"Brushing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fritzing, brushing aside these suggestions with an angrily contemptuous wave of his hand, "has taken a fancy—I may say an exceedingly violent fancy—to these two cottages. What is all this talk of traps and horses? My niece ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... dispel your gloom, either, Katherine," said Migwan, looking closely at Katherine, who, after the first moment of banter, had lapsed into silence and sat staring gloomily into the curtain of vines that covered the end of the porch. "What's the matter?" she asked curiously, brushing back the damp hair from Katherine's forehead with a gentle hand. It was easy to see how Katherine was idolized by the rest of the Winnebagos. For her to act depressed was unheard of and alarming. At Migwan's words ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... brushing away the tears, "I have just been to see her, and she don't look to me as if she'd last the week out. I believe she is far more dangerous ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... and in many a legend, are always fighting for my life. Whenever I have any cherished purpose, either outward obstacles swarm around, which the hand that would be drawing beautiful lines must be always busy in brushing away, or comes this great vulture, and fastens his iron talons on ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Evans to repose," says Moll, brushing her eyes and turning to the door. "You will save his life, Doctor, for he has given ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Waterholes as the strength of the afternoon sun began to wane, and headed due west As they rode round the side of the largest pool, the three horses of the dead men, which were camped under the shade of the Leichhardt trees, brushing the flies off each other's noses with their long tails, raised their heads inquiringly as if to say. "Are you going to leave us here?" and then sedately trotted ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... was beginning to find it unpleasant to be at such close quarters with the crowd. Some of the people he was brushing up against, he complained, were not too ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... a merry-looking man, lying at full length, and brushing the fresh scent out of the grass, while two or three little children tumbled over him, and crept about him, as kittens or puppies frolic with their parents, "if that's all, we'll have a subscription of eatables for them improvident ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... they had asked for the pleasure of her company. Rebecca, on the other hand, had dressed up the dog in John's clothes, and being requested to get the three younger children ready for dinner, she had held them under the pump and then proceeded to "smack" their hair flat to their heads by vigorous brushing, bringing them to the table in such a moist and hideous state of shininess that their mother was ashamed of their appearance. Rebecca's own black locks were commonly pushed smoothly off her forehead, but on this occasion she formed what I must perforce call by its only name, a spit-curl, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she said, stooping down and brushing his forehead with her lips hastily. "You know you were to come to me when you were in trouble, or to tell me when you were very happy: that was our compact, Arthur, last year, before we parted. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minute more Blanche's quick ear caught the faint sound of a woman's dress brushing over the lawn. She ran to the nearest window, looked out, and clapped her hands with a cry of delight. There was the well-known figure, rapidly approaching her! Anne was true to their friendship—Anne had kept her engagement ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... these filings before him, separating the brass from the iron by means of a magnet. Only imagine a boy of fourteen or fifteen doing nothing all day long except raking a magnet through a heap of black and yellow dust, and brushing into a separate heap the iron filings off his magnet! You will also see a series of three iron rollers working on each other, by means of which plate iron can be twisted into any given form; a mighty "punch" which will make a hole an inch in diameter through iron an inch ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Brushing against one another, passing one another in the streets or the fields, they see bodies and hear voices, but it does not really matter—they are disconnected, psychically lost. Is this due to the particular circumstances of small-town ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... trotted down the trail toward the dragon, muttering to himself, "Very suspicious—tigers too busy chewing gum, Rhinoceros too busy brushing his tusk—must get hold of that invasion. Don't like it one bit, not one bit! It's upsetting everybody terribly—wonder what it's ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... search for those that had strayed, I took a sponge, and went to try to collect some of the dew which was hanging in spangles upon the grass and shrubs; brushing these with the sponge, I squeezed it, when saturated, into a quart pot, which, in an hour's time, I filled with water. The native boys were occupied in the same way; and by using a handful of fine grass, instead of a sponge, they collected about a quart among them. Having taken ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... sailed round and round them, and forced them to contract their circle, by continually brushing past and making as though they would attack at once, having been previously cautioned by Phormio not to do so till he gave the signal. His hope was that the Peloponnesians would not retain their order like a force on shore, but that the ships would fall ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... seventh month, when she was brushing his Sunday coat, she felt papers in the breast pocket, and, seized with a sudden curiosity, took them out to read. He very rarely wore the frock-coat he was married in: and it had not occurred to her before to feel curious ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... swain may say, Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn, Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... it's all right wid him. Things allus do come right, some time," she added, in a reflective tone, brushing ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... was set right with a jerk; then the plaits of a false bosom were smoothed down; next the tie of a flowing silk cravat was settled; while, in other parts of the room, there was a stealthy display of private rolls of pomatum, and a desperate brushing of hair, sometimes refractory to anything but ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... said, brushing Malone's question away with a wave of his hand. "So now I hear all this stuff from Kettleman. And it begins to add up. The kids can disappear somehow, and re-appear some place else. Walk through walls?" He shrugged. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... for (as a matter of faithful history) he had spent a great deal of time brushing bay Nellie. She did indeed shine like a bottle, and her harness, newly oiled and carefully burnished, glittered as if ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... approaching up the path. He had thrown aside his blanket, and he strode rapidly, clad in close-fitting jacket and leggings of deerskin, with knife and hatchet slung at his waist. He came straight to the hut and entered, brushing by her without a glance. Just as he passed she recognized him. He was Tegakwita. Her fear of these stern warriors had suddenly gone, and she followed him into the doorway to hear his errand. Menard greeted him with a nod; Father Claude, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... squirrels are tame. Every day, at noon, an old policeman, a former Confederate soldier I believe he is, comes into the square with a basket of corn. When he arrives all the pigeons see him and rush toward him in a great flapping cloud, brushing past your face if you happen to be walking across the square at the time. Nor is he the only one to feed them. Numbers of citizens go at midday to the square, where they buy popcorn and peanuts for the squirrels and pigeons—which, by the way, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Silence. Thekla, brushing a few tears from her eyes, scrutinized the ropes again, before she walked heavily out of the room. She turned the key ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... sidelong path at a jog, brushing the dew and grasshoppers and the birds from the hazel bushes and the papaw shrubs, and scaring many ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... keys; he did not like being "rubbed down," but he submitted to the process with great good-humour. It was the cosiest old kitchen; the table was the whitest, and the pots and pans the brightest, that could be imagined; and Jane, the cook, groomed him down as though brushing a damp jacket with a dry glass-cloth was the most enjoyable pastime in life. In the parlour it was just the same: the pretty china cups and saucers, and the little bunches of bright flowers, only made all the nice things ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... unconscious in the sun, and may watch many hours without event; but sometimes it happens that he raises his head, quivers for an instant his double tongue, and slides off the stump into a bush. At such times put your ear to the earth. Do you not distinguish—or is it all imagination—a sound, a brushing? ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... about his neck before slipping into the loose coat of glossy plum-brown, then checked the stun-pistol and pocketed the black notebook, its plastileather cover glossy from long use. He stood in front of the mirror, brushing his beard, now snow-white. Two years, now, and he would be eighty—had he been anyone but The Guide, he would have long ago retired to the absolute peace and repose of one of the Elders' Havens. Peace and repose, however, were not for The Guide; it would take ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... his story, and then Dick was led into the house. He lost no time in brushing up and washing himself, and by that time breakfast was ready in ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... her manner, and began to laugh at his own ridiculous mistakes, rising from his knees and brushing the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... remarked, glancing in amusement at his blue serge clothes, which, to tell the truth, badly needed brushing. "What are you doing in the West End at this time ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not pretty," added my aunt, brushing the firedog with the tip of her tiny boot. "It lends an especial charm to the look, I must acknowledge. A cloud of powder is most becoming, a touch of rouge has a charming effect, and even that blue shadow that they spread, I don't know how, under the eye. What coquettes some women are! Did ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... also bent; she was waiting to hear the end of that sentence. She thought society opened beautifully. Such a handsome fellow in such a romantic spot, beginning his compliments in such a low, rich voice, with his hair almost brushing hers. But he did not finish. Abel Newt was perfectly silent. He glided away with Grace Plumer into grateful gloom, and her ears, exquisitely apprehensive, caught from his ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... and began crawling through beneath the tons of balanced rock, which might give at any instant. Larger than his younger companion, he found it more difficult for his great shoulders persisted in brushing at all times, and now and then he was compelled to squeeze himself through a narrow place that for a moment threatened to be impossible. Once a timber above him gave a little and a rock crowded down until only by exerting his whole force ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... have made myself two or three caps to wear of evenings since I came home, and they save me a world of torment as to hair-dressing, which at present gives me no trouble beyond washing and brushing, for my long hair is always plaited up out of sight, and my short hair curls well enough ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... our friends came back with the ropes. Backwards and forwards in front of us flew untiringly two ravens, now flying across the gorge, and then again almost brushing us with their wings as they swept up the face of the cliff from below. We thought they had a nest somewhere close at hand, ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... affected the proficient social gentleman very pleasantly, and with fascinated eyes he hummed and buzzed about her like a moth at a lamp. Suddenly his head dived: 'Nothing, nothing, signorina,' he said, brushing delicately at her dress; 'I thought it might be paint.' He smiled to reassure her, and then he dived again, murmuring: 'It must be something sticking to the dress. Pardon me.' With that he went to the bell. 'I will ring ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... can't think why Irish people want to be Irish. It seems so damn silly. Gilbert's writing a play. He has done about a page and a half of it, and it's most awful bilge. He keeps on reading it out to me. He read some of it to me last night when I was brushing my teeth which is a damn dangerous thing to do, and I had to clout his head severely for him. He is a chap. He got poor Mary into a row on Sunday. We took him to church with us, and when the Vicar was reading the first lesson, all about King Solomon ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... showed himself, and, selecting a good position on the flank, opened up a lively salvo of artillery, playing his pieces well. Shells screamed through the air over the moving column, and the 3d and 4th Ohio suffered seriously. Considerable time was consumed in brushing off this force, whose evident aim was to harass and not fight, but they were finally routed. From prisoners taken we learned that Ross' Cavalry Brigade ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... vibrating in the air, but the native was determined to have revenge for the rap from the iron pin. A knife flashed in the moonlight, and I staggered as the blade touched my forehead like a tongue of flame. A dark figure dashed along the deck toward the forecastle, and brushing the blood from my ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... began to laugh, but the damsel, who was not the sort of woman to care about trifles, scarcely showed any concern, but quietly let go her hold without brushing or changing colour, though she was sorry in her heart to let out of her hand what she could have well used ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... and we went out into the great court, where the horses were fidgeting, and biting and kicking at one another, and being shouted at by the men, who were brushing away at their coats to get them into as high a state of perfection as possible. There were the bullocks too, sadly reduced in numbers, and suggesting famine if some new efforts were ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... brushing the dirt from his clothes, "I am sorry they did not let us have the wrestle out—though you are a quick hitter, my lord, and powerful strong in the arms. I wager you showed James more stars than ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Trask was across now and brushing the snowy traces of battle from his queer old cape. "No; I don't want any children. I ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... floor, and must have appeared miserable. She passed her hands back over her forehead many times as if brushing something away. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... position between them, the missionary was enabled to support both. Raising their heads with the assistance of Lieutenant Canfield and Captain Prescott, he laid them upon his lap in close proximity to each other. The men stood silent and affected witnesses of the scene. Brushing the luxuriant hair from the face of the dying Indian, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... he continued, brushing the flour from his person. 'I did but practise that cunning of the serpent which should in every warrior accompany the courage of the lion. You have read your Homer, doubtless. Eh? I too have had a touch of the humanities. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was a woman as old as the mountains—on the sudden I heard something stirring and scraping near me. I opened the window shutter at my head a little, and as the half moon peept into the room, I saw a tiny creature brushing away at my shoes. 'Who are you?' I askt the mite; for he lookt much like a boy of eleven years old.—'Hush!' said the little thing, and brusht away busily. 'I am Silly, the good comrade.'—'Silly?' askt I; 'he's one whom I know ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and chin. He stood beside her, very straight and tall, not speaking, still hiding his hands in his pockets, keeping up to the last minute his pose of indestructible tranquillity. He was so close that she could hear his breathing and feel his coat brushing her shoulder. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... representation with which she gave them, as a child to a child. And all the while she let Johnny constantly be changing his position, as restlessness prompted; from sitting to kneeling and lying in her arms; sometimes brushing his hair, which once in a while he had a fancy for, and sometimes combing it off from his forehead with her own fingers dipped in the vinegar and water which he liked to smell. Nothing could be more winning—nothing more skilful, in its way, than Faith's talk to the sick child that half hour ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... straight vegetable rows, marked off by variegated borders of flowering plants—heartsease, foxglove, and the red-lidded eyes of scarlet poppies. Beyond the feathery green of the asparagus bed there was a bush of flowering syringa, another at the beginning of the grass-trimmed walk, and yet another brushing the large white pillars of the square front porch—their slender sprays blown from sun to shade like fluttering streamers of cream-coloured ribbons. On the other side there were lilacs, stately and leafy and bare of bloom, save for a few ashen-hued ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... him without suspecting him, and men might talk to each other without an idea that he heard them, and even talk to themselves according to the habit people have sometimes when they think themselves quite alone. All the guests had departed thus, passing close by him, almost brushing him, had exchanged their "Adieus," their "Au revoirs," and all their final, drawn-out farewells. That dear little living domovoi certainly was a rogue! Oh, that dear little domovoi who had been so affected by the tears of Matrena Petrovna! The good, fat, sentimental, heroic woman longed ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... and a strange, sweet fragrance of the fancy not to be described! One, where lived a notable cook, had, in a quiet corner, a little grove of caraway. It seemed mysteriously connected with the oak-leaf cookies, which only she could make; and the child, brushing through the delicate bushes grown above his head, used to feel vaguely that, on some fortunate day, cookies would be found there, "a-blowin' and a-growin'." That he had seen them stirred and mixed and taken from the oven was an empty ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Body, with the mounted patrols of the Vanguard 4 to 5 miles ahead of the Main Body. These mounted patrols would discover the presence of an enemy, and with the supports of the Vanguard would feel for his strength and ascertain his dispositions. The Main Guard would either assist in brushing him away or would resist, in the best available position, any attempts to attack the Main Body while the latter ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... against her was that she had not a double name. She was a power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred sets and circles, all intersecting on the common battlefield of charity functions, and on that battlefield brushing skirts so pleasantly with the skirts of Society with the capital 'S.' She was a power in society with the smaller 's,' that larger, more significant, and more powerful body, where the commercially Christian institutions, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the morning, that a hand knocked at Kate's door and she opened it to Jim Silent. He entered, brushing off the dust of a ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... She spoke quietly, brushing the tears from her eyes. But with the last words, her voice wavered a little. Phoebe had bowed her head upon the hand which held hers, and there was no spectator of the feeling in Eugenie's face. Was her pure conscience tormented with ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... intellectual belief) of his real nature and powers. We are following the latter plan, for this course is a Course in Raja Yoga. We are aiming to present the matter to the mind in such a manner that it may prepare the way for the dawning consciousness, by brushing away the preconceived notions and prejudices, and allowing a clean entrance for the new conception. Much that we have said in this lesson may appear, on the one hand, like useless repetition, and, on the other hand, like an incomplete presentation of the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... brushing her hair at the moment, and then she sat still with the brush in her hand, thinking. 'No,' said she, after a while, 'not a pair of slippers—I shouldn't like ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... and anon startled by the strange, mysterious sounds that issue from its hidden depths. The distant fall of an ancient and decayed trunk, or the tread of animals as they prowl over the mouldering branches with which the ground is strown; the fluttering of unseen birds brushing through the foliage, or the moaning of the wind sweeping over the topmost boughs,—these all tend to excite the imagination and solemnize the mind. But the stillness of a forest is more startling and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of a somnambulist had come upon Frederick, who with his shirt sleeves rolled up was ceaselessly washing his arms and hands and brushing his finger nails, all at the bidding of a will not his own. He was acting in a state of will-lessness, of auto-suggestion. Yet it was with perfect lucidity and due deliberation that he selected the necessary instruments ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Umpashongwana) the Zulu, whose zeal exceeds anything one can imagine. For instance, when he sets to work to brush F——'s clothes of a morning he is by no means content to brush the cloth clothes. Oh dear, no! He brushes the socks, putting each carefully on his hand like a glove and brushing vigorously away. As they are necessarily very thin socks for this hot weather, they are apt to melt away entirely under the process. I say nothing of his blacking the boots inside as well as out, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... is completely hidden, and we turn and look ahead, somewhat solicitous for our own prospects. Before us, up the mountain, long streamers of hostile vapors are swinging over the downs, trailing to the ground and at times brushing down to our own level; but the wind keeps hunting them off, and so far their tenure is hopefully precarious. There is scarcely a tree above the hospice; we have left ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... for brushing off the pictures, and M. Gambeau was not in the least inclined to help us, being not at all pleased with our disturbing the dust of ages so freely. However, the walls are in a good state, and we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... holidays are terminable, and when the boys left she hoped to do great things. But visitors came to stay in the house, special friends of her own, with strong theories as to the value of co-operation in the matter of brushing their hair ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... discover beautiful swans in the stupidest geese that ever cackled along the flowery meads of literature; reverent readers, who treat a book as they would treat a great and good man, considerately and politely, carefully brushing the dust from a beloved volume with the sleeve, or tenderly lifting a book fallen to the floor, as if they thought it suffered, or felt harm; careless and rough readers, who will turn down books on their faces to keep the place, tumble them ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... was a lie, but I believed it, for I still thought her honest long after I ought to have begun to doubt her, suspecting that this was no way for a high-minded bird to be acting. I followed, and followed, and followed, making my periodical rushes, and getting up and brushing the dust off, and resuming the voyage with patient confidence; indeed, with a confidence which grew, for I could see by the change of climate and vegetation that we were getting up into the high latitudes, and as ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... brushing feebly at the smoke that still wreathed him faintly. "If it isn't Thomas Boyd, the ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and against which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief. With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... endured such torture from so small a cause as the mosquitoes occasioned us. Indeed, my hands and his for a month afterward, were swollen and sore from the venom of these abominable little pests. They are not like civilized mosquitoes, for no amount of brushing or fanning will keep them away. Their sociability is unbounded, and you have absolutely to push them off, a handful at a time, while their places are at once filled by others, the air teeming with them all the time. The natives keep their tents filled with smoke from a slow, smouldering ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... touched my arm, and I leaned forward to look in his face. He nodded, and, brushing aside the trees, we sprang out upon the astonished fellows. Fora moment they did not move, struck motionless with surprise, while we stood over them, pistols in hand. We had caught them fair and square. Expecting no interruption, they had guarded against none. Their weapons were in their ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... eleven, he rose and appeared at the breakfast-table, he ate nothing but crumbs of dry bread. It was curious to see his precise attention to the neatness of his hat and coat, and the nervous eye he cast upon the clock, while brushing and accurately fixing these garments. The hat would not sit as he was accustomed to have it, owing to the bruise on his head, and he stood like a woman petulant with her milliner before the glass; now pressing the hat down till the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chin photographed itself upon his memory. As he bent down closer to the grave and tender lips, he was suddenly, unaccountably frightened and ashamed. His hand dropped, sought for her small limp hand. His lips shifted from their course and went lower, just brushing her fingers. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... her blanket round her, whispered to her friend, "Lie close," sprang up, and, brushing swiftly past the warrior with a light laugh—as though amused at having been discovered— ran into camp, joined the group round the missionary, and sat down. Although much surprised, the captives were too ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... the embankment a favorable path by which to stalk these enemies. It was dry and sandy, with borders of high weeds. The only drawback was that it was almost impossible for him to keep from brushing against the dry, invisible branches of the weeds. To offset this he wormed his way like a snail, inch by inch, taking a long time before he caught sight of the sitting figure of a man, black against the dark-blue sky. This rustler had fired his rifle three times during ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... jenny, and Sir Richard Arkwright both expended their ingenuity upon it, the latter seeming to have been the first to provide a carding machine operated by other than hand-power. The basic principle involved is the straightening out of the fibers by combing or brushing them with wire ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... Lisbeth had swept her long train across her arm, and we were running hand in hand, all three of us, running across lawns and down winding paths between yew hedges, sometimes so close together that I could feel a tress of her fragrant hair brushing my face with a touch almost like a caress. Surely, surely, there was magic ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... came out of his bath a little before the hour of his banquet, and two slaves, trembling with fear, followed him to his chamber. They put his tunic on him, and his sandals, and wound the fillets that held them in place. One of the slaves began brushing the dark hair of his master while the other was rubbing a precious ointment ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... rushes that covered it, and made it rustling and rough, narrow passages had been cut, through which the flat-bottomed boats, impelled and steered by poles, passed along silently over dead water, brushing up against the reeds and making the swift fish take refuge in the weeds, and the wild fowl, with their ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... shades. By way of a balance to this wealth of hair on his chin, a precocious baldness had despoiled his forehead, which was as bare as a billiard ball. He vainly strove to conceal the nakedness of the land by brushing forward a tuft of hairs so scanty that they could almost be counted. He wore a black coat worn at the elbows, and revealing whenever he raised his arms too high a ventilator under the armpits. His trousers might have once been black, but his boots, which had never been new, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... sang he was right. (DANIEL comes out and starts brushing his coat loudly to attract JOHN'S attention, and then goes across towards him and ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... of her," said Mr. Pollock, taking his feet down from the porch-rail and carefully brushing the cigar ashes off of his coat sleeve. "Takes old Alaska Spigg out too, and the ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... for the truth of the charges; their function was only to receive and report them. The King had sent them to Virginia to make the royal ear accessible to the humblest citizen. This could be done only by brushing aside the usual channels of information and going directly to the commons themselves. That some of the accusations were exaggerated or even entirely false seems not improbable; many were undoubtedly true. Posterity must accept them, not as the relation of established truth, but as the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... with stunted, moss-bearded, heather-bedded hawthorns, between the great grim lifeless mountain walls? Did he feel no pleasant creeping of the flesh that day at the sound of his own horse-hoofs, as they swept through the long ling with a sound as soft as the brushing of a woman's tresses, and then rang down on the spongy, black, reverberating soil, chipping the honey-laden fragrant heather blossoms, and tossing them out in a rosy shower? Or, if that were really too slight a thing ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the end of two months we were cleaned out. Then it was that we came to Hotel Boncoeur and that this life began." She checked herself with a strange choking in the throat. Tears gathered in her eyes. She finished brushing her linen. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... material and fuel which there are neither engines nor wagons to bring. Meanwhile, all over Russia, spades are worn out, men are plowing with burnt staves instead of with plowshares, scratching the surface of the ground, and instead of harrowing with a steel-spiked harrow of some weight, are brushing the ground with light constructions of wooden ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... it. It's too much! It would try the patience of Job!" she cried passionately. "Someone is bent on driving me frantic, and whoever she is she's a mean, dastardly wretch. Sometimes,"—her eyes flashed upon Nancy, who sat upon her bed leisurely brushing out her long brown mane—"sometimes, Nancy, I believe it ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... interesting. We are, too, a miscellaneous people, and we are peculiarly fond of miscellanies. The age of folios and quartos is forever past with Young America. Octavos are waning, and more in need of brushing than of burnishing. But still we must have Poetry—good Poetry; for we Americans prefer to live rather in the style of good lyric than in that of grave, elongated hexameter. Variety, too, is with us the spice of life. We are not satisfied with grand prairies, rivers, and cataracts, and even ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I should get freckles. I collected rain-water for washing. I slept in gloves; and though I adored sweets, I refrained from eating them on account of my teeth. I spent hours brushing ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... but any one can spend at least a little time in a state of nature. Both at the time of rising in the morning and upon retiring at night, there are many things which are usually done while one's clothes are on which could be done just as well while they are off. Brushing the teeth, washing the hands, shaving, etc., necessarily consume some time during which the luxury of an air-bath can be enjoyed. Exercises should also be taken at these times. Exercising in cold air, if not too cold, with clothing removed, is ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... grass, with the pink cistus flowers brushing her hot cheeks, Lorna raged impotently against the tragedy of a fate which was changing the dearest friendship of her life into a feud. Irene!—the only one at school who had sympathized and understood her, who had behaved with a delicacy and kindness ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... was the door of his sitting-room; he flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would, Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and manner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she glided past him into the room—brushing his coat with her elbow by ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... "My dear Miss Georgia,"—brushing out his hand in a characteristic way which seemed to be sweeping things aside—"go back to your paper and say that for all I care every intern in Chicago may get drunk every night ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... master of the black sleigh, a heavily built, elderly man, had picked himself out of a drift with the assistance of his lackey and was brushing the snow from his long fur cloak. A fur cap, pulled down over his eyes, hid his face, but his gestures were angry, and his voice ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... appearance again, and was diligently taking away broken meats and soiled dishes and refreshing the look of the table; setting some things to warm and some things to cool; giving the spare plate and knife and fork the advantage of the best place at table; brushing away crumbs, and smoothing down the salt-cellar. "You are over particular!" thought Elizabeth; — "it would do him no harm to come after me in handling the salt-spoon! — that even that trace of me should be ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... beautiful night of the year!" she had replied, brushing their objection aside with that reason alone. "And it is the happiest! I will be married on that ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... elbow; to dusting and sweeping from his table all superfluous sand and tobacco ash; to procuring a new mat for his inkstand; to looking for his hat—the meanest-looking hat that ever the world beheld—and having it ready for him at the exact moment when business came to an end; to brushing his back if it happened to become smeared with whitewash from a wall. Yet all this passed as unnoticed as though it had never been done. Finally, Chichikov sniffed into his superior's family and domestic life, and learnt that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... come this delay. Such was her nature that personal danger ever appalled her. Death and disaster in the abstract were nothing to her, but their shadows brushing her own person was something more than terrifying. And as she thought of the immensity of the world about her, the gloom, the awful hush, the spirit of the hills got hold of her and ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the second ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... nice myself," said Lillie, as she stood brushing out a golden tangle of curls. "Dear me!" she added, "how much better he is than that Danforth! Really, Danforth was a little too horrid: his teeth were dreadful. Do you know, I should have had something of a struggle ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... chair, his head lopped, he kept moving a hand before his eyes, as if he were brushing away cobwebs. Then Fanny ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and jumped into it, taking care as he did so to avoid brushing against the muddy wheel, lest he should tarnish the glories of his light-coloured trousers. Monsieur D'Arblet was more than usually particular about his appearance this morning. He said to himself, with ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... late," said Uncle William. He had come upon another pile of cigar-ashes behind a picture on the shelf, and was brushing it up, whistling softly. "You must 'a' smoked a good deal," he said, rapping out the ashes. "I've been sweepin' 'em up ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... walks while collecting objects of natural history. The country is pleasant for exercise. There are many very beautiful flowers; and, as in most other dry climates, the plants and shrubs possess strong and peculiar odours—even one's clothes by brushing through them became scented. I did not cease from wonder at finding each succeeding day as fine as the foregoing. What a difference does climate make in the enjoyment of life! How opposite are the sensations when viewing ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... clean-shaven; he had thin, beautiful lips that he held in stiffly; he had dark eyes like his son Reggie's, and dark hair parted correctly in the middle, hair that waved. He had tried to depress and subdue it by hard brushing with a wet brush, but it continued to wave in spite of him, and the crests of the waves were silver, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the girl's taut senses they seemed theatrical and deliberate. Into her mind was seared forever the memory of that second, as though the shutter of a camera had snapped, impressing upon her brain the scene, sharp, clear-cut, and vivid. The shaggy back of the large man almost brushing her, the rage-drunken, white shirted man in the derby hat, the crowd sweeping backward like rushes before a blast, men with arms flexed and feet raised in flight, the glaring yellow sign of the "Gold Belt Dance Hall" across the way—these were stamped upon her retina, and then ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... little reflection, had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and, eager to show himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the staircase in violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the Temple Gate, and, brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty-brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, &c. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little struck ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dark narrow passage now, following the whispered voice of Tiedus. It was damp and rankly odorous there in the darkness, and slimy things wriggled over the floor, brushing their ankles clammily. Behind them there was the roar of another explosion and the shouting of angry voices. The guards were in the secret chamber and ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... I am very much in love with you to-day?" she whispered, brushing a few stray hairs from my forehead and kissing ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... retiring to rest, she was in the habit of brushing up the ashes around the fire place, and putting a few fresh peat on the fire to keep it in all night, and she was careful to sweep the floor before going to bed. It was a sight worth seeing to see her clean cottage. One night the Fairies, in their ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... safety, and obligations of fidelity, to have looked better to the steering of that boat, wherein they themselves were carried, and not to have suffered it to fleet, and run on ground, with those empty sails of tumour of popularity and applause; methinks one honest man or other, who had but the brushing of his clothes, might have whispered in his ear, "My lord, look to it, this multitude that follows you will either devour you, or undo you; do not strive to overrule all, of it will cost hot water, and it will procure envy, and if needs your genius must have it ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... all this wild talk about the marvelous cave of gold but the delirium of a dying man and tried to quiet the sufferer; but the miner would not be quieted, and, roughly brushing the hand from his forehead, he turned his glowing ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil |
