"Carving" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in which we might say that dishes and bottles are the protagonists, nearly all the large pictures representing historical personages, burgomasters, and national guard, show them seated at table in the act of eating, carving, or pouring out wine. Even their hero, William the Silent, the incarnation of New Holland, shared this national love of the table. He had the first cook of his time, who was so great an artist that the German princes sent beginners to perfect themselves at his school, and Philip ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... set in, the dorsal fin of "Port Royal Tom" was discovered. The black fisherman, nothing dismayed, paddled out to the middle of the harbour where the shark was playing about; he plunged into the water armed with a pointed carving knife. The monster immediately made towards him, and when he turned on his side (which providentially sharks are obliged to do to seize their prey, their mouths being placed so much underneath) the fisherman, with great quickness and presence of mind, dived, and stabbed him in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... dined alone, for Georges was invited out; well, to whom else can I acknowledge that when I found myself alone, face to face with a leg of mutton, cooked to his liking, and with the large carving-knife which is usually beside his plate, before me, I began to cry like a child? To whom else can I admit that I drank out of the Bohemian wine-glass he prefers, to console ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... would order a second basket to be furnished at their expense. Which he did—no one knew how—and by-and-by, the captain being again summoned, again sulkily returned with another something; over which my popular attendant presided as before: carving with a clasp-knife, his own personal property, something smaller ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the head, carving, carving, carving, watching the plates come back, and back, and back. [As she is about to go.] There, there, not another ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... invented. They swathe him about so thickly that the pricks of fate scarce penetrate to him, or become but a pleasant titillation. And so, indeed, it is with all of us who go on living. Self-deception is the anaesthetic of life, while God is carving out our beings. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... into an ice-saloon, just before I embarked for England; the room on the ground-floor was one hundred and fifty feet long by forty broad; rows of pillars on each side were loaded to the most outrageous extent with carving and gilding, and the ceiling was to match; below that was another room, a little smaller, and rather less gaudy; both were crowded with the most tag-rag and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... glimpses of the immortal fields. And, all of us, I trust, are thankful that God has not created merely men and women, crimped into artificial patterns, with selfish speculation in their eyes, with sadness and weariness and trouble about many things carving the wrinkles and stealing away the bloom; but pours in upon us a fresh stream of being that overflows our rigid conventionalisms with the buoyancy of nature, plays into this dusty and angular life like the jets of ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... for the good Latin and beautiful carving of the many inscriptions he composed and set up, was undeniably also a good man in the evil days ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... a feeling of immense relief, she went downstairs. Caesar was coming in from the preaching-room, and Pete from the new house at Ramsey. They sat down to dinner. After dinner she would speak out. Caesar sharpened the carving-knife on the steel, and said, "We've taken the girl Christian Killip back ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... beneath this trophy was placed a small side board, the open doors of which disclosed a number of shelves laden with gilt edged drinking vessels of white and blue china; a set of rose colored tea-cups, and several polished silver plated mugs. A few uncommonly excellent specimens of carving in wood, decorated one of the shelves, and another shelf contained several articles of jewelry which Magde had received both before and after she was married. All these little valuables Magde had gathered together, after she had put the children to bed, in the hope that she might ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... may put some on to keep it going; so it is with a gentleman's stomach. You may take ham to appease hunger, or you may take it to prevent the obtrusion of that vulgar sensation. Not that I object to helping you fellows. The carving of ham is an art, a fourpenny piece representing the maximum of thickness which the lean should obtain. With a carving-knife and fork this ideal is not too easy of attainment, but with these small blunt tools it requires a first-rate workman to approach it. Now this ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... at little separate tables now, and the "family," which was Mother and Nana, and Aunt Adele and Uncle John, were together at the largest table at the back where the serving and carving were done, and where the big shiny percolator stood. Teddy knew all the boarders—old Colonel and Mrs. Fox from the big upstairs bedroom, and Miss Peet and her sister, the school-teachers, from the hall-room on that floor, and the Winchells, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... design, including that of the curved line and a rude representation of a man, which I have not met with among the Mafulu. As regards this last point I draw attention to Mr. Monckton's figures of carving on a bow and on wooden clubs. I think, however, that in such matters as these local differences might well arise between people who are really more or less identical, especially if their respective districts are on opposite sides of the main ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... grave were in fragments. But, fragmentary as they are, they are sufficient to give us a good idea of the art of the first period of the Egyptian kingdom, a period which is now most generally estimated to be five and a half millenniums before the present day (3600 B.C.) The skill with which ivory carving was done in that early time is indeed amazing. Reclining lions, hunting dogs and fish are so skillfully reproduced that one asks how many centuries of development must have preceded before the art of carving reached this perfection. A number of feet taken from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... and the addition of passing and ornamental notes to every melody is distinctly an oriental trait, which finds vent not only in music but also in architecture, designing, carving, etc. It is considered by many an element of weakness, seeking to cover a poverty of thought by rich vestments. And yet, to my mind, nothing can be more misleading. In spite of Sir Hubert Parry ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the audience. The last were seated, horseback-fashion, upon parallel low benches, for their accommodation, twenty feet long, all turned towards the judge, and looking over the shoulders of the one in front of him, and busily employed in carving at the bench between his thigh and that of his neighbour. It was a very singular coup d'oeil, and a new-comer from Europe would have supposed the assembly to ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... her round behind the idol, pushed against one of the leaves of a flower in the carving, and the stone swung back, and showed a hole just large enough to get through, with a stone staircase inside the body of the idol, made, no doubt, for the priest to go up and give responses through the mouth. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... carving, his wonderfully-drawn plans about him. It was certainly the best modern work we had ever seen; and here, we felt, was a genius. Probably it had been hampered for want of means, as so many other geniuses have been since the foundation of the world. He ought ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... have himself strapped to his own kitchen table, and defend himself to the last gasp with a carving-knife. Exors says that the law is bad, and you can't touch him. As for Barnes, he has gone out of what little wits he ever had with the fright of it, and people seem to think that you couldn't ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... southwards to Fertas Locha Echtrann. He remained there till the end of the day [1]and they found no one there before them.[1] "If we dared tell thee, little boy," spoke Ibar, "it were time for us to return to Emain [LL.fo.66a.] now; for dealing and carving and dispensing of food is long since begun in Emain, and there is a place assigned for thee there. Every day it is appointed thee to sit between Conchobar's feet, while for me there is naught but to tarry among ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... 1194 which burnt out the church behind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it. Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure of the great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive as fire can be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary and carving, but also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped the flames; and, what is almost equally strange, escaped also the hand of the builder afterwards, who, if he had resembled other architects, would have made a new front of his own, but who, with piety unexampled, tenderly took the old stones ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the altered position of his eyes), and displayed the whole of his white fangs, which were easily discernible. I took the remains of the ham-skin, and the bottle containing the liqueur, and secured them about my person, together with a large carving-knife which Augustus had left me—then, folding my cloak around me as closely as possible, I made a movement toward the mouth of the box. No sooner did I do this, than the dog sprang with a loud growl toward my throat. The whole weight of his body struck me on the right shoulder, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Monsignor would have to pass on his way to the pulpit. He was to preach that Sunday at St. Joseph's.... He passed close to her, and she had a clear view of his thin, hard, handsome face, dark in colour and severe as a piece of mediaeval wood carving; a head small and narrow across the temples, as if it had been squeezed. The eyes were bright brown, and fixed; the nose long and straight, with clear-cut nostrils. She noticed the thin, mobile mouth and the swift look ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... a fort, called by the natives "The Rath," fifty yards in diameter, the grassy walls, some ten feet high and four yards thick, reared in a perfect circle, on which grow gorse and brambles. The graveyard is sadly neglected. Costly Irish crosses with elaborate carving stand in a wilderness of nettles and long grass. Not a semblance of a path anywhere. To walk about is positively dangerous. Ruined tombstones, and broken slabs which appear to cover family vaults, trip you up at every step. Every yard of progress is made with ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... remembered that I wanted to take some provisions in a bundle, and a big knife to kill wolves. So I went back as soon as it was dark, and stole round to the back of the house, so I could get in the window and find the carving knife and some cake. I was just getting in the window, when somebody put their arms around me, and said, "Dear little soul! was he almost frightened to death?" It was Sue, and I told her that I was going to be a pirate and wanted ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... transparent honey, and then dropped asleep to the sound of the monotonous humming of the bees and the rustling chatter of the leaves. A slight gust of wind awakened me.... I opened my eyes and saw Kalinitch: he was sitting on the threshold of the half-opened door, carving a spoon with his knife. I gazed a long time admiring his face, as sweet and clear as an evening sky. Mr. Polutikin too woke up. We did not get up at once. After our long walk and our deep sleep it was pleasant to ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... Greeks were teachable, and learnt from all the nations round. From the Phoenicians they learnt shipbuilding, and some say letters beside; and from the Assyrians they learnt painting, and carving, and building in wood and stone; and from the Egyptians they learnt astronomy, and many things which you would not understand. In this they were like our own forefathers the Northmen, of whom you love to ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... down on the edge of his bunk, produced the captured knife, and commenced to sharpen it slowly, without ostentation, on the sole of his shoe. It was already of a razor keenness. It was a carving knife evidently stolen from the galley of the ship; it had been ground so often that the steel which remained was thin and narrow. A sharp blow with that knife would drive it to the handle through human flesh. ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... honor inside the vast church, and these scintillating lights gave a magical aspect to the edifice. The black arcades, the columns with their capitals, the recessed chapels glittering with gold and silver, the galleries, the Moorish fretwork, the most delicate features of this delicate carving, were all revealed in the dazzling brightness like the fantastic figures which are formed in a glowing fire. It was a sea of light, surmounted at the end of the church by the gilded choir, where the high altar rose ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... in the hospitals of Manila and Singapore, Cairo and Cape Town. A rupee spent for thread at Calcutta starts the spindles going in Manchester; a new calico dress for a Mandalay belle helps the cotton-print mills of Leeds; a new carving set for a Fiji Islander means more labor for some cutlery works in Sheffield; a half- dollar for a new undershirt in Panama means increased work for a cotton mill in New England; a new blanket called for against the winter's cold of Siberia moves the looms of some Rhode Island ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... angels! With hoists and levers, joists and poles, With knives and cleavers, ropes and saws, Down the long slopes to the gaping maws, The angels hasten; hacking and carving, So nought will be lacking for the starving Chosen of God, who in frozen wonderment Realize now what the terrible thunder meant. How their mouths water while they are looking At miles of slaughter and sniffing the cooking! Whiffs of delectable fragrance swim by; Spice-laden ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... bride and groom on that memorable voyage of discovery of which the booty had till recently adorned her walls; and there was a dim consolation in the thought that those early "finds" in coral and Swiss wood-carving, in lava and alabaster, still lay behind the worn locks, in ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... confesses later, he dates the first consciousness of his love. He soon publishes Idea, the Shepherd's Garland, Rowland's Sacrifice to the Nine Muses, where we first see our poet, in his pastoral-poetic character, carving his "rime of love's idolatry," upon a beechen tree. Thirteen stanzas of these pastoral eclogues do not exhaust the catalogue of her beauties; and when he praises the proportion of her shape and carriage, we know that it was not the poet's ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... for three nights in the castle." The King looked at him, and because he pleased him, he said: "You can ask for three things, none of them living, and those you may take with you into the castle." Then he answered: "Well, I shall beg for a fire, a turning lathe, and a carving bench with ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... it?—two artists sit down together, each begins talking of what he's doing—to avoid complimenting the other, naturally. As soon as the third arrives they begin carving up another; only thing they can agree on, see? Soon as you get four or more of the species together, conversation always comes around to marriage. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... pieces the perforated part, that there might be no tracing his action in this matter. Then gaining possession of his handkerchief full of flue, he stole softly back again, and laid great flakes between the legs of the chest and the wall, stuffed light fragments into the interstices of the carving, and laid them upon any projecting ledge that was likely to have caught such light dirt as it ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... meals with Mr. Heathcliff. I held the mistress's post in making tea and carving; so I was indispensable at table. Catherine usually sat by me, but to-day she stole nearer to Hareton; and I presently saw she would have no more discretion in her friendship than ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... special notice. The writer is evidently describing a MANDAPA richly sculptured, of which so many examples are still to be seen in temples, and he states that the whole of the stone carving was richly coloured and gilded. This probably was always the case. Traces of colour still remain on many ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... rubber for the operation, after which it should have one coat of shellac (two parts by weight of shellac to one of spirits) applied with a brush, and when dry it should be carefully smoothed down with flour paper, the utmost caution being observed in dealing with the sharp edges, or the carving will be spoiled. Then it is embodied with polish again, and one coat of glaze applied with the greatest care. A few hours should be allowed to harden, and then finished off with a rubber slightly damped with thin polish. This is an expensive method, but it will pay in appearance ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... table for approval, is removed by the servants, and carved at a sideboard, and after. wards handed to each in succession. This is extremely convenient, and worthy of acceptation in this country. But unfortunately it does not as yet prevail here. Carving therefore becomes an indispensable branch of a gentleman's education. You should no more think of going to a dinner without a knowledge of this art, than you should think of going without your shoes. The gentleman of the house selects the various dishes in the order in which they should be cut, ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... and returned soon after with the apron and Le Duc, to whom I explained in all seriousness what he had to do. He laughed like a madman, but assured me he would follow my directions. I procured a carving-knife, tied my hair in a queue, took off my coat, and put on the apron over my scarlet waistcoat ornamented with gold lace. I then looked at myself in the glass, and thought my appearance mean enough for the modest part I was about to play. I was delighted at the prospect, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... them, boy. You know Drummond is bent on carving his own fortune rather than taking yours, and that your sister only longs to see ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... considered the principal room of the cottage. It was an oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, sixteen feet long, and twelve broad, very prettily wainscoted from the floor to the ceiling with dark polished oak, slightly embellished with carving. One window there was—a perfect and unpretending cottage window—with little diamond panes, embowered at almost every season of the year with roses, and, in the summer and autumn, with a profusion of jasmine and other fragrant shrubs. From the exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... been preternaturally calm all the afternoon, uttered a shriek of rage, and with a carving-knife chased that man out into the brush. Nor would he be appeased to the point of getting supper until ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... legitimate modern successor of the old forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no attainable forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can be oftener repeated. So these courts in their Sunday rest are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look. And here is Garraway's, bolted and shuttered hard and fast! It is possible to imagine the man who cuts ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... The carving knife should be light, of middling size, and of a fine edge. Strength is less required than skill in the manner of using it; and to facilitate this, the butcher should be directed to divide the joints of the bones of all carcass joints of mutton, lamb, ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... brightnesses of vitreous pictures, and floral graces of deep-wrought stone, were in any wise intended for your own poor pleasures, whatever profane attraction they may exercise on more fleshly-minded persons. And as you have certainly received no definite order for the painting, carving, or lighting up of churches, while the temple of the body of so many poor living Christians is so pale, so mis-shapen, and so ill-lighted; but have, on the contrary, received very definite orders for the feeding and ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... certainly did clutch a vertical rope, but could that simple act—we ask in a whisper—have had such an unusual effect as causing the clock to repeat its striking? For, whether or not, before we reached the ground, the three strokes rang out again. The carving over the altar is good, and the general effect of the whole church is likewise; but the supposed model of the grotto at Lourdes, and the awful painting in the side altar on the left, certainly do not ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... had been deceiving. It could not be that he meant to carve me to any really noticeable extent—his attitude had been entirely too casual. At our house carving is a very serious matter. Any time I take the head of the table and start in to carve it is fitting women and children get to a place of safety, and onlookers should get under the table. When we first began housekeeping and gave our first small dinner-party we had a brace of ducks ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... above the horizon, flashing a long, level beam along the surface of the water, striking the stranger and causing the stern of her to blaze into a sudden flame of glittering radiance—"do you see that, Henderson? Her quarter is a solid mass of painted and gilded carving. The Dutchman is too economical, too fond of the dollars to lavish so much gold-leaf as that on the adornment of his ship; he prefers to put the money into extra bolts and fastenings. No; that fellow is a ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... many of the mouldering monuments, fixed together without order or symmetry on the walls. Outside are some Saxon arches, oddly built of black slate-stone; and the window-mouldings are ornamented with rough carving, which at once proclaims its own antiquity. But it is in the tower that the interest attached to the church chiefly centres. Square, thick, and of no extraordinary height, it resembles in appearance most other towers in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Carving in ivory was another trade followed in Babylonia and Assyria. The carved ivories found on the site of Nineveh are of great beauty, and from a very early epoch ivory was used for the handles of sceptres, or for the inlaid work of wooden furniture. The "ivory couches" of Babylonia made ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... taking place at the Elliotts' dinner-table, and Uncle Charley looked up from his carving to say: ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... left and stand as well as if composed of stone. The magazines of the enemy were made by running passage-ways into this clay at places where there were deep cuts. Many citizens secured places of safety for their families by carving out rooms in these embankments. A door-way in these cases would be cut in a high bank, starting from the level of the road or street, and after running in a few feet a room of the size required was carved out of the clay, the dirt being removed by the door-way. In some ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... in the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned Madonna, the type and gesture of S. Catherine, and the treatment of the Pieta above, are thoroughly Lombard, showing how Luini's ideal of beauty could be expressed in carving. Some of the choicest figures in the Monastero Maggiore at Milan seem to have descended from the walls and stepped into their tabernacles on this altar. Yet the style is not maintained consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of S. Abondio we miss Luini's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... helpless than an hour-old babe, with a blasted thigh, utterly drained of its brawn. And who was it that now stood over him like a superior being, and, as if clothed himself with the attributes of immortality, indifferently discoursed of carving up his broken flesh, and thus piecing out his abbreviated days. Who was it, that in capacity of Surgeon, seemed enacting the part of a Regenerator of life? The withered, shrunken, one-eyed, toothless, hairless Cuticle; with a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... nearest point at which other relics belonging to the same period had been found was the site of Fort Crevecoeur, near Starved Rock, Illinois. After all, the stone only differed from the arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented size—and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its discovery. No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by scientific research at Crevecoeur had been found ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the noblest grace of the heart, to consider the case of other people, and to see, as Butler says, that we differ as much from other people as they differ from us. And it is by far the noblest use of the imagination, far nobler than carving a Laocoon, or painting a Last Judgment, or writing a "Paradiso" or a "Paradise Lost," to put ourselves into the places of other men so as to see with their eyes, and feel with their hearts, and sympathise with their principles, and even with their prejudices. Now, the inconsiderate man ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn. Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of ready wit, and she enchanted the Doctor by her odd bits of information on the localities, and by guiding him to out-of-the-way curiosities. She even carried the party to Woolstone-lane, displayed the Queen of Sheba, the cedar carving, the merchant's mark, and had lifted out Stow's Survey, where Sarah was delighted with Ranelagh, when the door opened, and Owen stood, surprised and blank. Poor fellow, the voices had filled him with hope that he should find Honor there. The visitors, startled ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ornamented with thread of various colours. Numerous sawpits had been formed, and sawyers were at work preparing planks for the buildings. Already many houses had been run up, with high gables, gaily ornamented with paint and rough carving; for the Swedish settlers had been there already nearly forty years. The somewhat romantic notions entertained by Wenlock and his younger fellow passengers were rather rudely dissipated on their arrival. The work of settling ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... has rented the cellar beneath, where his coals be stored," answered the man carelessly; and Cuthbert, who had asked the question rather haphazard and without exactly knowing why, moved away to examine a piece of fine carving ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... spoon half-way to his mouth, as if his son considered some problem more important than soup. Mrs. McKaye and the girls chattered on, oblivious of these slight evidences of mental perturbation, but as The Laird carved the roast (he delighted in carving and serving his family, and was old-fashioned enough to insist upon his right, to the distress of the girls, who preferred to have the roast carved in the kitchen and served by the Japanese butler), he kept a contemplative eye upon his son, and presently saw Donald ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... magazines, and reviews kept trumpeting this great refutation of the Bible. From these it descended to the vulgar, with additions and improvements; and it is now frequently alleged as proving that "ten thousand years before Adam was born, the priests of Egypt were carving astronomy on the pyramids." There is scarcely one of my French or German readers who has not ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... pain when inflicted on themselves, and the habit of scalping are common to the Indians of King George's Archipelago, and those of the water-system of the Mississippi. On the other hand, they share the skill in painting and carving with the Chenuks and the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... their fame rings near and far, But then, alas, the trouble is, I don't know what they are. Though I could carve a Venus or a Belvedere with ease, My wondrous skill is lacking when it comes to carving these. ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... me day and night, would pass away and be succeeded by things more happily characteristic. I have found it so. He now haunts me, strangely enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a hillside and carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a younger man, running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick, myself—aetat. 11—somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when stripped! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are good hands at carving wood, so toys are easily made for the smaller children, and one finds everywhere such simple toys as wooden dolls, animals, miniature ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... Pinderwell. He was a gentleman, she said, and though his mind had become more and more bewildered towards the end, he had been unfailingly courteous to her. She would find him wandering up and down the stairs, carrying a small basket of tools in his hand, for he took to wood-carving at the last, as the panels of the bedroom doors were witness, and he would stop to speak about the weather and beg her to allow him to make her some ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... product of natural forces working through uncounted periods of time; the continent slowly rising and falling in the sea like the heaving breast of a world asleep; glaciers carving patiently through ages the deep estuaries; seasons innumerable clothing the hills with ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... very willingly that Romund gave permission, for he almost expected the spoiling of his work: but the carving-tool had not made more than a few cuts in the German's fingers, before Romund saw that his guest was a master in the art. The work so laborious and difficult to him seemed to do itself when Gerhardt took ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... an hour among his relics seem like a morning stroll in some monkish garden. We did all this and much more—wandered into dark chapels, damp courts, and dusty palace-rooms, in quest of lingering hints of fresco and lurking treasures of carving. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... were his board and a salary of twenty-five dollars a year,—out of which he managed not only to pay all obligations, but also to lay by a little money. During this period he not only mastered the details of the trade, but learned in his hours of leisure other branches, such as ornamental wood-carving, and made several inventions, one of which was a machine for mortising hubs,—an operation performed by hand up to that time. Another invention over which the young apprentice dreamed, and of which he laboriously constructed ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... new fashions and devices to attract and gratify his customers. When the night was far advanced, the soldiers of the guard and the revellers returning from their carousals, always saw a lighted lamp at the casement of the goldsmith's workshop, where he was hammering, carving, chiseling and filing,—in a word, laboring at those marvels of ingenuity and toil which made the delight of the ladies and the minions of the court. He was a man who lived in the fear of God, and ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... I had. My host was absorbed in the carving and in the details of the day's sport; my other neighbour was evidently too hungry to waste his time in talking to a chit of a girl like myself. It was a dull and tedious meal. Lady Sutherland was gentle and polite, but ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... of birds on her window. There was a piece of sculpture above her window which frightened her. She had shown this more than once in Quasimodo's presence. One morning, for all these things happened at night, she no longer saw it, it had been broken. The person who had climbed up to that carving must have ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... likewise with some odoriferous effluvia, the produce of the day's labour, with a pitchfork in her hand, Molly Seagrim approached. Our hero had his penknife in his hand, which he had drawn for the before-mentioned purpose of carving on the bark; when the girl coming near him, cryed out with a smile, "You don't intend to kill me, squire, I hope!"—"Why should you think I would kill you?" answered Jones. "Nay," replied she, "after your cruel usage of me when I ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... music with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe: I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted, and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not: ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... less time than I have taken to tell it, and as every one's attention was fixed on the parade the scene passed unnoticed. I was shortly afterwards told that a large carving-knife had been found on the young man, whose name was Staps. I immediately went to find Duroc, and we proceeded together to the apartment to which Staps had been taken. We found him sitting on a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... remain with them, and need not try to escape; then she led the talk to more indifferent matters. Her hand, worn and thin, the blue veins relieved under the delicate skin, lay on the white coverlid like a beautiful carving of ivory. As Maurice looked at it, it brought into his mind the hand of his mother, as in her last days, when he sat by her bedside, it had rested in the same fashion. The tears sprang in his eyes at the memory, half-blinding him. As he tried to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... laid as usual in the drawing-room, which was the largest room, and furnished with old-fashioned ostentation. The furniture was white and very old, upholstered in old, red, silky material. In the spaces between the windows there were mirrors in elaborate white and gilt frames, of old-fashioned carving. On the walls, covered with white paper, which was torn in many places, there hung two large portraits—one of some prince who had been governor of the district thirty years before, and the other of some bishop, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... when carving a tough goose, had the misfortune to send it entirely out of the dish, and into the lap of the lady next to him; on which he very coolly looked her full in the face, and with admirable gravity and calmness, said, "Madam, may I trouble you for that goose." In a case like this, a person ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... from the grasp of Asti, the tiny sun and its planets followed, spinning now above her palm as they had above the statue's. But out of the cowled figure some virtue had departed with the going of the miniature solar system; it was now but a carving of stone. And Varta did not look at it again as she passed behind its bulk to seek a certain place in the temple wall, known to her from much ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... odd. Its body was in shape not unlike a panther's; but the tail was short, and stuck straight in the air. The head might have been formed to represent a monkey, although the ears were very long, and the whole was covered with carving to represent scales. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... one places of resort, which have sprung into existence, within twenty miles of the Metropolis of England. Not confined, however, to picking daisies for their doxies, as these said cockneys do, or carving their vulgar names on every magnificent tree, that spreads its gorgeous arms to afford them the temporary shelter of a home, the men severally devote themselves, for a period of the day, to manlier exercises. The ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... village in the Devizes parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, on the river Kennet, 8 m. by road from Marlborough. The fine church of St James contains an early font with Norman carving, a rich Norman doorway, a painted reredos, and a beautiful old roodstone in good preservation. Avebury House is Elizabethan, with a curious stone dovecot. The village has encroached upon the remains of a huge stone circle (not quite circular), surrounded by a ditch and rampart of earth, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... like backwoodsmen on board a Mississippi floating- palace, stripped off their coats, tucked up their sleeves, and, knife in one hand and bread in the other, advanced gallantly to the fray. They began by quarrelling about carving; one made a sporting offer to decouper la soupe, but he would go no farther; and Madame, as the head of the table, ended by asking my factotum, Selim Agha, to "have the kindness." The din, the heat, the flare ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... she helped to the fish (cod, garnished round with smelts) and insisted on carving the turkey herself, which she did extremely well. By the way, I observe they never carve the breast of a turkey LONGITUDINALLY, as we do, but in short slices, a little diagonally from the centre. This makes many more slices, ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... swim at top of the table, where her wry little finger bewrays carving; her neighbours at the latter end know they are welcome, and for that purpose she quencheth her thirst. She travels to and among, and so becomes a woman of good entertainment, for all the folly in the country comes in clean linen to visit her; she breaks to them her grief in sugar cakes, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... had a modern air. The building itself, from the stone window-seats to the old-fashioned tower through which you entered, proclaimed its antiquity. In the vaulted entrance-hall stood two immense presses: the quantity of wood which formed them, and the artistical carving, testified to their great age. Above the door were ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... fire, made his tongs red hot, and held them before the face of the saint, threatening to shoe him as he would a horse unless he cured the child of his fever. The threat took immediate effect, and my father was cured. Wood-carving has long been in great favour in Brittany. The statues of these saints are extraordinarily life-like, and in the eyes of people of vivid imagination they may well seem to be actually alive. I remember in particular ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... at Penshurst, and other English mansions of the same age and order; where we sometimes ascend to galleries of inestimable paintings over steps roughly hewn with the axe, and look upon ceilings of the most exquisite and elaborate carving suspended over floors which have never had the benefit of the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... carving knife, Billie went over and stood in front of the strange woman. Percy, peeping through the half open door, was grinning, and Nancy ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... Government for alleged treason. It was my good fortune to be invited into this mess. It is not my purpose to inflict upon the reader a detailed account of prison life during the war, which has been described by far abler pens than mine. All the members of our mess took their turns, either at carving or waiting upon the table, and guests were never better served. The graceful and accomplished old Commodore B. and General T. shone conspicuous as carvers; while Colonels, Majors and Captains, with spotless napkins on their arms, anticipated every wish of the guests at the table. Colonel Dimmick ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... how it looks when it lies on the table in the sheltered great floor-space between house and kitchen, and the children gathered for the sacrifice and their mouths watering; I know the crackling sound it makes when the carving-knife enters its end, and I can see the split fly along in front of the blade as the knife cleaves its way to the other end; I can see its halves fall apart and display the rich red meat and the black seeds, and the heart standing up, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... help put things on a right basis, I'd make a bargain that I wasn't to help do the carving," she rejoined wickedly. The Young Doctor always incited her to say daring things. They understood each other well. "So don't let that stand in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of carving a fowl, indicates you will be poorly off in a worldly way. Companions will cause you vexation from continued ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... are twisted with the soles upwards, and, while the right arm hangs down, the left is folded, the forearm projecting, and the hand holding a bronze ball. By his side, generally on the left, is a small tablet in a frame of elaborate wood-carving. At the foot of the statue is a large collection box for the donations of the worshippers. The background is usually plain, or painted with innumerable figures of the minor gods, some with young white faces and good-natured expressions, probably the gods of confidence; ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... appeared to be about fourteen feet high by two feet square and twenty-five feet apart. This building must therefore have formed an oblong of 300 feet by 150. Many of the granite blocks were covered with rough carving; large flights of steps, now irregular from the inequality of the ground, were scattered here and there; and the general appearance of the ruins was similar to that of Pollanarua, but of smaller extent. The stone causeway which passed through the ruins was about ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the same clear skin and even teeth; but the expression was different. There was never any devilment in the girl's face; it was always pale and tranquil, almost to sadness, as the Tenor saw it, standing out in fair relief against the dark oak carving of the stalls. Her movements were all made, too, with a certain quiet dignity that seemed habitual. In the Boy, on the contrary, there was no trace of that graceful attribute. He threw himself about, lolled, lollopped, and gesticulated, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... presented God as full of inflexible purposes, but the oftener you told us that we could not help ourselves, and that there was no use in resisting, the move I felt like resisting. The idea of cutting and carving character out of quivering human hearts as if they were marble! The idea of putting one, like a lump of ore, into a crucible, and then coolly sitting by to see what becomes of it! I'm not a lump of ore, and if I need harsh treatment I want it done sympathetically, feelingly, or I shall ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... upon the spectacles of Huang Chow. Watching him, Durham saw him take out from a hidden drawer in the pedestal a long, slender key, insert it in a lock concealed by the ornate carving, and then slightly raise the lid which had so ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Oceanides. The ancients are said to have used its bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a kind of paper called Philyra. They also made bucklers of its wood, "on account of its flexibility, lightness, and resiliency." It was once much used for carving, and is still in demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes and panels of carriages, and for various uses for which toughness and flexibility are required. Baskets and cradles are made of the twigs. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is said to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... magnificence of it. Inanimate beauty can so command. 'Tis that which painters, artificers, orators, all aim at, as Eriximachus the physician, in Plato contends, [4819]"It was beauty first that ministered occasion to art, to find out the knowledge of carving, painting, building, to find out models, perspectives, rich furnitures, and so many rare inventions." Whiteness in the lily, red in the rose, purple in the violet, a lustre in all things without life, the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... animals and vegetables which we use as food. I have followed the animal from his birth to his appearance on the table; have described the manner of feeding him, and of slaying him, the position of his various joints, and, after giving the recipes, have described the modes of carving Meat, Poultry, and Game. Skilful artists have designed the numerous drawings which appear in this work, and which illustrate, better than any description, many important and interesting items. The coloured plates are a novelty ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the car of explosives, and they don't know it!" Then he darted back into the Nadia's kitchen, returning quickly with a huge carving-knife rummaged from the pantry shelves. "Stand back and give me room," he begged; and they saw him lean out to send the carving-knife whistling through the air: saw it sever the head from the stiff-bodied snake—the head and the trailing horn ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of the common sort; an oblong oaken box, much battered and bruised, and like the Elgin Marbles, all over inscriptions and carving:—foul anchors, skewered hearts, almanacs, Burton-blocks, love verses, links of cable, Kings of Clubs; and divers mystic diagrams in chalk, drawn by old Finnish mariners; in casting horoscopes and prophecies. Your ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... therefore seem very natural that these monks sent to live at Chartres were the men who drew the plans of Notre Dame, and employed the horde of artists whom we see represented in one of the old windows of the apse—men in furred caps shaped like a jelly bag, who are busily carving and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... in connection with such an elaborate work. East Wickham is little more than a village even now, and this carving is very creditable in comparison with other attempts of the same early period; but the high road from London to Dover runs through the parish, and may have carried early cultivation into the district. All the rougher illustrations which I have found have been in remote and isolated spots, or spots ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... on which, in his airy garret, he unrolled his paper-parcel of dinner, happy if its wrapping were a sheet from Brown's last poem, and not his own. Now an editorial table seems to mean a board of green cloth at which literary broken-victuals are served out with no carving but that of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... learning the good nature, the roguishness and the dependableness of the animal, Graham hummed the words of the "Gypsy Trail" and allowed them to lead his thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of bucolic lovers carving their initials on forest trees, he broke a spray of laurel and another of redwood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a long- stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind the sprays into a cross. When the patteran was fashioned, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London |
