising a substance into the air. These diligent brothers, however, had only partly learned the truth as yet, or they would have known that it ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... them were mulattoes or blacks; the number of half-grown boys was very large; there was hardly a suggestion of a uniform in the whole command; most of the men were barefooted, and their coarse, drooping straw hats, cotton shirts, and loose, flapping cotton trousers had been torn by thorny bushes and stained with Cuban mud until they looked worse than the clothes that a New England farmer hangs on a couple of crossed sticks in his corn-field to scare away the crows. If their rifles and cartridge-belts ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... before her, she gradually comes forward, gazing into it with astonishment; whereupon the Kami of the "strong arm" grasps her hand and drags her out, while two other Kami* stretch behind her a rope made of straw, pulled up by the roots,** to prevent her return, and sunshine once more floods ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Show him your house freely, just as it is, talk to him freely of it, just as he in England showed you his finer things. If the man is a true man, he will thank you for such unpretending, sincere welcome; if he is a man of straw, then he is not worth wasting Mrs. Smilax's health and spirits for, in unavailing efforts to get ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... of a human being is at stake; we should be guilty ourselves of a crime which on our deathbeds we should tremble to recall, were we to suffer any consideration, whether of interest or of prejudice, or of undue fear for our own properties and lives, to bias us even to the turning of a straw against the unfortunate prisoner. Gentlemen, if you find me travelling a single inch from my case,—if you find me saying a single word calculated to harm the prisoner in your eyes, and unsupported by the evidence I shall call,—then ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... presents in the canoes when Patteson spied two men, and advanced to them while the Bishop went back to fetch the goods. After a rubbing of noses and a Maori greeting, the men were reassured, and eleven more came up, one a chief with a spear in his hand. 'I had my straw hat fastened by a ribbon, which my friend coveted, so I let him take it, which he did by putting his adze (my gift) against it, close to my ear, and cutting it, off—not the least occasion to be afraid of them.' ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tabarenian land, When some good woman bears her lord a babe, 'Tis he is swathed, and groaning put to bed; While she arising tends his bath and serves Nice possets for her husband in the straw. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautic Exp ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... on the end of the cart, and actually climbed into it, falling all in a heap upon the straw that lay upon the bottom. But it did n't hurt her at all, and the next minute the farmer whipped up his horses, and they went trotting along the lane, carrying Miss Muffet farther and farther away from hated Nurse Holloweg and the ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... enough; Duane felt himself overcome with emotion. There were tears in his eyes. He sat down on a bench, put his elbows on his knees and his hands to his face. For once he had absolutely no concern for his fate. This ignominy was the last straw. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... of it," said Aurelia. "Soon came Miss Herries in a straw hat, and the prettiest green petticoat under a white gown and apron, as a dairy-maid, but the cow would not stand still, for all the man who led her kept scolding her and saying 'Coop! coop!' No sooner had Miss Herries seated herself on the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under the seat. She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet. Round her neck she had folded a man's linen handkerchief, and she had elastic-sided boots on her feet. She locked the door, and put the keys in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... interest one had in the daytime was sitting on the damp straw in our clay vault, scraping the mud off one's saturated boots and clothes. The event to which one looked forward with the greatest interest was the arrival ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... when, if you are not fond of them, you are human enough to forget every personal grudge before the spectacle of a fellow creature in pain or peril, what you want is comfort, reassurance, something to clutch at, were it but a straw. This the doctor brings you. You have a wildly urgent feeling that something must be done; and the doctor does something. Sometimes what he does kills the patient; but you do not know that; and the doctor assures you ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... something," he returned, pointing to a corner of the little bench, "with straw; but I don't ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... set afloat in a pond is free to sit in the tub till it dies there, it is under no obligation to wet its feet; and a drowning man may catch at a straw or not, just as he likes—it is a glorious liberty! Let any man think for five minutes of what old maidenhood means to a woman—and then let him be silent. Is it easy to bear through life a name that in itself ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... once that for which he had come. He would get it, if he did, he was certain of that. And for the rest, what the young men said or thought, or what others who heard their story might say or think, mattered not a straw now that he came to consider it; since he could have Basterga seized on the morrow, and all would pass for a ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... on the Servian shore, had the same poverty-stricken look I had frequently noticed in Galicia. Wretched clay huts, thatched with straw, lay scattered around; and far and wide not a tree or a shrub appeared to rejoice the eye of the traveller or of the sojourner in these parts, under the shade of which the poor peasant might recruit his weary frame, while it would conceal from the eye of ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... embarrassed silence. Miss Prime's lips were compressed, and she seemed more aggressively busy than usual. She bustled about as if every minute were her last one. She brushed off tables, set chairs to rights, and tried the golden-brown cup-cake with a straw to see if it were done. Her visitor positively writhed with curiosity and discomfiture. Finally she began again. "Margar't only had one child, did ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... for Sockatoo, which is a well built city, laid out in regular streets, and containing a large number of inhabitants. The palace was merely a large enclosure, consisting of a multitude of straw huts separated from each other. The sultan was away on a ghrazzie or slave-hunt, but returned next day, and sent for the English traveller. After being conducted through three huts, which served as guard-houses, Clapperton was ushered into a fourth, somewhat larger than the rest, supported ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... storehouses, Rabbi Jochanan in walking through the city saw the populace boiling straw in water and drinking of the same for sustenance. "Ah, woe is me for this calamity!" he exclaimed; "how can such a people strive against a mighty host?" He applied to Ben Batiach, his nephew, one of the chiefs of the city, for permission to leave Jerusalem. But Ben Batiach replied, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... submit without repining. In the meanwhile, I was careful in the performance of every duty, and studious to give no cause, not the remotest, for complaint or dissatisfaction. It was not long, however, before signs of an altered state of things presented themselves to view. A straw tells which way the wind blows, and wisps began to fly in all directions. I found at length that I could do nothing right. To-day I was too indolent; to-morrow, too officious:—now I was too much of a gentlemen; and now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... balsam, hemlock, or pine, you can make a good spring mattress by collecting small green branches of any sort of tree which is springy and elastic. Build the mattress as already described. On top of this put a thick layer of hay, straw, or dry leaves or even green material, provided you have a rubber blanket or poncho to cover the latter. In Kentucky I have made a mattress of this description and covered the branches with a thick layer of the purple blossoms of ironweed; ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... a tall, thin man, with a shrewd clean-shaven face. He wore a new straw hat that day, with a faded linen coat, and a much washed-out plaid gingham cravat under his shirt collar. The best hat was worn on Betty's account, and was evidently a little stiff and uncomfortable, for ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... my time many a genius of this stamp; but, to speak my mind freely, I never knew one who, for the ordinary purposes of life, was worth his weight in straw. In this respect a little sound judgment and plain common sense is worth all the sparkling genius that ever wrote poetry or invented theories. Let us see how the universal acquirements of William the Testy aided him in the affairs ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Bailiff's-Follower, telling how it was; By what means such a Robber was taken; Who his Relations are; One boasting of being his near Neighbour; and another of an intimate Acquaintance with him, &c.——In another, a heap of Earthen-ware Women, with Straw Hats, and their black and blue Eyes and swoln Faces, lamenting the Fate of poor Bob, or Jemmy, hoping the L—d will deliver him out of the Hands of his Adversaries; meaning the Laws of his Country——In a third, is a row of Spittle-field Weavers, with the Lice ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... in her house was most unwelcome to her. But he, too, had his own pride, as distinct and as strong as hers, and at the very moment that Hetty was saying to herself, "I'm on my own ground: I won't run away from the popinjay," Dr. Eben was thinking in his heart, "What a fool I am to care a straw about meeting her! I'm about my own business, and she is ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... rooms, which were separated by a folding-door, and used as parlor and dining rooms. They were neatly furnished, with nice ingrain carpets, cane-bottom chairs, an extension dining table, and very pretty, straw-colored Venetian window-blinds, trimmed with dark blue cords and tassels. A mahogany work-stand—the only article ordered from "the east," because it was a gift for his wife—was placed in the parlor, for it was too pretty ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... or blue. The women wear a white waist with a gay kerchief crossed above the bosom, a full short skirt of blue, red, or white, and a man's jacket of blue, with tight sleeves. On the head there is the pretty round-topped straw hat with red and white cord, which is now so extensively imported from Fayal; and beneath this there is always another kerchief, tied under the chin, or hanging loosely. The costume is said to vary in every village, but in the villages opposite ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... trust them if they think that they advance more, and have a deeper fruition of God, when they make efforts of their own. Oh, when God wills it, how He discovers Himself without these little efforts of ours! We may do what we like, but He throws the spirit into a trance as easily as a giant takes up a straw; no resistance is possible. What a thing to believe, that God will wait till the toad shall fly of itself, when He has already willed it should do so! Well, it seems to me still more difficult and hard for our spirit to rise upwards, if God ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... could have been more free and easy. The Queen herself looked a Venus-like dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it was announced that the game of the afternoon should be that called "Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the Little Trianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... awful! I love pretty shoes, too; and the first time I wore these I—I cried! I was very home-sick, you see, and nervous and anxious about my work, and it seemed the last straw. Never mind! it's only a little thing, and on Thursday you shall wear your very best pair and I'll wear mine, and we'll compare notes and see which is ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... where the seasons wheel round without any appreciable difference in temperature, where, if it were not for the gentleman who writes the calendars, nobody would know whether to wear straw-hats or snow-shoes, Christmas comes sneaking up behind you and grabs you by the pocket before you have time to dodge. "Christmas Eve already!" you exclaim. "Christmas Eve! and there's dear old Tom in Penang and good old Dick in Patagonia and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... brandy, which, however, was only half full. She herself stayed behind a screen, in which she made a little hole. The ex-dragoon sent his uniform the night before, and she had not refrained from kissing it. When Philippe was placed, in full dress, on one of those straw horses, all saddled, which Joseph had hired for the occasion, Agathe, fearing to betray her presence, mingled the soft sound of her tears with the conversation of the two brothers. Philippe posed for two hours before and two hours after breakfast. At three ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... bit of fever, and a great deal of laziness," responded Mr. Williams. "He is the laziest fellow alive. Since his uncle died, and that money came to him, he doesn't care a straw how things go. He was copyist to the cathedral, and he gave that up last week. I have asked Sandon, the lay-clerk, if he will take the copying, but he declines. He ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... his brother into one of the empty barns, where he laid him down upon some straw. He rolled up his own coat for a pillow, and after hastily finishing the filling in of the grave, he went back into the forest for his game bag, and having kindled a fire, cooked some of the meat, and forced his brother to eat and drink. It was growing dark ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... might turn for help or counsel, nobody in all the wide, wide world who belonged to her, and would defend her and take her part. Everything appeared to have conspired against her, and this final and most crushing blow was the last straw. Gipsy clenched her fists in an agony of hopelessness. "Oh, Dad, Dad! why don't you come back?" she moaned, and the utter futility of the question added to her misery. Outside the sun was shining ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... fellow of perhaps sixteen stood only a short distance off from the lake with an expression of superior amusement on his face. He was a country boy, for he wore no hat and his hair was burnt to a light straw color at the ends, his skin ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... said one of the widows to me, when at last it was decreed that the tenements were to be pulled down, "unless I can find a man to take care of me. Might get one that drinks? I would hammer him half to death." She did find her "man," only to have him on her hands too. It was the last straw. Before the wreckers came around she was dead. The amazed indignation of the alley at the discovery of her second marriage, which till then had been kept secret, was beyond bounds. The supposed widow's neighbor across the hall, whom we knew in the front generally ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... with which Max was wholly unfamiliar. "See!" he said. "Le bon Dieu has given me this thing to do, and He will give me the strength to do it. That is His way, mon ami. He does not command us to make bricks without straw." ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Bellamy, with an ominous smile, "that George Caresfoot has made up his mind to marry you, and that I have made up mine to help him to do so, and that your will, strong as it certainly is, is, as compared with our united wills, what a straw is to a gale. The straw cannot travel against the wind, it must go with it, and you must marry George Caresfoot. You will as certainly come to the altar-rails with him as you will to your death-bed. It is ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... not care for the warm sun and the fresh air; it took no notice of the peasant children, who went about talking together, when they had come out to look for strawberries and raspberries. Often they came with a whole pot-full, or had strung berries on a straw; then they would sit down by the little Fir Tree and say, "How pretty and small that one is!" and the Fir Tree did not like to hear that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... crossing to press them back on Vicksburg, so as to clear Grand Gulf. Grant's supply train (raised by impressing every horse, mule, ox, and wheeled thing in the neighborhood) looked more like comic opera than war. Fine private carriages, piled high with ammunition, and sometimes drawn by mules with straw collars and rope lines, went side by side with the longest plantation wagons drawn by many oxen, or with a two-wheeled cart drawn by a ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... 'Would Melbourne resign?' 'O Lord, no! Resign? Not a bit of it. I tell you all these things are a nine-days' wonder; it can't come into court before Parliament is up. People will have done talking of it before that happens; it will all blow over, and won't signify a straw.' So spoke his Grace. I doubt not prime ministers, ex and in, have a fellow-feeling and sympathy for each other, and like to lay down the principle of such things not mattering. I hope, however, that it will blow over, for it would really be very inconvenient and very mischievous. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... be done, there came a heavy clumping step up to the house and a knock at the door; and then a person entered whom Juanita did not know. A hard-featured woman, in an old-fashioned black straw bonnet and faded old shawl drawn tight round her. She came directly forward ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... the sewers, too," said Livius, snatching at a straw. "By Hercules, I know nothing ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... are going strictly to condemn all who have a liking for an occasional small hot bird, there will be but few of us left. At this season he is the town crier of the wood, clanging his bell loudly at every wood-road corner and announcing in strident monotones that straw hats are called in and there is an exhibition sale of fall ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... straw. Not that he believed it, for he didn't; but it gave him a chance to ease the tension. He forced a smile and said that Tim might come bolting in at the last minute. The moment the roll call was completed, he turned the talk to the Scoutmaster's Cup. He didn't want to give the scouts a chance ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... were boys of sixteen, or thereabouts, selected from the hands on the plantation with reference to their size and muscular development. They were clothed in white duck pants, blue cotton frocks, trimmed with white, and wore uniform straw hats, encircled by black bands, upon which was inscribed, in gilt letters, the name of the boat, "Edith," in compliment to the young ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... morning we started for Kaschbach. The place looked even more dismal than the one we had visited the day previous. In one of the huts a weaver, with a swollen arm in a sling, led us into a corner of the room. On a bunk covered with straw and rags lay a woman with a little baby near her. Its body was covered with a terrible rash, perfectly bare, almost hidden within the floor rags. The shy father, himself in pain, stood near, the personification of helplessness. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... fields, houses, forests, villages, pasture-grounds or granaries, also one who has intercourse with the wife of the king, are to be burned in a straw-fire. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw; and these two pots being to stand always dry I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal, when the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to see who it was, found that his papa was just on the point of driving over in the dog-cart to see another farmer (the very old gentleman in whose orchard Kapchack's palace was situated) about a load of straw. ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... did not always contain eatables. Often our mother, or one of us, had been wishing very much for something which could not possibly have got into his pockets, and before many days were over, it was very nearly certain to make its appearance, when the top of the hamper was thrown back, imbedded in straw or paper. That dear old hamper always put us in mind of some magic chest in a fairy tale, only I doubt if any magic chest ever afforded so much pleasure, or produced so great a variety of articles as it did. I do not know if our kind father ever was out of humour; if he was, he left ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the day's first beam, He said within himself, "It was a dream!" But the straw rustled as he turned his head, There were the cap and bells beside his bed, Around him rose the bare, discolored walls, Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... looks outside like a small cellar that has somehow risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With tattered ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... accordingly landed in the midst of them and a friendly intercourse took place with dancing on both sides—in an hour the boat returned. Mr. Bowen had dressed them in our white shirts and invited them on board, this however they declined, but exchanged for all this. Got a basket of straw neatly enough made. They were all clothed in the skins of opossums and each had a bundle of spears, a stone mogo and one basket. They wished much to know what our arms were and their use and did not seem entirely to believe Mr. Bowen that they were only walking sticks—no ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... cottages in Sky, instead of being one compacted mass of stones, are often formed by two exterior surfaces of stone, filled up with earth in the middle, which makes them very warm. The roof is generally bad. They are thatched, sometimes with straw, sometimes with heath, sometimes with fern. The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a lady's hair in papers; but I should think that, when there is ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... tacklers, but bunted into them and dumped them over with a spine-jolting vigor, and covered Punk from attack on the rear, and carried him across the center line and well on into Clayton's territory before Clayton realized that several of his pets were mere straw men, and dashed violently and madly into and through Punk's interference, and downed him on the 15-yard line; how the spectators looked on in silent amazement at this unexpected beginning; how promptly Tug's ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... lost their match with the Carthusians—the match which a good St. Amorian would rather win than any two others—and it was plain that Dick, though a useful fellow, could not bottle up the forwards in the Actonian style. This defeat was the last straw to break the back of the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them; and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell them that either the 'king,' 'queen,' or some member of the 'royal family' is being married or visiting them; and nothing pleases the poor, ignorant Gipsies better than to get the bystanders, with mouths open, to believe their ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause.' The Citizen of the World, Letter xxi. According to Davis (Life of Garrick, i. 113), 'in one year, after paying all expenses, L11,000 were the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... barrel were found an ink-stained apron, a bath-robe, nearly new—which plainly owed its presence to its hideous colors—two or three tin dishes (not new), a harmonica, a box containing a straw hat trimmed with drooping blue bows, several fans, a box of dominoes, a pocket-knife with a broken blade, several pairs of new hose, marked plainly "seconds," some sheets and pillow-cases (half-worn, ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... 4th of July a mob assembled, who forced all that went by to put a handful of straw in their hats, upon which the Duc d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde went to the Hotel de Ville and convinced the assembly of the necessity they were under of defending themselves against Mazarin. Upon a trumpeter arriving from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... own weapon. I began to draw his spear and every breath that he drew I thought I would be down his throat, and when his breath came out I was back again just as far. But with every ill that befell me I got the spear loosed from him. Then I was as one under a bundle of straw in a great wind for I could not manage the spear. And it was fearful to look on the brute, who had but one eye in the midst of his face; and it was not agreeable for the like of me to attack him. I drew the dart as best I could, and I set it in his eye. When he felt this he gave his ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... pound of white sugar—then boil it slowly till it becomes a thick jelly, which is ascertained in the same manner as currant jelly. If you wish to have it of a red tinge, put in, when taken from the fire, a little cranberry or beet-juice. If you wish to have it a straw color, put in a little tincture of saffron. If green, use the expressed juice of spinach leaves. Let it pass through the jelly-bag again—when cool, ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... this mighty tradition hath a mystery in it that your Indian minds will scarcely be willing to receive," resumed the missionary, earnestly. "I would not, for a thousand worlds, or to save ten thousand lives as worthless as my own, place a straw in the way of the faith of any; yet must I tell the thing as it happened. This Son of the Great Spirit was certainly killed by the Jews of that day, so far as he COULD be killed. He possessed two natures, as ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... acknowledge, without any feeling of mortification, that it was of mousseline; but the secret of its making was preserved by the modiste. It was tight and easy at the same time, a perfect fit attained by Palmyre in her moments of inspiration; a black silk mantilla, a little straw bonnet trimmed plainly with ribbon, and a green gauze veil, half thrown back, completed the adornment, or rather absence of ornament, of this ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... demonstratively deduced from this concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw;—or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward on the antecedents, that must be presupposed in order to render experience itself possible. The first book of Locke's Essay, (if the supposed error, which it ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... very rich man too many avaricious, commonly he was travel at a horse, and single for to avoid all expenses. In the evening at to arrive at the inn did feign to be indispose, to the end that one bring him the supper. He did ordered to the stable knave to bring in their room some straw, for to put in their boots he made to warm her bed and was go lo sleep. When the servant was draw again, he come up again, and with the straw of their boots, and the candle Avhat was leave him he made a small fire where he was roast a herring what he did keep of her pocket. He was always ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... to show you, if you're not too tired, how one good Roman can fight six enemies and beat 'em, same as we've often done in the good old days when I wore my armour and brass helmet with its plume, not a straw hat and things like these. Ah, boy," said the man, drawing himself up and shouldering his crook as if it were a spear, "those were grand old times! I was a ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn |
