"Figurehead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interesting in themselves, and some whom chance and the agreement of men have picked out as symbols and convenient indications of some particular group or temperament of opinions. To the latter it is that Sir Thomas More belongs. An age and a type of mind have found in him and his Utopia a figurehead and a token; and pleasant and honourable as his personality and household present themselves to the modern reader, it is doubtful if they would by this time have retained any peculiar distinction among the many other contemporaries of whom we have chance ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... with Anaitis in the two tall chairs that were in the prow of the vessel, under a canopy of crimson stuff embroidered with gold dragons, and just back of the ship's figurehead, which was a dragon painted with thirty colors: and the ship moved out of the harbor, and so into the open sea. Thus they ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... upholding the claims of John Dillon and the other faithful to the flag of T.M. Healy. Meanwhile Justin McCarthy, a man of excellent intention but of feeble grasp, occupied the chair of the Party, but did nothing to direct its policy. He was a decent figurehead, but not much else. William O'Brien lent all the support of his powerful personality to Mr Dillon in the hope that, by establishing his leadership and keeping the door open for reconciliation with the Parnellite minority, he could restore the Party to some of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... training of the men, gave instruction in tactics to the officers, caused maps to be prepared, and in general took every precaution that his experience could suggest to ensure success. Del Canto was himself no mere figurehead, but a thoroughly capable leader who had distinguished himself at Tacna (1880) and Miraflores (1881), as well as in the present war. The men were enthusiastic, and the officers unusually numerous. The artillery was fair, the cavalry good, and the train and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... strung bow, scarcely fifty feet in length, low amidships and curving upwards to high peaks at stem and stern, both of which converged to sharp edges. It resembled an enormous canoe rather than aught else to which we can compare it. On the stem was a carved and gilt dragon, the figurehead of the ship, which glittered in the bright rays of the sun. Along the bulwarks of the ship, fore and aft, hung rows of large painted wooden shields, which gave an Argus-eyed aspect to the craft. Between them was a double row of thole-pins for the great ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... turned to the fired East, where, in the sea-haze, lay the sacred places clothed (like the Sacrament) in that gauzy veil. First of them Trenchemer steered, the King's red galley, in whose prow, stiff and hieratic as a figurehead, was the King himself, watching for a sign. The great ships rolled and plunged, the tide came racing by them, blue-green water lipped with foam, carrying upon it unknown weeds, golden fruit floating, wreckage unfamiliar, a dead fish scarlet-rayed, a basket strangely wrought—drifting heralds ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Teddy, with a twinkle in his eye. "If there's a Mrs. Jason on board Jason himself won't have a word to say about the expedition. He'll be nothing but a figurehead. ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... frustrated the other because their objects were different. When the French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alencon might come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly that a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished Alencon to be there as figurehead at the time—the very thing that the official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was betrayed and suppressed, and Alencon's life was for a time in danger; but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne, Alencon kept openly a rival ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... quite as well now in my absence as they did in my presence. St. Timothy's is a great, strong society of the rich, and the man they engage to preach to them on Sundays has mighty little to do that any figurehead couldn't do as well. Down here—well, there is something to do which won't get done unless I do it. And if this neighbourhood, or any other similar one, needs me, there's no question that still more ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... showed for figurehead a Love with wings; The second showed for figurehead a Worm with stings; The third, a Lily tangled to a Rose which clings. The first bore for freight gold and spice and down; The second bore a sword, a sceptre, and a crown; The third, a heap of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... happy here is the governess, and the factory hands are working for her gratification. But that's only apparent: she is only the figurehead. The real person, for whom everything is being done, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... before had been his painted Madonna of wood, now became Frederick's ecstatic figurehead. He saw her high above the waves on the prow of a phantom sailing ship, bent forward with open mouth and wide eyes, her yellow hair falling straight down from both ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... She is supposed to have struck on a reef to the southward of the Palm Islands, as the bulk of her cargo was cast ashore in Ramsay Bay, Hinchinbrook Island. Portions of the wreckage were found on the Brook Islands; her figurehead—the spread eagle of the United States—and a seaman's chest were picked up on the beach here. Her windlass, with a child's pinafore entangled with it—for the skipper had taken his wife and two children to bear him company—drifted on the South Franklands, 40 miles to the north, and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... substance. This gunwale is open at the stern, the ends not being connected, but the bow is closed by a raised end-board fancifully carved and painted in front of which a crest-like wooden ornament fits into a groove running along the beak. This figurehead, called tabura, is elaborately cut into various devices, painted red and white, and decorated with white egg-shells and feathers of the cassowary and bird of paradise. The bow and stern also are more ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... flattery, a display of enthusiasm and promises to place the power about to be conferred on them by the people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and prejudices. Thus introduced into the municipal council, they constitute its majority and appoint a mayor who is their figurehead or creature, now the bold leader and again the docile instrument of their spite, their favors, and their headlong action, of their blunders and presumption, and of their meddlesome disposition and encroachments.—In the department, the council general, also elected by universal suffrage, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he is efficient, without regard to his politics. This is the course taken very generally by other great nations, and especially by our sister republic of Great Britain (for Great Britain is simply a republic with a monarchical figurehead lingering along on good behavior): she retains her representatives in these positions, and promotes them without any regard to their party relations. During my first official residence at Berlin, although the home government at London was of the Conservative party, it retained at the German ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... advisers and their lords were in their thinking, they did not dare to trample openly on the old tradition. The emperor might in practice be a completely powerless figurehead, but he belonged nevertheless, according to tradition, to a family of divine origin, which had obtained its office not merely by the exercise of force but through a "divine mandate". Accordingly, if one of the feudal ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... it, lad. The only embargo that I lay upon you is—haul off, and mind you don't let your figurehead go by the board. Meanwhile, here comes the boat. Now, Nigel, none o' your courtin' till everything is settled and the wind fair—dead aft my lad, and blowin' stiff. You and the hermit are goin' off ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... shape, form, outline, tournure, conformation, image, effigy, statue, bust, figurehead, likeness; numeral, digit, number; type, emblem, symbol; caryatid; atlantes, telamones; figurine; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... had done so. For Fritz, there was a fishing-net and a ten-bladed knife; for Arthur a turning lathe with foot-power, and in addition a tall toy ship with a golden-haired nymph as figurehead. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... contracted. The Greeks understood the place of women; all this nonsense of vows of fidelity and exaltation of sentiment in the home cramps a man's ambitions. It is perfectly natural that he should take a wife if his position calls for it, because the society in which we move has made a figurehead of that kind necessary. But that a woman should expect a man to be faithful to her, be she wife or mistress, is contrary ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the other counties of his district, and speeches on behalf of the party outside the Demijohn, entailed by too successful stumping in the past. Capping all was the perverse closet-reformer, Sprague, and his figurehead, Graves. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... really beautiful and sat the water almost as gracefully as the birch-bark canoe of the Chippewas. At each end they rose into a sort of neck, which terminated often in a head carved to resemble a deer or some fabled animal. Some of them had white bands encircling the throat of this figurehead. Their paddles were short and broad, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... reveal Most aptly how sweet concert for the time Doth work our purpose on this pliant soul. So long as he from contact with his kind We can prevent by flattery and guile; He, like to wax within the moulder's hand, May form a figurehead of brave design, But statue-like it were an empty house. 1st Gentleman: I have a thought, sweet Quezox, and must voice It in thine ear. Soon, from that distant land Where our oppressors dwell, others will hie Them to our shores; and they may ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... for that, sir. I'll show my figurehead there first thing in the mornin'. No fears o' any one getting theer afore me, if they've ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... intense. There was almost a mutiny in the second war year. And anything to help it along. To-morrow, Franz Lipp the new foreign minister of the Soviets will telegraph to Berlin recalling the Bavarian ambassador; there is one, you know—a figurehead. And the good Franz will announce to the world that Bavaria has declared its independence of Prussia. This will be a politic move for the Soviets as well as England. For the bourgeoisie in Bavaria dislike Prussia as much as the communists dislike her. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... is the "Man with a Pick." The group in the tympanum represents Varied Industries. (p. 138.) The central figure is Agriculture, the basic food-supplying industry. On one side is the Builder, on the other the Common Workman. Beyond them are Commerce holding the figurehead of a ship, and a woman with a spindle, a lamb before ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the train, but after the winter of trial and probation, and difficulties of beginning are over, and the summer of success has come, his position, in regard to the artists, must be more like that of a figurehead. I have, however, great faith in the power of artists to make a figure-head useful as well as ornamental, although I do not know that they have shown a proof of this to-day by making their figure-head deliver a speech, which it is well known ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... establish a native prince on the throne of the Incas to rule in accordance with the dictates of Spain. The young prince, Manco, a son of the great Inca Huayna Capac, named for the first Inca, Manco Ccapac, the founder of the dynasty, was selected as the most acceptable figurehead. He was a young man of ability and spirit. His induction into office in 1534 with appropriate ceremonies, the barbaric splendor of which only made the farce the more pitiful, did little to gratify his natural ambition. As might ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an almost pedantic rigour of mind and character, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... intrigues and domestic squabbles over the choice of his successor, and also that the noble electors were able not only to secure liberal bribes but to wring from the elect such concessions as gradually reduced the kingship to an ornamental figurehead. Most of the later kings were foreigners who used what little power was left to them in furtherance of their native interests rather than of the welfare of Poland. Thus the kings in the first half of the eighteenth century were German electors of Saxony, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... he will be well served," he answered. "There is no one more fit to command than you, sir. The present admirable disposition of our forces is yours, not mine; so far I have been no more than a figurehead. Your plan of entrenchments has been a revelation ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... Captain Nummy Tangye, of the Touch-me-not, relinquished his command. Captain Tangye's baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his native town. But the Touch-me-not, which he had commanded for thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh a scroll with the motto, Noli Me Tangere, and this being, in popular belief, an effigy of the captain taken in the prime of life, Mr. Tangye cheerfully accepted the fiction with its implication of Scottish ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... flames. The ship was found to be the Dover Castle, a new and very fast ship of the Company's service, of which all traces had been lost since she left Bombay two years before. She was now painted entirely black, and a snake had been added for her figurehead. The original name, however, still remained upon the binnacle and ship's bell. Her former armament had been increased and she now carried thirty guns, of ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... your own without complaint, while attending to our various lesser hurts and scratches. Wherefore, just because we feel you are above us in this and many other things, we have set you amongst us as a warning Figurehead, which cries shame upon us if we falter, and reminds us that you, a woman, can do, and probably will do, what we men cannot. Imagine it! You would bear all things for love's sake!—and, frankly speaking, we would bear nothing at all, except for our own immediate and particular pleasure. For that, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... lips curled as she turned to face him and she seemed to spit the words at him in sudden, unexpected resentment. "I love the meaningless sound of my official figurehead title! It's so much better than being regarded as a living person with ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... conjecture, we have the key to the large popularity of the delusion—as I think it. We have long ceased in England to take much interest in saints, and in the recent revival of the cultus of St. George, the saint is little more than a patriotic figurehead. And the appeal to the saints to succour us is certainly not a common English practice; it is held Popish by most of our countrymen. But angels, with certain reservations, have retained their popularity, and so, when it was settled that the English ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... obeyed. The man who has not power is not obeyed. Titles are of little importance, though it is the custom for the man with the actual power eventually to assume the official rank of authority. Since the President in Asuncion was no more than a figurehead who called anxiously upon the Senor Francia every morning for instructions concerning the management of the nation, Francia indifferently ignored him whenever he chose and gave orders directly. There would be very little surprise and no disorder whatever when The Master proclaimed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... connected with the magazine. When all was ready the train was ignited; the boats moved away and were out of danger when the explosion took place. The men saw their ship sink, and all they had to remind them of the circumstances was a bulldog's head, the same being the figurehead of the ship. The boatswain and several seamen were killed by the Haytian fire. The lost vessel was a gunboat, and her crew would not be more than 150. These were not long in their boats, but were rescued by passing ships ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... time the Indians arrived with the head of the alligator, which they and Sambo proposed to preserve, in order, the latter said, to make a figurehead for the new vessel! ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Buzzby doated on her as if she were his only child, and felt a secret pride in being in some indefinable way her protector. Buzzby philosophized about her, too, after a strange fashion. "You see," he would say to Fred, "it's not that her figurehead is cut altogether after a parfect pattern—by no means, for I've seen pictur's and statues that wos better—but she carries her head a little down, d'ye see, Master Fred? and there's where it is; that's the way I gauges the worth o' young women, jist accordin' as they ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with fury. "I have too many princes and baronets here for my taste." He stamped round the room in agitation. "My men!" he cried. "Good Lord, what have I had to do with them? I wish I'd never seen the figurehead of the yacht. Good Lord! my men! I would sooner run an excursion steamer ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... priest, Senor Pascual Reyes, has arrived here from Cebu, and says that in Leyte General Lucban is committing many abuses and that Colonel Mojica is only a mere figurehead. In Cebu, he says, things are also in a chaotic condition, because the military chief, Magsilum [Maxilom,—TR.], and the people ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... other countries that it is Queen Marie who is really the head of the Rumanian royal family and that the King is little more than a figurehead. With this estimate I do not agree. Rumania could have no better spokesman than Queen Marie, whose talents, beauty, and exceptional tact peculiarly fit her for the difficult role she has been called upon to play. But the King, though he is by nature quiet and retiring, is by no means lacking ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... governing Ireland in the interests of England. It was the beginning of a government which led to the appointment of such a man as Primate Boulter, who simply ruled Ireland behind the Lord Lieutenant (who was but a figurehead) for and on behalf of the King of England's advisers. Irish institutions, Irish ideas, Irish traditions, the Irish Church, Irish schools, Irish language and literature, Irish trade, manufactures, commerce, agriculture—all were ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... they did and the speech was a success. There is a wooden statue of Daniel Webster that has stood for forty years in Hingham, Massachusetts. It is larger than life and called a good portrait. It was made more than sixty years ago as a figurehead for the ship Daniel Webster but never put on. That would have been appropriate if he was occasionally half seas over. Daniel's devotion to his only brother "Zeke" is pleasant to remember. By the way, there are many men who ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... said she; 'and you may suppose, sir, that a man had to have something to show for a figurehead before he could marry Madame de Merret, who, without any reflection on others, was the handsomest and richest heiress in our parts. She had about twenty thousand francs a year. All the town was at the wedding; the bride was pretty ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... tried to read a story in my fairy book, called 'The Gift Ship,' but the ship's masts were studded with jewels, and its figurehead was of pure gold, and some way it seemed too grand, too fine, while Pa was longing for just a plain ship like the other ships that we see every day. I knew it was its cargo that he was anxious about, but the story seemed too good to be true, and ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... he is only a figurehead; that he is only a name; that he is in reality an imperceptible, intangible idol, whom hoboes worship, and to whom they refer as their common leader, while, in reality, there is no real ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... right to do certain things which England, they knew, would be indisposed to permit. In brief, they claimed religious and civil independence, the latter in all but name, and left the king to be a figurehead without perquisites or power. They followed this intrepid statement by solemnly proclaiming Charles in Boston, and threw a sop to Cerberus in the shape of a letter couched in conciliating terms, feigning to believe that their ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... why some one who is simply a figurehead goes on taking all the credit for tricks turned by a smart fellow who is working for him. Now, if you lived in the dear old land of ready money, where the accident of birth doesn't give any man the right to sit on somebody else's neck, you'd ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... and card parties every day! I'd know that the house was clean, the meals as good and as nourishing as could be; I'd know that guests would be well cared for and that bills would be paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a house, supposed to do more than that? I don't want to be a mere figurehead." ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... of the sermon that it all connected up. Years ago a ship had sailed into the harbor, and I had been taken down to see it. I had been enchanted by the freshly painted figurehead—a strong young god of some old Norse tale, with red-gold hair and a bright blue tunic. And now in the harbor was The Viking, and here, in the shadow of a perfectly orthodox pulpit, sat that strong young god, more glorious even than my memory of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... merely a figurehead in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). The change of title is significant. The two previous works have been romances, but it is now Mrs. Radcliffe's intention to let herself go further in the direction of wonder and suspense ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... having been fixed, at worst at death, at best exile or civil war. He had to go from a country where he was the wealthiest and most important personage to another where he would be merely regarded as a minor German princeling set up as a figurehead, and where many of the gentry were wealthier than he. This point was appreciated by Lady Mary when she went to Hanover in November, 1716, for she wrote from there to the Countess of Bristol: "I have now made the tour of Germany, and cannot help observing difference between ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... him was an old Roman image, the head and bust of an Emperor, which had been unearthed in the neighbourhood of the house when the foundations had been laid, and had been adopted forthwith as a family relic. If this old imperial figurehead had been an enemy, let us say the famous robber of the district, our marksman felt that he could easily have shattered his skull ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... already perplexing chronology of Japan. In administrative methods there was a difference. The Northern Court adhered to the camera system: that is to say, the actual occupant of the throne was a mere figurehead, the practical functions of Government being discharged by the cloistered sovereign. In the Southern Court the Emperor himself, nominally at all events, directed the business of administration. Further, the office of shogun in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... treat British officers like common criminals, as he was supposed to. I think this is highly probable, though I cannot vouch for the truth of the assertion, it being only hearsay. He was replaced by a fat and rather harmless dug-out captain, who proved to be only a pompous figurehead. The camp was entirely run by the second in command, Lieutenant Wolfe. In England persons of this type are so rarely met with that our language does not contain the necessary words to describe them adequately. In Germany they are comparatively common, therefore, collectively they may be ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... point, until we found ourselves, before we were aware, on the grassy slope outside the castle wall. Besides, there was the cathedral to be visited, and the tomb of Richard Watts, "with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's figurehead." ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... as it had not beheld during the last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of figurehead in the position ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... enjoyed G? She's just the kind of oddity he doted on. Fancy her teaching music of all things. It must be only scales and exercises. I think she's splendid to see the incongruity herself, and refuse to call it music when she dare be honest. What a grotesque figurehead she looks, chum, doesn't she? I thoroughly enjoyed ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... with slender spars hung with snowy canvas, and braced with a web of taut cordage. Across the street that passed the foot of the slips, reached out the great bowsprits or jibbooms, springing from fine-drawn bows where, above a keen cut-water, the figurehead—pride of the ship—nestled in confident strength. Neptune with his trident, Venus rising from the sea, admirals of every age and nationality, favorite heroes like Wellington and Andrew Jackson were carved, with varying skill, from stout oak, and set up ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Romano laughed outright. "You do not know how bad are some of the men around the arch rebel, capitan. He has some bad advisers, I can tell you that. To some of the worst of the crowd, Aguinaldo is but a figurehead." ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... Secretary—a hard man with a soft manner and a morbid passion for work. This Secretary was called Wonder—John Fennil Wonder. The Viceroy possessed no name—nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them. He said, in confidence, that he was the electro-plated figurehead of a golden administration, and he watched in a dreamy, amused way Wonder's attempts to draw matters which were entirely outside his province into his own hands. "When we are all cherubims together," said His ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... foundation, in truth, for Frank's suggestion. The old schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as "Molly M," seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of ancient days. This figurehead jutted out beneath ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... at its word, and lopped it off the tree. A carver in the neighborhood engaged to make the figurehead. He was a tolerably good workman, and had already carved several figure-heads, in what he intended for feminine shapes, and looking pretty much like those which we see nowadays stuck up under a vessel's ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... new mayor had as qualifications for his office two facts only: he was the senior deputy of the city to the National Assembly; he possessed an unquenchable supply of civic and complimentary eloquence. Behind this figurehead the sections soon built up a new municipality or town council made up of delegates from the sections, and that varied in numbers at ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... extended On the grass the vessel's keel; High above it, gilt and splendid, Rose the figurehead ferocious With its crest ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... Annunciation chapel, which comes next in order, is a fine, burly, ship's-figurehead, commercial-hotel sort of being enough, but the Virgin is very ordinary. There is no real hair and no fresco background, only three dingy old blistered pictures of ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... deal of an exhibit, in his way. His togs were cut to fit his spars, and he carried 'em well—no wrinkles at the peak or sag along the boom. His figurehead was more'n average regular, and his hair was combed real nice—the part in the middle of it looked like it had been laid out with a plumb-line. Also, he had on white shoes and glory hallelujah stockings. Altogether, he was ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... limit. Say, she's born to troubles and worries all the time. And she mostly gets through all the time. Why? Grit! She doesn't just care a darn. She's going to get through—and she does. Say, let's get along down and leave that wall-eyed old figurehead ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... means to be jammed back in a mold that will turn me out to the family pattern. It means a willingness to give up thinking for myself and accept YOUR thoughts and shape my life by them. It means being a figurehead as long as you live and a replica of yourself when you are gone. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... of at least the tragic hero. But one of the worst of the many misunderstandings of his dicta brought the wrong notion about, and Virgil—that exquisite craftsman in verse and phrase, but otherwise, perhaps, not great poet and very dangerous pattern—had confirmed this notion by his deplorable figurehead. It is also fair to confess that all except morbid tastes do like to see the hero win. But if he is to be a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,—but I will not have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat, lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea under the bows—but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get on my own; for between him and me there is a secret ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... right one sees the ordinary workman with his sledge-hammer, bringing to mind the rougher side of industry. In the left corner a woman with her spindle - a lamb standing near - recalls the making of textiles. Commerce occupies the right corner, holding the prow of a vessel with its figurehead. ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... disturbances, they will select a man of the type of Li Wang of Korea, who betrayed his country to Japan, and make him Emperor of China. Whether this man will be the deposed emperor or a member of the Imperial family or the leader of the rebel party, remains to be seen. In any event he will be a figurehead in whose hand will not be vested political, financial and military power, which will be controlled by foreigners. All the valuable mines, various kinds of industries and our abundant natural resources will likewise be developed by others. China ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... her; she's a mere figurehead; she's awfully slow; I don't like black hair; I'm taken by conversation—and all that. There are some men that can only really love once in their lives, and never forget their first love, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... There can be no question that Stephens never did anything which in his own mind was in the least disloyal. And yet it was Stephens who, in the autumn of 1864, was singled out by artful men as a possible figurehead in the conduct of a separate peace negotiation with Sherman. A critic very hostile to Stephens and his faction might here raise the question as to what was at bottom the motive of Governor Brown, in the autumn of 1864, in withdrawing ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Fathers, true to the teachings of their forefathers, sailed for the New World with the image of St. Nicholas for a figurehead on their vessel. They named the first church they built for the much-loved St. Nicholas and made him patron saint of the new city on Manhattan Island. Thanks, many many thanks, to these sturdy old Dutchmen with unpronounceable names who preserved to posterity ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... with, and the voyage would be long enough for me to try my sea legs, and, as he believed, to cure me of my fancy for a sea life. I was to visit the skipper at the Angel tavern that evening, and if he liked my figurehead, as Woodrow put it, the matter could ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... brother of the Emperor, to come to the Low Countries, but Orange easily countered this manoeuvre by arresting the duke and opening negotiations with Matthias, who signed the second Union of Brussels, on December 10, 1577, and guaranteed liberty of conscience. The young archduke was henceforth a mere figurehead and Orange remained the real ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... beauty she was, as clean built and finely modelled as a yacht—for which, indeed, she might easily have been mistaken, except for the fact that her sails were not big enough. She was painted all black from her rail to her copper, with the bust of a woman, painted white, for a figurehead, and the name Martha Brown, with the word Baltimore—her port of registry—painted in white letters on her stern. She appeared to be in little more than deep-ballast trim, and I began to wonder whither she was bound even before ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... I fancied I saw a gilt figure-head and three masts, belonging to a ship just about to start; so I darted on board, but speedily jumped on shore again, when I found that two of the masts belonged to another vessel, and the figurehead to a third! At last I caught sight of what I made sure was it,—a fine large vessel just casting off her moorings. The tafferel was green. Three masts,—yes, that must be it,—and the gilt figure-head of Hercules. To be ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... let go the umbrella, leaving it in his hand. She bent forward, stooped down. The strong young face, proud and sad, so pure in its maiden strength, glowing with passionate emotion, was laid softly against that bruised and battered figurehead of shipwrecked womanhood; Nellie had kissed the sleeping ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the proceedings had been as expressionless as that of a wooden figurehead, now relaxed into ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... editor. Greatest of the additions to the substance of the cycle was the story of the Holy Grail, originally an altogether independent legend. Important changes necessarily developed. Arthur himself, in many of the romances, was degraded from his position of the bravest knight to be the inactive figurehead of a brilliant court; and the only really historical element in the story, his struggle against the Saxons, was thrust far into the background, while all the emphasis was laid on the romantic achievements ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... know of a politician with a big name who was ever anything but a figurehead in a deal ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... minutes of his call he succinctly outlined all the changes he wishes to see accomplished in this institution. HE forsooth! And what, may I ask, are the duties of a superintendent? Is she merely a figurehead to take orders from ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Rajendrahal fraudulently appropriated all the credit. Even to-day we very often find the tools arrogating to themselves the lion's share of the achievement, imagining the wielder to be a mere ornamental figurehead. If the poor pen had a mind it would as certainly have bemoaned the unfairness of its getting all the stain and the writer ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... to summon the vision of Honora, in rustling garments, poised as the figurehead of this craft, beckoning him on to battle and victory. Alas! the launching happened at that grimmest and most unromantic of hours-ten minutes of eight in the morning. There was a period, indeterminate, when she poured out his coffee with wifely zeal; a second period when she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evidence for a graft exposure that would shock the country. I regret very much that the Honorable Milton Waring is involved in these charges, along with Blatchford Ferguson and Nickleby. Alderson himself is merely a figurehead of Nickleby's; for, as I told you before, the Alderson concern is ninety per cent. J. C. Nickleby. It was immediately after a secret meeting between these four men that the campaign fund contribution ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... enormous length of the vessel. It will be seen that the distinctive type of the Inman line has not been departed from in respect to the old fashioned but still handsome profile, with clipper bow, figurehead, and bowsprit—which latter makes the Rome's length over all 600 feet. For the figurehead has been chosen a full length figure of one of the Roman Csars, in the imperial purple. Altogether, the City of Rome is the most imposing and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... persisted. It took her two hours to examine thus, in detail, one half the island. But at last she discovered something. She saw at the eastern side of the reef a wooden figure of a woman, and, making her way to it, found the figurehead and a piece of the bow of the ship, with a sail on it, and a yard on that. This fragment was wedged into an angle of the reef, and the seaward edge of it shattered in a way that struck terror to Helen, for it showed her how omnipotent the sea had been. On the reef ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... might test the powers of the most discerning critics, and in which perfection is hardly to be attained. Yet one may ask whether in the entire extent of Hazlitt's writing a great living genius has been turned into a mockery or a figurehead been set up for the admiration of posterity. Of his personal and political antipathies enough has been said, but against literary orthodoxy his only great sin is a harsh review of "Christabel."[96] If in general we look at the age through Hazlitt's eyes, we shall see its literature dominated ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Roper, however, was a figurehead. The brains behind the formation of the Business Advisory Council were in the head of Sidney J. Weinberg, Senior Partner of the New York investment house of Goldman, Sachs & Co.—and also on the boards of directors of about thirty of ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... influential recently deplored the want of vitality in the old religions of the country, and, regarding their reformation as hopeless, openly advocated the adoption of Christianity. To be independent of the foreigner it must, he said, be made a state church, with one of the princes for a figurehead, if not for pilot. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Less prominent than these but far from proper were Schenck and Fremont. The latter was arrested in France, charged with promoting a railroad on the strength of land grants that did not exist. He had been close to the old Republican organization, and the figurehead of the radicals in 1864, so that his notoriety was great. Schenck, while Minister in London, posed as director of a mining company, and borrowed from the promoters of the scheme the money with which he bought his shares. When the company proved insolvent, and perhaps fraudulent, Grant was forced ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... looking back on it now, getting it from the viewpoint of one stepping from it, he could see just how true was the statement: "Harvey Francis has been the real Governor of the State; John Morrison his mouthpiece and figurehead." ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... closet, followed by Astro. Suddenly the big cadet stopped, turned, and fired point-blank at the figurehead of the Nationalist rebellion. Sharkey once again ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... cannot describe. It was not of this world. And we knew her. We were her friends. She was our hostess. To the house she was the great artiste—a name to whisper, a figurehead to bow before. For us, we were listening to the song of a friend. As she had promised, she sang to us. There was no mistaking it. And the great charm of her welled out in that wonderful voice. All the spirit of melody danced in her notes. When she was singing, there seemed to be none but us in ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... that the decorative quality of women in public life was recognized in Rome as it always has been in monarchies, and we should recur to the fact that this was the point which had been made against all republics. Coming down to the Italian republics, we should have to own that Venice, with her ducal figurehead, had practically a court at which women shone as they do in monarchies; while in Florence, till the Medici established themselves in sovereign rule, women played scarcely a greater part than in Athens. It was only with the Medici that we began to hear of such ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... caught up the words almost before they had fallen from the lips of the other. "Yes, I am the King. I am the miserable, gilded figurehead out on the prow, which serves no end and no purpose. I am the ornamental symbol of a system which the world is discarding! I am a medieval lay figure upon which to hang ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... - merely a figurehead, I understand. He's in New York now, working with us, as I shall tell you presently. If there is any one else besides Brown in it, it might be Michael Dawson, the nominal assistant but really the active treasurer. There you have another ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... that in the olden times the crocodiles used to speak to his people, warning them of danger, but that now they never speak, and he supposes that their silence is due to the fact that his people have intermarried with other tribes. The Long Patas frequently carve a crocodile's head as the figurehead for ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the event as though it were a great military victory, rejoicing unrestrainedly. The premier, Trepov, who though a mere figurehead, was still loyal to Russia and secretly an enemy of Rasputin and Protopopoff, allowed all the details of the assassination to be published in the papers, even to the names of those concerned in the actual killing. These latter were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of parchment found in the figurehead of an old vessel tells of a buried treasure. A thrilling ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... off, and, despite the intense calmness of the sea, was pitching and tossing as if in the roughest water. As she drew nearer I was able to make her out better, and from her build—she carried two masts and was square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft—as well as from her tawdry gilt figurehead, concluded she was a hermaphrodite brig of, very possibly, Dutch nationality. She had evidently seen a great deal of rough weather, for her foretopmast and part of her starboard bulwarks were gone, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... boats a gay appearance which was increased by the round shields which were hung outside the gunwale and which were also painted red, black, or white. At the prow there was usually a beautifully carved and gorgeously painted figurehead. The stem and stern of the ships were high. In the stern there was an upper deck, but in the forepart of the vessel there was nothing but loose planks on which the sailors could step. When a storm was raging or a battle was being fought, the loose ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... fixed up along the wall there, and your sofa by them. A clerk over there: it would be a sort of companion. You've plenty of capital to start with, and wouldn't have to lose your head at the first wrong deal. Of course you'd want someone the other end, a figurehead and mouthpiece, and someone to show you the lines, start you off; I'd be pleased to do it. We could make a partnership concern of it, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... bargain driven with a king before? "Behold," says Norway in effect, "you may sit on a throne; but beware how you attempt to king it over us. We will give you a salary to transact our official business and act as official figurehead. But you must never overlook the fact that it was we who made you ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... any of the foreign journals." In 1804 the price had been raised to six dollars. The issue of July 21, 1804, was in deep black lines, in mourning for Alexander Hamilton. The issue of July 23, 1808, was a memorial number to Fisher Ames. The "Oliver Oldschool" figurehead was abandoned in January, 1811, and "conducted by Jos. Dennie, Esq.," took its place; for, the editor explained, "Since the magazine is no longer political, the appellation of Oliver Oldschool is no longer expedient or necessary." During Dennie's last illness his place in the editorial chair was ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... the hero of an emancipated nation, and here I am. The sudden arrival of Amoagos, at the head of his miners, decided the question. The safety of his friend, the Duc de Christoval, was the reward of his interference. Between ourselves, the Emperor Iturbide, my master, is no more than a figurehead; the future of Mexico is entirely in the hands of ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... Westphalia by its practical recognition of state neutrality in religious matters put an end to the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, and reduced the Emperor to the position of a mere figurehead, depending for strength entirely on his own hereditary states. Instead of preventing disunion it made national unity almost impossible, and exposed Germany to attack from any hostile neighbour who might wish to strengthen himself by encouraging ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... herself leaning forward tensely, her hands shut in excitement and emotion; and she relaxed with a happy laugh as the Nautilus, with her yards exactly square and rigging taut, her sides and figurehead and ports bright with newly laid on paint, moved to ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Therefore I have correctly substituted "extinguished" for "out-doo." At the beginning I have substituted "dummy" for "figure" because we are told that the figure is "put for" (that is, put instead of) Shakespeare. In modern English we frequently describe a chairman who is a mere dummy as a figurehead. Then "wit" in these lines means absolutely the same as "mind," which I have used in its place because I think it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of Bacon in his 18th year, which was painted by Hilliard in 1578, we read:—"Si ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... practicable. Democracies to which Mr. Lincoln's definition would fairly enough apply have existed, and now exist, in which, though the supreme authority reside in the people, yet they can act only indirectly on the national policy. This generation has seen a democracy with an imperial figurehead, and in all that have ever existed the body politic has never embraced all the inhabitants included within its territory, the right to share in the direction of affairs has been confined to citizens, and citizenship has been further restricted by various limitations, sometimes of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... so very old! I am weary of being a king. I am weary of being weary, and for such there is no remedy. Truly I was not cut from the pattern of kings; no, no. I am handier with a book than with a scepter; I'd liever be a man than a puppet, and a puppet I am—a figurehead on the prow of the ship, but I do not guide it. Who care for me save those who have their ends to gain? None, save the archbishop, who yet dreams of making a king of me. And these are not my people who surround me; when I die, small care. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Griswold interrupted, shortly. "And, besides, you have told me yourself that Atherton is only a figurehead. Grierson's the man." ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... year, not because of fitness but as a number of others held office at that time. The consul did nothing worthy of note save that at this time, too, he acted as advocate in suits, since his colleague Gaius Capito counted as a mere figurehead. Augustus, because he was growing old, wrote a letter commending Germanicus to the senate and the latter to Tiberius: the manuscript was not read by him in person, for he was unable to make himself heard, but by Germanicus, as usual. After that he asked them, making the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... of waist—all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn off, the wood was gray and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... setting among flowers, was a page out of a book long closed; a book in which had been written the most unforgettable things of life. Besides well-remembered features, there were details which had been forgotten and which now set free currents of reminiscence—such as the battered figurehead of an old schooner raised on high over a front door and a wind-mill as antique of pattern as those to which ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the battered figurehead of the Goddess of Liberty, which lay deeply embedded in the sand on the beach, suddenly appeared at the door demanding admittance, the occupants of the cabin could not have been more speechlessly and hopelessly astonished than at the form which stood in the ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been the leader of all these movements—as the figurehead of a ship may seem to a savage to guide the vessel—acted like a child who, holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... monster, a sage,—it was all the same to these unheeding centuries. The people could not follow those they understood or who understood them. They must trust all to the blind chance of heredity. Tyrant or figurehead, the mob, which from its own indifference creates the pomp of royalty, threw up its caps for the king, and blindly died for him in his courage or in his folly with the same unquestioning loyalty. In like manner did the mob fashion ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. Her mainsail was looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind was moving. Now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of the sea, and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt figurehead, looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her skirts to cross a muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys. That was very much her situation. She knew she was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Virgin, had caught the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling |
