"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to do as she was told, but one morning as she was cleaning, and the witch was out, she forgot what the witch said, and looked up the chimney. When she did this a great bag of money fell down in her lap. This happened again and again. So the girl ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... suggested. I swung my feet around on the sofa and lay with my head in her lap. Pheola bent down over me and stroked my forehead ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... last lap, now," said Fred gleefully. "In a few minutes we'll know whether we've struck oil or gold. Come on, fellows!" he ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... wrap around her throat, because she always had sore throats and croup when she was a child. And when the men found them, he was sitting up against a tree sound asleep, almost frozen stiff, with her in his lap and his cold little arms around her. It was late in September and the nights were cold. Then there was the time when she fell off the side of the ferry boat and he jumped in after her,—with his best suit on, the little ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... watch-chain: and Pen was very much pleased that she came to him; for he was very soft-hearted and simple, though he concealed his gentleness under a shy and pompous demeanour. So she clambered up on his lap, whilst her father continued to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Him: Almighty God was He: Steadfast and very stout of heart mounted the shameful tree, Brave in the sight of many there, when man He fain would free. I trembled when He clasped me round, yet groundward durst not bend, I must not fall to lap of earth, but stand ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... prevent. Our associates of the animal kingdom do not escape the influence of such causes: the mountain shepherd and his dog are equally hardy, and form an instructive contrast between a delicate lady and her lap-dog; the extreme point of degeneracy and imbecility of which each race is susceptible. In the early ages of society man enjoyed long life, his manner of living was simple, his food, habitation, and pursuits, were all calculated to fortify the body, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... after their exertion. "Oh those jagged mountains," exclaims Mrs Browning, "rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts, and setting their teeth against the sky.... You may as well guess at a lion by a lady's lap-dog as at Nature by what you see in England. All honour to England, lanes and meadowland, notwithstanding. To the great trees above all." The sculptor Story and his family, whose acquaintance they had made in Florence before Casa Guidi had become their home, were their ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of his pocket. The body of a man, tied at the hands and heels behind with a hitching-strap, and with a linen carriage lap-cloth wound around his head and knotted, lay there endeavoring to ease the rigor of his ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... reporter enters upon the last lap of his rounds. Through, perhaps, the narrow, crooked lane of Pine Street he passes, to come out at length upon a scene set for a sea tale. Here would a lad, heir to vast estates in Virginia, be kidnapped and smuggled aboard to be sold a slave in Africa. This is Front Street. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... handful into her lap. Then he crossed back to the library and shut the conservatory door behind him. I am not surprised that Gilbertine wondered at her ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... excellent portrait of Cromwell, was struck by the Dutch. The Protector, crowned with laurels, is on his knees, laying his head in the lap of the commonwealth, but loosely exhibiting himself to the French and Spanish ambassadors with gross indecency: the Frenchman, covered with fleur de lis, is pushing aside the grave Don, and disputes with him the precedence—Retire-toy; l'honneur appartient ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... these words (of the king), the Muni controlling his outer senses entered into meditation, sitting in the shade of that very mango tree where he was. And there fell upon the lap of the seated Muni a mango that was juicy and untouched by the beak of a parrot or any other bird. That best of Munis, taking up the fruit and mentally pronouncing certain mantras over it, gave it unto the king as the means of his obtaining an incomparable offspring. And the great Muni, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hidden by low hills and forest, bombards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf. In front of the town, the long line of sea-beach trends north and north-west, and then westward to enclose the bay. The waves which lap so quietly about the jetties of Monterey grow louder and larger in the distance; you can see the breakers leaping high and white by day; at night, the outline of the shore is traced in transparent silver by the moonlight and the ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the Choice of a Mistress, to whom you may say, In Thee alone my choice is fixed. Do not believe such a one will fall into your Lap. It will become you to look about sharp for her, and with all your Eyes, I do assure you. And here my first Instruction shall be, where she may most probably be found: For he is a bad Huntsman who would beat about the Royal ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... took her work, and tried not to observe the countenance, which the other tried to hide between the large sheets; but she could not help becoming aware of tears stealing down the face and dropping on the lap. The first remark Miss Bronte made was to express her fear lest so severe a notice should check the sale of the book, and injuriously affect her publishers. Wounded as she was, her first thought was for others. Later on (I think that very afternoon) Mr. Thackeray called; she suspected (she said) ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Princess, brushing the bread crumbs off her green silk lap, "if you're sure you won't have any more meat you can come and see my treasures. Sure you won't take the least bit more chicken? No? ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... you will see finer things than most children will tonight. Steady, now, and do just as I tell you, and don't say one word whatever you see," answered Nursey, quite quivering with excitement as she patted a large box in her lap, and nodded and ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... indeed, the most beautiful stew in the world, being made of partridges, and pheasants, and chickens, and hares, and rabbits, and peahens, and guinea-fowls, and one or two other things. Toad took the plate on his lap, almost crying, and stuffed, and stuffed, and stuffed, and kept asking for more, and the gipsy never grudged it him. He thought that he had never eaten so good a breakfast in ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... so far removed from life, so wrapped in cotton wool, so deep-sunk in the soft lap of civilization, that I cannot feel the cold splash of truth? It is a disquieting thought—for certainly piracy seems as ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... costly presents. These she took, but valued them not so much as his kind words and smiles. More and more she loved to hear his voice, and when he was gone out hawking or looking at jousts she was sad and thoughtful, sitting with her fair hands in her lap and her eyes looking far away, and when she heard his step or his voice in the hall, then would her sad eyes light up, and a merry tune would hum upon her lips, and she would gaily talk with her handmaidens, who, whispering and glancing and nodding ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... unfurled. There had been a stillness there and scents and colours she knew. A bird had come and swung upon a twig quite near her and, looking at her with bright soft full eyes, had sung gently to her, as if he were speaking. A squirrel had crept up onto her lap and had not moved when she stroked it. Its eyes had been full and soft also, and she knew it understood that she could not hurt it. There was no mistake in her being among the new fair greenness, and the woodland things who spoke to her. They did not use words, but ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is only entitled to his accustomed trade. That any inconveniences he may suffer are quite balanced by the enlargement of his commerce; the trade of the belligerents is usually interrupted to a great degree, and falls into the lap ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... the lap of her dress and both arms full of great clusters of dewy roses, white, yellow, crimson, russet brown. Some were wide and transparent like those of the Villa Pamfili, all fresh and glistening, others were densely ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... nets. Clear and sweet and with a penetrating pathos indescribable, the voice rose and fell in all the quaint turns and quavers and cadences that a tune takes on with age. As she sang her song in the soft Gaelic tongue, with hands lying idly in her lap, with eyes glowing in their gloomy depths, the spell of mountain and glen and loch fell upon her sons and upon the girl seated at her feet, while Iola's great lustrous eyes, fastened upon the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... chase for the hunting of Hlo-hlo, who wears Their halos, so these people say, on golden hooks along his hunting-belt. And from Theth he came to the city of Moung and the temple of Moung-ga-ling, and entered and saw the spider-idol, Hlo-hlo, sitting there with Dead Man's Diamond glittering on his lap, and looking for all the world like a full moon, but a full moon seen by a lunatic who had slept too long in its rays, for there was in Dead Man's Diamond a certain sinister look and a boding of things to happen that are better not mentioned here. The ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... Yes, yes Madam and your daily occupation to inspect the Dairy, superintend the Poultry, make extracts from the Family Receipt-book, and comb your aunt Deborah's Lap Dog. ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... urns have been discovered of the slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the wool which was spun by the empress's maids, another for the care of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of Pollio or Lentulus. They ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... scarlet hat, the laurell'd stave Are measures, not the springs, of worth; In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth. Seek other spur Bravely to stir The dust in this loud world, and tread Alp-high among the ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... first mention of Isaacs since his departure. I had said the thing inadvertently, for I would not have done anything to increase her trouble for the world. She leaned back, dropping her hands with her work in her lap, and stared straight out through the doorway, as pale as death—pale as only fair-skinned people are when they are ill, or hurt. She sat quite still. I wondered if she were ill, or if it were only Isaacs' going that had wrought this change in her brilliant looks. "Would ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... simple and secluded maiden. The books were hers to read as much as any other's; the gold and silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and, without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... canners, and he has to say, "Wait a minute and I'll figure it out," or turn to one of his boys and ask, "Bill, what are twos netting us?" he isn't sitting close enough to his job, and, perhaps, if Bill were in his chair, he'd be holding it in his lap; or when you ask the chief engineer how much coal we burned this month, as compared with last, and why in thunder we burned it, if he has to hem and haw and say he hasn't had time to figure it out yet, but he thinks they were running both benches in the packing house most of ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the brougham draw up in the wet street before the door, Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long, hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date Madeleine Verrier had been a great beauty, and she had never yet reconciled herself to physical losses which were but the outward and visible sign ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to attempt to dress a young baby in a sitting posture. It should lie upon the nurse's lap until quite old enough to sit alone, the clothing being drawn over the child's feet, not slipped over ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... in action, the operator taking down dictation on to the machine so quickly that it was almost as good as short-hand. It stopped suddenly, and the fragile anaemic woman who was working it laid down her hands in her lap, saying she was afraid she could not continue. In reply to the question if she was ill she said no—that it was simply she was nervous. She said she had only just returned from the country, where she had been resting for a week—a rest ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... negligently for her cigarette case, lighted one and letting it droop at a rather impossible angle, supported by the lightest pressure of her lips so that the smoke crept up over her face into her lashes and her hair, folded her hands demurely in her lap and waited for her aunt to go on. She was mischievously half aware of the disturbing effect of this ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... o' the warl', wi' a swirl an' a sway, An' a Rin, burnie, rin, That water lap clear frae the dark till the day, An' singin' awa' did spin, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... was turned and necks were craned. A waiter, serving coffee, was so electrified that he poured no small quantity into the lap of an indignant German. Joan, too wrathful for mere words, dared not rush away instantly to her compartment, though she would have given a good deal at that moment to be safe in its kindly obscurity. And the worst thing was that she saw the coffeepot ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... fresh ardour to the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... funeral pile is set on fire, she walks round it two or three times, bewailing the death of her husband, and then rejoicing that she is now to live with him again: After which, embracing her friends, she sits down on the top of the pile among dry wood, taking her husband's head on her lap, and orders fire to be put to the pile; which done, her friends throw oil upon her and sweet perfumes, while she endures the fire with wonderful fortitude, loose not bound. I have seen many instances ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... after supper we all went out on the bungalow porch, and Miela told me her story. She spoke quietly, with her hands clasped nervously in her lap. At times in her narrative her eyes shone with the eager, earnest sincerity of her words; at others they grew big and troubled as she spoke of the problems that were harassing her world and mine—the inevitable self-struggles of humanity, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... that to himself, as it might shock his mother's sense of propriety and make her think less of Katy, impulsive, confiding Katy, little dreaming as on that rainy afternoon she sat in the kitchen at Silverton, with her feet in the stove-oven and the cat asleep in her lap, of the conversation taking place between Wilford Cameron and his mother. They had left the dinner table, and lighting his cigar, which for that one time the mother permitted in the parlor, Wilford opened the subject by asking her to guess what ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... very closely watched by their masters, and they always go out to parties in couples or in bands, so that they may be a check upon one another. Doubtless, however, in spite of all precautions, the shower of gold does from time to time find its way to Danae's lap; and to be the favoured lover of a fashionable singer or dancer is rather a feather in the cap of a fast young Japanese gentleman. The fee paid to singing-girls for performing during a space of two hours is one shilling and fourpence each; for six hours the fee is quadrupled, and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... no more. His assailants very deliberately proceeded to rifle the inanimate body, when one of them, perceiving the silver badge, exclaimed, with an oath, "One of the rampant Neviles! This cock at least shall crow no more." And laying the young man's head across his lap, while he stretched back the throat with one hand, with the other he drew forth a long sharp knife, like those used by huntsmen in despatching the hart. Suddenly, and in the very moment when the blade was about to inflict the fatal gash, his hand was forcibly arrested, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... May was sitting with her arms lying loose in her lap, palms upward. Her lips had been loose and parted a little with the slackness of blank amazement. In those first awful minutes she really believed that her father had suddenly lost his mind; that he was joking never occurred to her. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... lay on his soft, open collar and tie, his sunburnt lips were shut tight, and above and between his nervous brown eyes were two little, vertical furrows of perplexity and regret. He was looking at the dull-finish barrel of a new rifle, that lay across Lefever's lap. At intervals Lefever took the rifle up and, whistling softly, examined with care a fracture of the lever, the broken thumb-piece of which lay on the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... a low chair, with her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in her palms; and in her lap lay paper and pencil, while a sealed letter had fallen on the ground beside her. At the sound of the opening door, she lifted her head, and tears dripped upon the paper. In her faded flannel dressing-gown, with tresses of black ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... commodities taken by French people on a journey, and the cool self-satisfaction with which they are appropriated as occasion demands, give a stranger the most vivid idea of sensual egotism. The pt, the long roll of bread, the sour wine, the lap-dog, the snuff, and the night-cap, which transform the car or carriage into a refectory and boudoir, with the chatter, snoring, and shifting of legs, make an interior scene for the novice, especially on a night-jaunt, compared to which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... weeping and praying. She sat down and took his head in her lap, and with her lace handkerchief wiped his blackened and bleeding face, ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... sat at my feet, and his head he laid Low down on my lap, and he did not move, But he murmur'd softly, 'I am afraid I shall make a fool ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... if you do not, then I have the pleasure of informing you. Your conduct is so light—so light," she repeated, the fan wavering higher like a butterfly, "that perhaps you do not truly understand." The Countess rolled her fan together, laid it in her lap, and rose to a less languorous position. "Indeed," she continued, "I should be sorry to see any young woman in your situation. You began with every advantage—birth, a suitable marriage—quite pretty too—and see what you have come to! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentle Ithamore, lie in my lap.— Where are my maids? provide a cunning banquet; Send to the merchant, bid him bring me silks; Shall Ithamore, my love, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... little it took to tire her now. She leaned back in his chair, propped by the cushions he had chosen for her (chosen with a distinct prevision of the beauty of the white face and dark hair against that particular shade of greenish blue). She had been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap. Her feet rested on his fender, they stretched out towards the warmth of his fire. If only it were permitted to him always to buy things for her; always to give her the rest she needed; always to care for her and keep her warm and well. He wondered how things had gone with her ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... interest in his cough, his appetite, his digestion, his night's rest. Zephirine had succeeded in making a valetudinarian of her factotum; she coddled him and doctored him; she crammed him with delicate fare, as if he had been a fine lady's lap-dog; she embroidered waistcoats for him, and pocket-handkerchiefs and cravats until he became so used to wearing finery that she transformed him into a kind of Japanese idol. Their understanding was perfect. In season and out of season Zizine consulted ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... taking the slightest notice of anything, "just as I was going past that door I picked up a most remarkable thing. Wonder if it's yours, madam?" glancing at Zuilika. "Just have a look at it, will you? Here, catch!" And not until he saw a piece of gold spin through the air and fall into Zuilika's lap did the Major remember that ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... radius of the firelight a girl leaned forward, her eyes fastened upon a drawing she held in her lap. One could see only vague outlines. The light danced over the figure of the girl, her bright, reddish-gold hair, cut short and held in place with an amber comb, her slender shoulders, the unconsciously graceful poise of ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... tale, the change that came over her was most remarkable. When I began she was leaning back placidly in her large chair, with her handkerchief upon her lap; but gradually her face kindled, she sat upright, and she was transformed with a completeness and suddenness which I could not have conceived possible. At last, when I had finished, she put both ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... at Margaret Elizabeth from beneath his bushy brows. Confound them, what were they doing to her? She had a way of joining him in the library, and sitting with a book in her lap, which she ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... scold! So bitter and so bold! Shake the windows with your tap, tap, tap! With half-shut, dreamy eyes The drowsy baby lies Cuddled closely in his mother's lap. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... and her aunt staid all night. And after the whole story had been gone over and over, and Grandpapa had held Polly on his knee, all the time she was not in Mamsie's lap, and Alexia had had her poor arm taken care of, and all bandaged up, Dr. Fisher praising her for being so cool and patient, why then it was nearly ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... storm overtaken an army or patrol, the situation would have been exactly similar, and would have been an ordeal even to experienced Boers or Colonial farmers, and if an enemy had been located near Reddersburg, all the cattle and horses would simply have fallen into his lap. ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... is all very well for people who have been reared in the lap of luxury, and tenderly nurtured; but neither of these half-clad Kan-kiang navigators was born with the traditional silver spoon. From infancy they have had to thrive the best way they could on rice, turnip-tops, peanuts, and delusive expectations of pork and fish; their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the heat, from which she could not shield herself, spread a slight flush over her cheeks and ears, and, shedding a soft indolence over her whole body, was reflected in a dreamy languor in her pretty eyes. She was almost unable to work; her hands seem to fall naturally into her lap. She scarcely walked at all, and was constantly sighing and ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... powder like a beetroot in white sauce, favoured Betty with a broad stare. Vulgarity was very vulgar in those days, especially when it had purchased rank, and thought manners might be dispensed with. Betty sat down, and Amoret climbed on her lap, while a diversion was made by Archer's imperious entreaty that his mamma would purchase a mandarin who not only nodded, but waved his hands and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unromantic pair of lovers as they were, must have had some touch of the ordinary softness of human nature; they looked content with all the world. Lucia, leaning back with her crochet lying on her lap, and her eyes half hidden by their black lashes, had yielded herself up entirely to the indolent enjoyment of perfect stillness, forgetting even to be conscious of the pair of handsome blue eyes which rested on her, taking in luxuriously the charm ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... blushes alike over what they had, however briefly, alienated, and over what they had, however durably, gained. They had preserved and consecrated, and she now—her part of it was shameless—appropriated and enjoyed. Palazzo Leporelli held its history still in its great lap, even like a painted idol, a solemn puppet hung about with decorations. Hung about with pictures and relics, the rich Venetian past, the ineffaceable character, was here the presence revered and served: which brings us back to our truth of a moment ago—the fact that, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... you'd be comin'," she said, smiling, "but I looked for you yesterday." She sat down and settled herself for conversation, her long hands, still nice looking in spite of rheumatism, moving nervously over her gray chambray lap. "Dis las' gone August I was 72 years old," she began, "my sister say I older dan dat, but I know I born las' year of de war. I was born on governor Pickens' place, de Grove place fur out, and my mother was Lizbeth Cohen. Must have was my father a Indian, he brighter dan me, but redder. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... in respect for his work. It was on this that she must concentrate her whole mind, privileged auditor that she was. She sat looking straight before her, with her lips slightly compressed, and her hands folded on her lap. I used to wonder that there had been that first moment when I did not think her pretty. Her eyes were of a very light hazel, seeming all the lighter because her hair was of so dark a brown; and they were beautifully set in a face of that 'pinched oval' kind which is rather rare in England. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... teeth. In one of them the anterior part of the jaw was fractured perpendicularly; in the other, both branches were fractured. Plenty of good soup was injected into their mouths. Ten or twelve days afterwards, they were suffered to lap it; and in a little while they ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... as was shown by the regular movement of the covering over his chest. Madame Leon and Mademoiselle Marguerite were his only attendants. The housekeeper, who sat back a little in the shade, was half reclining in an arm-chair with her hands clasped in her lap, her lips firmly compressed, and her eyes fixed upon vacancy. Pale but calm, and more imposing and more beautiful than ever, Mademoiselle Marguerite was kneeling beside the bed, eagerly watching for some sign of renewed life and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... teeth, a dropped wrist, and to the hospital again or on to the file-cutter's box; and so he goes miserably on and off, till he drops into a premature grave, with as much lead in his body as would lap ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... stars at night; happy prisoner! his eyes have broken gaol! And again he who has learned to love an art or science has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches; if prosperity come, he will not enter poor into his inheritance; he will not slumber and forget himself in the lap of money, or spend his hours in counting idle treasures, but be up and briskly doing; he will have the true alchemic touch, which is not that of Midas, but which transmutes dead money into living delight and satisfaction. Etre et pas avoir—to be, not to possess—that is the problem of life. To ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you then at early noon carousing 5 Lap in luxury? they, my jolly comrades, Search the streets ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... summons. Clary gave one look, put her handkerchief quickly to her eyes, and then turned and softly covered the tools, lifted the boiling pot to the side of the grate, and took Dulcie's fretful, wondering child in her lap. She was not a fine lady now, but a woman in distress. Sam stood immoveable and uncertain, with a man's awkwardness, but a face working with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... said the King. And when Sir Bedivere had laid him there, King Arthur rested his head on the lap of the fairest Queen. ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... that was part of the fun of the occasion, and added to the general hilarity. A formal meal in the dining-room could be had any day, but it needed a convulsion of Nature to induce Mrs Rendell to hold her plate in her lap, and actually—oh, horrors! to help herself to butter with her own individual knife! The girls chuckled with delight at the spectacle, and then turned to greet ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as fast as it was possible it seemed but a snail's pace to Elizabeth. She could realize nothing but that her father was in danger. After hearing Nora's reasons for this sudden journey, she spoke no word but sat rigid, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She was leaning forward, trying to pierce the darkness of the road before them. The rain beat into her face. Her cap and veil were drenched but ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Fir-capped and rugged monuments of time; A level vale of rich alluvial land, Washed from the slopes through circling centuries, And sweet with clover and the hum of bees, Lies broad between the rugged, somber hills. Beneath a shade of willows and of elms The river slumbers in this meadowy lap. Down from the right there winds a babbling branch, Cleaving a narrower valley through the hills. A grand bald-headed hill-cone on the right Looms like a patriarch, and above the branch There towers another. I have seen the day When those bald heads were plumed with lofty ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... ill-natured rebuff, the sensitive woman sat down the next evening with her baby in her lap, and half-blinded by her tears, wrote "An Apology for my Twilight Rambles," in the verses that have made ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... her, but said nothing. She was a very quiet child, and somehow she exasperated Marjorie. Perhaps she would not have done so had they all been out of doors, playing together, but she sat on a chair by Marjorie's bedside with her hands folded in her lap, and her whole attitude so prim that Marjorie couldn't help thinking to herself that she'd like to stick a pin in her. Of course she wouldn't have done it, really, but Marjorie had a riotous vein of mischief in her, and had little ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... called, was clever, rich, and pretty, and knew well how to ingratiate herself with the friend of the hour. She was a greedy, grasping little woman, but, when she had before her a sufficient object, she could appear to pour all that she had into her friend's lap with all the prodigality of a child. Perhaps Mrs. Bonteen had liked to have things poured into her lap. Perhaps Mr. Bonteen had enjoyed the confidential tears of a pretty woman. It may be that the wrongs of a woman doomed ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... that the gun holstered upon his chest drew tight against its strap as he drank the fragrance of Earth and clover warm in the sun. Here in the hollow of the hills, willow-shaded, pillowed upon clover and the lap of Earth, he let his breath run out in a long sigh and drew one palm across the grass in a caress ...
— Song in a Minor Key • Catherine Lucille Moore
... from the hand of the widow Andrei, and would have it nowhere but on her lap, where she held it during the rapid drive, sitting bolt upright, staring straight in front of her into the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... she sat alone, in a dreamy, musing state, with a book lying upon her lap. She had been trying to read, but found it impossible to take any interest in the pages over which her eyes passed, while her mind scarcely apprehended the sense. Some one opened the door; but she ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... marshes, moved solemnly upon the hills. Ten minutes more and the landscape was utterly blotted out; simultaneously the wind died away, and a death-like silence stole over sea and shore. The faint clang, high overhead, of unseen brent, the nearer call of invisible plover, the lap and wash of undistinguishable waters, and the monotonous roll of the vanished ocean, were the only sounds. As night deepened, the far-off booming of the fog-bell on the headland at ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this matter FRANKLAND remarks: "In those early days the innermost secrets of nature lay in the lap of geometry, and the extraordinary inference follows that Euclid's Elements, which are devoted to the investigation of the regular solids, are therefore in reality and at bottom an attempt to 'solve the universe.' Euclid, in fact, made this goal of the Pythagoreans the ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... of the English character, I don't love Englishmen. Why, how can any man who speaks the English tongue, and boasts one drop of English blood in his veins, not be proud of England? England, the mother of poets and thinkers; England, that gave us Newton, Darwin, Spencer; England, that holds in her lap Oxford, Salisbury, Durham; England of daisy and heather and pine-wood! Are we hewn out of granite, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... minutes later, the young woman, breathless and excited, flew up the walk, with the twins toiling on behind. Auntie Jean and grandma were sitting on the porch, when suddenly a shower of dull-looking coins fell into auntie's blue lawn lap. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... cloas off th' bed an' aw luk'd under it, an' ovver it, but net a bit on it could aw see, an at last aw began to fancy 'at aw must ha dremt all th' lot, an' 'at aw'd niver had one sent at all; but when aw wor gettin' mi breeches on, blow me! if it worn't stuck fast wi a wafer to mi shirt lap. What her 'at sent it ud a sed if shoo'd seen it, aw can't tell, an' aw wodn't if aw could; but aw know one thing, aw wor niver i' sich a muck sweat afoor sin aw wor born, an when aw went to mi breakfast ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... finished, and sealed it up, when in came Mrs Trotter. "Oh my dear Mr Simple! I'm so sorry, and I have come to console you. There's nothing like women when men are in affliction, as poor Trotter used to say, as he laid his head in my lap. When ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... coward!" was all Eileen's bloodless lips allowed to pass, as she sat staring blankly ahead of her, her face pale and her hands working together on her lap. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... hand upon hand in the lap of her gown, and looked down, and her voice trembled as ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the lady of Greshamsbury. And then the tear, which had been no whit controlled, which indeed had now made itself master of her, came to a head, and, bursting through the floodgates of the eye, came rolling down, and in its fall, wetted her hand as it lay on her lap. "What a fool! what an idiot! what an empty-headed cowardly fool I am!" said she, springing up from the bench on ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... described is the simplest that can be made. If the sleeve is to open at the back and finished with a tape, with a placket, strap or fancy lap, the seam in the sleeve is stitched first and the cuff ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... the same causes, Louis XV. had sunk, with his household and court, while Lafayette was rising to manhood surrounded by the contamination of their example. Had his natural endowments been even of the higher and nobler order of such as adhere to virtue, even in the lap of prosperity, and in the bosom of temptation, he might have lived and died a pattern of the nobility of France, to be classed, in aftertimes, with the Turennes and the Montausiers of the age of Louis XIV., or with the Villars or the Lamoignons of the age immediately ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... to dawn. It was Sunday, and I was desirous of eluding observation. I was somewhat recruited by rest, though the languors of sleeplessness oppressed me. I meant to throw myself on the first lap of verdure I should meet, and indulge in sleep that I so much wanted. I knew not the direction of the streets; but followed that which I first entered from the court, trusting that, by adhering steadily to one course, I should some time ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... as having given birth and nurture to three Chief-Justices of the United States, Ellsworth, Chase, and Waite; through his first lessons in the humanities in beautiful Windsor, his fuller instruction in the lap of this gracious mother, his loved and venerated Dartmouth; through his lessons in law and in eloquence at the feet of his great master, Wirt, his study of statesmen and government at the capital; through, his faithful ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... from Paris?" asked Isabelle, drawing Chiquita up on her lap. "Did you hear any one mention the name of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a very pretty and odd scene. The slightly undulating sheep-walk dips suddenly into a wide glen, in the lap of which, by a bright, winding rill, rise from the sward the ruins of a small abbey, with a few solemn trees scattered round. The crows' nests hung untenanted in the trees; the birds were foraging far away from their roosts. The very ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... moment's silence, he took out of his pocket a little box, and making a table of her lap, took out a ring of twined ruby and diamonds, such as could not but startle the instincts ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the edge of his bed, applying a cool and soothing ointment to his ear. On the table by the bed lay a basin of water, and on her lap lay a pink tube. He grabbed the tube, looked at the label. Sedasalve. He sighed with relief. "Where did you ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... him as fast as his legs would carry him, conducted Mr. Glover to Susan's door. Susan was not a little surprised, on seeing Jack conduct a gentleman into her cottage, and then running to her, hid his little head in her lap, crying, "This is she! this is my other mammy!" Mr. Glover, however, did not keep her long in suspense, but related to her what he had just seen, and begged Susan to give him the history of the parents of this little boy.—Susan desired the gentleman to be seated, and then related to ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin |
