"Flax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tallow,' while English sheep would breed abundantly there. It was also held to be good in many places for madder, hops, and woad. It afforded 'fells of all sorts in great quantity, red deer, foxes, sheep, lambs, rabbits, martins and squirrels,' &c. Hemp and flax grew more naturally there than elsewhere, which, being well regarded, would give provision for canvas, cables, cording, besides thread, linen cloth, and all stuffs made of linen yarn, 'which are more fine and plentiful there than in all the rest of ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... a model mistress, and also showed an example of industry. At the Chicago Exhibition in 1893 were napkins made from flax spun by Her Majesty, and a straw hat plaited by her. There was, too, a noble human grace about her acts of beneficence. For instance, in erecting an almshouse for poor old women in the Isle of Wight, she ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... were to be withheld, and such should be the unusual and abnormal drouth that the Nile should be dried up, and the reeds upon its banks should wither and decay. The river was stocked with fish, but the fishermen should cast their hooks and arrange their nets in vain. Even the workers in flax (one great source of Egyptian wealth and luxury) should be confounded. The princes were to become fools; there was to be general confusion, and no work was to be done in manufactures. Even Judah should become ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... strange-looking. In one corner was the large open fireplace. A large hand loom, with an unfinished piece of thick coarse woollen stuff or cloth which was being woven, was in another corner. Near by were three spinning-wheels; upon one was flax and on the two others wool. On the walls were shelves for plates, saucers, glasses, ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... inflection of a word, for which we cannot conceive an appropriate meaning or use, it follows that whatever is of such a species that it cannot be taken in any plural sense, must naturally be named by a word which is singular only: as, perry, cider, coffee, flax, hemp, fennel, tallow, pitch, gold, sloth, pride, meekness, eloquence. But there are some things, which have in fact neither a comprehensible unity, nor any distinguishable plurality, and which may ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of calves; and every farmer was, under a penalty of 6s. 8d. (about L3 of our currency), compelled to rear all his calves for a period of three years; and in the 24th Henry VIII. the act was further continued for two years. The culture of flax and hemp was also encouraged by legislation. The 24th Henry VIII., cap. 14, requires every person occupying land apt for tillage, to sow a quarter of an acre of flax or hemp for every sixty acres of land, under a penalty ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... spring. A view like that of a narrowing gorge, with a bridge arched boldly over it, awakens at once his artistic sense. Even the smallest details give him delight through something beautiful, or perfect, or characteristic in them—the blue fields of waving flax, the yellow gorge which covers the hills, even tangled thickets, or single trees, or springs, which seem to him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... are numbered, not one of them can fall to the ground without the express will of God: he will not suffer thee to be tempted above measure, he corrects us all, [6809]numero, pondere, et mensura, the Lord will not quench the smoking flax, or break the bruised reed, Tentat (saith Austin) non ut obruat, sed ut coronet he suffers thee to be tempted for thy good. And as a mother doth handle her child sick and weak, not reject it, but with all tenderness observe ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... that he might be with his family; he sent dear love to little Winifred and Asahel, and postscripts of fatherly charges to Winthrop, recommending to him particularly the care of the young cattle and to go on dressing the flax. And Winthrop, through the long winter, had taken care of the cattle and dressed the flax in the same spirit with which he shut his bedroom door that night; a little calmer, not a ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... also sown the seeds of many trees which the second year bear flowers or fruits. The agathis, encircled with long clusters of white flowers, which hang upon it like the crystal pendants of a lustre. The Persian lilac, which lifts high in air its gay flax-coloured branches. The pappaw tree, the trunk of which, without branches, forms a column set round with green melons, bearing on their heads large leaves like those of the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... left St. Anne. South of the town there is a stretch of road that runs for some three miles through the French settlement, where the prairie is as level as the surface of a lake. There the fields of flax and wheat and rye are bordered by precise rows of slender, tapering Lombard poplars. It was a yellow world that Margaret Elliot saw under the wide light ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... different kinds of grain and of flesh of game, with which the country is exceedingly well supplied. The dress of the Indians of the coast is made of the skins of sea-wolves, which the Indians tan and dress very well. They have abundance of thread made from Castilian flax, hemp, and cotton. By these Indians and by many others whom the said Sebastian Vizcaino discovered along the coast in the more than eight hundred leguas of his voyage, he was everywhere informed that there were great ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... kinds of suits of apparel and an hundred pieces of fine white linen cloths of Egypt and silks of Suez and Cufa and Alexandria and a crimson carpet and another of Tebaristan[FN217] make and an hundred pieces of cloth of silk and flax mingled and a goblet of glass of the time of the Pharaohs, a finger-breadth thick and a span wide, amiddleward which was the figure of a lion and before him an archer kneeling, with his arrow drawn to the head, and the table of Solomon ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... or in winter, as you prefer. The seed is removed on a cylinder eighteen inches long, and two and a half feet in diameter, having two hundred wrought nails with their points projecting. It is turned by a crank, like a fanning mill. The corn is held in a convenient handful, like flax on a hatchel. Where large quantities are to be cleaned of the seed, power is used to turn the machine. Ground or boiled, the seed makes good feed for most animals. Dry, it has too hard a shell. Fowls, with access to plenty of gravel, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... Rainbow-maiden, Never say in tones reproachful, She was born in lowly station, That her father was unworthy; Honoured are thy bride's relations, From an old-time tribe her kindred; When of corn they sowed a measure, Each one's portion was a kernel; When they sowed a cask of flax-seed, Each received a thread of linen. Never, never, magic husband, Treat thy beauty-bride unkindly, Teach her not with lash of servants, Strike her not with thongs of leather; Never has she wept in anguish, From the birch-whip of her mother. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... man of his secular duties, and its material varies, in consequence, according to the occupation of the wearer. Thus, while the thread of the Brahmans is made of pure cotton, that of the Kshatriyas (the warriors) is composed of flax—the bow-string material; and that of Vaishyas (the traders and cattle-breeders), of wool. From this it is not to be inferred that caste was originally meant to be hereditary. In the ancient times, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... on down the road, and Nancy went indoors and went about her household work. She cleaned the dishes and trimmed the hearth; she spun the flax which tufted her wheel; then she took the rags of some garments past repair, and in the afternoon shadow of her threshold she cut them into ribbons and sewed them end to end and wound them into ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... strong chains with which to bind the earth and the waters," and on Christmas Eve "the oldest man in each family takes a spoonful of kissel (a sort of pudding), and then, having put his head through the window, cries: 'Frost, Frost, come and eat kissel! Frost, Frost, do not kill our oats! Drive our flax and hemp deep into ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... were to be admitted free of duty to both countries, the principal being grain, flour, lumber, bread-stuffs, animals, fresh, smoked and salted meats, lumber of all kinds, poultry, cotton, wool, hides, metallic ores, pitch, tar, ashes, flax, hemp, rice, and unmanufactured tobacco. In return the American fishermen obtained the coveted privilege of fishing within the territorial waters of the Maritime Provinces, without any restriction ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... noise frighten the master and domestics, as it happened some years ago at Mosheim, where large rats amused themselves in the night by moving and setting in motion the machines with which the women bruise hemp and flax. An honest man who related it to me, desiring to behold the thing nearer, mounted up to the garret armed with two pistols, with his servant armed in the same manner. After a moment of silence, they saw the rats begin their game; they let fire ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... occasion, Gonzalo not only obliged every one to labour without regard to rank, but gave the example himself in using both the hatchet and the hammer as occasion required. Instead of pitch and tar, the gum which exuded from some trees of the forest was collected; and instead of flax and hemp, the old clothes of the Indians and the wore-out shirts of the Spaniards were employed for caulking the scams. They at length succeeded in making their bark capable of swimming, so as to transport ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... whole country that Anna had gathered grain, ground, boiled, and kneaded it, and made a loaf of bread, as she had promised while picking strawberries. Then, after three more days and nights, tidings went through the land that Stana had collected flax, dried, and hackled it, spun it into linen, wove the cloth, and made her husband a shirt as she had promised while seeking for her strawberries. Laptitza alone had not yet kept her word, but great things ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... Eternals and to me, I doom thee to roam the earth as a mortal woman. I take thy glory from thee. Walhall shall know thee no more. Thou art forever cast out from us. Henceforth thy fate shall be to spin the flax, to sit by the hearth, a slave to man." He could not look upon her because he loved ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... are the "dangerous trades," in which countless workers are employed. Their hold on life is indeed precarious—far, far more precarious than the hold of the twentieth-century soldier on life. In the linen trade, in the preparation of the flax, wet feet and wet clothes cause an unusual amount of bronchitis, pneumonia, and severe rheumatism; while in the carding and spinning departments the fine dust produces lung disease in the majority of cases, and the woman ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... of melted wax; Bind, ye haughty prelates,—a thread of ravelled flax; Growing, growing, ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... equal to those of China. The cotton of Japan seems to be of the same kind as that of our West Indian colonies. It furnishes the ordinary dress of the great mass of the people, and also serves all the other purposes for which we employ wool, flax, furs, and feathers. The culture of it is, of course, very extensive; but the fabrics are all coarse: Golownin could hardly make himself believe that his muslin cravat was of this material. There is some hemp, which is manufactured into cloth for sails, &c.; but cables and ropes, very inferior ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... feet from the ground, and was far more neatly made than that of the foregoing species; it is likewise less deep internally. It was composed of the dry stalks of 'forget-me-not,' compactly held together by the intermixture of a quantity of moss interwoven with fine flax and seed-down, and lined with fine grass-stalks. Internal diameter 31/2 inches; external 6 inches; depth 11/2 inch, forming a flattish cup, of which the sides are about 11/2 inch thick. The depth, therefore, is less by 1 inch than in that of the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the new-comers seem to have quickly become farmers, growing grain for food and flax for their garments. The culture of the silk-worm was early known, trade was developed, and fairs were held. There was intellectual culture also. They knew something of astronomy, and probably possessed the art of hieroglyphic writing,—which, if they ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... salmon he swam in the River. But even for the fishes that swam beside him Loki had hatred. Out of flax and yarn he wove a net that men might have the means of taking them ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... were slow to appreciate the bitterness and intensity of that hatred, which, long smouldering under the surface of Southern society, burst forth at once into a wide-spread conflagration, severing like flax all the ties of kindred, and all the bonds of individual friendship and national intercourse which had united us for half a century? Here was a section of our Union which had always enjoyed equal rights with us under the Constitution, and had known the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... with salmon imparts an agreeable zest, and effectually destroys the disagreeable smell of that fish when smoke-dried. Saint John's wort is very common, and has been successfully applied as a fomentation in topical inflammations. A kind of weed, which the natives convert into a species of flax, is in general demand. An evergreen, similar to that we found at the mouth of the Columbia, with small berries growing in clusters like grapes, also flourishes in this district. Sarsaparilla and bear-root are found in abundance. White earth abounds in the vicinity of ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... Princess consented at once, and for a whole year she served as a maid; but in spite of her youth and beauty she was very badly treated, and suffered many things. One evening, when she was spinning flax, and had worked her little white hands weary, she heard a rustling beside her and a cry of joy. Then she saw a handsome youth standing beside her; who knelt down at her feet and kissed the little weary ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... at this time, he also contrived a new device for sawing marble which proved to be a valuable improvement. To this period in his life also belongs his invention of a machine for spinning flax. In 1797 he removed to Paris where he remained seven years, assiduously studying the sciences. It was during his sojourn there that he brought out his celebrated torpedo-boat, since known as the Nautilus, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... at first proposed that wheat flour should be taxed, but that item has, I believe, been struck out of the bill in its passage through the House. All articles manufactured of cotton, wool, silk, worsted, flax, hemp, jute, India-rubber, gutta-percha, wood (?), glass, pottery wares, leather, paper, iron, steel, lead, tin, copper, zinc, brass, gold and silver, horn, ivory, bone, bristles, wholly or in part, or of ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... she helped with the gooseberries, the briery vines she did not like. There were jars of jam and preserves, rose leaves to gather, and all the mornings were crowded full. Often in the afternoon she went up in the garret to see Miss Eunice spin—sometimes on the big wheel, at others with flax on the small wheel. She liked the whirring sound, and it was a mystery to her how the thread came ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... unsatisfying. It would be well for all to learn the lesson (not least he for whom the ceremony is primarily intended), which is symbolically taught when a Pope is crowned. The Master of the Ceremonies takes a lighted taper in one hand, and in the other a reed with a handful of flax fastened to it. The flax flares up for a moment, and then the flame dies away into thin, almost imperceptible, ashes, which fall at the Pontiff's feet, as the choir chant the refrain "Pater sanctus, sic transit gloria mundi." No earthly honour ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... these tasks were quite enough, He thought them all too few, And so her uncle, rude and rough, Invented something new. He took her to a little room, Her willingness to tax, And pointed out a broken loom And half a ton of flax, Observing: "Spin six pairs of trousers!" His haughty manner seemed to rouse hers. She met ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Then came the Feast of Lovers, called the Buscou,{4} on the last day of the year, where, in a large chamber, some hundred distaffs were turning, and boys and girls, with nimble fingers, were winding thread of the finest flax. Franconnette was there, and appointed queen of the games. After the winding was over, the songs and dances began to the music of a tambourin. The queen, admired by all, sang ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... with rude dwellings of logs now giving way to others of frame and of brick; and, stretching away from the town toward the encompassing wilderness, orderly gardens and orchards now pink with the blossom of the peach, and fields of young maize and wheat and flax and hemp. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... stop her from spinning; she is for ever at it, and I am poor and cannot furnish her with flax enough." ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Whitney's cotton gins there had been much attention bestowed by the people of the State upon the cultivation of flax. This crop was never reared for exportation, but for family use at home. Few of the ancient spinning-wheels can now be found, but they were once abundant and the manufacture of home made linen was common in North Carolina. This was even more the case than is now ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... a certain woman who did not pay due reverence to Mother Friday, but set to work on a distaff-ful of flax, combing and whirling it. She span away till dinner-time, then suddenly sleep fell upon her—such a deep sleep! And when she had gone to sleep, suddenly the door opened and in came Mother Friday, before the eyes of all who were there, clad in a white dress, and in such a rage! And ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... in the use of which they had been carefully exercised. He took much pains, assisted by the Spaniard Marini, to introduce the cotton-tree, which answered very well, and yielded fine cotton; and endeavoured to improve the native flax, already much superior to that of New Zealand, and to profit by it as an article of commerce. Nothing which promised advantage to his country escaped his penetrating mind; he exerted, in short, every faculty of his mind to place the Sandwich Islands in ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... thither. The people were directed at the same time to procure some of the bark of the tree lately discovered, to be manufactured into cordage; for which purpose it was reckoned superior to any of the flax that had been brought ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the young man answered, "We may not prove fit company for such as you, and if so the event shall prove, we will pass on and trouble you no further. If every thread were dry as summer flax," he added, in a tone of deep feeling, "I for one, am not fit to sit among ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... it is an easy matter to carry off the stolen goods, even though the men are searched at the end of the day. A little girl minding her father's sheep and goats in the neighbourhood of the excavations, and apparently occupying her hands with the spinning of flax, is perhaps the receiver of the objects. Thus it is more profitable to dig for antiquities even in authorised excavations than to work the water-hoist, which is one of the usual occupations of the peasant. Pulling the hoisting-pole ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... in the field, are maize or Indian corn, wheat, oats, barley, buckwheat, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rye for horse feed and distilleries, tobacco, cotton, hemp, flax, the castor bean, and every other production common to ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... that piece of ground is where Father Wetherell raised the last piece of flax. I don't suppose ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... laborers of the priests were at work in the fields. On the estates of nobles and nomarchs, but especially of the pharaoh, flax was unpulled, clover uncut; there was no one to gather in grapes. The common people did nothing but prowl about in bands; they sang, ate, drank, and threatened either priests or Phoenicians. In the cities all shops ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... globe lamps us'd at Vauxhall[91] have in keeping them clean, learn to have such holes in their street lamps. But, these holes being made for another purpose, viz., to communicate flame more suddenly to the wick by a little flax hanging down thro' them, the other use, of letting in air, seems not to have been thought of; and therefore, after the lamps have been lit a few hours, the streets of London ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Christians, both because it would be a great deal cheaper, and because there would not be the need in the household of having so many kitchen dishes, which every orthodox household must have in order to keep the food properly kosher. As for the woven stuffs containing a mixture of wool and flax, Pani Hannah closed her eyes and ears to all interdictions, and used them without hesitation, because they were pretty and cheap. When she came to Szybow she was perfectly horrified. There was not one sign of civilisation—no public garden no music, no fountain, not even the shadow ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... tenax (New Zealand flax), which I see is imported to San Francisco in large quantities yearly for making cordage and binder twine, and is said also to be the best of bee pasture. Can I get the plants on the coast, and is California soil and climate adapted ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... was carried on in small boats that could be drawn up along the river bank by means of oars, spikes, poles, and hooks. The articles most in demand were axes, hoes, cotton cards, hatchels for cleaning flax, hemp and cotton, spinning wheels, knives, and ammunition, guns, and bar shears for plows. In exchange for such goods the people traded beef, hides, furs, tallow, beeswax, and honey. Money was not needed or used by anyone - everything was ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... multitudinous populations, from Poland to the Pacific, from Finland to the Caucasus, are equally composite. In each of these great States nations have been united under a common law; and where the wisdom of the central government has not "broken the bruised reed or quenched the smoking flax" of national life, the nations have been not only willing but anxious to join in the work of their State. Nations, like men, were made not to compete but to work together; and it is so easy, so simple, to win their good-hearted devotion. It takes ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... the time came to corral the stock a new calamity was discovered. The cattle wandered into the edge of a field of flax as they neared the barn. Luther, following them, dropped from the back of his pony and stopped to examine the grain. The girl was excitedly getting the straying animals crowded on toward the pens and it was ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... be trimmed? What would an infinite God care on which side he cut the breast, what color the fringe was, or how the buttons were placed? Do you believe God told Moses to make curtains of fine linen? Where did they get their flax in the desert? How did they weave it? Did He tell him to make things of gold, silver and precious stones, when they hadn't them? Is it possible that God told them not to eat any fruit until after the fourth year of planting the trees? You see all these ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... each pupil longed to have her for a companion during the summer. I never saw a class undertake a composition with more eagerness. In a certain fifth-year class in geography a contest between the boys and girls for the best collection of articles manufactured out of flax resulted in the greatest enthusiasm. The reading or committing to memory of stories with the object of dramatizing them—such as The Children's Hour, in the second or third grade—seldom fails ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... offering which they chose was the spot whereon the altar of the Temple at Jerusalem stood later.[11] Abel selected the best of his flocks for his sacrifice, but Cain ate his meal first, and after he had satisfied his appetite, he offered unto God what was left over, a few grains of flax seed. As though his offense had not been great enough in offering unto God fruit of the ground which had been cursed by God![12] What wonder that his sacrifice was not received with favor! Besides, a chastisement was inflicted upon him. His face turned black as smoke.[13] Nevertheless, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... stiff, tall, and spare; his eyes bleared and filmy; his hair red, and so scanty withal, that it seems like a few stripes of blasted flax hung around a distaff." ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... me tell another thing about the Colchians to show how they resemble the Egyptians:—they alone work flax in the same fashion as the Egyptians, 90 and the two nations are like one another in their whole manner of living and also in their language: now the linen of Colchis is called by the Hellenes Sardonic, whereas that from Egypt ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... nuster plant indigo. Seed lak a flax. Put myrtle seed in with indigo to boil. Gather and boil for the traffic. All the big folkses plant that fore the rice. Rice come in circulation, do way with indigo. Nuster (used to) farm indigo just like we work our corn. Didn't have nothing but ox. And the colored folks—they came next to the ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... raging for some time with terrible fury, and had already got full possession of two large warehouses, each five or six floors in height, all connected by means of double iron folding-doors, and stored from basement to roof with spirits, tallow, palm-oil, cotton, flax, jute, and other merchandise, to the extent of upwards of two millions sterling in value. The dock fire-engines had been brought to bear on the flames a few minutes after the fire was discovered. The two floating-engines were paddled at once ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... landlord that he expected work at Marshall's, and seeming to be a respectable young man, the landlord trusted him; and he was so fortunate as to obtain the job which he sought at Mr. Marshall's, who was then beginning the manufacture of flax, for which the firm has since become ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... way by the wagon-house. The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and buys him a sleek, shiny black suit—the coat is a long-waisted, long-tailed frock—and he adds a pair of good "stubbid" shoes, having strings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... as white as snow, All flax-en was his poll; He's gone, he's gone, And we cast away moan; God ha' ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... permanently, and they formed twenty-one large factories, all the members of which were unmarried, and lived together in messes within their factories. Each factory was capable of accommodating about one hundred merchants, with their servants. Their importations consisted of flax, corn, biscuit, flour, malt, ale, cloth, wine, spirituous liquors, copper, silver, &c.; and they exported ship-timber, masts, furs, butter, salmon, dried ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... I will make my spirit rest upon him, And he shall publish judgment to the nations. He shall not cry aloud, nor clamour, Nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. The bruised reed he shall not break, And the smoking flax he shall not quench. He shall publish justice, and establish it. His force shall not be abated, nor broken, Until he has firmly seated justice in the earth, And the distant nations shall wait for his ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... smoking flax"—the life that has lost its fire, and therefore its light, its enthusiasm, and therefore its ideals; the life that is smouldering into the cold ashes of moral and spiritual death! He will not stamp it out ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... would laugh and call him her Buttercup. But always Klaas wanted more cheese. When unusually greedy, she twitted him as a boy "worse than Butter-and-Eggs"; that is, as troublesome as the yellow and white plant, called toad-flax, is to the farmer—very pretty, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... and the spade. "In spite of Emerson's habit of introducing the names of agricultural objects into his writing ('Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood' is a line from one of his poems), his familiarity therewith is evidently not so great as he would lead one to imagine. 'Take care, papa,' cried his little son, seeing him at work with a spade, 'you ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Samaritans seem to have ignited the beacons at the wrong time, so as to deceive the Jews. It was, therefore, decided to communicate the news by messenger. The mountain-fires were prepared as follows: Long staves of cedar-wood, canes, and branches of the olive-tree were tied up with coarse threads or flax; these were lighted as torches, and men on the hills waved the brands to and fro, upward and downward, until the signal was repeated on the next hill, and so forth. When messengers were substituted for these fire signals, it does not appear that they carried letters; they brought verbal ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... bitterly, and told him all about it. "Well," said the horse, "this time 'tis no trifle, but a real hard task. Go now to thy master, and bid him buy twenty hides, and twenty poods[13] of pitch, and twenty poods of flax, and twenty poods of hair."—So Tremsin went to his master and told him, and his master bought it all. Then Tremsin loaded his horse with all this, and to the sea they went together. And when they came to ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... their surroundings are nearly always the same. The yellow pond-lily is found in every sluggish stream and pond, but Nymphaea odorata requires a nicer adjustment of conditions, and consequently is more restricted in its range. If the mullein were fragrant, or toad-flax, or the daisy, or blueweed, or goldenrod, they would doubtless be far less troublesome to the agriculturist. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule I have here indicated, but it holds in most cases. Genius is a specialty: it does not grow in every soil; it skips ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... middens, of the Swiss lake dwellings. The men who lived in it had domesticated the dog, the cow, the sheep, the goat, and the invaluable pig; they had begun to sow small ancestral wheat and undeveloped barley; they had learnt to weave flax and wear decent clothing: in a word, they had passed from the savage hunting condition to the stage of barbaric herdsmen and agriculturists. That is a comparatively modern period, and yet I suppose we must conclude with Dr. James Geikie that it isn't to be measured by mere calculations of ten or ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in hand about two million poods (a pood is a little over thirty-six English pounds) of flax, and any quantity of light leather (goat, etc.), but the main districts where we have raw material for ourselves or for export are far away. Hides, for example, we have in great quantities in Siberia, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... this is seen out of the body; for if a hair, or a single untwisted fibre of flax or silk, be soaked in water; it becomes longer and thicker by the water, which is absorbed into its pores. Now if a hair could be supposed to be thus immersed in a solution of particles similar to those, which compose it; one may imagine, that it might be thus increased in weight ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... [Footnote: For a full account of the Greek five, see Gibbon, chapter 53] In sieges, it was poured from the ramparts, or launched like our bombs, in red-hot balls of stone or iron, or it was darted in flax twisted round arrows and in javelins. It was considered as a state secret of the greatest importance; and for wellnigh four centuries it was unknown to the Mahomedans. But at length the composition was discovered by the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... purchased several tons of hay of a neighbouring farmer, for the use of his cattle, and it had to be stowed into the same barn with some flax and straw that belonged to Uncle Joe. Going early one morning to fodder the cattle, John found Uncle Joe feeding his cows with his master's hay, and as it had diminished greatly in a very short time, he accused him in no measured terms of being the thief. The other ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... man scowled at his aged mother; and in response to an emphatic gesture from the priest, he pulled out a little coil of rope, partly worn at the end into a little wisp of flax. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... ironfounding and a brass foundry. The chief article of export is coal from the neighbouring collieries, the other leading exports being ale, whisky, glass and manufactured goods. The imports comprise timber, grain, iron, linseed and flax. The docks, accessible only at high water, include a wet basin and a dry dock. Amongst the principal buildings are the fine Gothic parish church, with a spire 200 ft. high; the town hall, including the free public library, from designs by Alfred ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be made from the blackest grapes, which would keep good, instead of turning yellow and degenerating like the wine obtained from white ones. Moreover, the happy thought occurred to him that a piece of cork was a much more suitable stopper for a bottle than the flax dipped in oil which had ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... following may not be declared contraband of war: (1) Raw cotton, wool, silk, jute, flax, hemp and other raw materials of the textile industries, and yarns of the same; (2) oil seeds and nuts; copra; (3) rubber, resins, gums and lacs; hops; (4) raw hides and horns, bones and ivory; (5) natural ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... nation had, in the beginning of this century, reached its greatest height. The culture of grain, flax, the breeding of cattle, the chase, and fisheries, enriched the peasant; arts, manufactures, and trade gave wealth to the burghers. Flemish and Brabantine manufactures were long to be seen in Arabia, Persia, and India. Their ships covered the ocean, and in the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... In those sections of the country where flax is spun on a "foot-wheel," it is not unfrequent that the spinners moisten the thread with the secretions of the mouth. This seems to operate economically for a time, but debility of the salivary organs soon follows, which incapacitates them from supplying saliva sufficient ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... all over the earth for some beast or bird or tree or lifeless thing, that had not taken the oath. But he could find not one. Then, disguised as a fair maiden, he went to Fensal Hall, where dwelt Balder's mother. The fair Asa-queen was busy at her distaff, with her golden spindles, spinning flax to be woven into fine linen for the gods. And her maid-servant, Fulla of the flowing hair, sat on a stool beside her. When the queen saw Loki, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... wanting, we are thrown upon internal, which in his case is unusually fallacious. It is satisfactory therefore to possess a fixed date in 1433, the year in which he painted the great tabernacle for the Company of Flax-merchants, now removed to the gallery of the Uffizii. It represents the Virgin and child, with attendant Saints, on a gold ground—very dignified and noble, although the Madonna has not attained the exquisite ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... other Greeks kept their daughters secluded in the house, spinning flax. The Spartiates would have robust women capable of bearing vigorous children. The girls, therefore, were trained in much the same manner as the boys. In their gymnasia they practised running, leaping, throwing the disc and Javelin. A poet describes ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... passing through valleys, at other times scrambling over rocks and hills. The country in general was destitute of trees, but they passed through groves of wormwood, eight and ten feet in height, which they used occasionally for fuel, and they met with large quantities of wild flax. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... was all of domestic manufacture. We had no other resource for clothing, and this, indeed, was a poor one. The crops of flax often failed, and the sheep were destroyed by the wolves. Linsey, which is made of flax and wool, the former the chain and the latter the filling, was the warmest and most substantial cloth we could ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... his proper shape, and went back to his cheerless home in the ravine. There he gathered flax and wool and long hemp, and spun yarn and strong cords, and wove them into meshes, after the pattern of Queen Ran's magic net; for men had not, at that time, learned how to make or use nets for fishing. And the first fisherman ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... as to custom dues and admiralty jurisdiction. As an inducement to accept the king's offer the citizens were assured that the country was well watered and suitable for breeding cattle; it grew hemp and flax better than elsewhere; it was well stocked with game and had excellent sea and river fisheries, and it contained such abundance of provisions as not only to supply the plantation, but also assist towards the relief of the London poor. Besides these advantages the city, which was ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... a garden that I ken, Full of little gentlemen; Little caps of blue they wear, And green ribbons, very fair. (Flax.) ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... upon him, and he tore the lion as he would have torn a kid. And, again, how when traitors had bound him with two new cords, the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords which were on his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and fell from off his hands. And, for God's sake, do not give in to that miserable fancy that because these stories are what you call miraculous, therefore they have nothing ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... have not gone into the idea seriously," Joan Peters returned. Her head was bent over the square frame she held in her lap, her fingers busy with the strands of flax. "Miss Frean comes to camp every few evenings and reads aloud to us. She insists that we are too frivolous in our own summer reading and wishes to read us something ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... thousand strong — all mounted men — and guns: There met, beneath the world-wide flag, the world-wide Empire's sons; They came to prove to all the earth that kinship conquers space, And those who fight the British Isles must fight the British race! From far New Zealand's flax and fern, from cold Canadian snows, From Queensland plains, where hot as fire the summer sunshine glows; And in the front the Lancers rode that New South Wales had sent: With easy stride across the plain their long, lean Walers went. Unknown, untried, those squadrons were, but proudly out they ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... and the comfortable darkness. Sometimes madame goes hard; so does the sun in summer-shines, shines, shines like a furnace. Madame's body goes like that—at the dairy, in the garden, with the loom, among the fowls, growing her strawberries, keeping the women at the beating of the flax; and then again it is all still and idle like the sun on a cloudy day; and it rests. So it is with the human soul—I am a philosopher—I think the soul goes hard the same as the body, churning, churning away in the heat of the sun; and then it gets quiet and goes to sleep in the cloudy day, when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spinning his bit of "linen manufacture" as long as he could, and raising Bridget's wonder that, instead of the lament which abducted ladies generally raise about their "vartue," this young woman's principal complaint arose on the scarcity of flax. Bridget appealed to common sense if blankets were not good enough in these bad times; insisting, moreover, that, as "love was warmer than friendship, so wool was warmer than flax," the beauty of which parallel case nevertheless failed to reconcile the disconsolate abducted. Now Andy had pushed ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Isa. 61:1, 2. The execution of this mission required a tender and forbearing spirit, that would not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax; and such was the spirit of his whole ministry. For the penitent, though publicans and sinners, he had only words of kindness. Towards the infirmities and mistakes of his sincere disciples he was wonderfully forbearing. When ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... lovely and stupid Venus. She was sixteen, and I have rarely seen such perfection of form, such suppleness and such regular features. I said she was a Venus; yes, a fair, stout, vigorous Venus, with large, bright, vacant eyes, which were as blue as the flowers of the flax plant; she had a large mouth with full lips, the mouth of a glutton, of a sensualist, a mouth made for kisses. Well, one morning her father came into my consulting room with a strange look on his face, and, sitting ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... His body was encased in a kind of basket from which his head, arms, and legs protruded, giving him the appearance of a gigantic insect. To the top of the basket, or tamgky, to give it its native name, was attached a rope of flax, the end of which had been thrown over a branch of one of the trees to the height of about forty feet from the ground. By command of Ackbau, a file of warriors now began to pull upon this rope, when ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... flanko. Flannel flanelo. Flap klapo. Flare brilego. Flash (lightning) fulmo. Flash (of wit) spritajxo. Flask boteleto. Flat plata. Flat (music) duontono sube. Flatten platigi. Flatter flati. Flatterer flatulo. Flattering flatema. Flavour gusto. Flaw difekto. Flax lino. Flay senhauxtigi. Flea pulo. Flee flugi. Fleece sxaflano. Fleecy laneca. Fleet (quick) rapida. Fleet sxiparo. Flesh (meat) viando. Flesh karno. Flexibility fleksebleco. Flexible fleksebla. Flexion flekso. Flicker lumsxanceli. Flight forkuro. Flight (birds) flugado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a pleasant spot on a warm day. Above its gravel beach rises a slope of coarse short grass, woven through with wild thyme and yellow crowtoe. Sea-pinks cluster on the fringe of grass and delicate groups of fairy-flax are bright-blue in stony places. Red centaury and yellow bed-straw and white bladder campion flourish. Tiny wild roses, clinging to the ground, fleck the green with spots of vivid white. The sun reaches every yard of the shadeless surface of the island. Here and there grey ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... those still existing. But this only throws far backward the history of civilisation, and shows that animals were domesticated at a much earlier period than has hitherto been supposed. The lake-inhabitants of Switzerland cultivated several kinds of wheat and barley, the pea, the poppy for oil and flax; and they possessed several domesticated animals. They also carried on commerce with other nations. All this clearly shows, as Heer has remarked, that they had at this early age progressed considerably in civilisation; and this again ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... through Down districts are bounded by undisturbed soil. Such a road wears for itself a hollow, and the bank at the top is fringed with long rough grass hanging over the crumbling chalk. Broad discs of greater knapweed with stalks like wire, and yellow toad-flax with spotted lip grow among it. Grasping this tough grass as a handle to climb up by, the explorer finds a rising slope of sward, and having walked over the first ridge, shutting off the road behind him, is at once out of civilisation. There is ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Even these stings are made useful to man. The poor people in some countries use them instead of blisters, when they are sick. Those leaves which do not sting are used by some for food, and from the stalk others get a stringy bark, which answers the purpose of flax. Thus you see that even the despised nettle is not made in vain; and this lesson may serve to teach you that we only need to understand the works of God to see that "in goodness and wisdom he ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Country:—only about the size of Cheshire; wet like it, and much inferior to it in cheese, in resources for leather and live-stock, though it perhaps excels, again, in clover-seeds, rape-seeds, Flanders horses, and the flax products. The 'clear overplus' it yielded to Friedrich, as Sovereign Administrator and Defender, was only 3,200 pounds; for recruit-MONEY, 6,000 pounds (no recruits in CORPORE); in all, little more than 9,000 pounds ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him for some benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply the industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had, when occasion offered, supported with his credit and his funds the linen factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Frevent, and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine was pronounced with veneration. Arras and Douai envied the happy little town of M. sur M. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... fifty years ago (if not, considerably later) the Rector of St. Martin's was paid tithes in cash based on the value of the crops, &c., one acre of good wheat being tithed at 7s. 6d.; an acre of good barley at 4s. 4-1/2d.; an acre of flax and hemp, if pulled, at 5s.; an acre of good oats, peas, or potatoes, and all kinds of garden stuff at 3s. 9d.; for meadow land 4d. an acre, and 2d. for leasow (or leasland); 3d. being claimed for cow and her calf. 1-1/2d. for each lamb, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... of the country of Bodial,[636] which borders on Mamgalor[637] by the sea-coast. He is lord too of Guiana.[638] In this country there is much pepper and sugar-cane and cloth (of flax)[639] and much rice; but there is no wheat, nor other cloth, and it is a land of wax. It yields him three hundred thousand PARDAOS a year, and he serves with eight hundred horsemen and ten thousand foot and fifteen elephants. He pays ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... mother of this maiden, nine bushels of flax were sown therein, and none has yet sprung up, neither white nor black; and I have the measure by me still. I require to have the flax to sow in the new land yonder, that when it grows up it may make a white wimple for my daughter's head, on the ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... of God, Who write down judgments with a pen hard nibb'd: Ushers of Beelzebub's black rod, Commending sinners, not to ice thick ribb'd, But endless flames to scorch them up like flax, Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribb'd The impression of St. Peter's keys ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger |
