"Oaken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... IX. Of oaken twigs and arbutus they wove A wattled bier. Soft leaves beneath him made His pillow, and with leafy boughs above They twined a verdurous canopy of shade. There, on his rustic couch the youth is laid, Fair as the hyacinth, with drooping head, Cropped by the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... out in the deep bass voices of the sea, marking the time by hammering in unison upon the oaken tables with their pewter mugs and flagons. The sentiment seemed to suit the company, if the zest with which they sang be any criterion. Care was taken to insure a sufficient pause, too, after the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Two oxen tripes, An oaken dish well carved, My little dog, And spotted hog, With two ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... with her invitation so far as to enter the large clean kitchen; the kitchen for show, that is to say, with the sanded floor, the bunch of evergreens in the covered kitchen-range, the dark old fashioned clock, the bright range of crockery, and well polished oaken table; and there, while Marian laid aside her riding-skirt, the good woman commenced her ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... exclamation of relief and pleasure escaped me as I suddenly found myself in a picturesque quadrangle, divided into fair green lawns and parterres of flowers. Straight opposite me as I approached, a richly carved double oaken door stood wide open, enabling me to look into a vast circular domed hall, in the centre of which a fountain sent up tall silver columns of spray which fell again with a tinkling musical splash into a sunken pool ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... silently unlocked a great oaken press, clamped with iron, a place where the Squire kept all his valuable papers, and some of the heirlooms which had come down to him from his forefathers. Tom looked on with curious eyes. He had always experienced, from childhood upwards, a certain sense of awe when that press was ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the large oaken table where he was engaged in writing. His form, which was of middle height, was wrapped in a comfortable dressing-gown of green silk, trimmed with black fur, which showed here and there a few worn-out, defective spots. A small green velvet cap, the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Giovanni minuet has been heard in a thousand halls of state and at the festivals of many lands. We may imagine the charm that such music had here, in this oaken room of the forest and prairie. At the head of the plumed ladies and men in glittering uniforms stood the Marquis of France, whom the world delighted to honor, and led the stately obeisances to the picturesque movement of the music under the ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... slow stealthy tread, that woke no echo, Cataline advanced to the door. There was no lamp in the cell of the atriensis; no sign of wakefulness in any of the casements; yet at the first slight tap upon the stout oaken pannel, although it was scarce louder than the plash of the big raindrops from the eaves, another tap responded to it from within, so faint that it appeared an echo of the other. The rebel counted, as fast as possible, fifteen; and then tapped thrice as he ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... are infinitely ingenious and elaborately grim, and the indoor atmosphere of mediaevalism most forcibly revived. No compromising fact of domiciliary darkness and cold is spared us, no producing condition of mediaeval manners not glanced at. There are oaken benches round the room, of about six inches in depth, and gaunt fauteuils of wrought leather, illustrating the suppressed transitions which, as George Eliot says, unite all contrasts—offering a visible link between the modern conceptions of torture and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... With cautious movements, and only a groan or two, the good Doctor transferred himself from the bed to the floor, where he stood awhile, gazing from one piece of quaint furniture to another (such as stiff-backed Mayflower chairs, an oaken chest-of-drawers carved cunningly with shapes of animals and wreaths of foliage, a table with multitudinous legs, a family record in faded embroidery, a shelf of black-bound books, a dirty heap of gallipots and phials in a dim corner),—gazing at these ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... house. At last the two bodies, each quite rigid and as straight as an arrow, slowly bent over towards each other, the sticks came crashing down for the last time on to the two heads with a thud as of enormous mallets falling upon oaken beams, and the pair lay prone upon the ground. At that instant appeared in all its vividness the suggestion that the two artists had gradually driven into the imagination of the spectators: "We are about to become ...we have now ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... oaken casket, where Lay hid that cup of grace, Since that fearful day, when the traitor foe Wrought ruin on ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... commonplace and dull. Dusk had fallen over the city, and Queed cleverly bethought him to snap on an electric light. It revealed a very shabby, ramshackle, and dingy office; but the long table in it was new, oaken, and handsome. In fact, it was one of the repairs introduced ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... picturesque fashion. Two miles further in the same direction brings us to the village of Newington, which possesses one of the quaintest little churches in Kent. Among other things it boasts some seventeen brasses—some dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries—an ancient dial, on oaken shaft fast mouldering away—and a picturesque wooden belfry surmounted by a vigorously modelled gilt weathercock ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and staircase in rapid retreat to ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... will give you a stroke with a good, strong oaken or beechen stick, and may the punishment teach you that treachery ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... empassion'd Sung a song in wildest tones; While the oaken boards I fashion'd, Doom'd to hide ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... couple of minutes Balder was at the house, breathless: the figure was nowhere to be seen. He sprang across the broad portico, and hurried with sounding feet through the oaken hall. Should he go up stairs, or on to the conservatory? The sound of a softly shutting door from the latter direction decided him. The place looked as when he left it a half-hour before. Gnulemah's curtain had not been moved. The other door was closed; he ran up the steps between ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... meant to contain. They were not only beautifully but severely dressed, with few ornaments, and those few a result of the same concentrated search for the rare which had brought together the few bibelots in the room, which had laid the single great dull Persian rug on the unobtrusively polished oaken floor, which had set in the high, south windows the boxes of feathery green plants ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... supper, and was going up into Hugh Lupus's tower completely knocked up, when, passing Sperver's room, whose door was half open, shouts and cries of joy reached my ears. I stopped, when the most jovial spectacle burst upon me. Around the massive oaken table beamed twenty square rosy faces, bright and ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... two sides of the room were not yet touched; the bed in the recess was unharmed, but Richard was not there, and a terrible fear crept over Arthur lest he had perished in his attempt to escape. Suddenly he remembered Nina's cell, and groping his way through fire and smoke, he opened the oaken door, involuntarily breathing a prayer of thanksgiving when he saw the tall form stretched upon the empty bedstead. He had probably mistaken the way out, and by entering here, had prolonged his life, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Sir Timothy Deuxace; that wretch has play'd off one of the best families in Europe—he has thrown away all his posterity, and reduced 20,000 acres of wood-land, arable, meadow, and pasture within the narrow circumference of an oaken table of eight foot." The Masquerade as the title of the play is a misnomer, for it does not conduce at all to the plot. We give the greater part of the Prologue to The ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might follow the wolf to his lair in the mountains; might spear the boar in the oaken glades, or the otter on the river's brink; might unearth the badger or the fox, or smite the fierce cat-a-mountain with a quarrel from his bow. A nobler victim sometimes, also, awaited him in the shape ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bad," said Madison complacently. "Bring your uncle into the front room, Helena; and then you can get Hiram to show you the well and the old oaken bucket and where the pantries and cupboards are, he knows more about them than I do—it's pretty near time for you to be thinking ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... moment of ill-humor he should have exclaimed to Boswell,—"Oh, Sir, a most dolorous country!" No wonder, that, his suspicions excited by the nakedness of the land and his preconceived notions of Scotch cupidity, he should, on occasion of losing his stout oaken stick, while crossing the Island of Mull on a Highland sheltie, have vowed to Boswell that it had been stolen by the natives, justifying the charge by the argument,—"Consider, Sir, the value of such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... wildwood, And every loved spot which my infancy knew; The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, The cot of my fathers, the dairy house nigh it, And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well; The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket, which hung in ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... them into a spacious cellar, and, having passed through a partition by opening a heavy oaken door, they entered what appeared to ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... obelisk was placed the sarcophagus containing the remains of the marshal, at the corners of which were trophies composed of banners taken from his enemies, and innumerable silver candelabra were placed on the steps by which the platform was reached. The oaken altar, in the position it occupied before the Revolution, was double, and had a double tabernacle, on the doors of which were the commandments, the whole surmounted by a large cross, from the intersection of which was suspended a shroud. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was only by day. At night the street-door stood wide open, and a porter was on duty at the foot of the staircase within. He was on the inner side of a stout oaken door, in which was a small window, opening with a trap. Through this he reconnoitred all arrivals, taking stock of their appearance, and only giving admission when satisfied as to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... could he find than that offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... lay on the chair and went out, though not quite refreshed, yet clean and fragrant. In the oblong dining-room, the inlaid floor of which had been polished by three of his men the day before, and containing a massive oaken sideboard and a similar extension table, the legs of which were carved in the shape of lion's paws, giving it a pompous appearance, breakfast stood ready for him. A fine, starched cloth with large monograms ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... she paused at a certain door and listened, her ear against the oaken panel. Then she hurried onward, knocked upon the door of the Reverend Mother's cell and, being bidden to enter, passed within, closed the door behind her, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... stood in the midst, laden with books and papers, and in a corner, near the open hearth, a carved desk, bearing on one slope the largest copy of the 'Bishops' Bible'; on the other, one of the Prayer-book. The ornaments of the oaken mantelpiece culminated in a shield bearing a cross boutonnee, i.e. with trefoil terminations. It was supported between a merman with a whelk shell and a mermaid with a comb, and another like Siren curled her ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began to lighten; he rolled his eyes around; and snatching up an oaken bench, which three ordinary men could scarce have lifted from the ground, he, in all likelihood, would have shattered the door in pieces, had not he been restrained by the interposition of Mr. Clarke, who entreated him to have a little patience, assuring him he would suggest a plan that would ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the thousand other situations in life infinitely more "sleep-compelling" than Morphine; for myself, my pleasantest and soundest moments of perfect forgetfulness of this dreary world and all its cares, have been taken in an oaken bench, seated bolt upright and vis a vis to a lecturer on botany, whose calming accents, united with the softened light of an autumnal day, piercing its difficult rays through the narrow and cobwebbed windows, the odour of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the stranger surlily, for he was angry at being so tumbled about. "If ye handle yew bow and apple shaft no better than ye do oaken cudgel, I wot ye are not fit to be called yeomen in my country; but if there be any man here that can shoot a better shaft than I, then will I bethink ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... himself forward toward the fat bad actor. On the way his hand encountered the blade of an oaken oar. Thereafter for the next twenty feet he trailed the oar after him. He came within range and above the head of the fat bad actor lifted the heavy ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... was placed in the coffin. I prevented them from fetching Alice. I kissed the brow of my beloved, then the sheet of lead was soldered. Next they put the oaken lid of the coffin on and screwed it down; thus I shall never see him more. But the soul remains. If I did not believe in the soul I ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... in the parish, surely one of the pleasantest for a meeting of this kind was the old oak at the end of Hawker's plantation, where George met Nelly a night we know of. So quiet and lonely, and such pleasant glimpses down long oaken glades, with a bright carpet of springing fern. Surely there will be a couple ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... rage, The Vandal's fire could nought avail: Though heathen sword-blows fell like hail, Though cities ran with Christian blood, Imperishable they had stood! They did not seem like books to him, But Heroes, Martyrs, Saints,—themselves The things they told of, not mere books Ranged grimly on the oaken shelves. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... From oaken frames old admirals looked down: They saw the lonely slumberer at their feet: They saw the paper, headed Talk from Town; Our rusting ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... left us to ourselves. The cell was not a roomy one; still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell. It had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove; two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces, armorial bearings, etc.—the work of several generations of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, blankets, or coverlets—for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... obliterated. To this alteration Cooper added the buttresses all about the church, not for structural necessity, but as an architectural embellishment. The interior he caused to be entirely remodeled, and finished in native oak. Cooper especially prided himself upon an oaken screen which, as his gift to the church, he erected behind the altar. The alterations in the church are referred to in a letter dated "Hall, Cooperstown, April 22nd, 1840" and addressed ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... gallery, on the left, a very narrow stair leads to the Clock, of enormous size, with a pendulum 16 feet long, constructed by Langley Bradley in 1708. Ever since, the oaken seats behind it have been occupied by a changing crowd, waiting with anxious curiosity to see the hammer strike its bell, and tremulously hoping to tremble ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... was nearly a year getting it together. Also he bought a new stove for his Sunday-School room, and a lot of pictures for the church walls, among others "Wide Awake and Fast Asleep," "Simply to Thy Cross," and "The Old Oaken Bucket." He gave to the school a cabinet organ with more stops than most of ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the simplest. The walls were covered with tapestry so faded that the pattern could hardly be detected. The hearth yawned dark and dull, and by it stood one chair with a moth-eaten cushion. A heavy oaken table and two forms were in the middle of the room, and there was the dreary, fusty smell of want of habitation. The Queen, whose instincts for fresh air were always a distress to her ladies, sprang to the mullioned window, but the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the story, but scarce therein might I trow That thou with all thy beauty wert born 'neath the oaken bough, And hast crawled a naked baby o'er the rain-drenched autumn-grass; Wilt thou tell the wandering woman what wise it cometh to pass That thou art the Mid-mark's Hall-Sun, and the sign of the Wolfings' gain? Thou shalt pleasure me much by the telling, and there of shalt ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... service was over we remained behind for a few moments. I could just distinguish the altar steps of white, black and red—the Dante combination of colours—and the peaceful light from the moon streamed through the stained glass windows on to the oaken stalls, showing faintly the outlines of apostles and saints. One of these was put up in 1852, in remembrance of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, examining chaplain to Bishop Longley and the father of the author ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... was a side-door, reached by walking down a covered way, over which the strong oaken rafters (revealed by the unflaking of the plaster) lay bent and warped by years and the weight of the building. From this door you saw the side, or rather the back, which the house kept for its intimates; a side even more picturesque with ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... and they entered a neatly-furnished chamber, that had that habitable look which the best room of a farmhouse too often wants. Instead of the cast-off furniture of other establishments, at the same time dingy and tawdry, mock rosewood chairs and tarnished mahogany tables, there was an oaken table, some cottage chairs made of beech wood, and a Dutch clock. But what surprised Egremont was the appearance of several shelves well lined with volumes. Their contents too on closer inspection were very remarkable. They indicated a student of a high order. Egremont read the titles ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... brown sandstone raised in colossal blocks. The spire, floriated richly and graduated with a precise symmetry, rises to an extreme altitude of 220 feet 6 inches. The extreme length is about 170 ft. The massive oaken front doors are carved handsomely, and contain the arms of the Stewart family, the Clinch family (Mrs. Stewart's maiden name), the Hilton family, and those of Bishop Littlejohn, the Episcopal head of the Long Island Diocese. The porch or tower entrance, which is the main entrance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... put it aside with a sigh, wondering whether dear old Ethel would ever marry herself. In that mood, I regretted that I had ever lingered in those dear old corridors at Bannington when the moonbeams slanted through the mullions of the narrow old Tudor windows, and Ethel came down the broad oaken staircase with a look of well simulated surprise in her eyes at finding me there, dressed early for dinner and waiting for her to surrender those red lips of hers ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... be understood of valleys rather than hills, and in calm places, than exposed, because they shoot streight and upright. The result of all is, that upon occasion of special timber, there is a very great and considerable difference; so as some oaken-timber proves manifestly weaker, more spungy, and sooner decaying than other. The like may be affirm'd of ash, and other kinds; and generally speaking, the close-grain'd is the stoutest, and most permanent: But of this, let the industrious consult that whole tenth ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... box-house; that is, it's made of boards set upright and nailed at the bottom and middle and top to joists. Over this crazy structure sets a roof made of long oaken shingles hewn with the broad axe. Step inside of the building, which will hold 125 people, and see the whole construction. Rough boards with the curve of the circular saw on them and now dingy with smoke, make the sides; oaken shingles black ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... the fire, and the deal table in the centre of the room was laid out roughly as for a meal. The candle which the old woman had carried in was the only light, though the flickering fire cast strange fantastic shadows in the further corners and among the great oaken rafters which ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... portraits on the walls, and paintings that hinted at old mastership filled whole panels; and the tall, high-backed, wonderfully wrought oaken chairs had heraldic devices in relief upon their bars and corners; and there was a great, round mosaic table, in soft, rich, dark colors, of most precious stones; these, in turn, hidden ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... bride walked down the world the observed of all observers, the gazed at of the town, only this time it was brick pavement not oaken stairs she trod, and most of the eyes that looked upon her were sheltered behind green jalousies. None the less, however, was she conscious of them as she made her way to the house of solemn feasting with David by her side. Her eyes rested upon the ground, or glanced quietly ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... stately head and mighty shoulders, so that the lion's skin was almost entirely covered with roses. They took possession of his ponderous club, and so entwined it about with the brightest, softest, and most fragrant blossoms that not a finger's breadth of its oaken substance could be seen. It looked all like a huge bunch of flowers. Lastly, they joined hands, and danced around him, chanting words which became poetry of their own accord, and grew into a choral song, in honour of the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... With oaken brace and copper band, Lay the rudder on the sand, That, like a thought, should have control Over the movement of the whole; And near it the anchor, whose giant hand Would reach down and grapple with the land, And immovable and fast ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... kinds of grain, wheat, barley, peas, and beans. The air was full of ambrosial sweets, resembling those proceeding from an orange grove; a place which though I had never seen at that time, I since have. In the garden was the habitation of the bees, a long box, supported upon three oaken stumps. It was full of small round glass windows, and appeared to be divided into a great many compartments, much resembling drawers placed sideways. He told me that, as one compartment was filled, the bees left it for another; so that, whenever he wanted honey, he could procure some without ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... long, weary mornings, when the sun, pouring through the curtainless south windows a great blaze upon the oaken floor, lights up for Reuben only the cobwebbed corners, the faded roundabouts of fellow-martyrs, the dismal figures of Daboll, the shining tail-coat of Master Brummem, as he stalks up and down from hour to hour, collecting in this way his scattered thoughts for some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... oak roof on the repair of which the late incumbent had spent so much, since as is common in monkish buildings, the windows were high and narrow. Presently, however, she perceived a little figure seated in the shadow at the end of the long oaken refectory table, that at which the monks had eaten, which still remained where it had stood for hundreds of years, one of the fixtures of the house, and knew it for that of Godfrey, Mr. Knight's son. Gliding towards him ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... despicable Xuriel, bowing low. Poor Edna had to follow him up a steep outside staircase to a gloomy room where deep-set windows commanded a view of the Courtyard below. He found some sheets of parchment and a reed pen, and lent her the inkhorn from his own girdle. As he was depositing these on a great oaken table, he glanced out of the window and gave a ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of the dame's school—a smart tapping on the head with a heavy thimble—to belaboring with a heavy walnut stick or oaken ruler. Master Lovell, that tigerish Boston teacher, whipped the culprit with birch rods and forced another scholar to hold the sufferer on his back. Other schoolmasters whipped on the soles of the feet, and one teacher roared out, "Oh the Caitiffs! it is good ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Which in the scorched Indian desert lies. And though the winged son of Jove[150] From these bewitched cups' delightful taste To keep the famous captain strove, Yet them the greedy mariners embraced With much desire, till turned to swine Instead of bread they fed on oaken mast. Ruined in voice and form, no sign Remains to them of any human grace; Only their minds unchanged repine To see their bodies in such ugly case. O feeble hand and idle art Which, though it could the outward limbs deface, Yet ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... your lightnings At the oaken, Massive, iron-studded portals! Sack the house of God, and scatter Wide the ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... invoke thee, Acharnian Muse, fierce and fell as the devouring fire; sudden as the spark that bursts from the crackling oaken coal when roused by the quickening fan to fry little fishes, while others knead the dough or whip the sharp Thasian pickle with rapid hand, so break forth, my Muse, and inspire thy tribesmen with ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... waterworks that formed a part of the sanitary equipment in the culinary department and which function to this day. There is a heavy hand-hewn stone sink and a copper caldron with its own firebox and ashpit. Formerly a large oaken bathtub stood in the back room off the kitchen and the water heated in the copper caldron was available to both rooms. An old brass spigot that served ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... unique piece of workmanship. It is an elegantly carved horn, about eighteen inches long, brilliantly polished, and richly mounted, the cover highly ornamented with chased oak leaves, and the tip adorned with an acorn; the horn resting on luxuriant branches of an oaken tree, exquisitely finished in chased silver. Around the cover is engraved the following inscription:—"Presented by the Cymmrodorion in Gwynedd, to RICHARD PHILLIPS JONES, M.D. for his unwearied exertions in promoting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... word or glance to any in the assembly, the stranger strode to the Branstock and thrust a glittering sword up to the hilt in its great bole. Then, turning slowly round, he faced the awe-struck and silent assembly, and declared that the weapon would be for the warrior who could pull it out of its oaken sheath, and that it would assure him victory in every battle. The words ended, he then passed out as he had entered, and disappeared, leaving a conviction in the minds of all that Odin, king of the gods, had been in ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to read aloud rapidly the smallest type of a newspaper. He was dressed in very plain, brown clothes, but of good quality, with large flaps to his waistcoat, grey woollen stockings, and large buckles. In his under-lip he had a prodigious large quid of tobacco, and he leaned on a very thick oaken cudgel, which, I afterwards learned, he cut in the woods of Hawthornden. His broad, bright, and benevolent countenance at one glance, bespoke powerful intellect and unbounded good-will, with a very visible sparkle of merry wit. The discourse at first turned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... that one heart in Albion Retains its oaken core; Alone I can withstand my duty, And so my answer to this beauty Is simply "Rats!" and "Rooti-tooti! My toll for this year must and shall be on The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... two hounds, you ragamuffin. I would not have parted with them to save your whole generation from the gallows, you ruffian, you!" "None of your jaw, you swab—none of your jaw," replied my uncle, "else I shall trim your laced jacket for you. I shall rub you down with an oaken towel, my boy, I shall." So saying, he sheathed his hanger, and grasped his cudgel. Meanwhile the people of the house being alarmed, one of my female cousins opened a window, and asked what was the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... with the place, tiptoe in through the grimy doors, ducking and winking, and softly lifting and placing their chairs, with a mock-timorous upward glance toward the long, ungainly personage who, under a faded and tattered crimson canopy, fills the august bench of magistracy with its high oaken back. On the right, behind a rude wooden paling that rises from the floor to the smoke-stained ceiling, are the peering, bloated faces of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and busied herself with the arrangement of the curtains. They were heavy velvet curtains, which at night-time drew round the whole of the large bay window which formed the end of the pretty, cosy room. Bridgie took especial pleasure in the effect of a great brass vase which, on its oaken pedestal, stood sharply outlined against the rich, dark folds. She moved its position now, moved it back into its original place, and touched the leaves of the chrysanthemum which stood therein with a caressing hand. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... entered; and the servant did not give himself the trouble to act as a cicerone to the two visitants, but carelessly said to the old gentleman that he knew the rooms, and that he would leave him to discourse to his friend about them. Accordingly, they went into the old hall, a dark oaken-panelled room, of no great height, with many doors opening into it. There was a fire burning on the hearth; indeed, it was the custom of the house to keep it up from morning to night; and in the damp, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Paused by the harness, as before a friend Whose well-known features slack our hurried gait; Francesca's name was fresh upon my mind, So I half-uttered it. Instant, my sword Leaped from its scabbard, as with sudden life, Plunged down and pierced into the oaken floor, Shivering with fear! Lo! while I gazed upon it— Doubting the nature of the accident— Around the point appeared a spot of blood, Oozing upon the floor, that spread and spread— As I stood gasping by in ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... down, give a dressing, trim, warm, wipe, tund^, cob, bang, strap, comb, lash, lick, larrup, wallop, whop, flog, scourge, whip, birch, cane, give the stick, switch, flagellate, horsewhip, bastinado, towel, rub down with an oaken towel, rib roast, dust one's jacket, fustigate^, pitch into, lay about one, beat black and blue; beat to a mummy, beat to a jelly; give a black eye. tar and feather; pelt, stone, lapidate^; masthead, keelhaul. execute; bring to the block, bring to the gallows; behead, decapitate, guillotine; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sleepily and got up to stretch a bit. Outside the dull morning light worked its way over Peter's farm—clouds of mist still poured up from the gorge, circling the bridge and creeping up the bank across the fields. Peter unlatched the heavy oaken door and went outside ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... to its heavy oaken doors, witnesses to the interest that is centred in the trial, and all eyes are fixed on the pale, stern old man who stands before the dais silently facing his judges. He is quite alone, and his thoughts go back, with some bitterness, to his previous trial, when ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... modernizing hand of taste. Indeed as the faults of the edifice were those of solid construction, it would have been difficult to render it less gloomy or more convenient by any change that art could affect. Its massive walls and huge oaken beams would neither permit the enlargement of its narrow windows, nor the destruction of its maze of useless corridors; and it was therefore allowed to remain unmolested and unadorned; unless when an occasional visit from some member of the Greville family demanded ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... the thundering rap on the heavy oaken gate or door which still continued, roused Humphrey Ratcliffe from his dreams, on the upper floor, and he presently appeared on the stone staircase which led into the outer hall, where the porter ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the oaken door at one end of the courtyard until it was opened by a bent-shouldered man with ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... it in his pride, and sounded it at Turpin's bidding, but too late; and how his temples burst with that great blast, and Charles and all his peers heard it through the gorges, leagues away in France. And then his "Aoi" rang forth so loud and clear, like any trumpet blast, under the oaken glades, that the wild men leaped to their feet, and shouted, "Health to the gleeman! Health to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... these, she slowly turned towards the clothes-press, and, opening the oaken doors, looked at a suit of black—'the Sunday best' of her dead husband, left undisturbed since his sudden decease ten years before. Then, turning to a box at the foot of the bed—that historic four-poster whereon the twin messengers of birth and ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... windows gave on the corridor, as did here and there the massive oaken doors, with their gigantic hinges and bolts, on the steps of which squatted groups of soldiers wrapped in their cloaks, with wild, suspicious eyes beneath their capotes, peering at the midnight ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... up to that opening and just look through. And with this intent, followed not quite closely by the boys, he went so near that he had but to take one more step to be able to look through into the next field; in fact, he was in the act of stretching out his hand to lay it upon one of the big oaken splints that hung from its copper nail, when there was a sharp report as if a pistol had been fired just on the other side, and in an instant the whole party were ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... large masses of oaken beams were fastened together, and thrown into the channel, and by them huge piles were continually fixed and unfixed, being all thrown into disorder by the rising of the stream, and afterwards they were broken and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of the hospital of Martha's Vineyard was a large and luxurious chamber, with an oval window at its farther end, and its two side walls panelled with portraits of former chairmen and physicians. In great oaken armchairs, behind ponderous oaken tables, covered with green cloth and furnished with writing pads, the Board of Governors sat in three sides of a square, leaving an open space in the middle. This open space was reserved for patients seeking admission or receiving discharge, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... "An oaken, broken, elbow-chair; A caudle-cup without an ear; A battered, shattered ash bedstead; A box of deal without a lid; A pair of tongs, but out of joint; A back-sword poker, without point; A dish which might good meat afford once; An ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... as if waking in another world. The clear cold air, thrilled with sunshine, filled her room. It was the "best room," furnished with a curious mingling of the ancient and the modern. The pretty chintz couch laughed at the oaken, high-backed chair, stiff with a century of worm-eaten state. On either side the fireplace hung two ancient engravings, of Mary Stuart and "bonnie Prince Charlie," both garnished with verses, at once remarkable for devoted loyalty and eccentric rhythm. Between the two was Sir William Ross's ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... covered over with copperplate, and the green was from the verdigris; out of the bunghole of the cask hung a long twisted cord. "Suppose I were to set fire to this cord, what would result?" Idalia asked herself, and hurried on her way. Suddenly the figure before her stood still. An oaken door with bands of iron closed the tunnel; here the tunnel was walled with brick, and the threshold of the door was of hewn stone; the masculine figure placed his torch in an iron ring on the wall and approached ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... dismissed the messenger, and commanding the city gates to be opened, went himself to meet King Marcobrun, took him by his white hands, led him into the marble palace, seated him at an oaken table spread with checkered tablecloths and sweetmeats, and they fell to eating ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... was a real art museum, containing splendid pictures, an oaken press and other things which suggest that this was the workroom where Rembrandt's etchings were ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... apartment, finished with the heavy oaken beams of the wall left full in sight, boarded over and painted. Two windows looked out on the street, and another into a sort of court-yard, where three black wenches, each with a broom, pretended to be sweeping, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the village stood the "British Lion" public-house. It was a quaint old homestead of two stories, with black, oaken interlacing beams in its wattled walls and mullioned windows, retaining the small diamond, leaded panes, long ago discarded by more pretentious contemporaries. Before the door still stood an ancient horse-block, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... latter had seated himself over against the stove and appeared to take little interest in what was going on. Victor stood with one foot tapping the floor impatiently. He had been quick to notice that Jean's great eyes had stolen in the direction of the little oaken keg. At last he threw the tin beaker aside as if in disgust. He played his ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... or of oak wood, and, like the oaken kumys churn, have been boiled in strong lye to extract the acid, and well dried and aired. In addition to the daily washing they are well smoked with rotten birch trunks, in order to destroy all particles of kumys which ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... when he saw a woman pass hastily by one of the parlor windows. Concluding that the men were off to the war, and that the lady was the only person left at home, he turned up the sandy path and rode to the front porch, where he dismounted, and used the heavy brass knocker attached to the oaken door. ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... a gold pound sterling that by the time you see Doll Vernon—Mistress Vernon, I pray your pardon—you will have grown so fond of me that you will not permit me to leave you." She thought after that speech he could not help but know her; but John's skull was like an oaken board that night. Nothing could penetrate it. He began to fancy that his companion was a simple witless person who ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... sea-green hair made a courtesy down to the ground, and likewise bade him welcome; so did her sister with the bodice of oaken bark, and she that sprinkled dew-drops from her fingers' ends, and the fourth one with some oddity which I cannot remember. And Circe, as the beautiful enchantress was called (who had deluded so many persons that she did not doubt of being able ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the time of their marriage had continued seven years with their master or mistress in Lewisham; with numerous other bequests. He further left moneys for the preservation of his father's, grandfather's, his wife's, and his own monument—his own being an oaken plank oiled, and a stone 'a foot square every way, and three feet long.' The stone and plank were removed many years ago, and an inscribed tablet has been set into the outer ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... of the wall in the way; and I used to think, that the sextons of Liverpool must have held a secret meeting on my account, and resolved to apportion me the most inconvenient pew in the churches under their charge. However, they always gave me a seat of some sort or other; sometimes even on an oaken bench in the open air of the aisle, where I would sit, dividing the attention of the congregation between myself and the clergyman. The whole congregation seemed to know that I ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... falling down into a lake, Which him up to the neck doth take. His fury somewhat it doth slake; He calleth for a ferry; Where you may some recovery note, What was his club he made his boat, And in his oaken cup doth float, As safe as ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... downe into a Lake, Which him vp to the neck doth take, His fury somewhat it doth slake, He calleth for a Ferry; Where you may some recouery note, What was his Club he made his Boate, 270 And in his Oaken Cup doth float, As safe ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Well chastened by the Church. This pastoral staff Mine oaken Pax Vobiscum, sent 'em home To think about their sins, with watering eyes. You never saw a bunch of such blue faces, Bumpy and juicy as a bunch of grapes Bruised in a Bacchanalian orgy, dripping The reddest wine a man could wish ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... into a wagon which stood near-by. But he soon saw that he needn't have gone to that trouble. For Snowball plainly had no more butts left in him for the time being. He stood still in a dazed fashion and stared dully about him. The heavy oaken swing seat had been no soft mark to hit, sailing swiftly through the air with eighty pounds ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... true word which touched the Anglo-Saxon heart in its tenderest spot, and being happily married to a plaintive air was sold by the hundred thousand, and is evidently destined to be sung forever. A like success has attended the Old Oaken Bucket, composed by Samuel Woodworth, a printer and journalist from Massachusetts, whose other poems, of which two collections were issued in 1818 and 1826, were soon forgotten. Richard Henry Wilde, an Irishman by birth, a gentleman of scholarly tastes and accomplishments, who wrote a great ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... she still sat on, watching the decaying fire and listening to the thunder of the sea as it broke upon the rocks at the base of the castle. At length she got up, drew aside the heavy window curtains, opened the strong oaken shutters and looked out upon the expanse of the gray and dreary sea, dimly visible under the cloudy ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the place previously determined, a cofferdam, with its sides formed of oaken stakes with ties between them, is to be driven down into the water and firmly propped there; then, the lower surface inside, under the water, must be levelled off and dredged, working from beams laid across; and finally, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... order from the Lord Provost, "to attend the wheeping of Paull and Anderson, actors in the late riots at Cannonmills." A rescue riot was apprehended, and the Trained Bands met in the old Justiciary Court-room, and were armed there with "stowt oaken sticks." Marching forth in regular order, they acted as guard to the magistrates during the day, and "by their formidable and respectable appearance had the good effect of detering the multitude so that they became only peaceable spectators." Whether an honorary captain ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... rode the waves with the bold freedom of her kind. Her keel was carved out of a single great tree. Her seasoned oaken timbers, overlapping, were riveted together by iron bolts, with the round heads outside. Where a timber touched a rib, a strip was cut out on each side, forming a block through which a hole was bored. Another hole was bored in the rib to match ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... chief then spent some time in examining the contributions of the loyal subjects of King Charles. These appeared to give him much satisfaction, and, after due inspection, were gathered up and deposited in a stout oaken chest. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... (q. v.), where Luther was confined by his friends when it was too hot for him outside, and where, not forgetful of what he owed his country, he kept translating the Bible into the German vernacular, and where they still show the oaken table at which he did it, and the oaken ink-holder which he threw at the devil's head, as well as the ink-spot ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... thick, and the seams were folded over and welded, no solder being used. The lead was much decayed. The curious thing about it is that when it was opened not a bone was found within it; the lead coffin had contained an oaken shell which crumbled into dust on exposure to the air, but within the coffin lying on a block of oak, so shaped as to receive the head of the corpse, was a tress of auburn hair forming a plait about eighteen inches long. It was in perfect condition and looked as if the skull had only recently been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... heirs divided the proceeds. They were sitting in the drawing-room. Blinds covered the low windows; some portraits hung on the walls, a chandelier was shrouded in a muslin wrapper that had not been changed for years. A yellow oaken piano was covered with dust, and the furniture's velvet covering was tarnished and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... oaken desk in one corner of the tent. In another corner was his bunk, a new suit case, and a new trunk, both in keeping with Tweet's expensive outdoor clothes. There were several chairs. Tweet arose briskly and held one for the girl with all the ceremony of a head waiter ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... a fresh contingent of voices in defiance of the late Professor Freeman. "Thou hast allowed the Emanuel Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake District with ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... presents), I was awakened at seven o'clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand, flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the great oaken hall as we came in from the dark, rainy night. A great fire burnt on its stone hearth in the centre, and the long tables were already set above and below it. The bright arms and shields on the walls shone below the heads of deer and wolf and boar, and the gust of ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... twelve feet—with a high conical roof. The roof had an inner lining of wood, and through a hole in it—where a panel had been slid back—a large optic-glass, raised on a pivot-stand, thrust its nose out into the night. Close within the door stood an oaken press, and beside it, on a tripod, a brazier filled with charcoal and glowing. A truckle-bed, a chair, and two benches made up the rest of the furniture: and of the benches one was crowded with all manner of tools—files by the score, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... sometimes supposed to be the original of the English "Hey down, derry, derry down!" but the old Druidic song-burden, "Come, let us hasten to the oaken grove," is in Welsh "Hai down ir deri dando," which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... my earliest recollections. It stood upon the staircase at home (I call it home still mechanically), nigh sixty years ago. I like it for that; but it is not on that account, nor because it is a quaint old thing in a huge oaken case curiously and richly carved, that I prize it as I do. I incline to it as if it were alive, and could understand and give me back the love ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... honor of dedicating to the temple of Jupiter the third "grand spoils" taken since the foundation of Rome, and of ascending the Capitol, himself conveying the armor of Virdumar, for he had got hewn an oaken trunk, round which he had arranged the helmet, tunic, and breastplate of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... made no reckoning of it; Erasmus declared it was best winked at, there being no remedy but patience, Dies dolorem minuit; Time, Age must mend it; and how according to the best authorities, bars, bolts, oaken doors, and towers of brass, are all in vain. "She is a woman," as the old Pedant wrote to ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... is cradled in silver, at his death he is laid in a golden casket, an oaken coffin, and a leaden outer coffin until, finally, a massy stone sarcophagus shrouds his remains forever. His life is a whirl of gayety and freedom. Around his castle there spread miles upon miles ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... which she was to take to her English Literature tutor on the following day, went aimlessly upstairs and put her head into Connie's room. The old house was panelled, and its guest-room, though small and shabby, had yet absorbed from its oaken walls, and its outlook on the garden and St. Cyprian's, a certain measure of the Oxford charm. The furniture was extremely simple—a large hanging cupboard made by curtaining one of the panelled recesses of the wall, a chest of drawers, a bed, a ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surgeon were soon cut short by the loud roar of the guns overhead, as the frigate opened her fire on the enemy. Then speedily came the crashing sound of the return shot, as they tore through the stout planks, and split asunder even the oaken timbers. It was evident that the two ships were very close together by the loud sound of the enemy's guns and the effects of his shot. Not many minutes had passed since the firing commenced, when steps were heard descending the ladder, and first one wounded man, and then another, and ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... they entered last, hung with rich tapestries and furnished with dark oaken chairs and settles covered with royal purple velvet, a few pages and the Queen's ladies alone kept her company. As Pocahontas and Lady De La Ware advanced, the Queen motioned every one else to withdraw ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... apprehend the slightest danger so long as the inmates remained within their doors, in case the din of battle was heard in the vicinity. As it was, however, the windows were well secured, and the heavy, oaken front-door was capable of being rendered all but invulnerable by a huge iron bar that could be speedily thrown across it into two deep grooves in ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... dared think. It was this dread that induced me, upon receipt of the box, appalling in its bulk and unpleasantly suggestive of the departure to other worlds of the original consignor, since it was long and deep like the outer oaken covering of a casket, to delay opening it for some days; but finally I nerved myself up to the duty that had devolved upon ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... It is an oaken vessel of ten to twelve thousand measures burden: deeply laden it would appear, for the waves wash over the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... vessels ran into each other. The boil and splash of water, breaking of oars, splintering of boatsides; the infuriate cries, oaths, and blind striving of the rowers, some intent on getting through at all hazards, some turned combatants, striking or parrying with their heavy oaken blades; the sound of blows on breaking heads; plunges into the foaming brine; blood trickling down faces and necks, and reddening naked arms—such was the catastrophe seen in its details from the overhanging gunwale of the galley. And while it went on, the worse than confused mass drifted ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... church, has a very high chancel and altar and no transepts, and the altar is marked by a striking profusion of color and of gilding, which does not degenerate into the tawdry and which lights up vividly under the entering noon light. The chapels at the sides are similarly decorated. Dark oaken balconies, elaborately carved, run in three tiers along the upper part of the nave. The seats in these are reserved for the men, the women being relegated to small black cushions placed on the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Mr. Axtell's door was open. He had left a light. I went in and took it up, with a box of matches lying near, and once more started down the stairs. How full of trembling I was! yet not afraid: there was a life, perhaps, to save. I opened the heavy oaken door. The wind put out my light. I did not need it longer. The shred of moon, hanging prophetic of doom, let out its ghastly whiteness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... gentlest, sweetest, saddest face—a little white, aged face, with dark, pretty eyes—and the most considerate manner. She took me up into an upper hall, where there were a couple of curious chimney-pieces and a fine old oaken roof, the latter representing the hollow of a long boat. There is a certain oddity in a native of Bourges—an inland town if ever there was one, without even a river (to call a river) to encourage nautical ambitions—having found his end ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... hastily gone to make some alteration in her dress), he had had time to look around him, and note the various little particulars of the room. Beneath the window (which commanded a magnificent view) was an oaken dresser, replete with drawers and cupboards, and brightly polished to a rich dark colour. In the farther part of the room Owen could at first distinguish little, entering as he did from the glaring sunlight, but he soon saw that there were two oaken ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with gray, lies back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite sits your mother: her figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued; her arm perhaps resting on your shoulder, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making a mock of poor mortality. The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh That from his noonday slumber roused an owl Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by. A very rare conceit—the ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... well they fought. Easily did they withstand the men of King Ryence. Four men were slain by their might, through wondrous and fearful strokes, and four were sorely wounded. There lay the four against an oaken tree where they had been placed in a moment's lull. But two knights were left to oppose Launcelot and Gawaine but these two were gallant men and worthy, the very best ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... with rudely bulging plaster walls, once painted a harsh blue, now toned by time and damp to a hundred parti-coloured patches. A rough, uneven floor; for furniture a narrow, oaken bedstead, a heavy chair lamed by four legs of various heights, a rickety table steadied by a pad of rags beneath one foot, a long chest of painted wood: such was the sleeping-room of Wilhelmine von Graevenitz, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... productive. And as to the people, I content myself with these great points: that every man was armed, every man was a good archer, every man could and would fight effectively, with sword or pike, or even with oaken cudgel; no man would live quietly without beef and ale if he had them not; he fought till he either got them, or was put out of condition to want them. They were not, and could not be, subjected to that powerful pressure of all the other classes ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... with diamonds of black and white marble; the low wide staircase that went in short flights around the hall, till you could look down upon the marble floor from the top story of the house, was uncarpeted—uncovered. The squire was too proud of his beautifully- joined oaken flooring to cover this staircase up unnecessarily; not to say a word of the usual state of want of ready money to expend upon the decorations of his house. So, through the undraperied hollow square of the hall and staircase every sound ascended clear and distinct; and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... been digging all day long the rough shingle for treasure-trove, had retired to their rudely constructed cabins. These rough huts were built of wood, and furnished with a seat on either side. There were two small windows let into the oaken walls—each of them not more than six inches square. They were absolutely free from furniture—save perhaps, a foot of cheap looking-glass, and here and there a wooden-peg used by the Miners for hanging up their slouch-hats, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... tell you when they met: In the limpid days of Spring; Elder boughs were budding yet, Oaken boughs looked wintry still, But primrose and veined violet In the mossful turf were set, While meeting birds made haste to sing And build ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the Dame," she said, and tried to look steadily at the woman who came out of the oaken door to lead her in. She was a strong, sturdy woman, neither tall nor short, with brown, smooth hair and a brown, smooth skin with red blood beneath. Her eyes were like brook water in the sun, that runs over clean pebbles, and ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... cleared off that portion of the floor of the lodge which lay west of the fire, and brought, in blankets, a quantity of dry sand, which they spread out over the cleared portion of the floor in a layer of the nearly constant depth of three inches. They smoothed the surface with the broad oaken battens used in weaving. Now for a time all operations were suspended in the lodge while the chanter went out to plant the çobolçà , or plumed wands, in front of the medicine lodge, and to lay beside them the collars of beaver skins and the symbols for wings which the ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... at a hand-gallop to the village of Chilton, and rouse the Constable, while another was sent to Oxford for a Magistrate's warrant to arrest Lord Fareham on the charge of abduction. And meanwhile the battering upon thick oaken panels with stout riding-whips, and heavy sword-hilts, and the calling upon those within, were repeated with unabated vehemence, while a couple of horsemen rode round the house to examine other inlets, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... gulden which the bailiff had already sent him for the stables in Dresden, and ordered a funeral ceremony that seemed more suitable for a princess than for her—an oaken coffin heavily trimmed with metal, cushions of silk with gold and silver tassels, and a grave eight yards deep lined with stones and mortar. He himself stood beside the vault with his youngest child in his arms and watched the work. On the day of the funeral the corpse, white as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... epoch records its history. Our ancestors of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries inherited the troublous times of their fathers in their heavy oaken chests. They owned more chests than anything else, because a chest could be carried away on the back of a sturdy pack mule, when the ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... parliamentary duty from insult and outrage. Lord Sandwich was dragged from his carriage, which was broken to pieces, and would have been killed if he had not been rescued by a magistrate, at the head of a small party of light-horse. At this time most of the rabble had oaken sticks in their hands, as well as blue cockades in their hats; and some had even banners, on which were inscribed their watchword, "No Popery!" This was also chalked on the carriages of all the lords ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wide green landscape and the far distant, almost level line of the horizon. His boy, Felix, had knelt in one of them a few hours ago, looking out with grave childish eyes on the sunset. The broad, shallow steps of the oaken staircase, trodden so many years by the feet of all who were dearest to him; the quiet chambers above where his mother, his wife, and his children were at this moment sleeping peacefully. How unutterably and painfully sweet all his home ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... picked the lock off the thick oaken chest, and were diving down among salvers, pitchers, and smaller articles, when they were terrified to hear a loud, ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie
... with sunny glimpses through archways of great boughs,—spires, towers, and turrets, each with its history and legend,—dimly magnificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom,—vast college-halls, high-windowed, oaken-panelled, and hung round with portraits of the men, in every age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustrious,—long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved,—kitchens, (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... floor, leaving holes between the logs, through which the wind and rain entered; and the one rickety chair, and the rude benches and boxes for sitting accommodations, and the bedsteads, composed of rough oaken slabs, spiked at the head and side to the walls, and a rough post at the unsupported corner, and the cracked and rusted stove and leaky funnel; and then he would look at his mother, who, despite her coarse and dingy dress, seemed so superior to her condition; and the ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... thickness of the walls, till they stood in a chamber under six feet high, but otherwise as large as the bedroom below. The walls were lined with wood, and there were two tiny slits that gave air, but hardly any light. The only furniture in the room was an oaken chest, clasped with iron ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... shocking sight indeed, a woman stript half naked, under the hands of a ruffian, who had put his garter round her neck, and was endeavouring to draw her up to a tree. Jones asked no questions at this interval, but fell instantly upon the villain, and made such good use of his trusty oaken stick that he laid him sprawling on the ground before he could defend himself, indeed almost before he knew he was attacked; nor did he cease the prosecution of his blows till the woman herself begged ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of Armine Place was a large irregular room, with a low but richly-carved oaken roof, studded with achievements. This apartment was lighted by the oriel window we have mentioned, the upper panes of which contained some ancient specimens of painted glass, and having been fitted up by Sir Ferdinand as a library, contained a collection of valuable books. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the sap of sturdier growth, So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 35 That these shall seem but their attendants both; For nature's forces with obedient zeal Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, And turn mad Pucks to flout and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the adding of en: as, oak, oaken; silk, silken; wheat, wheaten; oat, oaten; hemp, hempen. Here the derivative denotes the matter ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He presided at meetings ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... within the parish yard, In English faith—the parish church that links The present with the perished, for its walls Are of the clay that was the capital's, When halberdiers and musketeers kept ward, And armor sounded in the oaken halls. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... settle-corner lest she find you— Find and grow fearsome, too afraid to stay: Do you hear the hinge of the oaken press behind you? There all her toys were kept, there she ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... glancing round for them, and as I did so I saw the end of a thrall's mud hut across a field fall out. The king leaped up and set his foot in the stirrup, and at that moment the earth heaved and shook under us, and the whole oaken hall and buildings round us creaked and groaned like a ship in a ground swell, while Hilda clung to my arm in terror. Her horse, which the thane, her father, held, trembled and broke out into white ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler |
