"Hempen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature is to make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows or on mountains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, children and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do in the night steal hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses, as the story goes.... Such jocund and facetious spirits are said to sport themselves in the night by tumbling and fooling with servants and shepherds in country houses, pinching them black and ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... of medical books, a pair of dilapidated trousers filled up one side of the room. A pot of clove-pinks in the window struggled to drown with spicy fragrance the odor of stale tobacco smoke. There was a hempen carpet, inch deep with mud and dust, on the floor. Seated round an empty fireplace, on cane chairs and in solemn circle, were about forty followers of the Inner Light. McCall perceived Maria near the window, the dusky ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... quart of the ounce balls were hastily wrapped in the canvas, and lashed up with the hempen twine. The bag was then rammed down upon the powder, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... were joined by the whole Lappish tribe, who came by twos and threes, bringing with them all the instruments and appliances necessary for the important business of milking. These consisted of long thongs of reindeer-skin, and also hempen cords of the manufacture of civilized men, for noosing the reins, and of bowls, kits, &c., to receive the milk. The bowls were thick, clumsy things, round, and of about nine inches in diameter, with a projecting hand-hold. They would probably each hold ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... go, vnhappie foolish wight, When they command, eke there to do the best seruice I might. In fine, to go our way now serueth time and tide. We hauing nothing vs to stay, what should we longer bide? The hempen band with helpe of Mariners doth threat To wey and reare that slouthfull whelpe [The anker.] vp from his mothers teat. The Maister then gan cheere with siluer whistle blast His Mariners, which at the Icere are laboring wondrous fast. Some other then againe, the maineyard ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... house before. I trembled from head to foot, as in that hour. I felt myself all at once to be ugly, heavy, stupid, a brute to frighten any woman—sweating from the labors of the day, covered with dust, poor and frightful in my rough hempen shirt, with my naked legs and my bare knees impregnated with the juice of the grapes. And I dared to love this woman—I! Loved her, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... should you save her?" said the inexorable Dame Shoolbred. "I dare say she has deserved them both as well as ever thief deserved a hempen collar." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... what he had been seeking, a great coil of one-inch hempen cable, from which he measured off roughly what he would require, if his calculations were correct, and something over. This length he re-coiled and slung over his shoulder: an awkward, weighty handicap. Nevertheless ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... blossom thereof. I closed the panelling behind me, leaving the church as it had been on the day when, I saw the little hungry mouse treading sacred places. I went down the aisle; and as I passed by the hempen rope in the vestibule that so often had set the bell a-ringing, a longing came to do it now, to tell the village-people, by voice of sacred bell, that there was a new-born worship come down from Heaven. But I did not. I hurried on, and went out, locking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... would have been enough, Dunn thought, to place a harsh hempen noose about the soft white throat he watched where the little pulse still fluttered up and down. But now it was burnt and utterly destroyed, and no one ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... to take its course, And tie the fatal hempen knot, For vengeance cried from out the ground, Where lay ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... fancies, and in them behold Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... out to slarterin' some for Deacon Cephas Billins, An' in the hardest times there wuz I ollers tetched ten shillins), There's sutthin' gits into my throat thet makes it hard to swaller, It comes so nateral to think about a hempen collar; It's glory—but, in spite o' all my tryin to git callous, I feel a kind o' in a cart, aridin' to the gallus. But when it comes to BEIN' killed—I tell ye I felt streaked The fust time ever I found out wy baggonets wuz peaked, Here's how it wuz: I started ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... cloths and of all colours; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the former case, they sometimes ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... that the body bent, by its own weight, into an exquisitely painful position. His head was lower than his heels, and the breathing, in consequence, became exceedingly difficult. The poor man, so laid, was bound around the arms and legs with hempen cords, each of them encircling the limb ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... a sudden, something happened. The rope turned and twisted like a snake, a loop of it wound around the Elephant's neck, and a moment later he felt himself being lifted off the barn floor in the hempen coils. Through the air, like the pendulum of a big clock, he swayed, and as the rope pulled tighter and ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... the ane nor the ither—it wouldna be a thing in particular to be complained o'; but to be hanged like a dog is so disgracefu' and unchristian-like, that I would rather die ten times in a day, than feel a hempen cravat about my neck ance. And, moreover, I must say that hanging is not treating my dear young maister and kinsman as he ocht to be treated. His birth, his rank, and the memory o' his ancestors and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... the happy days in Atri sped, What wrongs were righted, need not here be said. Suffice it that, as all things must decay, The hempen rope at length was worn away, Unravelled at the end, and, strand by strand, Loosened and wasted in the ringer's hand, Till one, who noted this in passing by, Mended the rope with braids of briony, So that the leaves and tendrils of the vine Hung like a votive ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... I think of hempen fields, where I Once played with insects floating by, And joyed alike in sun and rain, Unconscious of approaching pain. I dwell upon my later lot, Where, swung in some secluded spot Between two tried and trusted trees, All summer ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was followed by their cheers and benedictions. Wonderfully different was the treatment he received on his arrival in his own country. Not long afterwards he was dragged through Boston streets by a hempen rope about his body, and was assigned to a prison cell, as affording the most available protection ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... is legitimate, and what good may all my stolen wealth avail me if I may not enter the haunts of men to spend it? Should I stick my head into London town, it would doubtless stay there, held by a hempen necklace. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the evening the wind shifted to east-south-east; and at ten it became what seamen term a hard gale, rendering it necessary to veer out about fifty additional fathoms of the hempen cable. The gale still increasing, the ship rolled and laboured excessively, and at midnight eighty fathoms more were veered out, while the sea continued to strike the vessel with a degree of force that no one had ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... rare a taste Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten; The hempen Haschish of the East Is powerless to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the dead. And when any one dies the friends and relations make a great mourning for the deceased, and clothe themselves in hempen garments,[NOTE 12] and follow the corpse playing on a variety of instruments and singing hymns to their idols. And when they come to the burning place, they take representations of things cut out of parchment, such as ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... an end. His execution was fixed; notwithstanding that some slight effort was made to save him by some persons more humane than their compeers, and who knew the character of the victim's persecutor; and he was led away to the final scene of his drama. Before the adjustment of the hempen order he was enlivened by the brutal taunts and lampoons of his master; who, forgetful of his own narrow escape from the grave, jested, with an unparalleled coarseness, on the fate awaiting ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... I saw these advertisements about harpooners, and high wages, so I went to the shipping agents, and they sent me here. That's all I know, and I say again that if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ring-maker and a horse-breaker; you'll make a hempen ring to break your own neck of a horse ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... halter got, Made of the best strong hempen teer, And ere a cat could lick her ear, Had tied it up with as much art, As DUN himself could ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... breast. Sometimes, more particularly in Germany, it is called the humerale (from humerus, shoulder). According to modern Roman use, laid down by the decree of the Congregation of Rites in 1819, the amice must be of linen or of a hempen material, not wool; and, as directed by the new Roman Missal (1570), a small cross must be sewn or embroidered in the middle of it. In putting it on it is first laid on the head, then allowed to fall on the shoulders, and finally folded round the chest and tied with the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Schubert emerged from the boma gate followed by natives carrying a table and a soap-box. He set these under a limb of the great baobab that faced the boma gate not far from the middle of the square. I noticed then for the first time that a short hempen rope hung suspended from the largest branch, with a noose in the end. The noose was not more than two ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... when the Harvester had completed his work at the cabin and barn and breakfasted, he took a mattock and a big hempen bag, and followed the path to the top of the hill. As it ran along the lake bank he descended on the other side to several acres of cleared land, where he raised corn for his stock, potatoes, and coarser garden truck, for which there was not space in the smaller enclosure close ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... 12 Leagues from the land; depth of water from 35 to 53 fathoms, fine sandy bottom. A great many Sea fowl and Grampusses about the Ship. In the A.M. Condemn'd 60 fathoms of the B.B. Cable,* (* B.B. stands for Best Bower, one of the principal cables. The hempen cables of those days were a continual cause of solicitude, and required great care.) and converted it into Junk; at Noon had no Observation, but by the land judged ourselves to be about 3 ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... method of roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was by suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a peg in the ceiling, while some one—usually an unwilling child—occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole turnspit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave the string a good twist, and thereafter it would untwist, and then ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. "I did not go empty-handed—they took the size from this monster. We all did our best. And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that. Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable front.... Well now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles twenty-five copecks the suit—together three roubles five copecks—a rouble and a half for the boots—for, you see, they are very good—and that makes four roubles fifty-five ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to hempen death, Savage, by royal grace, prolong'd his breath. Well might you think he spent his future years In pray'r, and fasting, and repentant tears. —But, O vain hope!—the truly Savage cries, "Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... felt for—as it was getting very dark—one end of the thin rope, and then, mounting a stool, he passed the strong hempen twist over the beam, which just allowed room for it to pass, knotted the end, made a slip noose, drew it tight, and then, feeling for the other end of the coil, he began to run it out through the open dormer, listening with ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... little man, as bone and muscle go, with deep-set eyes, and features kind and mild and fine as any woman's; some such face as Leonardo gave St. John, could that have been less youthful. I could not tell his order, though from his well-worn cassock girded at the waist with a frayed bit of hempen cord he might have been a Little Brother of the Poor. But this I noted; that he was not tonsured, and his white hair, soft and fine as Margery's, was like an aureole to the finely chiseled features. As missionary men of any creed are apt, he looked far older than he really was; ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... bad, are seldom justly given. Favour for a person will exalt the one, as disfavour will sink the other. But your uncle Antony has told my mother, who objected to his covetousness, that it was intended to tie him up, as he called it, to your own terms; which would be with a hempen, rather than a matrimonial, cord, I dare say. But, is not this a plain indication, that even his own recommenders think him a mean creature; and that he must be articled with—perhaps for necessaries? But enough, and too much, of such a wretch as this!—You must not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... with them in the heights among the Alpine roses, with only the clouds and the snow-summits near. But he was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that; and under his little sheepskin winter coat and his rough hempen summer shirt his heart had and much courage in it as Hofer's ever had,—great Hofer, who is a household word in all the Innthal, and whom August always reverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran out by the foaming water-mill and under the ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... the strongest building rock. And more than once 'gone up' in smoke Till scarce a building sheltered folk. The citizens can point to spots Where people fashioned hangman's knots With nimble fingers, to supply Some hardened rogues a hempen tie, Whom Vigilantes and their friends Saw ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the persons who are to be present; he also has an interview with the kaishaku, or seconds, and examines them upon the way of performing the ceremonies. When all the preparations have been made, he goes to fetch the censors; and they all proceed together to the place of execution, dressed in their hempen-cloth dress of ceremony. The retainers of the palace are collected to do obeisance in the entrance-yard; and the lord, to whom the criminal has been entrusted, goes as far as the front porch to meet the censors, and conducts them to the front reception-room. The chief censor then announces ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... saw it first at the arrival of the Mother of the Incarnation. Its scanty population has swelled to upwards of four thousand. The scattered huts which constituted the town, have been replaced by comfortable dwellings. Churches and convents have sprung up. Manufactures of serge and of hempen cloth have been introduced. A market, a brewery, and a tannery have been opened. The ground has been considerably cleared, and the agricultural resources of the country have been developed; three-fourths of the inhabitants can now live on the produce of the land, merely at the cost of their ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... that alone, we are to till the ground. By hand-labor also to plough the sea; both for food, and in commerce, and in war: not with floating kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle, and the winds of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greece rose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of Amalfi in her blue bay, of the Norman sea-riders from the North Cape to Sicily:—so, your ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... yes, probably; after which honest men may travel in safety! Ah, never have I adjusted a hempen cravat about the throat of any aspirant for such an honor with less pain than I shall officiate at the last toilet ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... day of festival In the capital of Valladolid That their eyes met at a crossing And their two souls rushed together. By the greed of a bought duenna And the interchange of love-notes And the help of a hempen ladder They arranged a meeting ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... so shy as his brother, and rather relies on keeping his nest out of sight than himself out of mind. His home is a sort of hempen hammock, only deeper and more pocket-shaped, to keep the babies from falling out, as Nat and Dodo both did out of ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... ancient days three warriors came from Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and Lochow,—how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,—how Diarmid O' Duin, i.e. son of "the Brown," slew with his own hand the mighty boar, whose head still ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... occasionally of cotton and wool; kersey, a knit woolen cloth, usually coarse and ribbed, manufactured in England as early as the thirteenth century, was especially for hose; lockram was a sort of a coarse linen or hempen cloth, and penniston, a coarse woolen frieze. Shalloon, a woolen fabric of twill weave was used chiefly for linings; fustian was a cotton and linen cloth, and diaper linen was woven of flax with a raised figure such as in damask, and used ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... brought him to the Watergate, Hard bound with hempen span, As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man. They set him high upon a cart— The hangman rode below— They drew his hands behind his back, And bared his noble brow. Then, as a hound is slipped ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... mighty pull on the hammock almost landed Sary out in the grass, but she clung like a vise to the hempen ropes. ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... (Fig. 11) of a tree are strong hempen bands which cover the open space down the centre of the tree, and are nailed, at one end, to the pommel, and at the other end to the cantle. They are tightly stretched, in order to give the rider a comfortable seat, and to keep her weight ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... weeks time with the help of the sorrel nag, who performed the parts that required most labour, I finished a sort of Indian canoe, but much larger, covering it with the skins of Yahoos, well stitched together with hempen threads of my own making. My sail was likewise composed of the skins of the same animal; but I made use of the youngest I could get, the older being too tough and thick; and I likewise provided myself with four paddles. I laid in a stock of boiled flesh, of rabbits and fowls, and took ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... presently a halter got, Made of the best strong hempen tear, And e'er a cat could lick her ear, Had tied it up with as much art, As Dun himself could do ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... moreover, three beds, but I was careful to ascertain that none would be occupied except by myself. I would sooner have slept on a bundle of hay in the loft than have had an unknown person snoring in the same room with me. One has always some prejudice to overcome. The bed was not soft, and the hempen sheets were as coarse as canvas, but these trifles did not trouble me. I listened to the song of the crickets on the hearth downstairs until drowsiness beckoned sleep and consciousness of the present lost its way in sylvan labyrinths ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... down to rest, their comforts are equally miserable and limited, for they sleep on a bench, or on the ground, with an old scanty blanket, which serves them at once for bed and covering, their cloathing is not less wretched, consisting of a shirt and trowsers of coarse, thin, hard, hempen stuff, in the Summer, with an addition of a very coarse woolen jacket, breeches and shoes in Winter. But since the war, their masters, for they cannot get the cloathing as usual, suffer them to go in rags, and many in a state ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... fat in that way. If we could not make fine candles, we might dip some wick in the grease, and thus have a kind of taper that would serve almost as well. I knew we had wick—I remembered the long hempen string which Ossaroo has got, and I knew that that would serve admirably for the purpose. All that would be easy enough—at least it appeared so—all except ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... a bow of yew, Good hempen cord and arrows true, When foes be thick and friends be few, Give ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... similar. We read that "in many parts of the Mark there still prevails on certain occasions the custom of kindling a need-fire, it happens particularly when a farmer has sick pigs. Two posts of dry wood are planted in the earth amid solemn silence before the sun rises, and round these posts hempen ropes are pulled to and fro till the wood kindles; whereupon the fire is fed with dry leaves and twigs and the sick beasts are driven through it In some places the fire is produced by the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... this here sea-port is no judge of an anchorage, or he would drop a kedge mayhap hereaway, in a line with the southern end of that there small matter of an island, and hauling his ship up to it, fasten her to the spot with good hempen cables and iron mud-hooks. Now, look you here, S'ip, at the reason of the matter," he continued, in a manner which shewed that the little skirmish that had just passed was like one of those sudden squalls of which they had both seen so many, and which were usually so soon succeeded ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... the best hempen cord," said Villiers, "just as it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute from ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... summer day the country looks as prosperous as it is beautiful, and one would not think that acute poverty could exist in the steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of the hill; but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just below tell the sad tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two days ago, because he was too poor to provide for a large family; and the house-mistress and Ito tell me that when a man who has a young ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... plate of the exact width of the plate to be coated. Immediately in front of the guide plate is a fixed silver cylinder, kept out of contact with the plate by the thickness of a piece of fine and very hard hempen cord, which can be renewed from time to time. These cords keep the cylinder from scraping the emulsion off the plate, and they help to distribute it in an even layer. There would be two lines upon each plate where it is touched by the cords, were not the emulsion so fluid as to flow over ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... a mile above, and that an attempt had been made to drown the magazine. As proof of good faith he had sent a lieutenant to notify Porter of the probable failure of that attempt. It remains, however, a curious want of foresight in a naval man not to anticipate that the hempen fasts, which alone secured her, would be destroyed, and that the vessel thus cast loose would drift down with the stream. Conceding fully the mutual independence of army and navy, it is yet objectionable that while one is treating under flag ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... did not desist from expressing his opinion, to Heinz, and assuring him that his place was on a battle charger, with his sword in its sheath or in his hand, rather than in a monastery with a rosary hanging from a hempen girdle. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... long-handled mops made of gaudy feathers—sacred to royalty. They are stuck in the ground around the tomb and left there.] before the tomb. He had the good taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the ordinary hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with. Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortly began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one man who attracted more attention than himself, and that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wisdom; now let us return to the wisdom that moves to the grave in the midst of the mighty crowd of human destinies; for the destiny of the sage holds not aloof from that of the wicked and frivolous. All destinies are for ever commingling; and the adventure is rare in whose web the hempen thread blends not with the golden. There are misfortunes more gradual, less frightful of aspect, than those that befell Oedipus and the prince of Elsinore; misfortunes that quail not beneath the gaze of truth or justice or love. Those who speak of the profit of wisdom are never so ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... one who should utter a loud word while the operation of lifting and settling the obelisk was going on. As the "huge crystallisation of Egyptian sweat" rose on its basis there was a sudden stoppage, the hempen cables refused to do their work, and the hanging mass of stone threatened to fall and destroy itself. Suddenly from out the breathless crowd rose a loud, clear voice, "Wet the ropes." There was inspiration ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... PUCK What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the fairy queen? What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor; An actor too perhaps, ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... beginning," he said. "Pliny tells us how the Romans used hemp for their sails at the end of the first century. Is not the English word 'canvas' only 'cannabis' over again? Herodotus speaks of the hempen robes of the Thracians as equal to linen in fineness. And as for cordage, the ships ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... there on the road was the truck with its great coil of hempen rope and its big pulleys, accompanied by two men in overalls. Pee-wee could not repress his exuberance as the trio clambered up on the cabin roof and waved ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... of woe to such as has a wish for it; I have fled as a fierce hull bitterly fighting, I have fled as a bristly boar seen in a ravine, I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat, On the skirt of a hempen sheet entangled, That seemed of the size of a mare's foal, That is filling like a ship on the waters; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless sea I was sent adrift; Which was to me an omen ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... time I saw her I criticised her straight Teutonic fringe and fanfaronaded on the captivating frizziness of Joanna's hair. The wonder is that Hedwige did not run hatpins into me. The murderer's widow of Prague was built of sterner stuff; she cared not a hempen strand for Joanna, a pale consumptive doxy, according to her picturing, who had jilted me for an ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... raised the kite, made of a large silk handkerchief. The top of the perpendicular stick was pointed with a sharp metallic rod. The string was hemp with the exception of the part held in the hand, which was silk; at the end of the hempen string a common key was suspended. With intense anxiety and no slight apprehension of danger, he held the line. Soon he observed the fibres of the hempen string to rise and separate themselves, as was the case of the hair on ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... aimlessly at the thick tether; nor throw away one ounce of useless energy. Seizing the hempen strands, he ground his teeth deeply and with scientific skill, into their fraying recesses. Thus does a dog, addicted to cutting his leash, attack ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the stone jug I was born, [1] Of a hempen widow the kid forlorn, [2] Fake away! [3] And my father, as I've heard say, Was a merchant of capers gay, [4 ] Who cut his last fling with great applause. Nix my doll, pals, fake away! [5] To the time of hearty choke with caper sauce. [6] Fake away! The knucks in quod did my ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... I took a dozen reeds and cut them each to a length of twenty-five feet, and afterwards notched them for the strings. In the meanwhile, I had sent two men down to the wreckage of the masts to cut away a couple of the hempen shrouds and bring them to the camp, and they, appearing about this time, I set to work to unlay the shrouds, so that they might get out the fine white yarns which lay beneath the outer covering of tar and blacking. These, when ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... attained on the earlier books either by sewing on flat bands, thin strips of leather or vellum (Fig. 10), or by flattening the usual hempen bands as much as they will bear by the hammer, and afterwards filling up the intermediate spaces with padding of some suitable material, ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... the bowstring? Whence a cord to match the weapon? Sinews from the elk of Hiisi, And the hempen cord of Lempo. Thus at length the bow was finished. And the stock was quite completed, 40 And the bow was fair to gaze on, And its value matched its beauty. At its back a horse was standing, On the stock a foal was running, On the curve a sleeping woman, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... The carpet—its hempen ground carried them to the north, from whence the material came, the inhabitants of the frozen world, their manners and their customs, the climate and their cities, their productions and their sources of wealth. Its woollen surface, with its various dyes—each dye containing ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... or their snug hammocks, and, like so many monkeys, jump up the shrouds, lie out on the enormous yards while the frigate was plunging bows under in the tumultuous seas, grasp the writhing canvas in their sinewy paws, and wrap it up close and tight in the hempen gaskets. Man-of-war sailors, for battle, or gale, or spree, every ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... silkworms. Again in 519, a century later, there was a dispute on the Ts'u-Wu frontier (North An Hwei province), about the possession of certain mulberry trees. Cotton (Gossypium) was unknown in China, and the poorer classes wore garments of hempen materials; the cotton tree (Bombyx) was known in the south, but then (as now) the catkins could not be woven into cloth. It was never the custom of officers in China to wear swords, until in 409 B.C. Ts'in introduced the practice; but it probably never ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... The kite being raised, a considerable time elapsed before there was any appearance of its being electrified. One very promising cloud had passed over it without any effect. Just as he was beginning to despair of his contrivance, he observed some loose threads of the hempen string to stand erect, and to avoid one another, just as if they had been suspended on a common conductor. Struck with this promising appearance, he immediately presented his knuckle to the key! And let the reader judge of the exquisite pleasure he must have ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... duration of apprenticeships. The term is different in different corporations. Where it is long, a part of it may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. In most towns, too, a very small fine is sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. The weavers of linen and hempen cloth, the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them, wheel-makers, reel-makers, etc. may exercise their trades in any town-corporate without paying any fine. In all towns-corporate, all persons are free to sell butchers' meat upon any ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... merry boys, and three merry boys, And three merry boys are we,[184-4] As ever did sing in a hempen string Under ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... this parachute, we cut a circle ten feet in diameter out of a piece of calico, and divide its circumference into ten or twelve equal parts. At each point of division we attach a piece of fine hempen cord about three feet in length, and connect these cords with each other, as well as with the suspension chain, by ligatures that are protected against the fire by means of balls ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... landing was not attempted this evening, for at eight o'clock the wind shifted to E.S.E., and at ten it had become a hard gale, when fifty fathoms of the floating light's hempen cable were veered out. The gale still increasing, the ship rolled and laboured excessively, and at midnight eighty fathoms of cable were veered out; while the sea continued to strike the vessel with a degree of force which had ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ocean wide with hempen bridle and horse of tree," How shall they in the darkening day of wrath and anguish and fear go free? How shall these that have curbed the seas not feel his bridle who made ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is called the corona, and has been most industriously studied and photographed during nearly every total eclipse for thirty years. Thus we have learned much about how it looks and what its shape is. It has a fibrous, woolly structure, a little like the loose end of a much-worn hempen rope. A certain resemblance has been seen between the form of these seeming fibres and that of the lines in which iron filings arrange themselves when sprinkled on paper over a magnet. It has hence been inferred that ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... of it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... sickness, was seated on a stone bench by the door, looking out for his coming, and introduced him into a not untidy cabin, where the old man, divested of his professional garb, was directing the last vibrations of a leg of mutton that hung by a hempen cord before the fire. The mutton was excellent—so were the potatoes and whiskey; and Scott returned home from an entertaining conversation, in which, besides telling many queer stories of his own life—and he had seen service in his youth—the old man more than once used an expression, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... happy sailors crown the sterns with flowers. Nathless then also time it is to strip Acorns from oaks, and berries from the bay, Olives, and bleeding myrtles, then to set Snares for the crane, and meshes for the stag, And hunt the long-eared hares, then pierce the doe With whirl of hempen-thonged Balearic sling, While snow lies deep, and streams are drifting ice. What need to tell of autumn's storms and stars, And wherefore men must watch, when now the day Grows shorter, and more soft the summer's heat? When Spring the rain-bringer ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... shore. Still Captain Hartland was not a man to yield while a possibility remained of saving his ship and the lives of those entrusted to him. The corvette carried aft two heavy guns for throwing shells. Some spare hempen cables were got up from below, and made fast to them; when hove overboard they checked her way. Daylight at length came, and revealed her terrific position. High cliffs, and dark, rugged, wild rocks, over which the sea broke in masses of foam, appeared on every side. Pale and anxious the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... A hempen string, whipped in the middle with colored silk, to mark the place for your arrow nock to be put, in shooting, will make ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Haraden, the most famous Salem privateersman of the Revolution, made the rigging for the mainmast in his loft. The sails were cut from duck woven for the purpose in the mill on Broad Street and the ironwork was forged by Salem shipsmiths. When the huge hempen cables were ready to be conveyed to the frigate, the workmen hoisted them upon their shoulders and in procession marched to the music of fife and drum. In 1799, six months after the oak timbers had been standing trees, the Essex slid from the stocks into the harbor ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... search of summer and other employment. As those wanderers may have entered England about the time of the cuckoo's appearance, the idea that the bird was the precursor of the Welsh might thus become prevalent. Also, on the quotation given by "PETIT ANDRE" (No. 18. p. 283.) of Welsh parsley, or hempen halters, it may have derived its origin from the severity practised on the Welsh, in the time of their independence, when captured on the English side of the border,—the death ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... be formed with the greatest facility and dispatch. They used all the iron and brass that could be obtained, and then melted down vases and statues of the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an inferior pointing of silver and gold. In the same manner, when the supplies of flax and hempen twine for cordage for their bows failed, the beautiful sisters and mothers of the hostages cut off their long hair, and twisted and braided it into cords to be used as bow-strings for propelling the arrows which ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... but common ones, Simple shepherds all - My tools are no sight to see: A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... cry with the woman, For yellow-haired Donough is dead, With a hempen rope for a neckcloth, And a white cloth ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest!—that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?—that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters beneath?—that they take counsel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... that morning, a stalwart batch of new-comers from the wilds of Muscovy, burning with the ardour of abnegation and wholly ignorant of local laws and customs, sauntered across the market-place in freshly purchased hempen sandals. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... their stead. I shall never forget the sight of her standing on the scaffold with the ruff round her pretty neck, all done up with the yellow starch which I had so often helped her to make, and that was so soon to give place to a rough hempen cord. Such a sight, sweetheart, will make one loath to meddle with matters that are too hot or ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... are of 240 H.P., consist of two coupled steam engines of the Collmann system. The one shaft in common runs with a velocity of 60 revolutions per minute. Its motion is transmitted by means of ten hempen cables, 3.5 cm. in diameter. The flywheel, which is 4 m. in diameter, serves at the same time as a driving pulley. As the pulley mounted upon the transmitting shaft is only one meter in diameter, it follows that the shafting has a velocity of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... family; but, as he pointed out to his dear old governor, a Carteret mustn't be allowed to starve; so the parson, who loved the handsome lad, put down his hack and sent the prodigal a remittance. He had better have sent him a hempen rope, for necessity might have made a man out of Master Dick; the remittance turned ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... winsome Laird o' Harden," she said, "when ye hae three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" Sir Willie was one of the handsomest men of his time, and when the men brought the rope to hang him he was given the option of marrying Muckle Mou'd Meg or of being hanged with a "hempen halter." It was said that when he first saw Meg he said he preferred to be hanged, but he found she improved on closer acquaintance, and so in three days' time a clergyman said, "Wilt thou take this woman here present ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers, paid a surprise visit to the Ruffling Harry, with the result that they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the north-east trades on a ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who heard the boy talking to himself; and, as they we're just passing the place where the gallows stood, the man said, "Do you see? There is the tree where seven fellows have married the hempen maid, and now swing to and fro. Sit yourself down there and wait till midnight, and then you will know what it is ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Rokuro[u]bei. When he showed a disposition to be recalcitrant, to equivocate, Homma gave sign to the do[u]shin. Quickly the scourgers came forward with their fearful instrument, the madake. Made of bamboo split into long narrow strips, these tightly wrapped in twisted hempen cord to the thickness of a sun (inch), with the convenient leverage of a couple of shaku (feet), the mere sight brought Kondo[u] to terms. As he entered he had seen them lead away a heimin (commoner) who had undergone the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... I fain would sing, And likewise his fair queen; But that the knave, A haughty slave, Must needs step in between: "Good diamond king, With hempen string This haughty knave destroy; Then may your queen, With mind ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... to the watergate Hard bound, with hempen span. As though they held a lion there, And not a 'fenceless man: They set him high upon a cart, The hangman rode below, They drew his hands behind his back And bared his noble brow. Then as a hound is slipped from leash They cheered the common throng, And ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... lately I have dreamed of high And hempen dissolution! O doctor, doctor, how can I Amend ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... some riding on oxen and asses. In their forefront went the two signs of the Battle-shaft and the War-spear. But moreover, in front of all was borne a great staff with the cloth of a banner wrapped round about it, and tied up with a hempen yarn that it ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... 'It is the best hempen cord,' said Villiers, 'just as it used to be made for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... wonder-struck, answered in his own way. Some said that the author of such a crime deserved a hempen cravat; others thought that the wretch should be thrown into the water with a stone to his neck. Beheading seemed to the old minister too mild a punishment for such a villain; he was in favor of flaying him alive, and ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... space, and that the earth itself had gotten loose and was dropping away beneath us to depths unknown. Every cord and rope of the huge fabric was tensely taut, the basket firm and solid beneath our feet. Indeed, the balloon, with nothing more substantial in her construction than cloth and twine, and hempen ropes and willow wands (the latter forming the basket), has always, while floating in mid-air free of the drag rope's tricks, the rigid homogeneity of a rock, a solidity that quickly inspires the most timid with ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... a line for a breastwork, and, when rolled before the men as they advanced, formed a moving rampart which was proof against shot, and only to be overcome by a sortie in force, which the enemy did not dare to make. On came the hempen breastworks, while Price's artillery continued an effective fire. In the afternoon of the 20th the enemy hung out a white flag, upon which General Price ordered a cessation of firing, and sent to ascertain the object of the signal. The Federal ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... place is that seat of grace For which all worldlings try: But who would stand in hempen band Upon a scaffold high, And through a murderer's collar take His last look at ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end of a hempen ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... drove steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as Troop steadied her at the wheel. "Up ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... that supported the car was made of very strong hempen cord, and the two valves were the object of the most minute and careful attention, as the rudder of ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... reasoning against an intuition. Every human being felt that the verdict was true, and that the judgment, when it came would be right: and recoiled from the smiling gentleman, over whose white head the hempen circle hung like a diabolical glory Dangerfield, who had something of the Napoleonic faculty of never 'making pictures' to himself, saw this fact in its ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the fire escapes before retiring. The Casa Nova is a stone building with stone stairways and floors. In our room there was nothing inflammable but the mosquito nettings and lace draperies over the iron bedsteads. Two candles furnished us with light, hempen rugs covered portions of the black and white marble floor, a gilded crucifix hung on the painted stone wall, and two chairs, a small table, and a washstand completed ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... may holler," I says to them, "you may holler till you be heard over the face of all the earth, but no one won't take no account of you." And the lies of them which have turned into ropes of hempen shall come up and strangle they. But me and my child shall pass by all fatted up and clothed, and with the last flick, afore the eyelids of they drop, they shall behold we, and, a-clapping of the teeth of them shall they ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... primitive as that of the ginning. A long bamboo, sufficiently thin to be flexible, is fastened at its base to a pillar or the corner of a small room. It slopes upward into the center of the room, and from its upper end a hempen cord is suspended. To this is fastened the "bow," an instrument made of oak, about five feet in length, two inches in circumference, and shaped like a ladle. A string of coarse catgut is tightly stretched from end to end of the bow, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... burrow in between small low cottages and warehouses. Some of these have overhanging upper stories to them, are half-timbered or yellow-washed. Some are built wholly of wood. There is an all-pervading odour of tar and hempen rope. Small industries abound, though without any self-advertisement of plate-glass shop fronts. Chimney-sweeps and cobblers give notice of their presence by swinging signs. Newsvendors make irruption of flaring boards upon the pavement. Little ground-floor windows exhibit ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... most fearful things In the crystal of a dream, We saw the greasy hempen rope Hooked to the blackened beam And heard the prayer the hangman's snare ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... skin was used by the ascetic in place of the regular Brahmanical cord. This thread or cord, sometimes called the sacrificial cord, might be made of various substances, such as cotton, hempen or woollen thread, according to the class of the wearer; and was worn over the left shoulder and under the right. The rite of investiture with this thread, which conferred the title of 'twice-born,' and corresponded ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... sailing frigate, of fifty-two guns, with huge spars—one of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... sell me any ... slippers ... pants ... hempen sandals ... old shoes ... secondhand clothes ... syringes ... urinals ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Joe, there will not," answered I; and, dashing forward to the windlass bitts, I proceeded to throw off turn after turn of the stiff hempen cable that held the felucca to her anchor, until the last turn was gone and the flakes went writhing and twisting out through the hawse-hole; then, as the end disappeared with a splash I dashed aft and rammed the tiller hard over ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... "several of the pauper women were chained to their bedsteads, naked, and only covered with a hempen rug," and "the accommodation for paupers was infamously bad, and required immediate reform;" while in January of the same year it is reported that "some pauper men were chained upon their straw beds with only a rug to cover them, and not ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... drink, then pours the wine on the ground by way of libation. At every step, he falls and rolls in the mud; he pretends to be most disgustingly drunk. His poor wife runs after him, picks him up, calls for help, tears out the hempen hair that protrudes in stringy locks from beneath her soiled cap, weeps over her husband's ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Tonzo were doing something to a trapeze. They had pushed up the outer silk covering of the rope—covering put on for ornamental purposes—and Tonzo was pouring something from a bottle on the hempen strands. ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... kite. He prepared one by fastening two cross sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. To the upright stick was affixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the appearance of a thundergust approaching, he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing the ridicule ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... attics, Combined with those vile anti-ladder fanatics, And sent a projectile which left the thief where Thieves and traitors should all be, suspended in air, Except that he lacked what was due to his calling, A hempen attachment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cases Mr. Wood used strong hempen thread for the stitches; of late, however, he has proved the greater advantage of ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... one of the most picturesque in Spain. The men wear short black velvet breeches, open at the knees and slashed at the sides, adorned with rows of buttons, and showing white drawers underneath; alpargatas, or the plaited hempen sandals, which, with the stockings, are black; a black velvet jacket, with slashed and button-trimmed sleeves, and the gaily-coloured faja, or silk sash, worn over ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... uncombed heares Upstaring stiffe, dismayd with uncouth dread; Nor drop of bloud in all his face appeares Nor life in limbe: and to increase his feares In fowle reproch of knighthoods faire degree, 195 About his neck an hempen rope he weares, That with his glistring armes does ill agree; But he of rope or armes has ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... broad, healthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare in her eyes was unpleasant, in spite of their meek expression. She wandered about, summer and winter alike, barefooted, wearing nothing but a hempen smock. Her coarse, almost black hair curled like lamb's wool, and formed a sort of huge cap on her head. It was always crusted with mud, and had leaves, bits of stick, and shavings clinging to it, as she always slept on the ground and in the dirt. Her father, a homeless, sickly drunkard, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bound fast here you saw him, and wondered to see him, Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned; There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat, And a hempen rope in ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... with other ships, slowly increasing their spread of canvas as they went, whereas the Nonsuch hung on to her anchor until practically the whole of her working canvas was set, wherefore no sooner had the ponderous hempen cable gone smoking out through her hawse pipe than she came under command, when her extraordinary speed at once told, and she began to rapidly overhaul the ships of which she was in chase. But it was nervous work threading her way out of that crowded anchorage in the intense ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the sand. She tied it on round her waist and her shirt over it, and wound an old crimson sash round both. Then she took up her little bundle in which were the wooden cup and a broken comb, and some pieces of hempen cloth and a small loaf of maize bread, and went on along the water, wading and hopping in it, as the water-wagtails did, jumping from stone to stone, and sometimes sinking up to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the river—that side on which lay the hacienda San Carlos—was the principal encampment. There stood a large, rudely-shaped tent, constructed out of the covers of the despoiled packages—pieces of coarse hempen canvas and sack cloth, woven from the fibres ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... A hempen cloth, so loosely woven as to leave interstices between the threads, in little squares. It is used for working in patterns upon it with wools, &c.; by painters for a ground work on which they draw their pictures; for tents, sails, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... intent upon thy Ode, I plunge my knife into the beef, Which, when a cow—as is the mode— Was lifted by a Highland thief. Ah! spare him, spare him, circuit Lords! Ah hang him not in hempen cords; Ah save him in his morn of youth From the damp-breathing, dark[23] tolbooth, Lest when condemn'd and hung in clanking chains, His body moulder ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... voted one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the support of the necessary branches of the establishment. A dispute arose between the commons and the lower house of convocation, relating to the tithes of hemp and flax, ascertained in a clause of a bill for the better improvement of the hempen and flaxen manufactures of the kingdom. The lower house of convocation presented a memorial against this clause as prejudicial to the rights and properties of the clergy. The commons voted the person who brought it in guilty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... defective ones in their stead. For the same cause they love to pester and persecute and play shrewd tricks upon decrepit old age, wise aunts, and toothless, chattering gossips, and especially such awkward "hempen home-spuns" as Bottom and his fellow-actors in ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the bonny cells of Bedlam, Ere I was ane-and-twenty, I had hempen bracelets strong, And merry whips, ding-dong, And prayer ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... suddenly he came to regret the use he had made of his life. A picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... estimation. He was a man of ordinary stature— rather below than above—and rather thin than stout, apparently between thirty and forty years of age: he had a large mouth, pale, dingy complexion, milky blue eyes, and hair the colour of a hempen cord. There was a roast leg of mutton before him: he helped Mrs. Bloomfield, the children, and me, desiring me to cut up the children's meat; then, after twisting about the mutton in various directions, and eyeing it from different points, he pronounced it not fit to be ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... concentrated young monk—the latter (by which I mean a monk of any kind) being a rare sight to-day in France. This young man indeed was mitigatedly monastic. He had a big brown frock and cowl, but he had also a shirt and a pair of shoes; he had, instead of a hempen scourge round his waist, a stout leather thong, and he carried with him a very profane little valise. He also read, from beginning to end, the Figaro which the old priest, who had done the same, presented to him; and he looked altogether as if, had he not been a ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James |
