"Whalebone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hazard in order to get it. Thus the risks in going after whales and seals for their blubber, which is very valuable, are great; but then, if the ship makes a good voyage, the profits are very large, and when the sailors receive their 'lay,' that is, their share of the profits on the oil and whalebone which have been taken, it sometimes amounts to quite a handsome sum of money to each, and they consider themselves well rewarded for all their privations and hardships. And it must be owned that the whalers and sealers are a very ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... huge fish from the ship; the pursuit in the boats, 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
... 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... at Worsley [a "happy woman" was the term used by me from my childhood to describe a woman on horseback], and, as sometimes happens, had even too much of my happiness. My friend Lady Francis is made of whalebone and india-rubber in equal proportions, very neatly and elegantly fastened together with the finest steel springs, and is incapable of fatigue from exertion, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... whale. There were two kinds of boats—the long ones, for from twelve to twenty men, the little skiffs which Eskimos of the Atlantic call kyacks—with two or three, seldom more, manholes. Over the whalebone frame was stretched the wet elastic hide of walrus or sea-lion. The big boat was open on top like a Newfoundland fisherman's dory or Frenchman's bateau, the little boat covered over the top except for the manholes round which were wound oilskins to keep the water out when ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... 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
... country near the coast. These priests were able to communicate directly with their informants, and certainly believed the story. Dr. Hildebrand, also, a competent German naturalist, believed in it. But Sir John Kirk himself says that "what the priests had to show was most undoubtedly the whalebone ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... teeth the mouth 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 feed in such vast quantities that they make ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... 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 going ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... 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 blight ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had umbrellas. All the region round about, and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops and umbrellas. Thus we stood during two drenching hours. No rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient. I had the rheumatism, too, and had heard ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in 1379 they invaded the East Bygd ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... was founded 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 the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... manipulate gates, 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 ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... here to describe my personal appearance on this important day, when, for the first time, I posed as a great chief, and led my people into battle, filled with the same enthusiasm that animated them. My hair was built up on strips of whalebone to a height of nearly two feet from my head, and was decorated with black and white cockatoo feathers. My face, which had now become very dark from exposure to the sun, was decorated in four colours—yellow, white, black, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... 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 ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... two workshops in Albion Villa. Ned's study, as he called it, and the drawing-room. In the former shavings flew, and settled at their ease, and the whirr of the lathe slept not; the latter was all patterns, tapes, hooks and eyes, whalebone, cuttings of muslin, poplin and paper; clouds of lining-muslin, snakes of piping; skeins, shreds; and the floor literally sown with pins, escaped from the fingers of the fair, those taper fingers so typical of the minds of their owners: or they have softness, suppleness, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that girl will abandon him the moment she gets him to sign a power of attorney, by which they mean to obtain the income of his money in the Funds. That letter will bring her back under his roof, the handsome runaway! this very night, or I'm mistaken. I promise to make her as pliable as a bit of whalebone for the rest of her days, if my uncle allows me to take Maxence Gilet's place; which, in my opinion, he ought never to have had in the first place. Am I not right?—and yet here's ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... is desolation and pettiness and disappointment.... And what is there on the sea? The great whale is dying; the monster who ranged the deep must go because men must have oil to cast up their accounts by the light of it, and women must have whalebone for stays.... The sleek seal with brown gentle eyes must die that harlots shall wear furs.... And there never was a Neptune or a Mannanan mac Lir.... There were only stories from a foolish old book.... The sun shines for a moment on the green waters, and your heart ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... jaw the membrane which covers the palate 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. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, And ropes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... by millions for their hides and hairs; the buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacen, and some other marine animals, for their whalebone and oil; the ostrich and other large birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in New England, by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh being thrown away; and it is even said that ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... long 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 young lady wears a cote-hardie, or close-fitting jacket, also edged with gris. Her ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... stiff whalebone bristles may be passed gently over the hair several times during the day, to brush out the dust and the dandruff, and to keep the hair smooth, soft, and clean; rough and hard brushing the hair with brushes having very stiff bristles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... support the contest; therefore the Court of France should strike at once, as they will reap an immediate harvest; they may sell their manufactures for any price they please to ask, they will get in payment tobacco, rice, indigo, deerskins, furs, wheat, flour, iron, beeswax, lumber, fish, oil, whalebone, pot and pearl ashes, and various other articles, and, if they please, here is an ample field to employ their shipping, and raise seamen for ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... 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 women parts, was my son. To guard ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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
... thoughtfully, when a sound behind him made him look around, and his bright eyes fell on a group of the strangest little people any small fox ever came across. There were seven of them. They all stood in a row, and each was as straight up and down as the big whalebone over the grave Omnok, the hunter, had made for his father. Little White Fox had seen some of these strange folks when he was with his mother a few days before. She had told him that they belonged to the Sea Parrot family. "There is a very large family of ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... half a yard in height, seemed to place her face near the middle of her body; her stomach was compressed into a stiff case of whalebone, which checked respiration, and deprived her almost of the power of eating; while a pair of cumbersome hoops, placed on her hips, gave to her petticoats the amplitude of a small elliptical, inflated balloon. Under these strange accoutrements, it would, at first sight, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... man, 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 s'pect some unfortunate female ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Marie de Medicis that of small collars. Dresses tight at the waist began to be made very full round the hips, by means of large padded rolls, and these were still more enlarged, under the name of vertugadins (corrupted from vertu-gardiens), by a monstrous arrangement of padded whalebone and steel, which subsequently became the ridiculous paniers, which were worn almost down to the commencement of the present century; and the fashion seems likely to ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... property is offered as follows: "If the gentleman who keeps the shoe store with a red head will return the umbrella of a young lady with whalebone ribs and an iron handle to the slate-roofed grocer's shop, he will hear of something to his advantage, as the same is a gift of a deceased mother now no more with the name engraved ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... shouldn't. You're as tough as a piece of whalebone, and a little nick like that can't put you on the retired list. Sit down here—I've got a few words to say ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... n. (pronounced merry), a Maori war-club; a casse-te^te, or a war-axe, from a foot to eighteen inches in length, and made of any suitable hard material—stone, hard wood, whalebone. To many people out of New Zealand the word is only known as the name of a little trinket of greenstone (q.v.) made in imitation of the New Zealand weapon in miniature, mounted in gold or silver, and used as a brooch, locket, ear-ring, or other ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... 'pepper-and-salt' locks, was evidently a contribution from the family stock of worn-out pillow-cases. She was very aged,—upwards of seventy,—and so thin that, had she not been endowed with speech and motion, she might have passed for a bundle of whalebone thrown into human shape, and covered with a coating of gutta-percha. It was evident she had been a valued house-servant, whose few remaining years were being soothed and solaced by the kind and indulgent care of a ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... 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 ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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), ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... out," she 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. Do you get that?" ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of deserted native encampments still further confirmed Mackenzie in his belief that he had at length reached the land of the Esquimaux. Round their fireplaces were found scattered pieces of whalebone, and spots were observed where train-oil had been spilt. The deserted huts also corresponded in construction with those which were known to be built elsewhere by the denizens of the far north. Several runners of sledges were also found, and the skulls of a large animal, which was conjectured to be ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... 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 ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... 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 up ile," and made the long whale hunts needless ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... 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 stick ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... through a school of small sea animals with open mouth, takes in a great quantity of water, and the fringe of whalebone acts as a strainer, letting out the water and retaining the food. In like manner the devil fish feeds, except that it has no whalebone. Its "horns" help it ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... been divided into the Denticete, or Toothed Whales, and the Mysticete, or Whalebone Whales. The former contains the river dolphins, the ziphoid whales, the gigantic sperm whale, the sea dolphins, and the narwhal or sea unicorn. The latter contains the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... shouting with much exultation, 'chimo! chimo! pillattaa! pillattaa!' expressions probably of friendship, or trade. They were particularly eager to exchange all that they apparently possessed, and hastily bartered with the Eddystone, blubber, whalebone, and seahorse teeth, for axes, saws, knives, tin kettles, and bits of old iron hoop. The women presented image toys, made from the bones and teeth of animals, models of canoes, and various articles of dress, made of seal skins, and the membranes of the abdomen ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... 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, or as ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... 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
... a sack, That hides the outline of her back, I cry, in sore distress, "Alack!" She showed a dainty waist when dressed In jacket; true, the size confessed That whalebone had its shape compressed. Still was her form sweet as her face, But now what change has taken place! This "sack coat" hides all maiden grace. Although men's clothes are always vile, The coat, the trousers and the "tile"! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... all kinds, whale fins, whalebone, oil, and blubber, not caught by and cured on board British vessels, when imported into Great Britain, are subject to double aliens duty. The Dutch, as they are still the principal, were then the only fishers in Europe ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... 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 middle ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... summer habitations of these Esquimaux, are principally supported by a pole of whalebone, about fourteen feet high. This pole stands perpendicularly, and has four or five feet of it projecting above the skins which form the roof and sides. The length of the tent is about seventeen feet, and the breadth from seven ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and who attempted to carry da Vinci's theories—one of them, at least, into practice. For this Guidotti, who was by profession an artist and by inclination an investigator, made for himself wings, of which the framework was of whalebone; these he covered with feathers, and with them made a number of gliding flights, attaining considerable proficiency. He is said in the end to have made a flight of about four hundred yards, but this attempt at solving the problem ended on a house roof, where Guidotti broke his thigh bone. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... 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 ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... stared, and thrust his fist into his mouth, as Mynheer put him down upon the floor. Soon he sat erect, and looked with a sweet scowl at the company. With his lace and embroideries, and his crown of blue ribbon and whalebone (for he was not quite past the tumbling age), he looked ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... 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 result ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 equal to half the perpendicular height of ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... will deny, for the evidence is before us. Now fix your attention on that needle. There is an active and acting principle in that as well as in the magnetized blade; for the blade will not attract a splinter of wood, of whalebone, or piece of glass, tho equal in size and weight. It will have no operation on them. Then it is by a sort of mutual affinity, a reciprocity of attachment, between the blade and needle, that ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... bow was a pliant whalebone, And his arrow a white-pine stick; Such a life as his archery practice Led the cats and each wretched chick! Our tea-sets were bits of dishes That mother had thrown away, With chincapin saucers and acorn-cups; ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... good cloaks or coats, and broad beavers to keep the 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 the weather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... seal so successfully, is hunted in turn for the sake of his thick soft fur, and often falls a victim both to white men and Esquimaux. The latter sometimes kill him by rolling a thick piece of whalebone, about two feet long and four inches wide, into a small coil, and wrapping it in a piece of seal blubber so that it forms a ball. Placed outside the hut, it soon freezes hard. Provided with this frozen bait, the natives search for Ninoo. When they find him, they run away, and ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I could have yelled aloud, so fast, so straight, so true it sped toward me. Then I hit it harder than I had ever hit a ball in my life. The bat sprung, as if it were whalebone. And the ball took a bullet course between center and left. So beautiful a hit was it that ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... wal! 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 ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... (practice materials): basting, stitching, pressing, binding, boning (whalebone, featherbone); hooks and ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... imitated the noise of 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 from the doomed vessel he counterfeited by suddenly striking a large tambourine with a sponge affixed to a whalebone spring, the reverberations of the sponge producing a peculiar echo as from cloud to cloud dying away in the distance. The rushing washing sound of the waves was simulated by turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted with shelves, and containing small shells, peas, and shot; ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Gawthorpe, to whom he had been recently united. In his attire, even when habited for the chase or a merry-making, like the present, the Knight of Whalley affected a sombre colour, and ordinarily wore a quilted doublet of black silk, immense trunk hose of the same material, stiffened with whalebone, puffed out well-wadded sleeves, falling bands, for he eschewed the ruff as savouring of vanity, boots of black flexible leather, ascending to the hose, and armed with spurs with gigantic rowels, a round-crowned small-brimmed black hat, with an ostrich feather placed in the side and hanging over ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... "I'll back whalebone against Spanish flies any day. Will you bet, Dick?" said he to his brother-in-law, who was a wild, helter-skelter sort of fellow, better known over the country as Dick the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... that they roll. Oh, but they do roll! Whoopo—down and back like that! Most any of them will make a complete roll inside of six seconds. Ours was a 5-1/4-second one. When she got to rolling right, she would snap a careless sailor overboard as quickly as you could snap a bug off the end of a whalebone cane. There is one over there which ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... man good sometimes to get in his blow. It did Oliver Vyell good, riding in, to slash twice crosswise on the brute's bandaged face; to feel the whalebone bite and then, as he swung out of saddle, to ram fist and whip-butt together on the ugly mouth, driving in ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... who behaved himself always like a lady. Suddenly the floor sank beneath the crowd of people, who retired in some disorder. Such a compression of crinoline was never seen as at that moment, when periphery pressed upon periphery, and held many a man captive in the cold embrace of steel and whalebone. The royal party retired to its rooms again and carpenters came in with saws and hammers. The floor repaired, an area was roped off for dancing—as much as could be spared. The Prince opened the dance with Mrs Governor Morgan, after which other ladies ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... speak lest his voice should be recognised afterwards, but he struggled all he knew. The man soon overpowered him; but Marriner came to the rescue. Throwing down the sack of pheasants, he had taken from his pocket an implement of whalebone with a heavy knob of lead at the end, and coming behind the man, both whose hands were holding on to Saurin, he struck him with it on the head as hard as he could. The keeper's grasp relaxed, he fell heavily to the ground, and Saurin was free. The man lay on his back with his head ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... 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 blood again—and so we reach the eyes. Behind ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... of the most wonderful animals in the world, and the baleen, or whalebone, one of its greatest peculiarities. The baleen consists of a row, on each side of the upper jaw, of about 300 plates or laminae, which stand close together transversely to the longer axis of the mouth. Within the main row there are some subsidiary rows. The extremities and inner margins ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... care of the wants of a modern civilization compelled the invention of the internal combustion engine. Before it appeared in the realm of mechanics, experimenters were applying in the construction of flying models the knowledge supplied by Cayley in 1796, who made an instrument of whalebone, corks, and feathers, which by the action of two screws of quill feathers, rotating in opposite directions, would rise to the ceiling; and the full revelation of the structure and action of bird wings set ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... deal upon the mechanic who handles the cloth. Some mechanics like a stiff cloth, but the writer has always used a flexible cloth. The sizes, shape, and methods of folding and breaking in as shown in Fig. 21 below have proved successful. Cloths made of whalebone ticking are inexpensive and make the best for ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... dreary banks of the Lena and Indigirka, along the whole extent of the frozen Tundra, which faces the Polar Sea, and in the distant isles of New Siberia, rarely visited by even the bold seekers of fossil ivory, the same ruined circles of stone, betokening the former abode of human beings, the same whalebone rafters, the same stone axes, the same implements of the chase, are to be found as to this day are used, and only used, by the Tchuktches of Behring's Straits, the Innuit of North America, or the Esquimaux of Hudson's Straits and Greenland,—a people ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... 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 ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... they require to be very carefully made, and to have a tight body under them, as otherwise they look untidy—particularly as the age of stiff stays has departed, we trust never to return, and the modern elegants wear stays with very little whalebone in them, if they ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... ribs the whalebone stung, A madness it did seem! And soon it rose on every tongue That Jack Macpherson rode among The creatures of ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... salle a manger was very prettily decorated with texts, and the furniture upholstered with cheveux de horse, Louis Quinze. The boarders were all very quietly dressed: Mrs. McFiggin was daintily attired in some old clinging stuff with a corsage de Whalebone underneath. The ample board groaned under the bill of fare. The boarders groaned also. Their groaning was very noticeable. The piece de resistance was a hunko de boeuf boile, flanked with some old clinging stuff. The entrees were pate de pumpkin, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... 3.20 p.m. changed to 20 degrees north of east; the first ten miles were over a plain of gums covered with grass two feet long; we had then six miles of spinifex, and a thick scrub of dwarf lancewood, as tough as whalebone. After that we entered upon another gum plain, also splendidly grassed, which continued for four miles, when the gums suddenly ceased, and it became a large open plain to north, as far as I could see. Seeing no appearance of water, I changed my course to 30 degrees ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... should be constantly watched day and night; that when the cough occurs, they may be held up easily, so as to stand upon their feet bending a little forwards; or nicely supported in that posture which they seem to put themselves into. A bow of whalebone, about the size of the bow of a key, is very useful to extract the phlegm out of the mouths of infants at the time of their coughing; as an handkerchief, if applied at the time of their quick inspirations after long holding their breath, is dangerous, and may suffocate the patient in an instant, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... guide overnight, Henri Renaud by name, and he appeared punctually at eight o'clock in the morning, got up in the short-tail coat of the country, and a large green umbrella with mighty ribs of whalebone. The weather was extremely unpleasant, a cold pitiless rain rendering all attempts at protection unavailing; but, fortunately, the glaciere is only an hour and a quarter from the village. The path is tolerably steep, leading across the petit ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... all around us who have been swallowed by monstrous misfortunes. Some of them sit down on a piece of whalebone and give up. They say: "No use! I will never get back my money, or restore my good name, or recover my health." They float out to sea and are never again heard of. Others, the moment they go down the throat of some great trouble, begin immediately to plan for ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... in the Phoenix Park, dressed much in 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 a lilac ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... 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. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... shirt and under his 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
... swallowed the brass. Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it took no more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay down on its back, and shoved five or six, inches of a silver-headed whalebone cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of the child with it. Then, being hungry for glass again, it broke up several wine glasses, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to buy whalebone, and other trifles which I must have for my business here. So I just go and come ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... the whale's head, and rise like steam in the colder air. The children's mother told them that the whale is the largest of all animals, and that it lives on little jellyfish. It swims with its great mouth wide open and catches all the tiny sea creatures in its path. A fringe of whalebone hangs down from the roof of the whale's mouth, and he strains the water out through this and swallows the fish. As the boat went on, the children said, "There she blows," as the sailors do when they see whales ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... buying a whalebone-and-steel-and-snow bull terrier, or a more formidable if more greedy Great Dane. But the Mistress wanted a collie. So they compromised ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... lying upon the rock. The howling of wolves, as the sailors thought it, was heard along the shore; but when two of these animals were killed they were seen to be dogs like mastiffs with sharp ears and bushy tails. A little farther on sleds were found, one made of wood and sawn boards, the other of whalebone. Presently the coast-line was broken into a network of barren islands with great sounds between. When Davis sailed southward he reached and passed the strait that had been the scene of Frobisher's adventures and, like Frobisher himself, also passed by ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... the story depends upon that. The gentleman in question did set the bones; but he set them across, you see,—as it might be so." And Miss Nares arranged four pieces of whalebone on the table in the shape of a long, narrow letter X; there could not have been a better exemplification. "The consequence was, my lady, that the poor girl's hand was found, when she had got well, to be turned completely round: and, in fact, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... which are badly cared for, than a few, that are well cared for; for the care bestowed on animals has, as a rule, much more influence on the body itself than on their covering.(799) In fisheries, caviar, sturgeon-bladders, oil and whalebone;(800) and in forest-culture, pitch, tar, potash and, to some extent, building material etc., play the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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
... rows of bodkins (wonderfully large, that stick [out] two or three inches from their hair), made of diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow stones, that it certainly requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to dance upon May-day with the garland. Their whalebone petticoats outdo ours by several yards circumference, and ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Yard, Pall Mall, or Downing Street: Are hills, and dales, and valleys half so gay As bright St. James's on a levee day? What fierce ecstatic transports fire my soul, To hear the drivers swear, the coaches roll; The Courtier's compliment, the Ladies' clack, The satins rustle, and the whalebone crack!" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... dignity. The music ceased, and Sancho seated himself at the head of the table, for there was only that seat placed, and no more than one cover laid. A personage, who it appeared afterwards was a physician, placed himself standing by his side with a whalebone wand in his hand. They then lifted up a fine white cloth covering fruit and a great variety of dishes of different sorts; one who looked like a student said grace, and a page put a laced bib on Sancho, while another who played the part of head carver placed a dish ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stuffs of their copes and stoles, their splendid silvered embroideries, sparkled in the light of a thousand tapers. The beadle strutted in all the glory of his brilliant uniform and flashing epaulets; on the opposite side walked in high glee the sacristan, carrying his whalebone staff with a magisterial air; the voice of the choristers, now clad in fresh, white surplices, rolled out in bursts of thunder; the trumpets' blare shook the windows; and upon the countenances of all those who were to have a share in the spoils of this rich corpse, this excellent ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... passed, and he made no attempt to take the reins. Victoria had drawn the whalebone whip from its socket, and was urging on the horse as fast as humanity would permit; and the while she was aware that Hilary's look was fixed upon her—in fact, never left her. Once or twice, in spite of her anxiety to get him home, Victoria blushed faintly, as she wondered what ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Eskimos alone who derived benefit from this unexpected prize. The captain of the English ship also got some barrels of oil and a large quantity of whalebone to fill up his cargo, and the bright shawls and real iron knives that were given in exchange soon graced the shoulders of the native women and the belts of ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... had been seduced into a forbidden boat,—and there was no balm in Gilead; nor any forgiveness forever. She pictured her grand, dark father standing like a biblical allegory of "Hell and Damnation" within the somber leathern cube of his books, the fiercely white, whalebone cane upon which he and old brother gout leaned, and the vast gloomy centers at the bases of which glowed his savage eyes. She thought of the rolling bitter voice with which she had once heard him stiffen ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... 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
... 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 ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... trade, spermaceti oil and salt-fish may be supplied to Prussia and Germany as cheap, or cheaper from the Colonies, than from Holland and Germany. The United Colonies exported to Europe chiefly, indeed, to Great Britain, fish-oil, whalebone, spermaceti, furs, and peltry of every kind, masts, spars, and timber, pot and pearl ashes, flax-seed, beef, pork, butter and cheese, horses and oxen; to the West Indies chiefly, wheat-flour, bread, rye, Indian corn, lumber, tobacco, iron, naval stores, beeswax, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... produce an intense, though {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 ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Whalebone is not bone, nor does it possess any properties of bone. It is a substance attached to the upper jaw of the whale, and serves to strain the water which the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... years' cruise, brought back 3497 barrels of sperm oil which sold for $89,000, and the William Hamilton of New Bedford set another high mark by stowing 4181 barrels of a value of $109,269. The Pioneer of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, was away only a year and stocked a cargo of oil and whalebone which sold for $150,060. Most of the profits of prosperous voyages were taken as the owners' share, and the incomes of the captain and crew were so niggardly as to make one wonder why they persisted in a calling so perilous, arduous, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... had 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
... see the pulses leaping and throbbing in the arteries, the delicate tissues of her bodice trembled and shook. Was it possible that in that frivolous little body, under that corsage of lace and satin and whalebone, there beat one of those rare and tragic passions, all-consuming, all-absorbing, blind and deaf to everything but itself? In that case—well, he felt something very like awe before what he called her miraculous stupidity. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... 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 ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... 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
... 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 ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... him) say that, with all his faults, he had the complexion of a baby. She would describe him as an unmarried man, of the age of fifty,—he had a prejudice against marrying under fifty,—dressed in nankeen for all weathers, with no other protection than a whalebone umbrella, and likewise remarkable for a fine Roman nose. 'Twas this Clatworthy, by the way, that a discharged gardener advised to go down to Merry-Garden and make a second fortune by picking cherries, "for," ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bass and tenor; practically the 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, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... needle. Both the poles, you find, attract both ends of the needle. Replace the needle by a bit of annealed iron wire; the same effects ensue. Suspend successively little rods of lead, copper, silver, brass, wood, glass, ivory, or whalebone; the magnet produces no sensible effect upon any of the substances. You thence infer a special property in the case of steel and iron. Multiply your experiments, However, and you will find that some other substances, besides iron and steel, are acted upon by your magnet. A rod of the metal nickel, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... to be an angel, Daisy," Theresa repeated,—"with wonderful wings made of gauze on a light frame of whalebone." ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... 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 Regime, vol. II, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... good as could be given,) for their admixture, in the composition of brass." "A lady's parasol, and a gentleman's watch were described in the same manner. The ivory knob, the brass crampet, the bamboo, the whalebone, the silk, were no sooner adverted to, than they were scientifically described. When their attention was called to the seals of the gentleman's watch, they immediately said, 'These are of pure, and those of jeweller's gold,' and described the difference. The steel ring was traced to ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... any teeth,—our branch of the family; and we live on creatures so small, that you could only see them with a microscope. Yes, you may stare; but it's true, my dear. The roofs of our mouths are made of whalebone, in broad pieces from six to eight feet long, arranged one against the other; so they make an immense sieve. The tongue, which makes about five barrels of oil, lies below, like a cushion of white satin. When we want to feed, we rush through the water, which is full of the little things ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... had not been properly closed, burst open, and my doggie came into the room all of a heap. After a brief moment lost in apparently searching for his hind-legs, he began to dance and frisk about the room as if all his limbs were whalebone ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... proclaims the 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 backbone ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... in bed 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 ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... 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
... night, we were sixty-four miles distant. During the night there was a very curious optical phenomenon, which I shall not undertake to account for. At half-past midnight the wind blew feebly from the east; the thermometer rose to 23.2 degrees, the whalebone hygrometer was at 57 degrees. I had remained upon the deck to observe the culmination of some stars. The full-moon was high in the heavens. Suddenly, in the direction of the moon, 45 degrees before its passage over the meridian, a great arch was formed tinged with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... naturally a stout walker, and carries herself firm; methinks I see her strut, and step clever over a kennel; and Dingley would do well enough if her petticoats were pinned up; but she is so embroiled, and so fearful, and then Stella scolds, and Dingley stumbles, and is so daggled.(14) Have you got the whalebone petticoats among you yet? I hate them; a woman here may hide a moderate gallant under them. Pshaw, what's all this I'm saying? Methinks I am talking to MD face ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... other fellow down, Swinburne," he called out, and before I knew where I was I was locked in a grapple with the man in the purple blazer. He was a wiry fighter, who bent and sprang like a whalebone, but I was heavier and had taken him utterly by surprise. I twitched one of his feet from under him; he swung for a moment on the single foot, and then we fell with a crash amid the litter of newspapers, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... brought groceries and dry goods for the store was to take away sealskins, walrus-skins, narwhal ivory, whalebone, and blubber of various sorts, which had been accumulating in the fish shed since the fishing began. This made Jervis as busy in his way as Katherine was in hers. Indeed, the press of work was so great that Mary went down day after day to do the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... laughed so violently that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller returns; and Tom went on ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... gray-spotted, and clear to see through, and something like a cuttle-fish, only more substantial, he will stay quite still where a streak of weed is in the rapid water, hoping to be overlooked, not caring even to wag his tail. Then being disturbed he flips away, like whalebone from the finger, and hies to a shelf of stone, and lies with his sharp head poked in under it; or sometimes he bellies him into the mud, and only shows his back-ridge. And that is the time to spear him nicely, holding the fork very ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Lady Barbara, as stiffly as if her throat were lined with whalebone; "no inconvenience ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out for that. The huge creature had drifted ashore on 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
... the buttons of which were spaded half-guineas; his 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 Mr. Petulengro had on a very fine white holland ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... of the party had gone into the steerage to examine some of those curious specimens of whalebone work, in the fabrication of which whalemen employ so much patience and time, during their long and often unsuccessful voyages. As Isabella and Morton stood together by the cabin table, the lady opened a bible that was lying there, and seemed for ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... structure closely connected with ruminants) has well-developed teeth in its upper jaw; so 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 ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... something snug around your waist could be harmful? Listen, dear, and I will tell you. Let us take the corset and examine it. It certainly looks very innocent and pretty, but just see how stiff it is. These steel ribs and this whalebone make it more like a piece of harness than anything else I can think of. When worn about the waist, it produces pressure upon the vital organs and thus deforms the body. These long strings at the back are often drawn so tightly as to cause the misplacement and derangement of those organs whose ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... Mary completed the fifth year of her age, her father removed to a small distance from his former habitation, and took a farm near the Whalebone upon Epping Forest, a little way out of the Chelmsford road. In Michaelmas 1765, he once more changed his residence, and occupied a convenient house behind the town of Barking in Essex, eight miles from London. In this situation some of their nearest neighbours were, Bamber Gascoyne, esquire, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... 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 with ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper. It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had clutched the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... which old fabrics of this kind exhibit. She wore a stomacher. On her wrinkled fingers appeared some rings of great size and seeming value; but, what was most remarkable, she wore also a satin hood of a peculiar shape. It was glossy like the gown, but seemed to be stiffened either by whalebone or some other material. Her age seemed considerable, and the face, though not unpleasant, was somewhat hard and severe and indented with minute wrinkles. I confess that so entirely was my attention engrossed by what was passing in my mind, that, though I felt mightily ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... years, the manufacture 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 ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the street. He stood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the women and the resigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible that these were his friends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among such puppets that he had sold his soul? What had any of these people done that was noble, exceptional, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... that 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 of formation of the eye and ear; as to the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... is unquestionably due to Cuvier; but his dissections were almost confined to the genus Delphinus, or the common Porpoise of our coasts. I repeated all his dissections, and found them, as they almost always were, scrupulously exact; but when I came to examine Cetacea with whalebone instead of teeth, I was surprised to find how different, in fact, the anatomy of the two great families was. Scarcely in any great natural family do we find Cuvier's favourite theory of anatomical and physiological ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... 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 ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... disregarded in infancy and childhood as being of no importance. In young children, the deformity is corrected by wearing a light splint fixed with strips of plaster, or a piece of whalebone or steel inside the finger of a glove. In older children, the finger may be straightened by subcutaneous division of the ligament over the palmar aspect of the base of the middle phalanx, or failing this ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... 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 mass on the back of the head These calashes were frequently a ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... 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 ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... 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 to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... out the shilling compass, still, fortunately, in working order, that he had bought off another boy at school for fivepence, a piece of indiarubber, a strip of whalebone, and half a stick ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... as you might say, she growed up to be the best girl, an' the cleverest, in the district. The other girls was weeds aside of her; she stood inches higher nor any o' them, an' she was a picter' to look at. Strong as whalebone, she was, an' not a lazy bone in her body. She was different from me in regard o' learnin', for she always liked to have her nose in a book, an' she went a lot to school. An' as for singin' or playin' anything in the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... 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 |
