"Whalebone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could be wound round the finger or tied into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity almost like steel. Trifling variations in the ingredients, in the proportions, and in the heating, made it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... jeered new ribaldry, until some one suddenly shot out from behind Cunningham, and before he had recovered from his surprise he saw the fakir sprawling on his back, howling for mercy, while Mahommed Gunga beat the blood out of him with a whalebone riding-whip. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... met 'em bigger than all the colleges up to Brunswick,—great white bears on 'em,—hungry as Time in the Primer. Once we came kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying Betsey hadn't been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry, that they stood there with the water jist runnin' out of their chops in a ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in the ocean of the Frigid Zone, is also very useful. From it we get the whalebone, oil and also a fertilizer to help our farm crops to grow. Great quantities of whale meat are eaten by some people ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... trap may be constructed of a pasteboard box and whalebone, for the capture of small birds, and used with good success. The size we have mentioned is adaptable for rabbits and animals of the same size, but is really larger than ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... much as would have filled an ink bottle when at last he went off to Edinburgh to study his father's profession. Five years after that did I tide at Birtwhistle's, and when I left had become cock myself, for I was wiry and as tough as whalebone, though I never ran to weight and sinew like my great predecessor. It was in Jubilee Year that I left Birtwhistle's, and then for three years I stayed at home learning the ways of the cattle; but still the ships and ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cloth, too. Times got so hard during de war dat de white folks had to use de cloth woven by hand, themselves. De ladies would wear bustles, and hoops made out of oak. Old times, they'd make underbodies with whalebone in it. There was something they'd put over the hoop they call, 'Follow me, boy'. Used to wear the skirts long, with them long trains that trail behind you. You'd take and tuck it up behind on some little ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... often at her watch; she gazed out froth the window; she turned her eyes to the sky; and in the end she retired for a time to her own chamber, and returned shortly after, dressed for going out, with a short black cloak, richly trimmed, cast over her shoulders, and a silk hood, stiffened with whalebone and deeply fringed with lace, covering her head and the greatest part of ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... sofas, and balanced themselves in chairs, all the way from Philadelphia, with all the conscious fascinations of stiff stays and neck-cloths, which, while doing to death the rash beauties who ventured to gaze, seemed but a whalebone panoply to guard the wearer, these pretty youths so guarded from without, so sweetly at peace within, now crushed beneath their armour, looked more like victims on the wheel, than dandies armed for conquest; their whalebones ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... over innumerable hatchings of things domestic, tended whole byrefuls of cows, handled suckling lambs with dead mothers lying up on the hill—aye, played the surgeon even to robins with broken legs, for one of which she constructed a leg capable of being strapped on, made it out of the whalebone of an old corset of her own for which she had ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... fine cow, but by some accident she had lost her tail, and I got her cheaper on that account," says Mrs. Gunning. "You don't know how distressing it was to see her switching a stump. So I made her a tail of whalebone and India-rubber and yarn. I knit ...
— A British Islander - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... snatched her largest doll from the chair where she was reposing, and belabored her soundly with a piece of whalebone that lay near at hand. Then, after shaking her heartily, she tossed her on to the bed, where she lay with her black eyes shut, as if overcome by her feelings. She was a very handsome wax doll, with chestnut hair done up like a lady's ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... rusty. His looks were starched, but his white neckerchief was not, and its long limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned waistcoat in a very uncouth and unpicturesque fashion. A pair of old, worn, beaver gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella, with plenty of whalebone sticking through the bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him; and, being disposed in a very tidy and careful manner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, whoever he was, had no intention of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... cried Trim, 'tis a bridge for master's nose.—In bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose, Susannah says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of Susannah's stays, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... covers, 7 small ditto, 1 small box, 4 ditto in one.—A large box of toys.—A collar.—A large tea chest, containing 160 articles of ladies' dress, etc.—A dress, 3 bodies, 3 berthas, a waistband, a pair of cuffs, a feather, an ornament for the hair, some artificial flowers, some whalebone, and some pieces of ribbon.—A cloth mantle, a velvet ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... brain to clear. I recovered slowly from the effect of those first two vicious blows. I saw Ward, his eyes narrowed calculatingly, his body swinging forward like a whalebone spring, delivering his attack with nice accuracy. A slow anger glowed through me. He had begun without the least warning: had caught me absolutely unaware. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... to primitive manners. In person this emperor was tall and dignified (statura elevata decorus;) but latterly he stooped; to remedy which defect, that he might discharge his public part with the more decorum, he wore stays. [Footnote: In default of whalebone, one is curious to know of what they were made:—thin tablets of the linden-tree, it appears, were the best materials which the Augustus of that day could command.] Of his other personal habits little is recorded, except that, early in the morning, and just before receiving ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... but because it would not do to let little people see the mischief that was going on abroad. So, while boys had their hair powdered, and wore long coats and waistcoats, and little knee-breeches, and girls were laced tight in stays all stiff with whalebone, they were trained to manners more formal than are ever ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... the farther side of the island, and Ted was much interested in seeing him gradually disposed of. Great masses of blubber were stripped from the sides to be used later both for food and fuel, the whalebone was carefully secured to be sold to the traders, and it seemed to Ted that there was not one thing in that vast carcass for which the Indians did ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... vessels moored to a nearby wharf, I inspected from hatches to keels, and by those on board was directed to a warehouse where were stored harpoons, whalebone, and wooden figure-heads. My pleasure in these led to my being passed on to a row of "antique" shops filled with relics of the days of whaling and also with genuine pie-crust tables, genuine flint-lock muskets, genuine Liverpool pitchers. I coveted especially old-time engravings of ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips Where ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... (bourse), ringlets, and curls"; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin is half way down ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the Hero of Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of Fred Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let him, so he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had. I made a cross-bow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well without him. We had reached that exciting scene where Gessler, the Austrian tyrant, commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper Whitcomb, who played all the juvenile and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sinews which passed over the top, and were made fast to stakes of bone firmly fixed in the ground on each side. When I entered, I found to my surprise that there was plenty of light, which was supplied from windows, composed of small panes of whalebone ground down very thin, and at the further end the head and skull of the animal formed a kitchen, the smoke from the fire escaping through the spiracles ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... this reflection upon the taste of former times, though she seldom presumed to oppose any of her daughter's opinions, could not here refrain from saying a few words in defence of sacks, long waists, and whalebone stays, and she pointed to a row of stays in the margin of one of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Dyak, who requested me to enter his house. He introduced me to his family, consisting of several fine girls and a young lad. The former were naked from the shoulders to below the breasts, where a pair of stays, composed of several circles of whalebone, with brass fastenings, were secured round their waists; and to the stays was attached a cotton petticoat, reaching to below their knees. This was the whole of their attire. They were much shorter than European women, but well made; very interesting in their appearance, and affable and friendly ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... taunted, "try it, try it. I'd slip through your fingers like oil. It's no good to flash your over-sized man-muscles on me; I'm made of whip-cord and whalebone. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... took the very largest umbrella in the stand—an enormous one. Its ribs were whalebone, its cover green gingham, and the handle ended in a knob nearly as large as a door-knob. But that umbrella was very highly valued by Uncle Ebenezer Stewardson, its owner, who carried it with him wherever he went, rain or shine. Uncle Ebenezer's grown nieces and nephews ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by its summer-sister of the same date, the green silk calash,—that funniest and quaintest of all New England feminine headgear,—a great sunshade that could not be called a bonnet, always made of bright green silk shirred on strong lengths of rattan or whalebone, and extendible after the fashion of a chaise top. It could be drawn out over the face by a little green ribbon or "bridle" that was fastened to the extreme front at the top; or it could be pushed in a close-gathered ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... left by the Esquimaux attracted our attention; we found a winter sledge raised upon four stones, with some snow-shovels, and a small piece of whalebone. An ice-chisel, a knife and some beads were left at this pile. The shores of this bay, which I have named after Sir George Warrender, are low and clayey, and the country for many miles is level, and much intersected with water; but ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship. The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... man, but he left much to be desired. He had too much whalebone in his composition, not enough steel, but he ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... but none sufficiently prepossessing; when, on turning down some nameless street that leads to Tottenham Court-road, I chanced to come behind a staid-looking gentleman, accoutred in a dark brown coat, with an umbrella—the cotton of which had shrunk half-way up the whalebone—held obliquely over his head. Hastily stepping up to him, "Pray, sir," said I, "could you be kind enough to direct me ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... muscular development; the back very slightly arched, and not sloping too suddenly towards the tail, which should be set up tolerably high. This ought to be thick and long, the end well furnished with a double fringe of very long thick hairs or whalebone-looking bristles. The legs should be short in proportion to the height of the animal, but immensely thick, and the upper- portion above the knee ought to exhibit enormous muscle. The knees should be well rounded, and the feet be exactly ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... She had known he was less rich; but half!—"maybe less!" The cuirass of steel, whalebone, kid, and linen which molded her body to a fashionable figure seemed to be closing in on her heart and ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... in reality they were loose enough to enable a finger and thumb to be passed between them and the stocking, and in the lining of the breeches was a pocket in which the cards had been placed, being held there by two pieces of whalebone, that closed the pocket. The searchers, among whom were Dick and Boldero, did not have it all their own way; four or five men rushed upon them, and endeavored to pull them off Emerson. The din of voices was prodigious, but ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... sometimes to buy whalebone, and other trifles which I must have for my business here. So I just go and come back, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... and the harpooning of the whale; its struggles after having been wounded; its being towed to the ship's side; the subsequent manufacture of oil from the blubber of the animal, and the preparation of whalebone. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... breaking the Lord Abbot's sleep,—after that sinful chivalry cockfight of theirs! They too are a feature of distant centuries, as of near ones. St. Edmund on the edge of your horizon, or whatever else there, young scamps, in the dandy state, whether cased in iron or in whalebone, begin to caper and carol on the green Earth! Our Lord Abbot excommunicated most of them; and they gradually came in ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Once, seeing the inside of a watch, he was filled with wonder. "Why should I not make a watch?" thought he. 10. But how was he to get the materials out of which to make the wheels and the mainspring? He soon found how to get them: he made the mainspring out of a piece of whalebone. He then made a wooden clock which kept good time. 11. He began, also, to copy pictures with a pen, and portraits with oil colors. In a few years, while still a small boy, he earned money enough to support his father. 12. When he became a man, ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... we soon afterward found, was only a preparation for the final winter covering of snow; and, indeed, many of the huts were subsequently lined in the same way within, the skins being attached to the sides and roof by slender threads of whalebone, disposed in large and regular stitches. Before the passages already described, others were now added, from ten to fifteen feet in length, and from four to five feet high, neatly constructed of large flat slabs of ice, cemented together by snow and water. Some huts also ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... whalebone ribs and a slender stick of cherry-wood. It lived with the wilful child in the white-house, just beyond the third milestone. All about the trees were green, and the flowers grew tall; in the pond behind the willows the ducks swam round ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... degrees, they got at last into a small room with books in it, where Mr Pinch's sister was at that moment instructing her eldest pupil; to wit, a premature little woman of thirteen years old, who had already arrived at such a pitch of whalebone and education that she had nothing girlish about her, which was a source of great rejoicing to all her ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... not a whit taken in by the comedy. When the time came for her to leap she was ready, to the last hair of her chimney-cleaner tail. She had been making most elaborate preparations all the while, stretching and retracting her claws, squirming her whalebone body flatter and flatter, her tail assuming majestic proportions, while her ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... long and perilous voyage, made harbor there; the old shipmasters built solid homes on the island shores; its merchants grew rich on the whaling vessels, that went forth to hunt for these monsters of the great deep, and came back laden with oil and blubber and whalebone and ambergris. But all this was changed now. Steam had come to supplant the white wings that had borne the old ships on their wide ocean ways. As Captain Jeb said, "the airth had taken to spouting ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... across ferns and cruets, table splashed and bottles smeared. I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be churned to ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... didn't hurt me," he answered. "I'm all rawhide and whalebone, and it isn't in you to hurt me. Confound you, I'll get you at something or other yet. Want to spar ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... old black walnut chamber set and framed photographs and chromos, but she maintained a sort of defiant pride in it even to herself. In Martha Wallingford's character there was an element partaking of the nature of whalebone, yielding, but practically unbreakable, and sometimes wholly unyielding. Martha proceeded to array herself for dinner. She had not a doubt that it would be a grand affair. She therefore did not hesitate about the ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... all this?" gasps Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, struggling affrightedly in his suffocating cage of whalebone and alpaca. "What's this here old lady's hoop-skirt doing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... inflict, and a tubular piece of broken iron, about two inches long, exactly corresponding with the shape of the loading described by Cluffe, was actually discovered in the sewer of the Brass Castle. It had been in the fire, and the wood or whalebone was burnt completely away. It was conjectured that Dangerfield had believed it to be lead, and having burnt the handle, had broken the metal which he could not melt, and made away with it in the best way ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with pricked ears and long bushed tails; we found a bone in the pizels of their dogs. Then we went farther and found two sleds made like ours in England. The one was made of fir, spruce, and oaken boards, sawn like inch boards; the other was made all of whalebone, and there hung on the tops of the sleds three heads of beasts which they had killed. We saw here ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... toothed whale, in contradistinction to those that are supplied with the whalebone-like arrangement that characterizes the right whales: consequently its food consists of fish and perhaps squid. To enable it to capture such prey it must be endowed with remarkable powers of speed. The motor is the great horizontal tail, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... called a fish-whip, made from the whipray, a fish quite new to us, but indigenous to these waters. With a body shaped like a flounder, it has a tail often ten feet long, tapering from about one inch in thickness at the butt to an eighth of an inch at the small end. When dried this resembles whalebone, and makes a good coach-whip. There is a great variety of fish in and about the Bahamas. We saw, just landed at Nassau, a jew-fish, which takes the same place here that the halibut fills at the North, being cut into ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Oh, yes, I put a piece of whalebone in my skirt, and me calico gown looks as big as the great ladies. But then ye says true, I hasn't but two gowns to me back, two shoes, to me feet, and one bonnet to me head, barring the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... sea-otter. Throughout the long line of the Aleutian Islands and the neighbouring coasts of North America, for over a century, hunters' boats—little cockle-shell skiffs made of oiled walrus-skin stretched on whalebone frames, narrow as a canoe, light as cork—rode the wildest seas in the wildest storms in pursuit of the sea-otter. Sea-otter became to the Pacific coast what beaver was to the Atlantic—the magnet that drew traders to the north-west seas, and ultimately led ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... Natural-Selection acts by slight variations.—These must be useful at once.—Difficulties as to the giraffe; as to mimicry; as to the heads of flat-fishes; as to the origin and constancy of the vertebrate, limbs; as to whalebone; as to the young kangaroo; as to sea-urchins; as to certain processes of {viii} metamorphosis; as to the mammary gland; as to certain ape characters; as to the rattlesnake and cobra; as to the process ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... {257} but a short coldness; or at two, three, or four several times, if you desire, that the produced coldness should rather last somewhat longer than be so great. Stirre the powder in the Liquor with a stick or whalebone (or some other thing that will not be injur'd by the fretting Brine, that will be made) to hasten the dissolution of the Salt; upon the quickness of which depends very much the intensity of the Cold, that will ensue upon this Experiment. For the clearing ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... with a will. The first part that came up was the huge lip, fastened to a large iron hook, called the blubber hook. It was lowered into the blubber-room between decks, where a couple of men were stationed to stow the blubber away. Then came the fins, and after them the upper-jaw, with the whalebone attached to it. The "right" whale has no teeth like the sperm whale. In place of teeth it has the well-known substance called whalebone, which grows from the roof of its mouth in a number of broad thin plates, extending from the back of the head ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... man," and even more is woman dependent upon her clothes for physical, moral, and intellectual support. An uncorseted body will soon make its influence felt upon the mind. The steel-and-whalebone spine which properly reinforces all feminine vertebra is literally the ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of fifty or sixty feet in length, which boasts of a mouth big enough to hold a jollyboat and crew, who would doubtless find their quarters exceedingly uncomfortable on account of the forest of whalebone hanging down from the roof, the white whale cannot keep under water long without coming up to breathe; but the one Johannes had so cleverly struck nearly carried out the whole of the line, which Steve watched darting out ring by ring over the bows, till, in spite of the riskiness of the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... nothing lovely about a blue cotton umbrella, though there may have been under it at times and seasons. Skeletons of the species, much faded as to color, much weakened as to whalebone, may still be found here and there in backwoods settlements, where they are known as "umbrells;" there are but few ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... hoops and mine were of black whalebone, covered with white cloth. One day, when at my brother's house, my hoop skirt had been washed and was hanging to dry behind the stove and I was in the little bedroom in the loft. My sister called to me that some young men ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... against a poacher's on even terms! Of course, if they suffice, I shall only treat him to my knuckles; but if not—if he be a giant, or there be more than one of them—then here is a better ally than mere bone and sinew." Yorke took out of a drawer a life-preserver, made of lead and whalebone, struck with it once, to test its weight and elasticity, then slipped it into his shooting-jacket pocket. "That will enlarge their organs of locality," said he, grimly; "they will not forget the Decoy Pond in a hurry whose heads ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... ingathered, waiting and quivering grievously, and beginning to sweat about it. Then her master gave a shrill, clear whistle, when her ears were bent towards him, and I felt her form beneath me gathering up like whalebone, and her hind legs coming under her, and I knew that ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... No one could better describe the macrocephalous cachalot, which is sometimes more than seventy-five feet long. Its enormous head occupies one-third of its entire body. Better armed than the whale, whose upper jaw is furnished only with whalebone, it is supplied with twenty-five large tusks, about eight inches long, cylindrical and conical at the top, each weighing two pounds. It is in the upper part of this enormous head, in great cavities divided by cartilages, that is to be found from six to eight hundred pounds of that precious oil called ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... of whips was the most important business in Amherst. It gave employment to several persons and furnished the means of support to ten or twelve families. The purchases of ivory, whalebone, and other raw material, were usually made from first hands and in such quantities as often gave the firm control of the market; while in the style and workmanship of their handmade whips, they had ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... a whale-ship once. I was gone from home that time more than three years. When we came back, we had our large ship all full of oil and whalebone. We got the oil and the whalebone out of the whales which we had caught. Whales, you know, are very large fish. They sometimes get two or three hundred barrels of oil ...
— Jack Mason, The Old Sailor • Theodore Thinker
... not had a hand in the preparation of such an affair can understand the manifold difficulties which Miss Thorne encountered in her project. Had she not been made throughout of the very finest whalebone, rivetted with the best Yorkshire steel, she must have sunk under them. Had not Mr Pomney felt how much was justly expected from a man who at one time carried the destinies of Europe in his boot, he would have given way; and his mistress, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... indeed, those of the footman, and the mystery of the death-chamber began to grow lighter, for it was evident that for some reason he had entered the room in the night. For no good mission, certainly, a short whalebone-handled life-preserver hanging by a twisted thong from ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... with a rag-bag in his hand, was picking up a number of small pieces of whalebone which lay on the street. The deposit was of such a singular nature, that we asked the quaint-looking gatherer how he supposed they came there. "Don't know," he replied, in a squeaking voice; "but I 'spect some unfortunate female was wrecked ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Is letter U a vowel or consonant? A. A vowel. Q. What is the use of the umbrella? A. To keep the rain off any body. Q. What are umbrellas made of? A. Some of silk and some of cotton. Q. Which are the best? A. Those that are made of silk. Q. Is there any thing else in an umbrella? A. Yes; whalebone. Q. Where does whalebone come from? A. Out of a large fish called a whale. Q. Who made the whale? A. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... rain out of their necks, faring not a jot the worse for it. Umbrellas are only fit for men-milliners, Cockney travellers, and women. The nature of a hat, we flatter ourselves, is something independent of cotton and whalebone; and instead of the umbrella claiming precedence over the hat, the hat, we take it, should be above the umbrella. An Englishman's hat, then, should be something that will keep the rain off his face and neck when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... furnished with hinges, which permitted it to fold together in a small compass, so that more than two persons might sit on one seat of a coach—a feat not easily performed, when ladies were encompassed with whalebone hoops of six feet extent. My curiosity was excited by the first sight of this machine, probably more than another child's might have been, because previous agreeable associations had given me some taste for mechanics, ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... stream between three and four miles, where it turned to the southwest, without discovering any indications of a wooded country; but a sufficient explanation respecting the birch-bark was perhaps furnished by his finding, at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the sea, a piece of whalebone two feet ten inches in length and two inches in breadth, having a number of circular holes very neatly and regularly perforated along one of its edges, which had undoubtedly formed part of an Esquimaux sledge. This circumstance affording a proof of the Esquimaux having visited this part ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... himself nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... sends out rows of broad, thin, horny plates, which are from eight to ten feet long (they have sometimes been seen twenty-five feet) in the centre of each side, but which decrease gradually towards the extremities. These are plates of whalebone (sometimes called whale's whiskers), and the industry of man has turned them to a thousand different uses; and you will open your eyes in astonishment when I tell you that 800 or 900 of them have been sometimes counted on each side of one mouth. Think of the number ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... to the outer yard. Jock Gilmour had been dashing water on the paved floor, and was now sweeping it out with a great whalebone besom. The hissing whalebone sent a splatter of dirty drops showering in front of it. John set his bare feet wide (he was only in his shirt and knickers) and eyed the man whom his father had "downed" with a kind of silent swagger. He felt superior. His pose was instinct with the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black as whalebone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I had burnt a row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb, and combed out my long, tangled hair ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... has a pleasant savour of food. It resounds with the dull rumble of cruising drays, which bear the names of well-known brands of groceries; it is faintly salted by an aroma of the docks. One sees great signs announcing cocoanut and whalebone or such unusual wares; there is a fine tang of coffee in the air round about the corner of Beach Street. Here is that vast, massy brick edifice, the New York Central freight station, built 1868, which gives an impression of being about to be torn down. From ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... it to be intended for that purpose. But he soon finds, after having doubled himself up, like people passing on a coach top under a low gateway, that it would be utterly impossible to remain long in that position, unless the human back were as pliable as a piece of whalebone. After all, perhaps, the bearers are compelled to rest the palanquin on the ground, and the abashed stranger, creeping hastily in, is glad to escape from the ill suppressed smiles ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... thunder by shaking one of the lower corners of a large thin sheet of copper suspended by a chain; the distant firing of signals of distress he imitated by striking, suddenly, a large tambourine with a sponge affixed to a whalebone spring—- the reverberations of the sponge producing a curious echo, as from cloud to cloud, dying away in the distance. The rushing sound of the waves was effected by turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted with shelves, and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... hereafter), went over the same river which we now pass at Ilford; and passing that part of the great forest which we now call Hainault Forest, came into that which is now the great road, a little on this side the Whalebone, a place on the road so called because the rib-bone of a great whale, which was taken in the River Thames the same year that Oliver Cromwell died, 1658, was fixed there for a monument of that monstrous ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... diameter of the drums at the French opera is 29 and 251/4 inches, and of the Crystal Palace band, 28 and 241/4 inches. In cavalry regiments the drums are slung so as to hang on each side of the drummers horse's neck. The best drum sticks are of whalebone, each terminating in a small wooden button covered with sponge. For the bass drum and side drum I must be content to refer to Mr. Victor de Pontigny's article, and also for the tambourine, but the Provencal tambourines I have met with have long, narrow sound bodies, and are ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... for three weeks; flat on her back as much as possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose, dear—about your looks, I mean—is that lovely boyish line of yours. It ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... breeches were of a stuff half velveteen, half corduroy, the cords exceedingly broad. He had leggings of buff cloth, furred at the bottom: and upon his feet were highlows. Under his left arm was a long black whalebone riding-whip, with a red lash, and an immense silver knob. Upon his head was a hat with a high peak, somewhat of the kind which the Spaniards call calane, so much in favour with the bravos of Seville and Madrid. Now when I have added that ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... enough to see what is termed "an exciting finish," one's general conception of the manliness of racing may be modified. From afar off the movement of the jockeys' whip-hands is no more suggestive than the movement of a windmill's sails; but, when one hears the "flack, flack" of the whalebone and sees the wales rise on the dainty skin of the immature horse, one does not feel quite joyous or manly. I have seen a long lean creature reach back with his right leg and keep on jobbing with the spur for nearly four hundred yards of a swift finish; ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of crimson skirts overflowing the elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding with dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to the cottage under a bonnet; no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or rather a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone. The screed, or frill of the cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round the face of the wearer. The ribbon, flourishing in puffs and bows about the head, was of the sort called love-ribbon. There was a good deal of it, I may say, a very ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... called from the construction of the bill, which is flat the whole length, but widens towards the end in the form of a spoon or spatula; and is equally remarkable in its substance, not being hard like bone, but flexible like whalebone. They feed on snakes, worms, frogs, and fish, even on shell-fish, which they first break with ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... upon a petition of the Greenland trade, which likewise represented the great consumption of whalebone which would be occasioned by the present fashion, and the benefit which would thereby accrue to that branch of ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... the same. Whalebone and husks, which martyr European girls, they know not. They are only covered with a shift until six years old: and the dress they afterwards wear confines none of their limbs, but suffers the body to take its true form; and nothing is more uncommon than ricketty children, and crooked ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... most commonly formed of a species of green talc, which appears to be found only in the southern island, and with regard to which the New Zealanders have many superstitious notions. Some of them are made of a darker-coloured stone, susceptible of a high polish; some of whalebone; and Nicholas mentions one, which he saw in the possession of Tippoui, brother of the celebrated George of Wangarooa, and himself one of the leaders of the attack on the 'Boyd,' which, like that of Shungie, which Rutherford ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... body is also fish-like, the hind-limbs are wanting, the fore-limbs are converted into powerful "flippers" or swimming-paddles, and the terminal extremity of the body is furnished with a horizontal, tail-fin. Many existing Cetaceans (such as the Whalebone Whales) have no true teeth; but others (Dolphins, Porpoises, Sperm Whales) possess simple conical teeth. In strata of Eocene age, however, we find a singular group of Whales, constituting the genus Zeuglodon (fig. 228), in which the teeth differed from those of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... scientists know a few things he didn't: the South Pole isn't at the water's edge but far inland; sharks don't flip over before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm whales don't prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding, Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths before the arrival of Jacques Cousteau and ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... one of the first men in that country, yet he had not more than twenty horned cattle, twenty sheep and twenty swine, and the little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. But their wealth consists mostly in the rent paid them by the Fins. That rent is in skins of animals and birds' feathers, and whalebone, and in ship-ropes made of whales'[26] hides, and of seals'. Every one pays according to his birth; the best-born, it is said, pay the skins of fifteen martens, and five rein-deers, and one bear's skin, ten ambers of feathers, a bear's or otter's skin kyrtle, and two ship-ropes, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... occupation during the navigation of these rivers, might bring some particular garment from Europe in the form of a bag, under which they could remain covered, opening it only every half-hour. This bag should be distended by whalebone hoops, for a close mask and gloves would be perfectly insupportable. Sleeping on the ground, on skins, or in hammocks, we could not make use of mosquito-curtains (toldos) while on the Orinoco. The toldo is useful only where it forms a tent so well ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... time the little Wave was carrying to it gallantly, her jib—boom bending like whalebone, and her long slender topmasts whipping about like a couple of fishing—rods, as she thrashed at it, sending the spray flashing over her mastheads at every pitch; but notwithstanding her weatherly qualities, the heavy ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of the whale is furnished with a curious framework of a substance called baleen; you will know it by the name of whalebone; it is arranged in rows, and projects beyond the lips in a hanging fringe; the food of the whale consists of shrimps, small fishes, sea-snails, and innumerable minute creatures, called medusae, which are found in those seas where the whales ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... make and use harpoons. As many as twenty. eight different kinds are known.[73] In some the barbs are bilateral, but most of them have them on one side only. Some, however, are made of stag or elk horn, and one harpoon from Maine is made of whalebone. A harpoon-point found near Detroit (Michigan) is nearly a foot long by one inch thick. Excavations in a rock shelter in Alaska yielded a harpoon which lay side by side with some of the most ancient Quaternary mammals of America. A good many copper harpoon-heads are also mentioned; ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... distance, that they looked as if they had fallen there by chance. This, flying open, discovered a fine yellow petticoat, beautifully edged round the bottom with a narrow piece of half gold lace which was now almost become fringe: beneath this appeared another petticoat stiffened with whalebone, vulgarly called a hoop, which hung six inches at least below the other; and under this again appeared an under-garment of that colour which Ovid intends when ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of success in many a speaker who has both a good voice and good matter may be found in the fact that his voice, instead of being as flexible as a piece of whalebone, is as unbending as a bar of iron; or, worse still, perhaps he adopts the dreary monotony of the sing-song tone: the two unvarying notes so suggestive of the up and down movements of a pump-handle. This "cuckoo" tone would ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... and he stumbled over a child, a girl about five, crawling on her hands and knees. He picked her up. She bit and thrashed and tore at him, her bare little body hard as whalebone and slippery with sweat. He could not hold onto her. She kicked herself free of his hands and rushed wildly out of reach, and one of the black hunters pounced in and bore her away, shrieking thinly like a fledgling bird in the ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of out-works and lines of circumvallation, A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etherege's way of making love in a tub, as in the midst of so ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and with which a mother amuses herself for an hour and then consigns them to her maids for the rest of the day. This mother reads Emile. It is not surprising that she immediately strips the poor little thing (of its social harness of whalebone, iron, and hair) and determines to nurse her next child herself." (Taine, H. A., The Ancient ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Taking a long breath and holding it as long as possible and repeating it while the ice is being applied is an aid. Placing the feet in hot mustard water is of decided use. Another excellent expedient is to wrap absorbent cotton round a smooth probe (piece of whalebone, for example), dip the cotton in an alum-water mixture (half teaspoonful powdered alum in a half cupful of water), and then push it into the bleeding nostril as far as you can with gentle force. A valuable remedy is Peroxide of Hydrogen used full strength and freely dropped into the nostril. If ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... his Provang (which was a flexible whalebone from two to three feet long, with a small linen or silk button at the end, which was to be introduced into the stomach to produce the effect of an emetic), the reader may find some account in Wood's Athen. (Bliss's edit., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... at the Gorgon!" cried the mother, as the battered head of an ancient doll was displayed over his shoulder by Perseus, decorated with two enormous snakes, one made of stamps, and the other a spiral of whalebone shavings ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said this he would slap his face. After some correspondence the two men met in Atlanta, September 4, 1848. The trouble was renewed; Judge Cone denounced Mr. Stephens, who rapped him over the shoulders with a whalebone cane. Mr. Stephens was a fragile man, and Judge Cone, with strong physique, closed in and forced him to the floor. During the scuffle Mr. Stephens was cut in six places. His life for a while was despaired of. Upon his recovery he was received with wild enthusiasm by ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Great Exhibition Prize Goat's-head Crochet Cotton. No. 4 Penelope Hook; 1 long strip of Whalebone; 1 yard of Satin Ribbon 1 inch in width. 2 yards ditto, ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... The door opened. His legs were made of whalebone. But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His features had a habit ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... is richly figured, And the train Makes a pink and silver stain On the gravel, and the thrift Of the borders. Just a plate of current fashion, Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. Not a softness anywhere about me, Only whalebone and brocade. And I sink on a seat in the shade Of a lime tree. For my passion Wars against the stiff brocade. The daffodils and squills Flutter in the breeze As they please. And I weep; For the lime-tree is in blossom And one small flower has ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... the same costume as Marie Antoinette and her female favourites are described to have worn in the gardens of Trianon, or in the bowers of St. Cloud,—to the horror of all old dames d'atours, and all the partisans of the ancient regime of whalebone and buckram! The chemise of transparent muslin, or robe a la Poliynae, chapeau de paille a la bergere, tied down with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... if this don't beat all natur, I give it up! What are you made of, young man, all spring and whalebone? I'd a bet he would 'a cleaned out a school-house full o' such dainty book chaps. I give it up. Let me feel o' you," taking Bart good-naturedly by the shoulder. "You'll do, by——. My Valdy said that when Grid gathered himself up the first time, he went heels over ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the library to ensure that their deliberations should not be interrupted. Providence turned out to be not even decently neutral; on a rack on the library wall were a dog-whip and a whalebone riding-switch. Rollo thought it criminal negligence to leave such weapons of precision lying about. He was given a choice of evils, and chose the dog-whip; the next minute or so he spent in wondering how he could have made ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... whalebone whale, Hank?" asked the boy, turning to a lithe Yankee sea-dog with a scraggy gray beard who had been busily working over the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the Borough. There I was told that we were at home. We entered, and I gave a curious and somewhat fearful glance round the place. The shop was set out partly with umbrellas and partly with shoes, but everything seemed dirty and in confusion. Shoe-lasts, umbrella-sticks, and a large quantity of whalebone, were lying in heaps about the floor, while in one corner stood a large pan of dirty water in which they soaked the leather, and which, not being often changed, sent forth a most unpleasant smell; the floor did not appear ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... his ribs the whalebone stung, A madness it did seem! And soon it rose on every tongue That Jack Macpherson rode among ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... other articles for which a demand in Europe either already existed or was ultimately created. Sea-fish abounded on the northeastern coasts of America to a degree that partially made up their loss to the disappointed seekers for a northwest passage. Whale oil and whalebone were obtained in the same waters. Dye-woods, timber, and ship stores were found on the coasts farther south. Furs became one of the most valued and most permanent imports from America. Gradually, as habits in Europe changed, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... received only four dollars a week; but, as our rent was small and our living expenses the very minimum, I was able to meet my half of the joint expenditure. I worked four months at selling pins and needles and thread and whalebone and a thousand and one other things to be found in a well-stocked notion department; and then, by a stroke of good luck and Minnie Plympton's assistance, I got a place as demonstrator of a new brand of tea and coffee in the grocery department of the same ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... good-sized affair of lace and silk and whalebone. (None of your "sunshades.") Little ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... was, that on the taking of a whale on the coasts, it should be divided between the King and Queen; the head only becoming the King's property, and the tail the Queen's. The reason of this whimsical distinction, as assigned by our ancient records, was to furnish the Queen's wardrobe with whalebone. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... (Platea).] So called from the construction of the bill, which is flat the whole length, but widens towards the end in the form of a spoon or spatula; and it is equally remarkable in its substance, not being hard like bone, but flexible like whalebone; they feed on snakes, worms, frogs, and fish, even on shellfish, which they first break ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... beautiful women, dragons, horses, monsters of various kinds, the symbol of the sun, or huge Chinese characters. Among the faces most frequently seen on these kites are those of the national heroes or heroines. Some of the kites are six feet square. Many of them have a thin tense ribbon of whalebone at the top of the kite which vibrates in the wind, making a loud humming noise. The boys frequently name their kites Genji or Heiki, and each contestant endeavors to destroy that of his rival. For this purpose the string for ten ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... thin strip of whalebone and showed it to them. The ends were sharp as needle-points. The strip he coiled carefully, till it disappeared in his hand. Then, suddenly releasing it, it sprang straight again. He picked up ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... Maturin, the two weirdest imaginations of our time, ever gave me such a thrill of terror as I used to feel when I watched the automaton movements of those bodies sheathed in whalebone. The paint on actors' faces never caused me a shock; I could see below it the rouge in grain, the rouge de naissance, to quote a comrade at least as malicious as I can be. Years had leveled those women's faces, and at the same time furrowed them with wrinkles, till they looked ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the cat's-paw out of the downhaul, and we began to boom end the sail, it shook the ship to her center. The boom buckled up and bent like a whipstick, and we looked every moment to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce, it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it. The carpenter said it was the best ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... you man of gunpowder, steel, whalebone, and gutta-percha! I positively have nothing but guesses to give you. Besides, do you think you have nothing to do but rush into Alice's arms when you find her? Take some valerian to quiet your nerves, and go to bed. In the morning, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... and spoke to the horse. He needed no further direction, but set off at a wide angle, nicely calculated, to intercept the truants. Brown Jug was a powerful beast. The spring of his leap was as whalebone. The yellow earth began to stream past like water. Always the pace increased with a growing thunder of hoofs. It seemed that nothing could turn us from the straight line, nothing check the headlong momentum of our rush. My eyes filled with tears ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... as well tell you about it. It's really no great mystery, no great story of the discovery of gold. Just the locating of a bit of whalebone. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... for such a shock was stout SIR CALIPEE, But he couched his new umbrella, and "Police" aloud cried he! Crash—smash—slap-dash! The whalebone snaps, the saddle seat is bare, And the Knight, in mazy circles, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... have been driven from their old grounds by the noise of firearms. The bows, four feet long, are very stout, and strongly reinforced with cords of sinew along the back. The arrows, a little under a yard in length, are tipped with a well-polished piece of whalebone. A sharp and barbed piece of whale's tooth fits into a hole bored in the end of the bone, and a cord of considerable length is tied to the detachable arrow head, the other end of the cord being wound around and fastened to the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... Lawrence, there may be seen disporting in the waves the white whale of aquariums, which is not a whale at all, but a true porpoise (Delphinopterus Catodon, as he is now called by naturalists), having teeth in the jaws, and being destitute of the fringed bone of the whalebone whales. This interesting creature is very abundant in the Arctic Ocean on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and has its southern limits in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, although one is occasionally seen in the Bay of Fundy, and it is reported to have been ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100 yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as whalebone. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... and to be cracked; the former being much more necessary to a horsewoman than the latter. The crop should therefore be of a serviceable length. It is the very silly fashion at present to have hunting whips that are less than two feet long. Many are made of whalebone, and are covered with catgut, their special advantage being that their flexibility greatly facilitates the process of cracking. A more serviceable crop for a lady is one of stiff cane, the thick end of the handle of which is made rough, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... enough, when let down, to touch her feet, is of that pale golden colour so much celebrated in the Middle Ages, and so very rarely to be seen now. Mistress Margery's attire comprises a black dress, so stiff, partly from its own richness of material, and partly with whalebone, that it is quite capable of standing upright without any assistance from Mistress Margery's person. Its trimming consists of a border of gris, or marten's fur; and over this black petticoat the ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... low brow, heavy jaw, bruiser type. The term a "tough" fits him closely. He had a punch like a kick from a dray horse but when called upon to use his hands he preferred to rely upon his mascot to ensure success. Freddie's mascot was a few lengths of whalebone bound with twine and socketed into a pear-shaped lump of lead. Scientifically wielded it would go through the helmet of a City policeman like a hot knife through butter. He had a healthy dislike for firearms which was perhaps the primary cause of his failure to ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... next to nothing. For equally low prices D'Urville was able to purchase, for the museum, specimens of the arms and native productions of the savages. Amongst them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a near relative ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... but I wear his father's likeness somewhere betwixt buckram and Flanders lace," answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from amidst the splendours of her corsage. "I call it next my heart; but there is a stout fortification of whalebone between heart and picture. You have gloated enough on the daughter's impertinent visage. Look now at the father, whom she resembles in little, as a kitten ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the nearest lane among the rougher patches, hist!—swist! flashed the darting feet. And as the skater passed in full flight, followed by the ever-turning, wrathful, watchful, shaggy head, up went the short sea-bow, backed with whalebone. Tsang! and swift as light an arrow, drawn to the head, had crossed the space and buried its length nearly to the feather in the mass of ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... I don't know how to mention it; but I have wished to ask you about it this great while. Pray is it really true that, in your illness last year, you coughed so violently that you broke the whalebone of your ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... directions, because it is limited by the general characters of the type to which the organism exhibiting the variation belongs. A whale does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of developing whalebone. In popular language there is no harm in saying that the waves which break upon the sea-shore are indefinite, fortuitous, and break in all directions. In scientific language, on the contrary, such a statement would be a gross error, inasmuch as every particle of foam is the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... because it would be nobody's interest to do me injustice. Had I kept silent, I might have lived an easy, prudent, reputable sort of life enough. But I established a journal on reaching America, and whereas my spine is not made of whalebone nor my conscience of indiarubber, I spoke the truth as I knew it in all things freely—thereby offending divers parties. This, I believe, could not be helped. After nearly a year of silence[19] I have at last (in self-defence) ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... was a fop, but the most charming of fops, when I first knew him. He wore brilliant waistcoats, variegated scarfs, diamond studs, and straw-colored kid gloves. In his hand he used to flourish an ivory-headed whalebone cane, and his boots were of feminine delicacy and dimensions. Such was Tom at that time, but the war had "brought him out." He had rushed into the ranks, shouldered a musket, and fought bravely. So much I knew—and I was soon to hear how he had ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... interview by the brooklet. He looked much less like an author,—but more perhaps like a perch-fisher. He had a new white hat, stuck on one side of his head, a new green overcoat, new gray trousers, and new boots. In his hand was a whalebone stick, with a silver handle. Nothing could be more vagrant, devil-me-Garish, and, to use a slang word, tigerish, than his whole air. Yet, vulgar as was his costume, he did not himself seem vulgar, but rather eccentric, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their procedure as follows: [411] "For peacock, saras crane and bustard they have a long series of nooses, each provided with a wooden peg and all connected with a long string. The tension necessary to keep the nooses open is afforded by a slender slip of antelope's horn (very much resembling whalebone), which forms the core of the loop. Provided with several sets of these nooses, a trained bullock and a shield-like cloth screen dyed buff and pierced with eye-holes, the bird-catcher sets out for the jungle, and on seeing a flock of pea-fowl circles round them under cover of the screen ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... ferociously. McNamara aimed a fearful blow, but Glenister met him squarely, beating him off cleverly, stepping in and out, his arms swinging loosely from his shoulders like whalebone withes tipped with lead. He moved lightly, his footing made doubly secure by reason of his soft-soled mukluks. Recognizing his opponent's greater weight, he undertook merely to stop the headlong rushes ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... that here is another instance of organs well-developed and very useful, in one animal, represented by rudimentary organs, for which we can discover no purpose whatsoever, in another closely allied animal. The whalebone whale, again, has horny "whalebone" plates in its mouth, and no teeth; but the young foetal whale, before it is born, has teeth in its jaws; they, however, are never used, and they never come to anything. But other members of the group to which the whale belongs have ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... does well enough. He can't be taught right, for it would be too bad to use Greenland whip; but I make this little one, and can drive very well;" and as he spoke, he held up a wand of supple whalebone, tipped with a slender "snapper" of plaited leather, and lightly touching the noble animal with the harmless implement, the dog gave a playful bark, and started off ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... waistband a small battle-axe, and handed it up to Hereward. It was a tool the like of which in shape Hereward had seldom seen, and never its equal in beauty. The handle was some fifteen inches long, made of thick strips of black whalebone, curiously bound with silver, and butted with narwhal ivory. This handle was evidently the work of some cunning Norseman of old. But who was the maker of the blade? It was some eight inches long, with a sharp edge on one side, a sharp ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley |
