"Excelsior" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... envelope and found a certificate for a hundred shares of the Excelsior Gold Mine, which appeared to be located in California. He had once heard his father speak of it in much the same ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... from first hands," interrupted Bruce, irritated by the verbal excelsior which the prosecutor so deliberately unwrapped from ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... foraged in the coat closet and presently emerged with a prier. Cleigh literally snatched it from the astonished butler's grasp, pried and tore off a board. He dug away at the excelsior until he felt the cool glass under his fingers. He peered ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... operated by the original settler in this part of the country; I know the history of these thirty-six square miles of land and also of the wonderful swarming of peoples which made the prairies over; and the agent of the Excelsior County History Company of Chicago, having heard of me as an authority on local history, has asked me to write this part of their new History of Monterey County for which they are now canvassing for subscribers. I can never write this as it ought ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... or lid with green burlap, allowing the edges to lap over the ends and sides and fasten under the side strips. This top can be stuffed with excelsior, if desired, and tacks with large heads driven in to hold it in place. The slats can be stained any color to suit the maker. They should be removed from the box when being stained so as not to spot or stain ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... I have been storing all of our wood in ordinary apple cold storage plants. Pack it in damp moss or excelsior. Paper line your boxes well, and nail them up, and leave them there until you are ready to use them. I have put wood in in November and taken it out in good shape in August. Pecan wood can be held the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the top of the rod for the head. Wire this loop to the ring made in the rod and make the head about this loop by using canvas or gunny cloth sewed up forming a bag into which is stuffed either excelsior, paper or hay. The arms are made by lashing with fine wire or strong hemp, a piece of wood 1 in. square and 20 in. long, or one cut in the shape shown in Fig. 6, to the rod. Place the wood arms close to the bottom of the head. Make a triangle of wire and fasten it and ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Gould's grocery was smug enough, but attached to the rear was a lean-to of storm streaked pine lumber with a sanded tar roof—a staggering doubtful shed behind which was a heap of ashes, splintered packing-boxes, shreds of excelsior, crumpled straw-board, broken olive-bottles, rotten fruit, and utterly disintegrated vegetables: orange carrots turning black, and potatoes with ulcers. The rear of the Bon Ton Store was grim with blistered black-painted iron shutters, under them a pile ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... his son-in-law, the Rev. Raywood Firth, who has worked through Longfellow's excelsior gamut rapidly and successfully. The father of Mr. Firth was a Wesleyan Methedist minister, and, singular to say, was at one time—in some Yorkshire circuit we believe—the superintendent of a gentlemen ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... them, and one of Billina's chickens gobbled it up. A few minutes afterward this chick got upon a roost and recited 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' without making a single mistake. Then it recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and afterwards 'Excelsior.' You see, the chicken ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Wilson's "Excelsior," with 10 inch steam cylinder and 8 inch water barrel. This powerful pump is in a special compartment of the fore hold, and will draw water from the bilge, sea, or either hold. A steam windlass and a double-handle winch are on deck as shown. On trial trip the engines of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... owner of the Excelsior Boarding-House. The policeman's name was Grogan. He was a genial giant, a terror to the riotous element of the waterfront, but obviously ill at ease in the presence of death. He drew in his breath, wiped his forehead, and whispered: "Look at ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... cannot stop here, for, as we have seen, its root in the Self-contemplation of Spirit renders it of necessity an Infinite Progression. So it is no use asking what is its ultimate, for it has no ultimate—its word is "Excelsior"—ever Life and "Life more Abundant." Therefore the question is not as to finality where there is none, but as to the next step in the progression. Four kingdoms we know: what is to be the Fifth? All along the line the progress ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... stuffed with hay. Thomas Cathcart Blake grinned and said that, as for taking the yacht out to sea, he was afraid of getting it wet; and he wouldn't want to bet as to what the sail covers were stuffed with because it might be excelsior, or cotton, or any one ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... tear down the gravel. It is delivered to the miner by huge pipes made of wrought iron, and laid down to follow the curvatures of the surface of the ground; and the pipe I now treat of, belonging to the Excelsior Water Company, has a diameter of 40 inches on a length of 6,000 feet, and 20 inches on the rest of its length of 8,000 feet, being 9,000 feet in all; and this large pipe forms an inverted siphon across a valley, following ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... with the blue vase packed in excelsior and reposing in a stout cardboard box, Bill Peck entered a restaurant and ordered dinner. When he had dined he engaged a taxi and was driven to the flying field at the Marina. From the night watchman he ascertained the address of his pilot friend and at midnight, with his friend at ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... wild leap, turned glittering ice In shame's suspension, and crow souls afeeding Upon a huge dead body and fast breeding,— Is, as a scene, not worth the railroad's price; But, oh, if, with "Excelsior" for device, Thou climb thy Alpine way, each day exceeding The other's height, what throngs would watch thy speeding And, for the thrill thou ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... all about that—you know? As it is I want to show you that I'm grateful, and my experienced eye informs me that you arrived in a box car. An empty furniture car, I should say, judging by that scrap of excelsior in your back hair, although the car might have been ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... little steamer running from near the railway station, which is close to the edge of the lake, to the village of Excelsior, six miles distant, near which lives one of the best guides to the fishing grounds of the lake. But a guide is not at all essential to the amateur, or those in simple quest of fun, pleasure, or health, since the fish here are so plentiful that all will have luck, whether they have ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... by them he is still most widely and gratefully remembered. To name these old favorites ("The Day is Done," "Resignation," "Ladder of St. Augustine," "Rainy Day," "Footsteps of Angels," "Light of Stars," "Reaper and the Flowers," "Hymn to the Night," "Midnight Mass," "Excelsior," "Village Blacksmith," "Psalm of Life") is to list many of the poems that are remembered and quoted wherever in the round world the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... human beings in the valley below. The Silver Knight also played his part well up in the skies, so did the General, and many others. Up, up went the Green Dragon, and high soared the Silver Knight; Excelsior was his motto; but high as he went, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... that either filled the eyes, lungs, and hair of the unfortunates travelling upon them with dust, or, resembling ploughed and fertilized fields, saturated and plastered them with mud. These miseries, together with sea-sickness in ocean travelling, are forever passed, and we feel that 'Excelsior!' is indeed our motto. Our new and increasing sources of power have so stimulated production and manufacturing that poverty or want is scarcely known; while the development of the popular demand, as ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... tighten the girths of my soul. I took a fresh grip on myself and said: "Look here, Tabbie, this is never going to do. This is not the way Horatius held the bridge. This is not the spirit that built Rome. So, up, Guards, and at 'em! Excelsior! Audaces ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and preoccupied. "I think he gave several very original ideas on the subjects of the pictures to those around. They seemed impressed. You know how far above the foolish feeling, mauvaise honte, he is; his voice 'like a silver clarion rung.' Excelsior was outdone. Everybody turned and ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... dissipated characters, yet,—but see what it comes to! They a'n't content with wasting their time,—they kill it, Sir, actually kill it!" When I thought of the manly figures and handsome, eager faces of my friends of the "Union" and the "Excelsior,"—the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, "Dolorosus, my boy, you are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Crusoe's tree-dwelling, Mr. Bly began cheerfully to mount the steps. It should be premised that, although a recently appointed clerk in a large banking house, Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful and imaginative, and regarded the ascent as part of that "Excelsior" climbing pointed out by a great poet as a praiseworthy ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... been found by the divers, all in crushed and shapeless masses. It is important to note that in the six-inch and ten-inch tanks recovered the excelsior used for packing the charges shows no injury ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... surprised—I should have thought—the fact is, when Raglan was at school, he had to learn 'Excelsior,' and I happened to glance over it. I was slightly acquainted with the piece, but I had quite forgotten that it contained what seems to me very gross indelicacy—very gross indeed. Do you remember a verse beginning (I must ask your pardon ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... est excelsior locus in vrbe ad cuius radicem, est castrum spectabile constructum per aliquem Soldanorum. In montis autem cacumine videntur multae sepulturae regum Indeae, videlicet Dauid, Salomonis, et quorundam de successoribus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... course, the replies. Thus General Grant sketched on an improvised map the exact spot where General Lee surrendered to him; Longfellow told him how he came to write "Excelsior"; Whittier told the story of "The Barefoot Boy"; Tennyson wrote out a stanza or two of "The Brook," upon condition that Edward would not again use the word "awful," which the poet said "is slang for ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... up by deposits from the water supersaturated with mineral. It might be three feet high; it might be thirty. There was the jet of water ejected by subterranean forces. It might be half an inch in diameter; it might be three hundred feet, as in the case of the Excelsior geyser. It might rise six inches; it might rise two hundred and fifty feet. There was the interval between the jets. It might be two seconds; it might be weeks ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... came together from Rhode Island and settled on Minnewashta Lake in '54. There was only a carpenter shop in Excelsior. We spent the first few months of our stay all living together in one log shack which was already there. The first night the man who had driven us from St. Paul sat up all night with his horses and we none of us slept ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... surveying for a moment the world in the sunlight. But a day was to come when I was never to do it again alone. You can imagine, therefore, what the coming of the Ashburnhams meant to me. I have forgotten the aspect of many things, but I shall never forget the aspect of the dining-room of the Hotel Excelsior on that evening—and on so many other evenings. Whole castles have vanished from my memory, whole cities that I have never visited again, but that white room, festooned with papier-mache fruits and flowers; the tall windows; the many tables; the black screen round ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... or jelly glass must be wrapped in several thicknesses of soft paper (newspapers will answer). Make pads of excelsior or hay by spreading a thick layer between the folds of newspapers. Line the bottom and sides of the box with these pads. Pack the fruit in the padded box. Fill all the spaces between the jars with the packing material. If the box is deep and ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... an' forty thousand pounds iv gum cotton at him, an' the poor crather was smothered to death. Now, says I, give these Tampa mules a chanst, an' we'll have no need iv wastin' ammun-ni-tion. Properly led, they'd go fr'm wan end iv Cuba to th' other, kickin' th' excelsior out iv ivry stuffed Spanish gin'ral fr'm Bahoohoo Hoondoo to Sandago de Cuba. They'd be no loss iv life. Th' sojers who haven't gone away cud come home an' get cured iv th' measles an' th' whoopin'-cough an' th' cholera ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... of New York, where the Washington Baseball Club was founded in 1843. The first regular code of rules was drawn up in 1845 by the Knickerbocker Baseball Club and used in its matches with the Gotham Eagle and Empire clubs of New York, and the Excelsior, Putnam, Atlantic and Eckford clubs of Brooklyn. In 1858 the first National Association was organized, and, while its few simple laws were generally similar to the corresponding rules of the present code, the ball was larger and "livelier," and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... a fish or fire a pistol on Sunday is a $10 offense, and to look on at a game of chess is a $50 crime. However, the law does not punish whistling on Sunday, unless the whistler has spectators, then it is a $50 business for all concerned. To read Longfellow's Excelsior on Sunday to a parlor of company is a $50 crime. Reading Milton's Paradise Lost, or the American Declaration of Independence would also rank as criminal business, being an entertainment, and a party of twenty playing a game of croquet may be ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... overlooked by the serene ass who has compiled this volume. We copy it with pleasure, as it has already shone in the 'Poet's Corner' of the 'Crusher' as the gifted effusion of the talented Manager of the Excelsior Mill, otherwise known to our delighted readers as 'Outcrop.'" The Green Springs "Arcadian" was no less fanciful in imagery: "Messrs. —— and Co. send us a gaudy green-and-yellow, parrot-colored ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on hand to clean and arrange things. At the sight of the large rooms and pretty yard, bare enough in winter, but giving promise of a delightful greenness in spring, and the array of new furniture standing about in excelsior, the whole family fell into a fever of delight. Such beauty, such spaciousness! George rubbed his feet over the new carpets and Bass examined the quality of the furniture critically. "Swell," was his comment. Mrs. Gerhardt roved to and fro like a person in a dream. She could not believe that ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... appeared "Ballads and Other Poems," and the two collections established their author in the popular heart beyond possibility of assault. They contained "A Psalm of Life," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Excelsior," which, however we may dispute their claims as poetry, have taken their place among the treasured household ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... desperandum; there is still room for improvement. Let your motto be 'Excelsior.' Possibly you may have already extracted from one-fifteenth to one-twelfth of the energy stored in the pound of carbon, but hardly more. Go on, go on, and bring it so cheap as to reach the humblest dwelling when you shall celebrate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... Massachusetts Historical Society is a prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently evolving as he trudged from house ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... after soiling the bed give no further care to it until the bed is bearing, others cover the beds with some litter, in the form of straw or excelsior. This is done for the purpose of conserving the moisture in the bed, and especially the moisture on the surface of the bed. Sometimes where there is a tendency for the material in the bed to become ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... crept back into the hammock, but out I went when I reached page 16, and repeated the performance at pages 19, 21, and 24 until the supplementary excitement became monotonous. Whereupon I procured some rags and excelsior, made a bed underneath the hammock, and proceeded to enjoy our eminent ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... which I had brought down, was a beautiful structure, made, I think, of very fine excelsior of a bright straw-color. It was suspended in an upright fork of four twigs, and lashed securely to three of them, while a few lines were passed around the fourth. Though it was in a fork, it did not rest on it, but was suspended three inches above it, a genuine ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... office, and another large room to be used for a retail store. On the second floor is the sorting room, and adjoining or connected with it is the baling room, where such stuff as paper, rags and excelsior is pressed, ready to be taken away. On this floor, too, is to be found the kitchen, the dining room and the reading room. On the third floor are situated the dormitories and sleeping rooms. This plan is often varied. Sometimes there is a basement and only one or ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... and at six o'clock our Company might have been seen (had there been a better light to see it by) progressing smartly in column of platoons. The shades of night were falling fast as over Regent's Park we passed, and my platoon was marching last, excelsior. As my platoon came opposite our Commanding Officer he gave the order, "About turn." We did so. "Form fours, left"—we made it that. The night fell thicker; I can now speak only for myself and my immediate neighbours. "Right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... passing notice on account of the numerous varieties which they present, differing in their precocity, in their manner of growth, their foliage, and bark. Thus of the common ash (Fraxinus excelsior) the catalogue of Messrs. Lawson of Edinburgh includes twenty-one varieties, some of which differ much in their bark; there is a yellow, a streaked reddish-white, a purple, a wart-barked and a fungous-barked variety. (10/144. Loudon's 'Arboretum et Fruticetum' ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... holy fire which we ought to keep burning, if adaptation is really to be improvement. If, as I have tried to show in my Philosophy of Religion, the innermost core of all religion is faith in the persistence of value in the world, and if the highest values express themselves in the cry "Excelsior!" then the capital point is, that this cry should always be heard and followed. We have here a corollary of the theory of evolution in its ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... then he murmured low to himself, '"When through an Alpine village passed." That's where the idea of the Excelsior comes in; see? "It goes up Mont Blanc," you said yourself. "Through snow and ice, A cycle with the strange device, Excelsior!"' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... circle formed about the case watching Ned take out the nails very carefully. Soon Jinks and he had the top boards off and then started to lift out the excelsior. This disposed of, a flat paper parcel was seen. Ned lifted it out, and seeing another one underneath, Jinks took it out also. Meredith and Don looked to see if there were any more, but excelsior seemed to fill the bottom ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges, to crawl up the remaining distance ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... as have not been able to cross a wide treeless space such as a river. The acquisition which pleased me most, in this place, was a new species of butterfly (a Catagramma), which has since been named C. excelsior, owing to its surpassing in size and beauty all the previously-known species of its singularly beautiful genus. The upper surface of the wings is of the richest blue, varying in shade with the play of light, and on each side is a broad curved stripe of an orange colour. It is a bold flyer, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... combined. Even the surrounding ledges could not withstand this terrible upheaval, and tons of rock were sometimes thrown up, with the water, more than two hundred feet. It is not strange, therefore, that this is called Excelsior, the King of Geysers. It is the most tremendous, awe-inspiring fountain in the world. When it will be again aroused, no one can tell. Its interval would seem to be from seven to ten years. Said an enthusiastic traveler to me: "If the Excelsior ever plays again, I will gladly ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Alpinist— Excelsior, there's nought we may not dare! Why, now, confess defeat, when plain in sight Looms the stern peak—to which we've toiled and fought Up many a mountain gorge and soaring height? It were a shame if we should now go back And, leaving all we've ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... really necessary, is most helpful. Where funds are lacking, one may be made by the pupils at small expense. A barrel, wooden box, or large pail may be filled with hay or excelsior, and small, covered, granite pails may be ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... bird house we find a tiny pair making their plans to occupy it and to take up housekeeping. Sometimes this will happen the same day the bird house is set up. Always provide some nesting material near at hand; linen or cotton thread, ravellings, tow, hair and excelsior are all good. Of course we must not attempt to build the nest. No one is ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... together until we discovered that each of us knew a man named Hellsmith, traveling for a stove factory in Duluth. This caused us to remark that the world was a very small place, and then this New Yorker busts his string and takes off his tin foil and excelsior packing and starts in giving us his Ellen Terris, beginning with the time he used to sell shoelaces to the Indians on the spot where Tammany Hall ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... thrusts. Th' editor left thim sacrilegious advertisements f'r his venal contimp'raries. His was pious an' nice: 'Do ye'er smokin' in this wurruld. Th' Christyan Unity Five-Cint See-gar is made out iv th' finest grades iv excelsior iver projooced in Kansas!' 'Nebuchednezzar grass seed, f'r man an' beast.' 'A handful iv meal in a barrel an' a little ile in a curse. Swedenborgian bran fried in kerosene makes th' best breakfast dish in th' wurruld.' 'Twus nice ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... told you about myself,' he said. 'Am I sure I can get work in Chicago? I am, worse luck. Darling, have you in your more material moments ever toyed with a Boyd's Premier Breakfast-Sausage or kept body and soul together with a slice off a Boyd's Excelsior Home-Cured Ham? My father makes them, and the tragedy of my life is that he wants me to help him at it. This was my position. I loathed the family business as much as dad loved it. I had a notion—a ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... two or three old New York families who had hitherto stood upon their dignity, and refused to acknowledge the shoddy aristocracy. The beautiful Mrs. John Seymour, therefore, was no less useful than ornamental, and advanced Mrs. Follingsbee's purposes in her "Excelsior" movements. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... will burn as harmlessly as excelsior in the open air," went on Tom. "But I hope to prove, when it is confined in a chamber, that it will be highly explosive. I'm going to make a test ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... the ecstasy of art, brought the "verse" part of his selection to an excruciating conclusion, half a tone below pitch. Before the chorus there was a brief pause for effect. In this pause, from Mr. Linder's open face a voice fell like a falling star. Although it did not cry "Excelsior," its output of vocables might have been mistaken, by a casual ear, for that clarion call. What the Honorable Mr. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... clarify the spirit of the nation. The authors of these productions have frequently won the recognition and affection of their contemporaries by means of prose and verse quite unsuited to sustain the test of severe critical standards. Neither Longfellow's "Excelsior" nor Poe's "Bells" nor Whittier's "Maud Muller" is among the best poems of the three writers in question, yet there was something in each of these productions which caught the fancy of a whole American generation. It expressed one phase ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... water. When this has dried, sandpaper smooth, using No. 00 paper held on the tips of the fingers. Apply a dark brown filler. When this has flatted, i.e., when the gloss has disappeared, which will be in the course of ten or fifteen minutes, wipe off clean with excelsior and then with waste or a cloth. Allow this to dry over night, then apply two or three coats of wax. Polish each coat with a flannel cloth by briskly ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... flushed a little at this practical direct answer to her half-figurative question. However, she began to think that moral Alpine-climbing youth might have pecuniary restrictions in their high ambitions, and that the hero of "Excelsior" might have succumbed to more powerful opposition than the wisdom of Age ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... Alcott. His best-known long poems are "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," "The Building of the Ship," and "The Courtship of Miles Standish." He made a fine translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy." Among his many short poems, "Excelsior," "The Psalm of Life," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Paul Revere's Ride" are continuously popular. He died in 1882. He was the first American writer who was honored by a memorial ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... within the recollection of almost the youngest inhabitant, how the daily trains, drawn by horse, mule, or ox, dragged themselves through our streets, proclaiming from their cotton coverings their distant destination, illustrating on their march the Western 'Excelsior'— ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sakes!" said the grandmother, taking her arms out of the suds and looked troubled. "Poor fellow! What would he like? I haven't got any hay, but there's some mashed potatoes left, and what is there? Why, there's some excelsior the lamp-shade come packed in. You don't suppose he'd think it was hay, do you? No, I guess it wouldn't taste ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... No. Up—up—up. Excelsior. I seem to be climbing double the number of steps, in going up, to what I did in coming down. My eyes too, after the keyhole, have not yet become re-accustomed to the light. I pause. I could almost swear that somebody, two steps lower ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... toy-stores, that wind up with a key and go rushing off frantically in tangents. No wonder the train to my lost village is called "Le petit deraillard"—"The little get-off-the-track." And so I say, it might all have come packed in excelsior in a neat box, complete, with instructions, for the sum of four francs sixty-five centimes, had it not been otherwise destined to run twice daily, rain or shine, to ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... a sudden sullen gray; the little square room, littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture, and the paper-hanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and die, How will my living be secured?— Stephen, your life is not insured. But tie a rope your waist around, And it will hold you safe and sound." "I will," said he. "Now for the roof— All snugly tied, and danger-proof! Excelsior! Excel—But no! The rope is not secured below!" Said Rachel, "Climb, the end to throw Across the top, and I will go And tie that end around my waist." "Well, every woman to her taste; You always would be tightly laced. Rachel, when you became my bride, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... but whoever excels all others in his own line, if his habits are good and his integrity undoubted, cannot fail to secure abundant patronage, and the wealth that naturally follows. Let your motto then always be "Excelsior," for by living up to it there is no such word ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... with us yesterday, looking wonderfully well, and singing "Excelsior" with a certain dramatic fire in her, whereof I seem to remember having seen sparks afore now. Etc. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... to the fact that a woman who joins a mountaineering party should not impose her personal doubts on men who are willing to go on. She flourished her ice ax bravely, and cried, "Excelsior!" ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... weakened by the withdrawal of so many troops for the grand flanking movement, gave way before they could be reached with the steel; and their three-deep lines became mixed up in the most hopeless disorder. Kearney's division made a gallant charge, in this movement, Sickles' Excelsior Brigade once more evidencing that splendid steadiness with the bayonet which had been so conspicuous at Williamsburgh and Fair Oaks. General Heintzelman joined in this brilliant advance, his tall form and blue blouse conspicuous as he rode rapidly along the lines, speaking ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... That reached, we are, for a time, content with our elevation. But just enough of valley and mountain, stretching far off in the dim distance, is revealed, to quicken our desire for a more extended vision, and soon, with renewed strength, we lift our gaze upward, and the word 'excelsior!' comes almost unbidden to our lips. There is a higher and a highest place to be gained, and I feel, Agnes, that there will be no rest for my feet ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... number of years he farmed. His motto was "excelsior" in whatever he engaged, and in farming ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... with new and crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, all on the same bank, the Excelsior National, of New York City. There were thirty of the bills, and evidently not one of them had been in circulation. The detective started as he took them up, held them to the somewhat dim light, and started again. He paused for a moment, as if deciding ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... youth in Excelsior one is always glad to accept the invitation or challenge of the mountain to go higher, especially when the heat flows in tremulous waves in the valley and even the breeze seems like a draught of air from an open oven. The intense heat only serves to make the insects more ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... writes the word Khwaja (for Khwajah see vol. vi. 46). Here we are at once interested in the scapegrace who looked Excelsior. In fact the tale begins with a strong inducement to boyish vagabondage and scampish indolence; but the Moslem would see in it the hand of Destiny bringing good out of evil. Amongst other meanings of "Khwajah " it is a honorific title given by Khorasanis to their ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... teach men to aspire he writes "Excelsior" and so causes them to know that only he who aspires really lives. They see the groundling, the boor, the drudge, and the clown content to dwell in the valley amid the loaves and fishes of animal desires, while the man who aspires is struggling toward the heights whence he may gain an outlook ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... like the nervous young woman in 'Excelsior,'" David Linton said, with a laugh. "Cheer up, my girl—there's no need to worry about Monarch and me. He's only playful; hasn't an atom of vice, and I know him very well by now. I never put my leg ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... may be divided into two sub-groups, according as the three sexual forms are found on the same individual or on distinct individuals. Of this latter or trioicous sub-group, the common Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) offers a good instance: thus, I examined during the spring and autumn fifteen trees growing in the same field; and of these, eight produced male flowers alone, and in the autumn not a single seed; ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... him. The last painter had spilled his last splash of paint on the sprouting grass beneath the spotless white window sills. The last paper-hanger had departed. Winnie S. was loading into what he called a "truck wagon" the excelsior and bagging in which the final consignment of new furniture had been wrapped during its journey from Boston. About the front yard Kenelm Parker was moving, rake in hand. In the kitchen Imogene, the girl from the Orphans' Home in Boston, who had been engaged to act as "hired ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... cruelly on the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me, with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a pile of planking fresh from the woodcutter's axe. There was no ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... yielded at this juncture, and Forsythe did not immediately answer. Instead, with Munson himself, and Billings the cook—insanely emitting whoops and yelps as he danced around for a peep—he joined the others in tearing out excelsior from the box. Then the bare contents came ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... over again about every five years, and it's a great thing to keep up with the new things. I always try and keep up with the new things of every kind. Don't you think that's a good motto for a young couple—to keep 'going higher'? That's the name of that piece of poetry—what do they call it?— Excelsior!" ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... is found near the Great Fountain; it will make good its name should you throw into it a handful of dirt. Excelsior Geyser, not far away, is really a winter volcano, its crater being a seething caldron near the Firehole River, into which it sends six million gallons of water each day, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... aloft, fly aloft; tower, soar, take off; spring up, pop up, jump up, catapult upwards, explode upwards; hover, spire, plane, swim, float, surge; leap &c 309. Adj. rising &c v.. scandent^, buoyant; supernatant, superfluitant^; excelsior. Adv. uphill. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Excelsior or Michel might be added as very early; Aroma is grown very extensively in some sections; also Tennessee (Tennessee Prolific) is a very promising new ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... apprising me of his marriage, I had not heard from him. It was, therefore, with some surprise, a good deal of reminiscent affection, and a slight twinge of reproach that, two years after, I looked up from some proofs, in the sanctum of the "Daily Excelsior," to recognize his handwriting on a note that was handed to me by a ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... luck than Bishop Briggs had with old Johnson, the Excelsior Bank president," said the visitor, encouraged by Windibrook's "heartiness" into a humorous retrospect. "Briggs goes to him for a subscription for a new fence round the buryin'-ground—the old one havin' rotted ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the McCloud River, Soda Springs, Big Spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere. Some demand bears, and make excited inquiries concerning their haunts, how many there might be altogether on the mountain, and whether they are grizzly, brown, or black. Others shout, "Excelsior," and make off at once for the upper snow fields. Most, however, are content with comparatively level ground and moderate distances, gathering at the hotel every evening laden with trophies—great sheaves of flowers, cones ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... the new valise and an old dress-suitcase tightly packed and shoved beneath the bed, and over a chair a tan-linen suit inserted with strips of large-holed embroidery that had been dyed in coffee by Katy Stutz. It had originally been designed as a traveling suit for a honeymoon trip to Excelsior Springs until that project had been decided against in favor of immediate possession of the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the sound Dan could make. He was trying to frame words, but his teeth wouldn't stop long enough. Dick made a dive for a lot of excelsior that had come around some of their goods the day before. This he threw into the dead, cold fireplace. Dan, shaking as though with ague, brought a log and laid it across the excelsior. Dick brought some more firewood. In a short time they had it well heaped. Then ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... professional library besides the family books which ran into the hundreds. She loved to see the crates and barrels swallow up dishes and crockery like hungry monsters with wide-open jaws. She found even the wrapping of chair legs with excelsior, and the crating of bureau ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... across Fiddes and Morris driving down this street when they hailed me and announced that they had just come from the Excelsior Hotel, the headquarters of the 29th Division, with the news that our bearers had to set off for the front before morning, and that I was one of the three officers who were to accompany them. We finished our shopping, and I went to Cook's office and wrote two post cards, then drove out to ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... be greatly facilitated by suspending the cell by the terminals, as shown in Fig. 305. Care should be taken to make this suspension so that the bottom of the jar will not be more than two inches above the table. A pad of excelsior should be placed under it to avoid breaking the glass jar ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... and light a fire in a stove, using not more than two matches, or light a gas range, top burner, oven and boiler, without having the gas blow or smoke. Lay and light a fire in the open, using no artificial tinder, such as paper or excelsior, and not ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... As in Excelsior, the shades of night were falling fast, when Cargrim found himself at the door of the curate's lodging. Here he met with a check, for Gabriel's landlady informed him that Mr Pendle was not at home, and she did not know where he was or when he would ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... and Flora smiled, well pleased, but she had not caught half the meaning. "May it be the right excelsior" added Ethel, in a low voice that no one heard, and she was glad they did not. They were all triumphant, and she could not tell why she had a sense of sadness, and thought of Flora's story long ago, of the girl who ascended Mont Blanc, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... our weary way upward. We sing "Excelsior" in our hearts, and forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night's toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... gray-eyed saint with the most shapely hands I ever saw. Reverend Hugh thinks so, too, I have no doubt. It was really too bad to waste a good fruit salad on him though, for I know he didn't know what he was eating. Excelsior would taste like ambrosia to him if Mary sat opposite—all of which is very much as it should be, I know. I thought for a while Mary liked Dr. Clay pretty well, but I know it is not serious, for she ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... appear in plays and pictures seated at the foot of a high, rocky cliff in some lonely spot, with bales and casks and strange looking bundles about. No one would be heartless enough to ask what was inside the bundles, but I have always had a strong suspicion that it was excelsior." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... seen a mattress sent away from the house to be renovated, and had asked the nurse all sorts of questions about it. We concluded it would be a fine thing to renovate the mattress of one of our doll-beds. So we ripped one end open and pulled out all the cotton and excelsior it was stuffed with, and burned it in the nursery grate. Then we began to look around the house for something ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was done up in a big black coffin covered with flowers; and the lid with his name, age and wonderful accomplishment engraved upon a plate stood beside him. The remains of Mighty Mardo, stuffed with baled hay and excelsior, were embracing the dead Admiral with monster coils; and the crowds came, gazed, and marveled; then they went forth to tell their friends that they might come ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... occasionally exclaiming, "That's got them," "That's knocked Genesis," with similar ejaculations of an aspiring mind. She glanced at the pile. Reran, minus the style. Darwin, minus the modesty. A comic edition of the book of Job, by "Excelsior," Pittsburgh, Pa. "The Beginning of Life," with diagrams. "Angel or Ape?" by Mrs. Julia P. Chunk. She was amused, and wondered idly what was passing within his narrow but not uninteresting brain. Did he suppose that he was going to "find out"? She ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... boarding-houses would laugh it and him to scorn. If this were not so, would he be found undertaking to lodge and feed people for one dollar or a dollar and a half a day? Neither does he dream of asking them, even at this low price, to fare as he fares. The "Excelsior" mattresses, at which they cry out in disgust, are beds of down in comparison with the straw "tick" on which he and his wife sleep soundly and contentedly. He has paid $4.50 for each mattress, as a special concession to what he understands city ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... upon the flag that upward led the way Until we lost it in the smoke on Lookout side that day; And then like demons loosed from hell we clambered up the crag, "Excelsior," our motto, and our mission, ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... October and eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it hed last year, and with their new pro-cess griss mills they jerk all the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior and upholster your horses with hemlock ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... of all parodies is one in imitation of Longfellow's "Excelsior," entitled "Tobacco." It ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings |
