"Cobweb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into its head to regard us with horror. Fear of us spread like an epidemic through the animal kingdom of the neighbourhood. A horse drawing a wagon-load of earth turned tail, broke his harness as if it had been of cobweb instead of old rope, and sprang lightly as a gazelle with all four feet into another wagon just ahead. A donkey, ambling gently along the road, suddenly made for the opposite side, dragging his fruit-laden cart after him, and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... days I was wild with restlessness. Life revived to dare things. We heard afterwards that about that time the meteor rushed once more across France. Napoleon landed at a Mediterranean port, gathering force as he marched, swept Louis XVIII away like a cobweb in his path, and moved on to Waterloo. The greatest Frenchman that ever lived fell ultimately as low as St. Helena, and the Bourbons sat again upon the throne. But the changes of which I knew nothing affected me ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... enabling the advancing troops to preserve some kind of alignment. At this the wary prick up their ears. Surprise stares on every face. Immediately follows a crash of musketry as Rodes sweeps away our skirmish line as it were a cobweb. Then comes the long and heavy roll of veteran infantry fire, as he falls ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... gleaming planks in the keen salt wind for half an hour, and he shadowed me unshrinkingly. With the worst will in the world I took him home, and all afternoon and all evening he stuck his shadowy head over my shoulder, and watched the pen as it spread its cobweb lines over the white desert of the paper. He waited behind my chair at dinner, and late at night, when the long day's work at last was over, he hung his intrusive head over my shoulder and stared into the moderate glass of much-watered whisky which ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of this growing confusion a party entered one of the most prominent boxes that drew the general attention in that part of the house. A lady in crimson velvet, with some gossamer lace about her arms and bosom, and a cobweb of the same rich material floating from the thick braids of her coal-black hair, came into the box, followed by a gentleman so like her ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... great states-men for their generall end In politique justice make poore men offend) Enforceth my offence to make it just. 65 What shall weak dames doe, when th' whole work of Nature Hath a strong finger in each one of us? Needs must that sweep away the silly cobweb Of our still-undone labours, that layes still Our powers to it, as to the line, the stone, 70 Not to the stone, the line should be oppos'd. We cannot keepe our constant course in vertue: What is alike at all parts? every day Differs from other, every houre and ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... it, but their natures are so different. Her thoughts and sentiments are as delicate as cobweb—and George? Have you noticed how hurt she was that he ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... that a little," and she pointed to a cobweb stretching from a dead twig to a weed. Hansei looked and slowly put ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... a little bridge spanning a chasm like a cobweb. A low parapet divided it from the awful gulf. On the other side the mountain lifted its jagged face, clammy with icicles, and far over all towered the sterile peaks, above the reach of clouds or lightnings, forever in ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... four feathery corners to a hair, the veins on a leaf, hardly visible to the naked eye, but like a thick net through the wonderful little glass; the skin on their own fingers, looking like queer hills and valleys; a cobweb like a bit of coarse sewing silk, and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... heed was paid to the remonstrances in behalf of the imperial Courts, or the privileges of Brabant. These were but cobweb impediments which, indeed, had long been brushed away. President Viglius was even pathetic on the subject of Madame Egmont's petition to the council of Brabant. It was so bitter, he said, that the Duke was slightly annoyed, and took ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... another difference in the woof of a Waverley novel from the cobweb of a modern one, which depends on Scott's larger view of human life. Marriage is by no means, in his conception of man and woman, the most important business of their existence;[48] nor love the only reward to be proposed to their virtue or exertion. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Monte. The figure of Caiaphas must be given to him, and it is hard to see how it could have been more dramatically treated. Caiaphas has stepped down from his throne, which is left vacant behind him, and is adjuring Jesus to say whether he is the Christ the Son of God. If it were not for the cobweb between the arm and the body, the photograph which is here given might almost pass as having been taken from life, and the character is so priest-like that it is hard to understand how priests could have tolerated it as they did. Indeed, the figure is so far finer than the general ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... one hand and grasped the bottle with the other. Penn seized the moment when his eyes were directed upwards at the cobweb festoons that adorned the cellar, and the sound of gurgling was in his throat, to whisper ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... economy! How she pitied them as the severe Sophia led the way into sacred corners, and lifted the lids of coppers and dustholes, and opened cupboard-doors, and once, with an aspect of horror, detected an actual cobweb lurking in an angle of the whitewashed wall! Clarissa could not admire things too much, in order to do away with some of the bitterness of that microscopic survey. Then there was such cross-examination about ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... into the desolate cavern of the store; the ghostly remnant of cotton goods fluttered in a draft like a torn and grimy cobweb; the lower floor was ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... friend and winked; Sir Digby was visibly agitated, and grinned vehemently at a cobweb in the corner of ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... you, dame; You must be wary, and pull in your sails, And yield unto the weather of the tempest. You think your power's infinite as your malice, And would do all your anger prompts you to; But you must wait occasions, and obey them: Sail in an egg-shell, make a straw your mast, A cobweb all your cloth, and pass unseen, Till you have 'scaped the rocks that are ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of fair, full of stalls, wares, and shopkeepers: in which the theologist sells his stuff, which at the same time supplies food and warmth. The critic disposes of his cobweb linen and transparent lawn, of no shelter from the cold. The philologist, his embroidered vests, Corinthian vases, and Phrygian marble. The physician letters and syllables. The lawyer, men. The antiquary, old shoes. The alchymist, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... light was dim and the air was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent game of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there, it was damp; great clammy masses of cobweb hung from the joists and spanned the spaces between the piles. The place was haunted by strange and fearsome insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust down between the cracks in the worn floor. But ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... pathetic old ciacconna or gavotte, some concerto or symphony; the thing nearest heaven is to sit apart with closed eyes while the orchestra or the individual performer interprets for one the mystic poetry, or the dramatic fire, or the subtle cobweb ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... carry out his schemes of usurpation. As the campaign advanced he became more emphatic, insisting that Burr's election would disgrace the country abroad, and that no agreement with him could be relied upon. "As well think to bind a giant by a cobweb as ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... they are very trifling nowadays, but the exercise is good for my health. I have trouble, at times, with my rheumatism, and with my—my memory." He passed his hand over his brow as though brushing away an imaginary cobweb. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... O villainous! nothing but sound, sound, a mere echo; she speaks as she goes tired, in cobweb-lawn, light, thin; good enough to ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... lumber-room, The Discobolus standeth, and turneth his face to the wall; Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed, and set at naught, Beauty crieth in an attic, and no man regardeth. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... future—no poet should presume to make a lady die for love two hundred years before her birth. To moralise this story, Virgil is the Apollo who has this dispensing power. His great judgment made the laws of poetry, but he never made himself a slave to them; chronology at best is but a cobweb law, and he broke through it with his weight. They who will imitate him wisely must choose, as he did, an obscure and a remote era, where they may invent at pleasure, and not be easily contradicted. Neither he nor the Romans had ever read the Bible, by which only his false computation ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... piece of carving; a jeweled comb; a string of pearls; diamond hoops for the ears; a large pin painted with a head of Guadalupe, the patron saint of California; and several fragile fans. Quite apart, on a little table, was the crown and pride of the donas,—six white cobweb-like smocks, embroidered, hemistitched, and deshaladoed. Did any Californian bridegroom forget that dainty item he would be ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... case with the chapel of Monte Beni. One rainy day, however, in his wanderings through the great, intricate house, Kenyon had unexpectedly found his way into it, and been impressed by its solemn aspect. The arched windows, high upward in the wall, and darkened with dust and cobweb, threw down a dim light that showed the altar, with a picture of a martyrdom above, and some tall tapers ranged before it. They had apparently been lighted, and burned an hour or two, and been extinguished perhaps half a century ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Olympus knew, was for ever at some piece of mischief, insisted on meddling with his father's work, and got leave to fashion the human ear out of a shell that he chanced to have by him, across which he stretched a fine cobweb that he stole from Arachne. But he hollowed and twisted the shell in such a fashion that it would turn back all sounds except very loud blasts that Falsehood should blow on a brazen horn, whilst the impenetrable web would keep out all such whispers as Truth could send up from the depths ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Cobweb," said the foolish clown, "kill me the red humblebee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Who, being a bird in whom marmot confided, Had hired his cottage, in which he resided. The landlord just hinted, that when he lived there, He had kept the old hovel in charming repair; The walls neatly mended, the parlour swept clean, And never a cobweb nor grain to be seen; But that now this once pleasant and rural retreat, By his tenant, the owl, was no longer kept neat; That the little round chamber, and long slanting hall, For the want of attention, were likely to fall; Such a ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... semicircles and stairways of an amphitheater. Nearly in the heart of the place rose the audacious and exquisitely embroidered tower of the town-house, three hundred and sixty-six feet in height; a miracle of needlework in stone, rivaling in its intricate carving the cobweb tracery of that lace which has for centuries been synonymous with the city, and rearing itself above a facade of profusely decorated and brocaded architecture. The crest of the elevation was crowned by the towers of the old ducal palace of Brabant, with its extensive and thickly wooded park on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... dominating all the other noises of the night, and uniting in one mighty chorus in the marshes along the river. An owl was hooting from a distant tree, and the hum of innumerable insects sounded on every side. Here and there a glittering, dew-spangled cobweb stretched across our path, a barrier of silver, and required more than ordinary resolution to be brushed aside. As we turned nearer to the river, the ground grew softer and the underbrush more thick, and I knew that ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... down the obstruction. Until some altogether new means of transport are provided, the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolley may carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force of public convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. The trains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; it does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between overcrowding ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... waste time in trivialities, Fenton," he rejoined gently. He brushed a fleck of cobweb from his coat. "By this time you ought to know that you cannot deal with me ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... interrupted my meditations and destroyed in an instant the cobweb tissue of my fancy. With his usual zeal he had gathered facts concerning the scene, which put my fictions all to flight. The heroine of my romance was neither young nor handsome; she had no lover; she had ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... when he withdrew, that watcher would have discovered, on peeping through the key-hole of his door, that he was engaged in one of the oddest of occupations for such a man,—sweeping down from the ceiling, by means of a walking-cane, a long cobweb which lingered on high in the corner. Keeping it stretched upon the cane he gently opened the door, and set the candle in such a position on the mat that the light shone down the corridor. Thus guided by its rays he passed out ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... which it had entered. Wondering how far it would have moved before the sermon was over, and whether it would have shone so very bright if God had made no covenant with Abraham, she was earnestly watching it pass from spot to spot, and from cobweb to cobweb, as if already it fled before the coming darkness of the long winter night, when she caught a glimpse of a very peculiar countenance turned in the same direction—that is, not towards the minister, but ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Cobweb[46], out of which great flyes breake and in which the little are hangd: the Tarriers snaphance[47], limetwiggs, weavers shuttle & blankets in which fooles & wrangling coxcombes are tossd. Doe ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... sure Pamelia's silk couldn't have been half so pretty. But she had no veil, and I felt rather disappointed about that. Then there was a knock at the door and Mrs. Franklin came in, with her arms full of something all fine and misty like a lacy cobweb. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... opening in the weir; but a group of fishermen stand round it with their hand nets, with which they catch any fish that leap out of the big net, and would otherwise escape, the ordinary hand nets being usually used for larger fish, and the cobweb ones for the smaller fish. They often have two or three of these weirs in the same stream, at some little ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... that runs, but in God that sheweth mercy. What hope, help, stay, or relief, then is there left for the merit-monger? What twig, or straw, or twined thread, is left to be a stay for his soul? This besom will sweep away his cobweb: the house that this spider doth so lean upon, will now be overturned, and he in it, to hellfire; for nothing less than everlasting damnation is designed by God, and that for this fearful and unbelieving Pharisee: God will prevail ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... too, for once I led my party into Pixley's camp, And he paroled me. I defended, too, The State of Oregon against the sharp And bloody tooth of the Australian sheep. But I've an aptitude exceeding neat For bloodless battles of diplomacy. My cobweb treaty of Exclusion once, Through which a hundred thousand coolies sailed, Was much admired, but most by Colonel Bee. Though born a tinker I'm a diplomat From old Missouri, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... if it were keeping time to an inaudible tune, as she sat there stiffly erect. Her skin was pale and withered; and her cheeks were wrinkled in fine lines, like the crossings of a cobweb. Her eyes might once have been blue; but they had become nearly colourless, and, looking at her, one might easily imagine that she was blind. She had a singularly sweet smile, and a musical voice, which though sad, had no trace of whining. If it had not been ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... excuse for violating the laws by which you are there to be tried. If you could justify yourself to the world, or to the women of whose folly you take advantage, by the fallacious arguments which you have so ready for that purpose, such cobweb sophistry cannot weaken the force of an ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... foolish clown, "kill me the red humblebee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a honey-bag. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who was Jekyll's predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance. Nowhere was there any trace of Henry ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... nonsense!" broke in Lucian, impatient of this cobweb spinning. "I don't believe a word of Ferruci's story. If Vrain lived in Jersey Street as Wrent, why should Mrs. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... suggestively bobbing around against wall or ceiling; and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared from the household broom, a gossamer arena of two years' standing, which makes a dense span of a length of about two feet from a clump of dried hydrangea blossoms to the sill of a transom-window, and which, of course, somewhere in its ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... comparatively placid presidential regime followed a series of barrack uprisings or attacks by Congress on the executive. The constitution became a farce. No longer, to be sure, an abode of Arcadian seclusion as in colonial times, or a sort of territorial cobweb from the center of which a spiderlike Francia hung motionless or darted upon his hapless prey, or even a battle ground on which fanatical warriors might fight and die at the behest of a savage Lopez, Paraguay now took on the aspect of an arena in which petty political gamecocks ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... own mind, I got the key of the house from Paul, explored it thoroughly, and was satisfied that no improper visitor had recently entered the drawing-room at least, as the windows were strongly bolted on the inside, and a large cobweb, heavy with dust, hung across the doorway. This did no great credit to Paul's stewardship, but was, perhaps, a slight relief to me. Nor could I see a trace of anything uncanny outside the house. When Severance went with me, next day, the coast was equally clear, and I was glad to have ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... George Eliot, in 'Middlemarch,' 'ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial acquaintance?' And, to press the metaphor, the cobweb, as far as Mark and Mabel were concerned, brilliantly as it shone in all its silken iridescence, would have rolled up into a particularly small pill. Mark was anxious that his engagement ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... had finished reading he folded the paper and looked dreamily at the cobweb in the corner. He wished to be understood as having no opinion whatever to express. Cranston sat in silence with lips compressed under his heavy moustache. Davies never moved. His blue eyes were fixed unflinchingly ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... about the miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that without hands or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can see, they are transported from place to place, and that there is nothing to account for it except the witch-broomstick and the iron or copper cobweb which they see stretched above them. What do they know or care about this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of the material universe? We ought to go down on our knees when one of these mighty caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I have seen robbers rule, And thieves go clad in gold—age after age— Because, though sordid, ragged, rude, and mean, They saw, like gods, no law above their heads. But when they fell—then for this cause they fell, This last mean cobweb of the fairy tales Of good and ill: that they must stand and fight When a man bade, though they had chose to stand And fight not. I am stronger than ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... space of silence. They glow, they gloom, they shine. Bend after bend they reveal themselves, endlessly new in endlessly changing veils of colour. A swimming and jewelled blue predominates, as of sapphires being melted and spun into skeins of shifting cobweb. Bend after bend this trance of beauty and awe goes on, terrible as the Day of Judgment, sublime as the Psalms of David. Five thousand feet below the opens and barrens of Arizona, this canyon seems like an avenue ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the Gnadigen Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? "With his Excellenz (the Count)," continues he, "I have more than once had the honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... wove it all that day in his web, and the next morning he brought her a long piece of the loveliest spider-lace as fine as a cobweb. Little Freckle Frog was very ...
— How Freckle Frog Made Herself Pretty • Charlotte B. Herr
... formerly receivd from him, and because I think the Spirit with which he writes and the intelligence containd in his Letter, will afford Satisfaction to you and the Circle of our Friends. "It is certain, says he, that the Peace of Europe hangs upon a Cobweb. It is certain that, Portugal & Russia excepted, all Europe wishes us Success. The Ports of France, Spain and the Mediterranean are open to us on the Terms of Neutrality. We have already receivd a Benevolence in this ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... as if my wicked French heels were on their necks. I noticed one girl, particularly; there was something so gallant about her cracked and polished shoes, her mended gloves, her collar, laundered to a cobweb thinness, and about the improbable sea-shell pink in her hollow cheeks. She had a sort of eager, sharpened sweetness in her face ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... cobweb where that big fly is buzzing loud enough to deafen me, and at those bits of fluff under the bed, and at that dust on the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... rejoined the theatrical gentleman; "but till I can forget the blunderbuss fired from the upsetting coach, the cobweb over the poor's-box, and the gay parson and undertaker at the harlot's funeral, I cannot allow of the comparison. Besides, I admire Hogarth for another reason: did he consider an engraver's to be an infradig. profession? No, for he was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... service clothes he was surprised to feel a new vigor in his limbs and a new strength of purpose in his mind. His brain was clearer than it had been for a long time. The last cobweb was gone, and for the moment at least he was lifted out of himself as by a strong, invigorating drink. When he stood in his old boots and felt the familiar drag of his cartridge-belt, when he tested his free muscles, he realized that he was another man. Even yet he could not put much faith ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... so that she can make out your bill—a very arduous, formidable undertaking. The bill is of prodigious dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless—it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the page and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; {55} and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar? In Hungary I have seen it the manner at all feasts, and all other such-like meetings, to have songs of their ancestors' ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... habits, black bulbuls conform more closely to the ways of their tribe than they do in other matters. The nesting season is early spring. The nursery, which is built in a tree, not in a bush, is a small cup composed largely of moss, dried grass, and leaves, held together by being well smeared with cobweb. The eggs have a pink background, much spotted with reddish purple. They display a great lack of uniformity as regards ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... high-colored wenches with cheeks like apples. It is not desirable that women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you comprehend how easy it would ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... copse because he saw something fifteen yards off—some plant, maybe, which he would tell me was very rare, though I should say I'd seen its marrow at every turn in the woods; and, if we came upon such a thing as this,' touching a delicate film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke, 'why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It is ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Away went the boar covered by a mass of dogs, and bearing the greater part of our weight in addition, as we hung on to the hunting-knives buried in his shoulders. For about fifty paces he tore through the thick jungle, crashing it like a cobweb. At length he again halted; the dogs, the boar, and ourselves were mingled in a heap of confusion. All covered with blood and dirt; our own cheers added to the wild bay of the infuriated hounds and the savage roaring of the boar. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the sofa, and the girl, looking at them, shuddered. It was Boolba's idea—nobody but Boolba would have thought of it. Every garment was of red, blood red, a red which seemed to fill the room with harsh sound. Stockings of finest silk, shoes of russian leather, cobweb underwear—but all of the same hideous hue. In Russia the word "red" is also the word "beautiful." In a language in which so many delicate shades of meaning can be expressed, this word serves a double purpose, doing duty for that which, ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... distant thunder; and straightway the debris of a landslip came rolling downwards, half obliterating in its course the circle of the conjurer. Turf, and clay, and stone lay in a mingled ruin at our feet; and wriggling in the midst, like a huge blue-bottle in an old cobweb, there was a reverend gentleman dressed in black. He gathered himself up, sprung deftly to his feet, and stood fronting the conjurer. Wonderful to relate, the man in black proved to be the veritable Mr. Clark of three ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... to corridor, from hall to gallery, and through passages; examining secret exits and closets. They traversed the long banquet-hall and were upon the threshold of a carved and lofty doorway, when Janet espied upon the parquetry a cobweb bit of lace protruding from beneath the tapestry of a chair. Lord Cedric's keen eyes marked her movement as she essayed to reach it without his notice. He turned quickly and fierce upon her, knocking his sword with a loud noise upon the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... first glimpse of her in her cobweb fineries, I was ill-bred enough to gape, whereat she blushed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the Walpole tract sounded the rick-tack of busy axes, the yawk of saws, and the crash of falling timber. The twitch roads, narrow trails which converged to centers like the strands of a cobweb, led to the yards where the logs were piled for the sleds; and from the yards, after the snows were deep and had been iced by watering tanks on sleds, huge loads were eased down the slopes to the landings ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... any display, if you wish to please me,' she said; and with a wave of her cobweb handkerchief she signified that ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... net enclosing the great gas-bag looked, aloft, where it towered above the roof, little more substantial than a film of lace; and to ascend in that balloon appeared about as safe a proposition as to enmesh a lion in a cobweb. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... sensible in cities than in many country places I could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by the scented elder-bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint mountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily discovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures, the goblins, hurrying from the white square stone door to the north, or from the Heart Lake in ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... widely diffused and most important of all vapours—the aqueous vapour of our atmosphere, and we found in it a potent absorber of the purely calorific rays. The power of this substance to influence climate, and its general influence on the temperature of the earth, were then briefly dwelt upon. A cobweb spread above a blossom is sufficient to protect it from nightly chill; and thus the aqueous vapour of our air, attenuated as it is, checks the drain of terrestrial heat, and saves the surface of our planet from the refrigeration which would assuredly accrue, were ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... which it opened was cut off from the other boxes by hangings of tapestry. One of the most beautiful effects of all was made by the ceiling, where the chandeliers shone through a network of strings of smilax and white and green electric lights radiating from the center like the strands of a cobweb. As may be guessed, the brilliancy of the audience was in harmony with that of the audience-room. The price of tickets for the stalls on the main floor was thirty dollars, and the chairs in the other parts of the room cost proportionately. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the train was hanging over the deep, misted cauldron of the valley, again and again it slipped delicately over the span of cobweb across the sky that is a Canadian bridge. In this land of steep gradients, sharp curves and lattice bridges, the train was divided into two sections, and each, with two engines to pull it, climbed ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... looked into the rose-pink room and saw Liane Delorme, in a negligee like a cobweb over a nightdress even more sheer, kneeling and clawing at her throat, round which a heavy silk handkerchief was slowly tightening; her face already purple with strangulation, her eyes bulging from their sockets, her tongue ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Cobweb, or a confus'd lock of these Cylinders, is a certain white substance which, after a fogg, may be observ'd to fly up and down the Air; catching several of these, and examining them with my Microscope, I found them to be much of the same form, looking most like to a flake ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... scent, like cobweb's films Slender and faint and rare, Of roses, and rich, fair fabrics, Cling on the stirless air, The sibilance of voices, At a wave ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... of moonbeams and rays of sunshine and rainbow-gleams—this dream—woven by fairy fingers into so fragile a cobweb that it seemed absurd to think it could stand the winds and torrents of Grown-Up Land; but Opal, in spite of her eighteen years, was still awaiting the coming of her ideal knight, though the stage setting ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... Louis XVI, which was influenced from the same source. Chairs had square or round or oval backs, and they also used a lyre-shaped splat which was copied later by Sheraton. Often the top rail was decorated by small and charming painted panels. These little panels were also used in the center of cobweb caning in chair backs and settees. Legs of chairs and tables were tapering and round or square and often reeded or fluted. Adam used much mahogany and kept its beautiful golden brown tone (not the dead ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... patience, repairing the breaches of its web, and taking no sustenance that I could perceive. At last, however, a large blue fly fell into the snare, and struggled hard to get loose. The spider gave it leave to entangle itself as much as possible, but it seemed to be too strong for the cobweb. I must own I was greatly surprised when I saw the spider immediately sally out, and in less than a minute weave a new net round its captive, by which the motion of its wings was stopped; and when it was fairly hampered in this manner it was seized and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... indefinably. Its depth and shadows jarred. Fair as it was, it had harbored things sinister and evil. And who might say—there was peace of course in the moon-silver rug of pine among the trees, in the gossamer cobweb there among the bushes jeweled lightly in dew, in the faint, sweet chirp of a drowsy bird above his head—but the moon-ray which lingered in the heart of the wild geranium would presently cascade through the trees to light the horrible ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the strange announcement that all the rebels, as they were called, would be freely pardoned, and invited the leading Protestant nobles to appear before him at Prague. They walked into the trap like flies into a cobweb. If the nobles had only cared to do so, they might all have escaped after the battle of the White Hill; for Tilly, the victorious general, had purposely given them time to do so. But for some reason they nearly all preferred to stay. And now Lichtenstein ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Larroones Lather ( ladder) (In Women beware Women Middleton plays on the word:— "Fab. When she was invited to an early wedding, She'd dress her head o'ernight, sponge up herself, And give her neck three lathers. Gaar. Ne'er a halter.") Laugh and lye downe Launcepresado Law, the spider's cobweb Legerity Letters of mart Leveret Limbo Line of life Linstock Long haire, treatise against (An allusion to William Prynne's tract The Unlovelinesse of Love-Lockes.) Loves Changelings Changed, MS. play founded on Sidney's Arcadia Low Country ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... grave through a web and tangle of fog. It was not one of the regular yellow devils who come and eat up London, first this part, and then that, then disgorge a little, choking it all up only to snap at it and swallow it down all bewildered a quarter of an hour after. This was a cobweb fog spun, as it might be, by some malignant central spider hidden darkly in his lair. The vapouring-like filmy threads twisted and twined their way all over London, and for four days and nights the town was a city of ghosts. Buildings loomed dimly behind their masks of silver tissue, streets seemed ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... unknown to us, where at work in a small room, we came upon our glass blower and the coveted copy of that lovely table-garden. This man had made four, and one was still in his possession. We brought it back to America, a gleaming jewelled cobweb, and what happened was that the very ethereal quality of its beauty made the average taste ignore it! However, a few years have made a vast difference in table, as well as all other decorations, and to-day ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... again, and observed something like a cobweb on the sky between the central pier and the opposite bank. There was a black spot that resembled a spider moving slowly along the cobweb. It ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... plain was still asleep. He had a kind of happy superstition that he was to save the child single-handed. He had not trusted the police... with their great, foolish fingers. They could not save his little girl. She had needed Achilles—and he had held the thread of silken cobweb—and traced it bit by bit to the place where they had hidden her. He should ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... a cobweb I fancied," said Gabrielle, proudly, as she gently shook out the folds of a light creation. "How beautifully it fits and yet it affords ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullen's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest— They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmed hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars' ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... between; A very tulip-garden stirred To hear the fluting of a bird; Faint sunlight through the casement falls On cupids painted on the walls At play with doves. Precisely set Awaits the slender legged spinet Expectant of its happy lot, The while the player stays to twist The cobweb ruffle from his wrist. A pause, and then—(Ah, whisper not) Monseigneur plays his ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... person, and the rogues lifted their arms up in the air, just as if they held something, and said, "See! here are the trousers, here is the coat, here is the cloak," and so forth. "It is as light as a cobweb; one might imagine one had nothing on, but that is ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the other day Mr. Horne wrote to me to reproach me for not having mentioned it to him, because he came upon it accidentally and considered it 'one of my best productions.' Mr. Kenyon holds the same opinion. As for Flush's verses, they are what I call cobweb verses, thin and light enough; and Arabel was mistaken in telling you that Miss Mitford gave the prize to them. Her words were, 'They are as tender and true as anything you ever wrote, but nothing is equal to the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the osier creel! Bring me flies of fifty kinds, Bring me showers, and clouds, and winds, All things right and tight, All things well and proper, Trailer red and bright, Dark and wily dropper; Casts of midges bring, Made of plover hackle, With a gaudy wing, And a cobweb tackle. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Quilp, making towards the door on tiptoe. 'Not a sound, not so much as a creaking board, or a stumble against a cobweb. Drowned, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... but it is much more. The vivid pages of history in which he explains and defends the French Revolution which Burke had attacked and misunderstood, are only an illustration to his main argument. He expounds the right of revolution, and blows away the cobweb argument of legality by which his antagonist had sought to confine posterity within the settlement of 1688. Every age and generation must be free to act for itself. Man has no property in man, and the claim of one generation to govern ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... white-and-liver-colored spaniel making his bed on the back of an elderly hackney, and on four ancient angels, still showing signs of devotion like mutilated martyrs—while over all, the grand pointed roof, untouched by reforming wash, showed its lines and colors mysteriously through veiling shadow and cobweb, and a hoof now and then striking against the boards seemed to fill the vault with thunder, while outside there was the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... entered her head that Owen would suspect her secret. Indeed, the whole affair was so dream-like, of so unsubstantial, so gossamer a lightness, that merely to speculate upon her romance would have been to shatter it, as one might put a finger through a fairy cobweb. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... that recurred to his memory. It was most unwelcome. Brandon could see that he looked more than disturbed; he was also angry; and yet after awhile, both these feelings melted away, he was like a man who had walked up to a cobweb, that stretched itself before his face, but when he had put up his hand and cleared it ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... scene which we have conjured up? He confesses to me that he sleeps soundly. This advantage I do not possess. It is not in my power to pass the sponge over my poor brain even as I pass it over the blackboard. The network of ideas remains and forms as it were a moving cobweb in which repose wriggles and tosses, incapable of finding a stable equilibrium. When sleep does come at last, it is often but a state of somnolence which, far from suspending the activity of the mind, actually maintains and quickens it more than waking would. During this torpor, in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... in the net which enveloped him from head to foot, he flopped about among the dead leaves on the bank of the stream, struggling and kicking like a fly in a cobweb. This ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... in no connection—the utilitarian also thoroughly despises cobweb theories, as he terms them. The world owes its greatest achievements to theories—cobwebs they may be. In caves have been found books of stone, whose nucleus was but cobweb; along these webs the calcareous solution ran, and hardened into stone. A cobweb theory has been the thread, on which, drop ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the four gentlemen that you suppose Lucy to have refused?" said I, with as indifferent an air as I could assume, affecting to destroy a cobweb with my rattan, and even carrying my acting so far as to make an attempt at ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... his left was thrown open, a flood of sunshine burst into the cobweb-hung loft, and an officer and a private of cavalry came rustling through the straw till they were within the scope of the wounded lad's gaze, and a chill of misery ran through him like a shudder as he saw Scarlett Markham, followed by Samson's ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... listened, saying not one word. There were but three couples dancing at the moment. There might as well have been but one for, within the hall and without, the eyes of all seemed fastened on that. Some strange caprice had prompted Evelyn Darrah to wear black that night—a grenadine, with cobweb lace and glinting spangles and sweeping train, the bodice cut low and displaying her shapely arms and neck and shoulders, enhancing the grace of her tall and slender form. Her dark hair was coiled in masses, yet here and there ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... of eye, Who the wildflowers' warders are: Ouphes, that chase the firefly; Elves, that ride the shooting-star: Fays, who in a cobweb lie, Swinging on a moonbeam bar; Or who harness bumblebees, Grumbling on the clover leas, To a blossom or a breeze— That's their faery car. If you care, you too may see There are faeries.—Verily, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... you're no witch, indeed, if you don't see a cobweb as long as my arm. Run, run, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... to see how John Dolittle with his fat heavy fingers undid that cobweb cord and unrolled the leaf, whole, without tearing it or hurting the precious beetle. The Jabizri he put back into the box. Then he spread the leaf ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... alders, in the deep cool shade. Here and there a ray of sunshine came through the thick foliage: I could see it where it silvered the cobweb ladders of those moist spaces. Somewhere in the thicket I heard an unalarmed catbird trilling her exquisite song, a startled frog leaped with a splash into the water; faint odours of some blossoming growth, not distinguishable, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... nothing," said the clown. "Only just help Cobweb to scratch. I must go to the barber's, for methinks I am marvelous hairy about ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... his new trousers, to the astonishment of all his messmates, who had now gathered round him, found them separated in the middle of each of his legs. He might as well have attempted to clothe himself with cobweb continuations; they came to pieces almost with a shake. The waistcoat and coat were in the same predicament; they had not the principle of continuity in them. Everybody was lost in amazement, except Mr Pigtop, whose ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the dumb perfume of the altar flowers. She rose,—and stood a moment trying to control herself,—a pretty little pitiful figure in her dainty, garden-party frock, a soft white chiffon hat tied on under her rounded chin with a knot of pale blue ribbon, and a tiny cobweb of a lace kerchief in her hand with which she ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... veins, for never was any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her liking and disliking, her love and hate, were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that seemed strong and durable enough, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... plant again in blossom in the aforesaid garden, raised from seeds which ripened there the preceding year, but unfortunately from the lateness of their flowering, and the very great injury the plants had sustained from the Cobweb Mite (Acarus teliarius) vulgarly called the red Spider, there seemed little prospect that the seed-vessels would ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... cobweb hangs on Sword and belt, The charger draws the gliding plow; The cannons in the furnace melt, And change to gentle purpose now; The threshers swing their ponderous flails, The craftsmen toil with cheerful might; The ocean swarms with merchant sails, And busy mills look gay by night; The happy ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the whole edifice of his labor, are sciolistic assumptions caught up in his youth from Auguste Comte and other one-eyed seers of modern France; his generalization, multitudinous and imposing, is often of the card-castle description, and tumbles at the touch of an inquisitive finger; and his cobweb logic, spun chiefly out of his wishes rather than his understanding, is indeed facile and ingenious, but of a strength to hold only flies. Such, at any rate, is the judgment passed upon him in the present ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... giue thee Fairies to attend on thee; And they shall fetch thee Iewels from the deepe, And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleepe: And I will purge thy mortall grossenesse so, That thou shalt like an airie spirit go. Enter Pease-blossome, Cobweb, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and all the world, In you, that are no child, for still I find Your face is practised when I spell the lines, I call it,—well, I will not call it vice: But since you name yourself the summer fly, I well could wish a cobweb for the gnat, That settles, beaten back, and beaten back Settles, till one could yield for weariness: But since I will not yield to give you power Upon my life and use and name and fame, Why will ye never ask some other boon? Yea, by God's rood, I trusted ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... of leisure and wealth, John Ruskin said: "Shall one by breadth and sweep of sight gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb of which he is himself to be the master spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his eyes?" Shall the industrial or political giant say: "Here is the power in my hand; weakness owes me a debt? Build ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... indomitable friend he seems to have some heart. I only wish he'd given us some facts; they would have been serviceable. But the letters reveal nothing except that he knew Doris. He writes in one of them: 'Doris is learning to embroider. It's like a fairy weaving a cobweb!' Doris isn't a very common name. She must be the same little girl to whom Miss Challoner wrote from ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... renew regret release retain rejoice return reduce report regard refresh restore remain coachman huntsman seaman postman salesman workman footman hackman railroad birthday foreman boatman inkstand daylight fireplace teacup seaside seaweed sunbeam tiptoe stairway necktie rainbow railway seashore cobweb spyglass beehive ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... reverend sir," said Mr. Flint with an affectation of firmness and unconcern he was, I knew, far from feeling. "We are the attorneys of Mrs. Rosamond Allerton, and shall, I dare say, if you push us to it, be able to tear this ingeniously-colored cobweb of yours to shreds. If you determine on going to law, your solicitor can serve us; we will enter an appearance, and our client ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren |
