"Mother-of-pearl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that cut one's boots terribly, the sun blazing down upon us fiercely all the time, until we reached a little settlement, consisting of several huts, the inhabitants of which were absent. Fine plaited mats for beds, cocoa-nut shells for cups, mother-of-pearl shells for plates, and coral, of various kinds and shapes, for dishes and cooking utensils, formed their only furniture. We saw three women, one very old, with nothing but a palm-leaf mat as a covering, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Arabic epitaph. In the Gd el-Khuraybah, the little inlet near the Gumruk ("custom-house"), as we called in waggery the shed of palm-fronds at the base of the eastern sandspit, lay five small Sambks, which have not yet begun fishing for mother-of-pearl. Here we found sundry tents of the Tagaygt-Huwaytt, the half Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We had an admirable view of the Tihmah Mountains—Zahd, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... only article on which the English smoker prided himself. It was made of various materials—wood, bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and silver: and the forms which it assumed were exceedingly diversified. Out of a collection of upwards of thirty tobacco-stoppers of different ages, from 1688 to the present time, the following are the most remarkable: a bear's tooth tipped with ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... he has made us all the most beautiful presents. He has given me a turquoise pin; Sophia has received a ruby cross; Mary, a Venetian chain, and even my parents have condescended to accept gifts from him. My father has a silver-gilt goblet, admirably chased; and my mother, a beautiful box made of mother-of-pearl mounted in gold. Even madame has not been forgotten, for she found a blonde mantle on her bed this morning; she praises the generosity of the Polish lords to the skies. But this is the only virtue she concedes to our nation, so that I cannot love madame; her injustice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hour the coach was back. The Fairy, who was waiting at the door of the house, lifted the poor little Marionette in her arms, took him to a dainty room with mother-of-pearl walls, put him to bed, and sent immediately for the most famous doctors of the neighborhood to ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... now as if coated with silver, and floating in a pale phosphorescent glimmer. All the ropes and cords seemed to be of new, bright, and liquid silver, like mercury, caused by the mist which had rested on them becoming suddenly congealed. Two luminous arcs intervened between us, in a sea of mother-of-pearl and opal, the lower one being the colour of red ochre and the upper one orange. Both of them, blinding in their brilliancy, seemed ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... the traveller was ready to mount his camel, the people of Bethlehem came with little articles which they had made. But he would not buy them, because they were images of the Virgin Mary and her holy child, and little white crosses of mother-of-pearl. They were very pretty: but they were idols, and ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... the bend in the avenue. The windows of the great house blazed a welcome. All the sky was mother-of-pearl and tender. In the air was the tang of spring. In the white light Marjorie saw Leonard's lips quiver and he frowned. She had a sudden twinge of jealousy, swallowed up by an ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... together, while Gluck stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic colors gleamed over it as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full halfway to the ground in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate that Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... pink-tinted, like the interior of a tropical shell; the full temples, where, beneath the slightest possible tint of amber, meandered an imperceptible network of blue veins; the mouth, fresh as a flower, ripe and ruddy as a fruit, slightly opened by a half smile, and illuminated by a gleam of mother-of-pearl; and above all, the eyes, whose glances, passing between a thick double fringe of black lashes, possessed an irresistible fascination. It was the Greek form with the Arab character: the style of beauty would have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... bugle died away over the woods. Night was falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray. We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures, his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old. He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for the best part of my life," he said simply, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... those groans of a chained Titan expressed in the marbles of S. Lorenzo! It is not an insignificant, though a slight, detail, that the predominant colour of Florence is brown, while the predominant colour of Venice is that of mother-of-pearl, concealing within its general whiteness every tint that can be placed upon the palette of a painter. The conditions of Florence stimulated mental energy and turned the forces of the soul inwards. Those of Venice inclined the individual to accept life as he found it. Instead of exciting him to think, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and the fairies, who hardly reached up to her knee, taking her between them, conducted her through a gate of mother-of-pearl into an illimitable space, through which throng of countless millions of elves confusedly moved. The converse of these semi-spirits sounded in the distance harmonious, like perfect music. Notwithstanding the immense multitude, there was nothing of tumult, nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... lingered long outside, admiring its beautiful proportions, described by Ruskin in a burst of pure poetry as "a multitude of pillars and grey-hooded domes clustered into a long, low pyramid of coloured light: a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaics and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory—sculpture, fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... wanting to complete the whole, for in the old careless days Claire's garments had been purchased with a lavish hand, the only anxiety being to secure the most becoming specimen of its kind. There were long crinkly gloves, and a lace handkerchief, and a fan composed of curling feathers and mother-of-pearl sticks, and a dainty bag hanging by golden cords, and a cloak of the newest shape, composed of layers of different-tinted chiffons, which looked more like a cloud at sunset than a garment manufactured by human hands and supposed to be ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... watch the lady to see where she kept the sweet things; and began hiding, and sneaking, and following her about, and pretending to be looking the other way, or going after something else, till he found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away in a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... his eyes as seeking approval of one far off; his wings stirred, and spread slowly and majestically, on their upper side white as snow, in the shadow vari-tinted, like mother-of-pearl; when they were expanded many cubits beyond his stature, he arose lightly, and, without effort, floated out of view, taking the light up with him. Long after he was gone, down from the sky fell the refrain in measure mellowed by ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... a box Chief Black Bear took certain treasures that he gave to the four little Bunkers who visited his wikiup. He even sent some fresh-water mussel shells, polished like mother-of-pearl, to the absent Margy and Mun Bun, of ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... instead, a book of English verses, published—there is no occasion to say when. It is full of costliest engravings—large, skillful, appallingly laborious; dotted into textures like the dust on a lily leaf,—smoothed through gradations like clouds,—graved to surfaces like mother-of-pearl; and by all this toil there is set forth for the delight of Englishwomen, a series of the basest dreams that ungoverned feminine imagination can coin in sickliest indolence,—ball-room amours, combats of curled knights, pilgrimages of disguised girl-pages, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... speaker finished by coming forward with one of the smaller things in his hand, which he offered personally to Louis, and then shook hands with us all and retired. Among these smaller presents were many fish-hooks for large fishing, laboriously carved from mother-of-pearl shell. One man came with one egg in each hand saying 'carry these to Scotland with you, let them hatch into cocks, and their song shall remind you of Tautira.' The schoolmaster, with a leaf-basket of rose apples, ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... the women are small, with good features, and generally handsome, though the complexion of both sexes is darker than that of the Tushepaws. In dress they resemble that nation, being fond of displaying their ornaments. The buffaloe or elk-skin robe decorated with beads, sea-shells, chiefly mother-of-pearl, attached to an otter-skin collar and hung in the hair, which falls in front in two queues; feathers, paints of different kinds, principally white, green, and light blue, all of which they find in their own country: these are the chief ornaments they use. ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... with that delectable meal; and to this day I cannot taste the flavour of guava but I find myself back in Captain Coffin's sitting-room, cutting a third slice from the wheaten loaf, with the corals and shells of mother-of-pearl winking at me from among the china on the dresser, and Captain Coffin seated opposite, with the silver rings in his ears, and his eyes very white in the dusk and distinct within their ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot trust even the strong hand of the Government to protect them, but take refuge in the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and Minton tiles and mother-of-pearl, I do not see why Jukes's tale should not be true. He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans and distances and things of that kind, and he certainly would not take the trouble to invent imaginary traps. He could earn more by doing ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... may never grasp, but which skirts, like a beautiful phantom, the mind's horizon. Like music, it is an opiate, and unlocks for us new states of mind in which we wander, as in halls of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, but where, alas, we may not linger. We can as readily sound the ocean as fathom the feelings it inspires. It is too deep for thought. As often as the sea speaks to us of the birth of Venus and of Joy, so also does it remind of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... round to Debray, without answering her husband. "Read me something, M. Debray," she said. Debray, who was slightly disturbed at this visit, recovered himself when he saw the calmness of the baroness, and took up a book marked by a mother-of-pearl knife inlaid with gold. "Excuse me," said the banker, "but you will tire yourself, baroness, by such late hours, and M. Debray ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to head, adorned with sea-shells; two large shells on her shoulders, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... river in their multitude to the side where those great buildings were, secure and stately, and they would pillage, burn, and sack. But the day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist was tenuous; it bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames was gray, rosy, and green; gray like mother-of-pearl and green like the heart of a yellow rose. The wharfs and store-houses of the Surrey Side were massed in disorderly loveliness. The scene was so exquisite that Philip's heart beat passionately. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world. Beside that nothing seemed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... goes," cries a cock of the old school, who used to hunt with Colonel Jolliffe's hounds, and still sports the long blue surtout lined with orange, yellow-ochre unmentionables, and mahogany-coloured knee-caps, with mother-of-pearl buttons. "Yonder he goes among the ship (sheep), for a thousand! see how the skulking waggabone makes them scamper." At this particular moment a shrill scream is heard at the far end of a long shaw, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... N. semitransparency, translucency, semiopacity; opalescence, milkiness, pearliness^; gauze, muslin; film; mica, mother-of-pearl, nacre; mist &c (cloud) 353. [opalescent jewel] opal. turbidity &c 426.1. Adj. semitransparent, translucent, semipellucid^, semidiaphanous^, semiopacous^, semiopaque; opalescent, opaline^; pearly, milky; frosted, nacreous. V. opalesce. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... where he had an office, with two or three Chinese clerks who looked after his affairs. His business was that of a coffee and opium merchant. He had a coffee estate at Bontyne, and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. About one he would return home, have coffee and cake or fried plantain, first changing his dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers and bare feet, and then take a siesta with a book. About four, after a cup of tea, he would walk round his premises, and generally stroll ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... by the window through which the shimmering lake shone in the sunset like rosy mother-of-pearl. Far up the mountain sounded the faint tinkling of goat-bells, and the clear, sweet yodelling of a peasant, on his homeward way. At intervals, the deep tolling of the bell of St. Oswald floated out ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... sat down across the hearth from me, and neither of us said anything. The firelight flickered over the room, bringing out the faded hues of the old Japanese prints on the walls, gleaming in the mother-of-pearl eyes of the dragon on the screen, setting a grotesque god on a cabinet to nodding. And it threw into relief the strong profile of the man across from me, as he stared at ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... makers. This will be found in nearly every genuine specimen. Unfortunately nuts wear out and become replaced with new ones, so that it is not always possible to obtain a bow that is original in all its parts. Dodd occasionally decorated the face of his bows with mother-of-pearl, as in the example shown in Fig. 31. He invariably stamped the name DODD in large, plain letters both on the side of the nut and on the stick. I have seen some that are stamped J. Dodd, but not many. Fig. 32 shows (actual size) a very early Dodd head, than which nothing, I think, ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... mother-of-pearl, bone, or wood, pointed and barbed with small bones or tortoise-shell. They are of various sizes and forms, but the most common are about two or three inches long, and made in the shape of a small fish, which serves as a bait, having a bunch of feathers tied to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... No. 2," I said, "I am using splinters of mother-of-pearl. Last week, with No. 1, I used a steel ring hanging by its rim to a shred of linen, two safeties, and a hairpin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... ornamented with columns and little images of alabaster; a portrait of Edward VI., brother to Queen Elizabeth; the true portrait of Lucretia; a picture of the battle of Pavia; the history of Christ's passion, carved in mother-of-pearl; the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots, who was beheaded, and her daughter; {17} the picture of Ferdinand, Prince of Spain, and of Philip his son; that of Henry VIII.—under it was placed the Bible curiously written ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... had peeled Ingigerd Hahlstroem out of her clothes, and without circumstance had laid her delicate body, shining like mother-of-pearl, on a couch against the wall taking up the full width of the room. At Frederick's instruction, he rubbed her body vigorously with woollen cloths. Rosa was doing the same for Ella Liebling, who was the first to be ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... an hour passed, when the carriage returned. The Fairy, who was waiting at the door of the house, took the poor puppet in her arms and carried him into a little room that was wainscoted with mother-of-pearl. She sent at once to summon the most famous doctors in ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... Araby. In an alcove, chastely draped with violent violet velvet, the grey apes swing, and the peacocks preen, on fretted pillar and jewelled screen. Horologes, to chime the hours, and even the quarters, uprise from tables of ebony-and-mother-of-pearl. Cabinets from Ind and Venice, of filligree gold and silver, enclose complete sets of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; whilst lamps of silver, suspended from pendant pinnacles in the fretted ceiling, shed a soft light over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... man, of about forty years of age, with thick black whiskers, marked features, and rather hollow cheeks, and with carefully dressed, glossy hair. He was smoking a handsome pipe with a long stem inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and took a sip from time to time from a cup of black coffee that ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... that came had five men on board. Girdles of beautifully plaited cocoa-nut fibre round their waists were their only clothing, but some had wreaths of flowers and green leaves round their heads, and most of them wore mother-of-pearl shells, beads, &c., round their necks and in their ears. They do not tattoo, but brand their skins. All five came, and presently three more, and then another; but seeing a large double canoe with perhaps twenty men in her coming ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that produce textiles, soap, olive-wood carvings, and mother-of-pearl souvenirs; the Israelis have established some small-scale modern industries ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... has the required lightness. The final touch of any painter properly so named, of Correggio—Titian—Turner—or Reynolds—would be always quite invisible to any one watching the progress of the work, the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparently careless, nay, to the painter himself almost unconscious. Great painters are so organized that they do their best work without effort: but analyze the touches afterwards, and you will find the structure and depth ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... originated the present commercial product, but who probably borrowed the original idea from the Chinese, call to their assistance the pearl oyster itself. The oysters are gently opened, small hemispherical discs of mother-of-pearl are introduced between shell and mantle and the oyster replanted. The foreign material is coated by the oyster with true pearly layers as usual, and after several years a sufficiently thick accumulation ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... form of charm will sometimes become popular, just as a new sanctuary becomes popular, because it is reported to have been effective in some particular case. Probably no change of fashion will ever banish horns made of coral or mother-of-pearl; being pointed, they are supposed to attract and break up the evil glance as a lightning conductor is supposed to attract and break up a ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... suggestion absurd. Joseph was always clean shaven; this youth had a smudgy moustache and a pair of incipient red whiskers. He was dressed in the loudest check suit I have ever seen, off the stage. He wore patent-leather boots with mother-of-pearl buttons, and a necktie that in an earlier age would have called down lightning out of Heaven. He had a low-crowned billycock hat on his head, and a big ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... were the greatest attraction. When she entered the store, she already had her heart fixed upon the peculiar little tan jacket with large mother-of-pearl buttons which was all the rage that fall. Still she delighted to convince herself that there was nothing she would like better. She went about among the glass cases and racks where these things were displayed, and satisfied herself that the one she thought of ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the good old merchant, over whose shoulder we were peeping, while he read the newspaper. Let us now suppose him putting on his three-cornered gold-laced hat, grasping his cane, with a head inlaid of ebony and mother-of-pearl, and setting forth, through the crooked streets of Boston, on various errands, suggested by the advertisements of the day. Thus he communes with himself: I must be mindful, says he, to call at Captain ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was made of ten thousand pieces of gold, mother-of-pearl, and woods of various hues. Look at the robes of that period: what embroidery, what delicacy of material, how many colors! And the bronze swords, the brooches, bracelets, earrings and implements of tillage and crafts of various descriptions. All these were ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... a shilling to please Blanche, who had spent all her own, obtained the two jars in potichomanie, and was regarding them with a face worth painting. Harvey Anderson had a doll, George Rivers a wooden monkey, that jumped over a stick; and, if Hector Ernescliffe was enchanted at winning a beautiful mother-of-pearl inlaid workbox, which he had vainly wished to buy for Margaret, Flora only gained a match-box of her own, well known always to miss fire, but which had been decided to be good ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... knows where my affections are set. Very likely there may be some young girl in Havre full of enthusiasm for my verses,—of which they are not worthy; that would not surprise me at all; nothing is more common. See! look at that lovely coffer of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and edged with that iron-work as fine as lace. That coffer belonged to Pope Leo X., and was given to me by the Duchesse de Chaulieu, who received it from the king of Spain. I use it to hold the letters I receive from ladies and young girls living in every quarter of Europe. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... going back to turn door-handles, the sitting in grotesque and untoward positions, the fondness for fingering any smooth and shiny objects, such as mother-of-pearl, develop into manias for change—change of scenery, of occupation, of affections, of people—change that inevitably necessitates misery; for breaking—breaking promises, contracts, family ties, furniture—but breaking, always breaking; for ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... on the spot, even while she looked, the warmly-washing wave had travelled far up the strand. She had subsequently lived, for hours she couldn't count, under the dizzying, smothering welter positively in submarine depths where everything came to her through walls of emerald and mother-of-pearl; though indeed she had got her head above them, for breath, when face to face with Charlotte again, on the morrow, in Eaton Square. Meanwhile, none the less, as was so apparent, the prior, the prime impression had remained, in the manner of a spying servant, on the other side ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... dropped off by their own weight into the grass below, then rose again and either flew aloft in wide and circling flight or rushed headlong upon the swarm once more. Across the iridescent cluster passed a gleam and glow of peacock and iris, opal and mother-of-pearl; while from its heart ascended a deep murmur, telling of tremendous and accumulated energy suddenly launched into this peaceful glade of apple-blossom and ambient green. The frenzy of the moment held all that little laborious ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... most costly objects from all quarters of the globe. Cheek by jowl, they lay beside the rudest native articles, without the slightest attempt at order. Superb writing-desks of rosewood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl; decanters and goblets of cut glass; embossed volumes of plates; gilded candelabra; sets of globes and mathematical instruments; the finest porcelain; richly-mounted sabres and fowling-pieces; laced hats and sumptuous garments of all sorts, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... quivered. He hung his head, and nervously fingered his mother-of-pearl cigarette-holder. After a moment's pause, Sarudine turned sharply round, and, jingling the keys loudly, opened ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... When freshly made it is very good, but at these feasts it is always old and sour, and dripping with cocoa- nut oil. The daras, or wooden bowls, into which it is put, are almost always carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl shell. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... child my own mother-of-pearl beads, mounted in silver, and was glad I had it to give. The children moved away, murmuring the Rosary ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... her cap, hung loose; bright golden color in the light, red in the rounded shadow of the curls that only partially hid her neck. Beneath a massive white brow, clean cut and strongly outlined, shone a pair of bright gray eyes encircled by a margin of mother-of-pearl, two blue veins on each side of the nose bringing out the whiteness of that delicate setting. The Bourbon curve of the nose added to the ardent expression of an oval face; it was as if the royal temper of the House of Conde shone ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... in dividing her long jet-black hair with a comb of mother-of-pearl as he entered; but she dropped both the hair and comb, and started to her feet with a simulated scream, covering her beautiful bust with her two hands, as if she had been taken ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of sheep-skins round the tent, and by one of these three women were standing. Two of these were richly dressed in gowns of handsome striped materials. They wore head-dresses of silver work with beads of malachite and mother-of-pearl, and had heavy silver ornaments hanging on their breasts. Their hair fell down their backs in two thick braids. The other woman was evidently of inferior rank. All were leaning over a pile of skins ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... stone, wipe dry, wash, and polish with a little bath brick or sapolio. Clean carving knives and forks in the same way, going around the joinings with a rag-covered skewer. Spots can be removed from ivory handles with tripoli mixed with sweet oil; from mother-of-pearl with sifted whiting and alcohol, which is washed off and followed with a polishing with dry whiting and a flannel cloth. Cover rusted knife blades with sweet oil, rub in well, and leave for forty-eight hours, then rub with slaked lime. Britannia, pewter, and block tin in table use are polished ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... returned to Venice and their palace was thrown open to guests, the private chapel of the Lady Marina was discovered to be a marvel of decoration—with superb Venetian frescoes set in marvelous scrollwork by Vittoria, with carvings of mother-of-pearl from Constantinople, with every sumptuous detail that could be devised; for, during the three years of their absence, the Lady Laura had not wearied of her gracious task nor stayed her hand. And into ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... established in her chair, with a mother-of-pearl lorgnette upon her lap and a pair of field-glasses swinging from the card-holder, felt more placidly happy than she had in years. If those left behind who supposed that she was going abroad to get a second husband could but have ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... disappearing into the hall and reappearing in a moment with an aged, gnarled dwarf apple tree growing in a green vase, and a lacquered box beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl. ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... admiration of Cook, are noted for their extraordinary diving. Speaking of the inhabitants of the island of Fakaraya, near Tahiti, de la Quesnerie says that the pearl-fishers do not hesitate to dive to the depth even of 100 feet after their coveted prizes. On the Ceylon coast the mother-of-pearl fishers are under the direction of the English Government, which limits the duration and the practice of this occupation. These divers are generally Cingalese, who practice the exercise from infancy. As many as 500 small boats can be seen about the field of operation, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... followed just behind them, escorting Cap'n Bill. They now entered an apartment so gorgeous that the child fairly gasped with astonishment. The queen's throne room was indeed the grandest and most beautiful chamber in all the ocean palaces. Its coral walls were thickly inlaid with mother-of-pearl, exquisitely shaded and made into borders and floral decorations. In the corners were cabinets, upon the shelves of which many curious shells were arranged, all beautifully polished. The floor glittered with gems arranged in patterns of ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... the great old chests, pulsing with the dull gnawing of the wood-borers, whose iron fretwork, pierced like lace, was dropping away from its supports. Some of the youngsters, brandishing short, small swords with hilts of mother-of-pearl, or long blades such as the Cid carried, would then wrap themselves in mantles of crimson silk darkened by ages. Others would throw over their shoulders damask counterpanes of priceless old brocade, peasant skirts with great flowers of gold, farthingales of richly woven ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in nature or in art is like the iridescent hue of mother-of-pearl, which is intrinsic and necessary, being the result of the arrangement of the particles,—the flowering of the mechanism of the shell; or like the beauty of health which comes out of and reaches back again to the bones and the digestion. There is no grace like the grace of strength. What sheer muscular ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... dexterous and nimble, but withal lazy in the high degree. They are said to be dull in everything but treachery and barbarity. Their houses are but low and mean, their clothing only a small cloth about their middle; but some of them for ornament have frontlets of mother-of-pearl, or thin pieces of silver or gold, made of an oval form of the breadth of a crown-piece, curiously notched round the edges; five of these placed one by another a little above the eyebrows making a sufficient guard and ornament for their ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Capitaine Audenis, of the fair waxed mustache and beautiful brown tail coat, so tightly buttoned with gilt buttons across his enormous chest, and imperceptible little feet so tightly imprisoned in shiny tipped female cloth boots, with buttons of mother-of-pearl; whose hobby was, I believe, to try and compensate himself for the misfortunes of war by more successful attempts in another direction. Anyhow he betrayed a warmth that made my small bosom a Gehenna, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Light, fleecy clouds covered the heavens to the southeast, but in the blue between a huge rift the sun shone down benignly. And in its bright rays they could count nine islands and islets, sprinkled here and there like emeralds in a sparkling sheet of mother-of-pearl. It needed only a glance at the chart to tell them that these were the Samoan group, and a little searching also told them that the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... night grayed down into a wan, spectral morning, and slowly the gray morning paled into a dim mother-of-pearl dawn. And then suddenly the mother-of-pearliness brightened into a shimmering opal, and the ray of pale gold light slanted through the barred window and the bright face of new day peeped over the sill, staring out of countenance the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... development, as did also the lacquer industry. Vermilion lacquer was invented in the time of Temmu, and soon five different colours could be produced, while to the Nara artisans belongs the inception of lacquer strewn with makie. Lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl was another beautiful concept of the Nara epoch. A special tint of red was obtained with powdered coral, and gold and silver were freely used in leaf or in plates. As yet, history does not find any Japanese painter worthy of record. Chinese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... child, wondering, yet perfectly docile, pulled out the little mother-of-pearl rosary that she always wore under her dress, and reverently murmured one of the prayers her mother had taught her. After which, as if beguiled by the association of ideas into thinking it bedtime, she curled herself up on the bench, and, with her head ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin coverlet, and the oldest and ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... crying aloud each time for joy when she saw pretty things displayed. They bought white slippers with little bows, a splendid wreath of white lilies of the valley, a great veil of woven lace, a white-ivory prayer-book, a mother-of-pearl rosary with a little glass peep-hole in the silver crucifix, showing all manner of pretty things. Horieneke sighed with happiness. Mother haggled and bargained, said within herself that it was "foolishness to waste all that money," but bought and went on buying; and, every ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... be outdone by anybody, produced, from no one ever discovered where, a mother-of-pearl manicure set for the delight and mystification of the hero; and even Lazy Daisy went so far as to cut some red and yellow tissue-paper into squares under the delusion that some time, somehow, she would find the energy to ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... phenomena of gratings must be attributed, too, the colors, often so brilliant, to be seen in mother-of-pearl. This substance is of a laminated structure; so much so, that in carving it the different folds are often cut in such a way as to form a regular net-work upon the surface. It is, again, to a phenomenon of this sort that are due the rainbow hues seen in the feathers of certain ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... carried her daub up to the edge of the frame. There was no question that the flowers masked some better painting, some portrait, no doubt, for enough was shown at the bottom to enable him to make out a strip of a brown velvet coat, and even one mother-of-pearl button of a brown velvet waistcoat. He stared at the flowers, he held a candle close to them in the hope of being able to trace some outline, to discover something of what lay behind. But the colour had been laid on with no sparing hand, the veil was impenetrable. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... high plain or mesa, facing a wide valley spreading miles away to the south where mother-of-pearl mountains were ranged like strung jewels far against the Mexican sky. At the north, slate-blue foothills lifted their sharp-edged shoulders three miles away, but only blank walls of Soledad faced the hills, all portals of the old mission appeared to have faced south, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... prince of good blood, he could, of course, wander where he pleased. He passed on among the golden columns and sculptured doorways, and under vaulted and arabesque ceilings, until he came to a door of mother-of-pearl, which had a golden lock, an alabaster knob, and a diamond key-hole. It turned easily on silver hinges, and the Prince passed by it into a beautiful garden. He had never been in such a place of loveliness. The trees were hung with many ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... Here are no grim grey towers of defence, but fairy palaces of white and coloured marbles, which rise from the waters below as if they had been built by the sea nymphs, who had fashioned them of their own sea-shells and mother-of-pearl. ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... at hand, with its low gable toward him. Late summer still lorded it in the land; only a few fleecy clouds shared the blue of the sky with the ripening sun, and on the hot ridges the air pulsed and trembled, like vaporized layers of mother-of-pearl. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... greeted with countless thanksgivings, celebrations, and joyous applause. Paris was beside itself when in the morning of March 20, 1811, there sounded the twenty-second report of a cannon, announcing that the Emperor had, not a daughter, but a son. He lay in a costly cradle of mother-of-pearl and gold, surmounted by a winged Victory which seemed to protect the slumbers of the King of Rome. The Imperial heir in his gilded baby-carriage drawn by two snow-white sheep beneath the trees at ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... man, for we found paintings of the Annunciation side by side with pictures of the Hindu god Ganesh. It is intensely interesting to see the place just as it was hundreds of years ago. In the great Mosque Quadrangle there is a marble mausoleum, delicately carved, a priceless piece of work in mother-of-pearl, erected to Akbar's high priest; and our guide was his lineal descendant, glad to get five rupees ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... meet the dazzling waters of the bay, the blue waters of the bay ran to meet a great stretch of absinthe green, the green joined a fairy sky of pink and gold and saffron. Islands of coral floated on the sea of absinthe, and derelict clouds of mother-of-pearl swung low above them, starting from nowhere and going nowhere, but drifting beautifully, like giant soap-bubbles of light and color. Where the lawn touched the waters of the bay the cocoanut-palms reached ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... are seldom made use of, except upon public feasts or rejoicing days. Some, after they have trained them, take delight in riding them, and show their skill and dexterity in races; others put them to chariots of mother-of-pearl, adorned with an infinite number of shells of all sorts, of the brightest colours. These chariots are open; and in the middle there is a throne upon which the king sits, and shows himself to his subjects. The horses are trained up to draw by themselves; ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... has been used with pleasing effect to exhibit the various forms of shells. The process of making pearl buttons and numerous articles made of mother-of-pearl add largely to the charms of the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... several chambers, decorated with much cost and barbarous splendour. The wainscot of one of the principal saloons is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, coral, and ivory; but the workmanship seems harsh and ungraceful. The ceiling is plastered with massive gilding, the effect of which is rather cumbrous than ornamental; "not graced with elegancy, but daubed with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... thought to his exposition of the Christian creed; it was a mere commonplace to him that Catholics believed that kind of thing; it was no more blasphemous to his mind so to describe it, than it would be to laugh at a Fijian idol with mother-of-pearl eyes, and a horse-hair wig; it was simply impossible to treat it seriously. He, too, had wondered once or twice in his life how human beings could believe such rubbish; but psychology had helped him, and he knew now well enough that suggestion will do almost anything. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... formerly ruled by a line of powerful princes as an independent fief, but now subject to a Dutch Governor, has become the capital of Celebes, and occupies an important commercial position. The wharves are filled with bales of copra, mother-of-pearl shells, plumage of native birds, dried fish, bundles of rattan, and precious woods from the primeval forests of the interior. The boom of the fisherman's drum echoes across the water in constant reverberations, a secularised relic of the religious past, originally serving ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart in a delicate crescendo of delight and died away swiftly. I was bitterly tired. The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak. It came at last with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had never seen before in the tropics, unglowing, almost gray, with a strange reminder ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... agitation that my eyes grew more and more dim every moment. My feet caught in one another most awkwardly, and I kept stumbling against the furniture without being able to advance. Edmee was lying on a long white chair, carelessly fingering a mother-of-pearl fan. She seemed to me even more beautiful than before, yet so changed that a feeling of apprehension chilled me in the middle of my ecstasy. She held out her hand to me; I did not like to kiss it in the presence of her father. I could not hear what she was saying to me—I ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... drawn through one another, and among them were worked innumerable gold and silver stars. After he had carefully traced all these, he produced a small box of ebony, skilfully inlaid with streaks of mother-of-pearl. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... her in a sugary voice; but elsewhere Olive was tremendously admired, there were always men about her, serenades rising from the lawn beneath her window, and Laurel herself had seen Olive's dressing table laden with bouquets in frilly lace paper. She had one now, in a holder of mother-of-pearl, with a gilt chain and ring. Her wide skirt was a mass of over-drapery, knots of moss roses and green gauze ribbons; while a silver cord ending in a tassel fell ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... visit some point of interest, a small crowd was sure to collect. The narrow lanes are lined in many sections by stores containing very attractive goods, curiosities, silks, fine China ware, ivory, scented woods, mother-of-pearl and carved tortoise shell, all goods of native manufacture. The remarkable patience and imitative skill of the Chinese enables them to produce very choice goods in these lines of art. The shops being all open in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... any English line of the same thickness. Their fishing-nets, though coarse, answered their purpose. They were often eighty fathoms in length. Harpoons, made of cane, were used to catch fish, and fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl. One used for trawling had a white tuft of dog's or hog's hair attached to it, to look like the tail of a fish. The fishermen watched for the birds which always follow a shoal of bonetas, and seldom returned without a prize. Both sexes were expert swimmers, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... reeds first," said young Pedgift. He gave his orders to the boatmen, dived briskly into the little cabin, and reappeared with a concertina in his hand. "Neat, Miss Milroy, isn't it?" he observed, pointing to his initials, inlaid on the instrument in mother-of-pearl. "My name's Augustus, like my father's. Some of my friends knock off the 'A,' and call me 'Gustus Junior.' A small joke goes a long way among friends, doesn't it, Mr. Armadale? I sing a little to my own accompaniment, ladies and gentlemen; and, if quite agreeable, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... glowing rose color and crimson, the tall ferns and sea flowers that waved with the movement of the water as the earth flowers move to the stirring of the wind. And there in the land of the mermaids, hidden between wonderful shells of mother-of-pearl, lie the jewels that are the purest and ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... and a bow at her throat, a lace bow, which made her one of the most coquettish-looking queens of the markets. She brought a vague odour of fish with her, and a herring-scale showed like a tiny patch of mother-of-pearl near the little finger of one of her hands. She and Lisa having lived in the same house in the Rue Pirouette, were intimate friends, linked by a touch of rivalry which kept each of them busy with thoughts of the other. In the neighbourhood people spoke of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and hurricanes so frequent in this part of the world. They have all one story, with a ground-floor; the upper part, generally occupied by the family, is surrounded by a wide gallery, opened or shut by means of large sliding panels, the panes of which are thin mother-of-pearl. The mother-of-pearl permits the passage of light to the apartments, and excludes the heat of the sun. In the military town are all the monasteries and convents, the archbishopric, the courts of justice, the custom-house, the hospital, the governor's palace, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the very latest fashion. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across the front and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and a pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearl buttons; an immense white cravat of the finest cambric; light trousers of white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they buttoned above the calves, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely with the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond buckles. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Rabelais; deep lines about the mocking mouth; a short chin, carried proudly, covered with a grizzled pointed beard; sea-green eyes that age might seem to have dimmed were it not for the contrast between the iris and the surrounding mother-of-pearl tints, so that it seemed as if under the stress of anger or enthusiasm there would be a magnetic power to quell or kindle in their glances. The face was withered beyond wont by the fatigue of years, yet it seemed aged still more by the thoughts that had worn away both ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... weak she could run no longer. She just lay down and died. Then the boy-child looked about for a place to put his sister's body. He looked at the fine branched trees, full of fruit, and saw that each single fruit was an agong, [61] and the leaves, mother-of-pearl. ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... the less venturesome, and they all sat down on the floor to make a selection. Reba chose a quaint, silver buckle, Reliance selected a mother-of-pearl card-case, Edna decided upon ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... rooms were more like scenes of enchantment pencilled by a poet's fancy, than anything perhaps before displayed in a domestic habitation. Escritoires of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and rich caskets for antique gems, exquisitely enamelled and adorned with onyx, opals, rubies, and emeralds; cabinets of ivory, curiously wrought; mosaic tables, set with jasper, blood-stone, and lapis-lazuli, their feet carved into the claws of lions and eagles; screens of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... by a few notches, made years ago, afterwards by clasping the trunk with his arms, arching his body with the feet against the tree, and then walking up precisely in the mode of the Torres Strait Islanders. Like these last people too, they open the nut with a sharp stick, and use a shell (a piece of mother-of-pearl oyster) for scraping out the pulp. After a stay of half an hour we returned to the boat leaving the natives in good humour. Our search for a safe anchorage for the ship was unsuccessful, so we returned ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... put in their places, and yet the owner spent many industrious moments, nearly every day, working with them. The piano, which sat almost directly opposite the secretary, was of a trifle later construction. It was large and square, of inlaid rosewood, with handsomely carved legs, and had mother-of-pearl keys faintly tinged with brown all around their edges. From end to end, lengthwise of its top, was a long narrow piece of dark red satin decorated with bunches of tall cat-tails heavily painted in oils. Scattered music lay all over the piano, on the music-rack, sliding down ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Italians. The manufacture of Lutes, Viols, and Guitars in Germany had in 1650, or a little later, reached its zenith, and the exquisite pieces of workmanship, in the shape of Lutes, Viols da Gamba, and Viols d'Amore, richly inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, and tortoiseshell, made at this period, evidence the high state of ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... occurrence of stone implements, are important. But it must be remembered that stone was used long into the 'Bronze' Age, and contemporaneously with copper. There is no sudden break between the two periods. Fragments of shell and mother-of-pearl, often with incised designs, are very characteristic of the earliest period. Coins are of late date; a tell with coins on it is certain to contain buildings as late as the fourth or third century B.C. (though it may also contain far older buildings as well). One of the most useful criteria ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... glory of the moon! That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped of their linens; Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them. They shudder and grow faint. And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody, That Life, like a drunken player, Strikes out of their clear white bodies As out of ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... cold-cream, of hartshorn, and of singed hair escaped from the part of the room which was shut off, and from time to time, when Francis came to fetch a curling-iron, Jenkins caught sight of a huge dressing-table laden with a thousand little instruments of ivory, and mother-of-pearl, with steel files, scissors, puffs, and brushes, with bottles, with little trays, with cosmetics, labelled and arranged methodically in groups and lines; and amid all this display, awkward and already shaky, an old man's hand, shrunken and long, delicately trimmed and ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... immediately the whole palace was in a bustle of excitement. Presently a procession of all kinds of fishes came in, all richly attired in flowing robes of various colours. Each one advanced with slow and stately pace, some bearing beautiful flowers, others great mother-of-pearl dishes laden with all the delicacies that go to make a feast; others bore trays of coral, red and white, with fragrant wines and rare fruits such as only grow at the bottom of the sea. It was the wedding feast, and with all decorum they set ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... Frenchman is my instinctive aversion. He is born in coxcombry, cradled in coxcombry, and educated in coxcombry. It is only after his coxcombry is rubbed off by the changes and chances of the world, that the really valuable material of the national character is to be seen. He always reminds me of the mother-of-pearl shell, rude and unpromising on the outside, but by friction exhibiting a fine interior. However it may be thought a paradox to pronounce the Frenchman unpolished, I hold to my assertion. If the whole of "jeune France" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... and they visited the theatre and the opera. We can easily realise the excitement and joy Balzac felt in showing them all his treasures—the bust by David D'Angers, the precious Medici furniture of ebony encrusted with mother-of-pearl, the Cellini statuettes, and the pictures by Giorgione, Palma, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... the appearance of a city. Within its area were corn fields, vineyards, pastures, and woods containing many animals, both wild and tame. In other parts it was entirely overlaid with gold, and adorned with jewels and mother-of-pearl. The porch was so high that a colossal statue of himself, one hundred and twenty feet in height, stood in it. The supper rooms were vaulted, and compartments of the ceiling, inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve and scatter ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... we trolled for swordfish with hook and line, or used the baitless hook to entice the sportful albicore, or dolphin, whose curving black bodies splashed the sea about us. A piece of mother-of-pearl about six inches long and three-quarters of an inch wide was the lure for him. Carefully cut and polished to resemble the body of a fish, there was attached to it on the concave side a barb of shell or ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the old Catholics did, on fasts, but for feasts. They will fetch 2d. each at the times of the Jews' holidays, so our fisherman told me, and find a ready sale at all times, though at low prices. Formerly the singularly bright scales were saved to make mother-of-pearl, or rather, to coat objects which were wished to resemble mother-of-pearl. After each haul the fish were dropped into a well in the middle of the boat. A few roach were taken, and an eel; but the most interesting part of the catch was the smelts. These sea-fish now ascend ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... designs, interspersed among heavy, antique pieces of carving and slender specimens of colonial simplicity; divans covered with pillows of every delicate shade imaginable; exquisite etchings and dainty bric-a-brac. In an alcove formed by a large bay-window stood a writing-desk of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and on an easel in a secluded corner, partially concealed by silken draperies, was the portrait of Kate Underwood,—a childish, rather immature face, but with a mouth indicating both sweetness and strength of character, and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... where it willed. The mother-of-pearl shimmer of evening was turning the headlands to mist, and the air smelled of cedar and pine. Tiny waves lapped complainingly on the sides of our rocking ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... sacred symbols and various other objects. The price paid for it was L1,000. There are also in the Museum some very rich chairs of modern Chinese work, in brown wood, probably teak, very elaborately inlaid with mother-of-pearl; they were exhibited in Paris ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... into a large white-and-gold reception-room, with inhospitable chairs and settees whose satin slipperiness offered no inducements to sit down. There were gold-lacquered tables and a curious concert-grand piano, also gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl cupids and flowers. Everything was most elaborate. Gila, in her soft transparencies, looked like a wraith amid it all. The young man chose to think she was too rare and fine for a place ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... hour. This studio calms me after the banal cackling of my clients. I almost think of ceasing to create raiment, I weary so of the stupidities of New York's four hundred. Corsets, heels"—her hands fluttered in repudiation. She sank full length upon the divan, lighting a cigarette from a case of mother-of-pearl. "Your husband is the only artist, Mrs. Byrd, who has succeeded in painting me as an individual instead of a beauty. It's relieving"—her voice fainted—"very"—it failed—her lids drooped, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... about 90 m. in circuit), and was discovered by Captain Cook in 1777. The islands were annexed by Great Britain in 1888 in view of the laying of the Pacific cable, of which Fanning Island is a station. Guano and mother-of-pearl shells are the principal articles of export; the population of the islands is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fiery cloud burning and quivering about them, page 420. f. A clear metallic voice, page 420. g. Like that of a kettle on the boil, page 421. h. As smooth and polished as a river, page 421. i. The prismatic colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl, page 422. j. In order to allow time for the consternation ... to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... great, full moon; and the sea was mother-of-pearl. Almost every sound was hushed, for the air was but faintly stirring; and the town lay panting, waiting for the night to cool. Offshore lay the fruit steamer Andador, of the Vesuvius line, full-laden and scheduled to sail at six in the morning. There were no loiterers on the beach. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... artificial strings colored, chains, and such like things as at the instant they had about them. These are a fair-conditioned people. On all the sea-coast along we found mussel shells that in color did represent mother-of-pearl, but not having means to dredge, could not apprehend further knowledge thereof. This main is the goodliest continent that ever we saw, promising more by far than we any way did expect; for it is replenished with fair fields, and in them fragrant flowers, also meadows, and ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... one, i.e. "touching the enchanting Rachel's wrist with one hand and gently elevating his bottle with the other." "Pope Joan" is little played now, if at all; "Fish" too; how rarely one sees those mother-of-pearl fish! The "Cloth is not drawn" and the table exposed to view, to be covered with dessert, bottles, glasses, etc. The shining mahogany was always a brave show, and we fear this comes of using cheap made up tables of common wood. Still we wot of some homes, old houses in the country, where ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... him. She sailed away so swiftly that he could at first mark nothing but the speed with which the clouds above and the dim earth below went rushing past. But soon he began to see that the sky was very lovely, with mottled clouds all about the moon, on which she threw faint colours like those of mother-of-pearl, or an opal. The night was warm, and in the lady's arms he did not feel the wind which down below was making waves in the ripe corn, and ripples on the rivers and lakes. At length they descended on the side of an open earthy hill, just ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... center of the valley was a great cluster of palaces that appeared to be built of crystal and silver and mother-of-pearl, and golden filigree-work. So dainty and beautiful were these fairy dwellings that Twinkle had no doubt for an instant but that she gazed upon fairyland. She could almost see, from the far mountain upon which she stood, the airy, gauze-winged forms of the fairies themselves, floating gently ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... supernatural aspect of the man's whole person. The old soldier was dry and lean. His forehead, intentionally hidden under a smoothly combed wig, gave him a look of mystery. His eyes seemed shrouded in a transparent film; you would have compared them to dingy mother-of-pearl with a blue iridescence changing in the gleam of the wax lights. His face, pale, livid, and as thin as a knife, if I may use such a vulgar expression, was as the face of the dead. Round his neck was ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... were placed many objects from the Royal, Museum, notably a large collection of ancient weapons, drums, cymbals, temple gongs, howdahs, some wonderful examples of mother-of-pearl work, hammered silver of antique designs, old lacquer, enormous elephant tusks, ancient theatrical costumes and properties, and portraits of Their Majesties the King and the Queen and His Royal Highness the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... tiny table of mother-of-pearl was brought, and on it some exquisite little striped porcelain cups, standing not in saucers, but in silver filigree cups into which they exactly fitted. Lucy remembered her Chinese experience, and did not venture to ask for milk or sugar, ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... person had sent his commendations to Ambrose, and likewise a laborious bit of writing, which looked as if he were fast forgetting the art. It bade Ambrose inform his mother and all his friends and kin that he was well and coming to preferment, and inclosed for Aldonza a small mother-of-pearl cross blessed by the Pope. Giles added that he should bring her ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remember in all the years of your life put together, I would tell you what sort of face Puppet's was; that it was a bright face, with blue eyes, just the color of the blue ribbon that went first round the guitar's neck, and then round Puppet's; that Puppet's teeth were as white as the mother-of-pearl pegs that held her guitar strings at the bottom; that her cheeks were as white as the ivory keys; that her hair was long, and yellow—just the shade of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... in glided Zoe, and seemed to extinguish everybody, and even to pale the lights, with her dark yet sunlike beauty. She was dressed in a creamy-white satin that glinted like mother-of-pearl, its sheen and glory unfrittered with a single idiotic trimming; on her breast a large diamond cross. Her head was an Athenian sculpture—no chignon, but the tight coils of antiquity; at their side, one diamond star sparkled vivid flame, by its contrast ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Virgilia's room was very simple. The bed was a couch, covered with white, with head and foot-board of ebony, curved in form and inlaid with quaint flower designs in mother-of-pearl. There was one chair, with slender arms, also in ebony and mother-of-pearl, and a stand, with ewer and basin of beaten brass. The floor was laid in red brick, and on it, at the bedside, lay a tiger-skin, brought from the East. Its tawny tints, varied by ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... around the bow, and overlapped at the back. I also glue a small piece of leather on the left-hand side of the bow above the handle to prevent the arrow chafing the wood at this spot. This is called the arrow plate and usually is made of mother-of-pearl or bone; leather is better. These finishing pieces are wrapped temporarily with ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... chuckle about the d'Oylys—that apparently ill-matched pair. She drank a glass of champagne with the air of a connoisseur and finally, having displayed an excellent appetite, mounted a cigarette into a long thin mother-of-pearl holder, lighted it and sank with a sigh into the room's one ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... lights upon it caught my eye. It was of pure gold, round-brimmed, and circled about with a string of the blue convolvulus, which implies delight to these people. Ay! and each man was plunging his hand into the dark and taking in his turn a small notch-edged mother-of-pearl billet from it that flashed soft and silvery as he turned it in his hand to read the name engraved in unknown characters thereon. "Why," I said, with a start, "surely THIS might be the golden pool and these the silver fish—but ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... dear, to-morrow let us set about procuring at least some TEMPORARY furniture for this room." Also, every evening would see placed upon the drawing-room table a fine bronze candelabrum, a statuette representative of the Three Graces, a tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a rickety, lop-sided copper invalide. Yet of the fact that all four articles were thickly coated with grease neither the master of the house nor the mistress nor the servants seemed to entertain the least suspicion. At the same time, Manilov ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... ornaments, like English plate of the present day; Romans, distinguishable among the others for a certain dash that artists call flafla; Spanish wreaths in bold relief; Flemings and Germans with quaint figures, tortoise-shell frames inlaid with copper and brass and mother-of-pearl and ivory; frames of ebony and boxwood in the styles of Louis Treize, Louis Quatorze, Louis Quinze, and Louis Seize—in short, it was a unique collection of the finest models. Pons, luckier than the art museums of Dresden and ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... hazy. The gray-green of the foliage on the mountains had a purple tinge in the early morning light, and the sea took on a mother-of-pearl gleam behind its amethyst, as it reflected the changing hues of the roseate sunrise. Over San Antonio and San Jacinto the sun rose gloriously, and in the freshness of the morning air the giant flying-fish of the Pacific leaped and gleamed across the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... his arm. On reaching Ada, she lightly touched her on the shoulder, white as mother-of-pearl, with her fan, and when the lady, somewhat surprised, turned, Frau von Jagerfeld, smiling pleasantly, said: "My dear child, let me present to you our best friend, Dr. Bergmann. I must devote myself ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... temple were made of cedar, ivory, amber, and silver; the ceiling glistened with golden mosaics; the walls shone with polished marbles: and the capitals of the columns were laced with delicate carvings inset with mother-of-pearl, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob |
