"Parchment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and contrasting its dirty splendour, and heavy odour of wine, and food, and perfumes, with the sunny grace and cleanliness of Greek houses. Against the wall stood presses and chests fretted with fantastic Oriental carving; illuminated rolls of parchment lay in heaps in a corner; a lamp of strange form hung from the ceiling, and shed a dim and lurid light upon an object which chilled the youth's blood for a moment—a bracket against the wall, on which, in a plate of gold, engraven with mystic signs, stood the mummy of an infant's head; one of those ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... into his castle on a black steed and bore him off in a storm of lightning amidst the crash of thunders and the shrieks of fiends. St. Britius once during mass saw the devil in church taking account of the sins the congregation were committing. He covered the parchment all over, and, afraid of forgetting some of the offences, seized the scroll in his teeth and claws to stretch it out. It snapped, and his head was smartly bumped against the wall. St. Britius laughed ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... all in black and white, chattering and whispering together. This was no day for tedious task-work, no day for grammar or arithmetic, no day for picking out illuminated letters in red and gold on stiff parchment, or patiently chasing intricate patterns over thick cloth with the slow needle. It was a holiday. A famous visitor had come to ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... length they reached the city hall Donna waited, blushing, outside the door of the marriage bureau while Bob entered and parted with two dollars and fifty cents for the parchment which gave him a legal right to commit what he called a social and economic crime. Later he came out and insisted that Donna should return with him to Cupid's window, there to receive the customary congratulations and handshake from Bob's ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... river of Acheron, where the ghosts of fishes flitted over the pebbly bed; or showed the Persian in trews and mitre flying before the Greek at Marathon, or the galleys clashing their beaks of brass in the little Salaminian bay. He drew with silver-point and charcoal upon parchment and prepared cedar. Upon ivory and rose-coloured terracotta he painted with wax, making the wax fluid with juice of olives, and with heated irons making it firm. Panel and marble and linen canvas became wonderful as his brush swept across them; and life seeing her own image, was still, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mediaeval transport, by sea as well as by land, and he can tell you at once the quantities of bowstrings and quarrels 'indented for' during the Crecy and Poictiers campaigns. Not long ago, poring over an ancient roll of parchment in the Record Office, he came across a list of the ships requisitioned for the Agincourt expedition, with their names, ports, and tonnage, inscribed on the back of one of the membranes. Great was his delight, and it will be some time before his friends will be allowed ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... old woman, yellow as parchment, with a mass of thick grey hair gathered in a single knot at the back of her head. She wore heavy rings on her fingers, and large earrings; her small piercing eyes had a look of burnt-out passion; and her countenance wore in a stronger degree the furtive, ratlike expression ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... and waiting. Before the roll was called, Sergeant Wilson, his face drawn and wrinkled like old parchment, came forward and asked hesitatingly if there were any news from Washington. The officer shook his head. The cords in the old negro's throat worked convulsively, and he requested rather brokenly that he might be excused ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror. It is dry as parchment, and brown as the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... Captain Blood thrust a parchment under Calverley's bulging eyes. The officer scanned it, particularly the seals and signature. He stepped back, a baffled, impotent man. He ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... What this security ought to be, is the great problem to be solved. Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the boundaries of these departments, in the constitution of the government, and to trust to these parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power? This is the security which appears to have been principally relied on by the compilers of most of the American constitutions. But experience assures us, that the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the Spanish officer to lay a finger on me. The commandant now draws his sword—a weapon of such monstrous length that it cannot be conveniently unsheathed without detaching the scabbard from the belt from which it depends. The consul in turn exhibits a mighty scroll of parchment, which takes as long to unroll as the officer's sabre takes to unsheath. Meanwhile I watch the combatants in agonising suspense, till the chamber becomes suddenly dark. But, after a painful pause, daylight appears, and to my unspeakable relief I find that my formidable visitors ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the seals deliberately, untied the red string, opened the huge sheet of parchment, and without saying one syllable tore it down the middle; then tore the pieces again, and again, till they were so small that the writing could not be read. The spectators looked ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... after he had dismissed the laborers to ask him what was the matter, when he responded by showing her a leaden tube with a cover, somewhat like the tube in which a soldier on furlough keeps his leave, from which he drew a yellow parchment covered with crabbed handwriting, and carefully unrolling ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... We're cutting some papyrus, and Douglas is going to show me how to make it into parchment like the ancient Egyptians used to write on. Won't it be gorgeous? Don't ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... window in the front room, where he had sat for several hours, with spectacles on his brow, poring over an old faded parchment deed, which related to some neighboring land he thought belonged to the Peabodys, (although in possession of others,) and which he had always made a close study of on his visits to the homestead. There was a dark passage, under ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... Right . . . The important piece of parchment, about the size of a bank-cheque, was handed ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Union; I want to maintain the constitutional rights of all classes, North and South; but to give me a mere written guarantee on parchment, and file it in the office of the Secretary of State, with a predetermination in the hearts and minds of the northern people inculcated and instructed to violate it, I cannot live with, and I will not. I would rather go where I naturally belong, with southern men; but ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... plucked at the oilskin wrapper, uncovered it, unfolded an inner parcel of parchment, and, trembling, spread it out on ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... mistaken in putting you down in my tablet as violent and hot-headed. But I fear lest you have a fault worse than these—I mean a tendency towards tears. I have seen sullen slaves melt away like the snows of winter under a spring sun, dry up like parchment, and cause great loss to their owners by their pitiful appearance. So, look out for yourself. There remain but fifteen days before the auction at which you are to be sold. It is a short while to restore you to your natural fleshiness, to give you ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... only passed his sixteenth birthday when, one wild March morning in 1785, he was handed an important-looking document. It was a parchment with the King's seal attached, his commission of ensign in the 8th Regiment. Isaac at once joined the regimental depot in England. It was evident that his lack of learning would prove a barrier to promotion. He found that much ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... my soule hath elbow roome, It would not out at windowes, nor at doores, There is so hot a summer in my bosome, That all my bowels crumble vp to dust: I am a scribled forme drawne with a pen Vpon a Parchment, and against this fire Do I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... they keep one themselves, and the other the give to the person they send forth; and these pieces of wood they call Scytales. When, therefore, they have occasion to communicate any secret or important matter, making a scroll of parchment long and narrow like a leathern thong, they roll it about their own staff of wood, leaving no space void between, but covering the surface of the staff with the scroll all over. When they have done this, they write ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... never came, and to avert lean years that very often did. The Anglican cannot understand the real aboriginal Papist. Sally's mother was puzzled when she saw an old, old kneeling figure, toothless and parchment-skinned, on whose rosary a pinch of snuff ut supra descended, shake it off the bead in evidence, and get on to the next Ave, even as one who has business before her—so many pounds of oakum to pick, so many bushels of peas to shell. It was a reality to her; and there ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... free countries over which no authority was claimed had been calmly omitted, as if, by such a subterfuge, the independence of the republic could be winked out of existence. Furthermore, it was objected that the document was in Spanish, that it was upon paper instead of parchment, that it was not sealed with the great, but with the little seal, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... third day the people of Edinburgh were called on to attest their devotion to the cause which was represented by the Covenant. Tradition long loved to tell how the honored parchment, carried back to the Grey Friars, was laid out on a tombstone in the churchyard, whilst weeping multitudes pressed round in numbers too great to be contained in any building. There are moments when the stern Scottish nature breaks out into an enthusiasm less ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... was therefore transcribed by an ancient penman to the parchment of a still existing manuscript, in the century before that in which the German epic is presumed, from style only, and in the opinion of Germans, to have ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... left at Mr. Truefitt's face, and struck with his right somewhere near the centre of his opponent's waistcoat. Mr. Truefitt, still gazing at him open-mouthed, retreated backward, and, just as the captain's parchment-like fist struck him a second time, tripped over a water-can that had been left in the path and fell heavily on his ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... Orkneyinga Saga, whereas that Saga constitutes but a very small part of the magnificent volume. The Codex Flateyensis takes its name, as W.H.F. rightly concludes, from the island of Flatey in the Breidafiord in Iceland, where it was long preserved. It is a parchment volume most beautifully executed, the initial letters of the chapters being finely illuminated, and extending in many instances, as in a fac-simile now before me, from top to bottom of the folio page. The contents of the volume may be learned from the following ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... pattern-books yet in existence. Parchment patterns, drawn and pricked for pillow lace, bearing the date of 1577, were lately found covering old law-books, in Albisola, a town near Savona, which was a place celebrated for its laces, as we infer from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... letter with a mixture of emotions. Beside it lay a deed, engrossed on parchment, which purported to grant all that he held under the will of the late Sir Michael McMurrough to and for the sole use of Constantine Hussey, Esquire, of Duppa. But annexed to the deed was a separate scroll, illegal but not unusual in Ireland at that day, stating that the true meaning was ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... phrase, he "buried himself in the most frightful labours." Between the end of 1833 and 1834 he produced Eugenie Grandet, The Illustrious Gaudissart, The Girl with the Golden Eyes, and The Search for the Absolute. The paper which he used for writing was a large octavo in form, with a parchment finish. His manuscripts often bore curious annotations and drawings. On the cover of that of Eugenie Grandet he had drawn a ground plan of old Grandet's house, and had compiled a list of names, from ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... CAPTAIN COX; and tells us, moreover, that "he had them all at his fingers ends." Among the ballads we find "Broom broom on Hil; So Wo is me begon twlly lo; Over a Whinny Meg; Hey ding a ding; Bony lass upon Green; My bony on gave me a bek; By a bank as I lay; and two more he had fair wrapt up in parchment, and bound with a whip cord." Edit. 1784, p. 36-7-8. Ritson, in his Historical Essay on Scottish Song, speaks of some of these, with a zest, as if he longed ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... still more, for, under the rough skin of this reptile-shaped forehead, could be distinguished the slightest protuberances, the smallest sutures of his skull; as to his visage, let one imagine some old parchment drawn over the face, and only slightly tightened from the cheek-bone to the angle of the lower jaw, the ligament of which was plainly visible. The eyes, small and squinting, were so deeply sunken, the eyebrows and cheek-bones so prominent, that under the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... two—and then came a messenger with a note written on a slip of parchment. The words ran thus: "Well-beloved 'Dorus: Veni, vidi, vici! Go fetch my maids, also all of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the constitution to take any action whereby they might be defrauded of their sacred rights to equality. Miss Anthony's message was quoted, "Let it be the best basis for a State ever engrossed on parchment;" and never did the faith of its editor waver in the belief ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... looking back three or four hundred years—were not our ancestors a little more practical than ourselves? Did the monks of the middle ages find it necessary, in order to express a single word on paper or parchment, to make the pen (as we do) travel over a distance of eight or ten inches?[62] ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... there is realization that only under a reign of law, based on righteousness and supported by the religious conviction of the brotherhood of man, can there be any hope of a complete and satisfying life. Parchment will fail, the sword will fail, it is only the spiritual nature of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Eyebrows she had none, having long since shed them. Her eyes, of pin-hole tininess, were blackest black. She was shockingly cadaverous. Her shrivelled forearm, exposed by the loose sleeve, possessed no more of muscle than several taut bowstrings stretched across meagre bone under yellow, parchment-like skin. Along this mummy arm jade bracelets shot up and down and ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... meditation. Presently a subtile thought struck him. He took a parchment-leaf and drew thereon a diagram; and after inscribing several hieroglyphic characters, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Brotherhood had ordered to be arrested for setting the galley slaves free, as Sancho had, with very good reason, apprehended. Suspecting how it was, then, he wished to satisfy himself as to whether Don Quixote's features corresponded; and taking a parchment out of his bosom he lit upon what he was in search of, and setting himself to read it deliberately, for he was not a quick reader, as he made out each word he fixed his eyes on Don Quixote, and went ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Committee were again assembled, standing in a solemn semicircle. "If you will sign this contract, we are willing to give you a reward. I speak in the name of the Gentlemen of the Committee," said Mr Query, and the little men nodded their heads in assent. He drew out a roll of parchment from a bag he carried with him and handed it to Karl. Norah looked ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... encampment; up to every move on the board. He wanted to have a deal with me for Jessy. But 'pon my honor, we had a good time of it. There was the old tinker, mending the shaft, in his fur cap, with a black pipe, one inch long, sticking out of his mouth; and the old brown parchment of a mother, with her head in a red handkerchief, smoking a ditto pipe to the tinker's, who told our fortunes, and talked like a printed book. Then there was his wife, and the slip of a girl who bowled over Blake there, and half a dozen ragged brats; and a fellow on a tramp, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... which also prayed for a Reform of the House of Commons, a reduction of all useless places, and an abolition of all unmerited pensions and sinecure places, were carried unanimously, or at least with only a few, very few dissenting voices. Sheets of parchment and pens and ink were provided, and the people began to sign their names instantly. Mr. Cobbett returned to his home, while I sent messengers or went myself into every town in the county, and collected signatures, which ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... dived head and shoulders through an opening she made, and then appeared to be pulling vigorously. Her activity was soon explained. We thrust our heads through the opening, and were face to face with a shrivelled-faced old woman, whose cheeks were like discoloured parchment, and whose hands and arms appeared to be mere bones. But her eye was bright, and her tongue proved her to be in possession of most of her faculties. She could not stand or walk, nor could she sit up for many minutes at a time, and the action ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in a mitre devouring a lamb, an ass's head with spectacles reading, a goose holding a rosary: the face is made out with a fish for the nose, a chalice and water for the eye, and other priestly ornaments for the shoulder and breast, on which rolls of parchment pardons hang.[96] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... be more deadly to the choice of her heart than her hate to one she abhors. The impatience of restraint you speak of and her very inability to brook opposition can be turned to good account now." And old Sanders again tapped in the rhythm of a dirge on his parchment-bound cranium. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... generally fringed and trimmed with quillwork; the upper part is fastened over the shoulders by strips of leather; a flap or cape hangs down about a foot before and behind, and is ornamented with quillwork and fringe. This covering is quite loose, but tied around the waist with a belt of stiff parchment fastened on the side, where also some ornaments are suspended. The sleeves are detached from the body garment; from the wrist to the elbow they are sewed, but thence to the shoulder they are open underneath and drawn ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the battles in Belgium I find myself at a loss as to what names to give them. After the treaty-makers have affixed their signatures to a piece of parchment and the arm-chair historians have settled down to the task of writing a connected account of the campaign, the various engagements will doubtless be properly classified and labelled—and under the ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... tracts of Scripture dealing with the sorrows of life, which lie perfectly dark and dead to us, until experience vitalises them. The old Greeks used to send messages from one army to another by means of a roll of parchment twisted spirally round a baton, and then written on. It was perfectly unintelligible when it fell into a man's hands that had not a corresponding baton to twist it upon. Many of Christ's messages to us are like that. You can ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... log-houses, built without much regard to comfort, surrounded by lofty stockades and flanked with wooden bastions. The difficulty of conveying glass into the interior has precluded its use in the windows where its place is poorly supplied by parchment, imperfectly made by the native women from the skin of the reindeer. Should this post however continue to be the residence of Governor Williams it will be much improved in a few years, as he is devoting his attention to that point. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... how far he had recovered his usual good looks. But that truthful counsellor presented to him cheeks still sunken and pallid, and sharpened features. The clear gray eye looked out from a cavern, and the rich nut-brown hair hung over a brow covered with parchment. His lean figure no longer filled the uniform which once fitted it so well. He stood before his glass in no peacock mood of self-admiration; but was compelled to own that he was not, just now at least, the man to fascinate a lady's eye; so he resolved to take Lady Mabel ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... I here tear up and burn all the feuds of Adlerstein," said Schlangenwald, producing from his pouch a collection of hostile literature, beginning from a crumpled strip of yellow parchment and ending with a coarse paper missive in the clerkly hand of burgher-bred Hugh Sorel, and bearing the crooked signatures of the last two Eberhards of Adlerstein—all with great seals of the eagle shield appended to them. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... aloud. The laugh startled him a little. He hadn't expected to do more than smile. But certainly it was worth a laugh, the solemn importance with which he'd dictated those letters; the notion that it mattered what he said, how he advised his clients in their bloodless, parchment-like affairs; that anything in all the files behind the black door of that vault represented more than the empty victories and defeats of a childish game. The dead smug orderliness of the place, with the infallible Miss Beach ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... my watch, which, I was glad to find, had not been utterly ruined by the salt water. Meanwhile the priest was fumbling in his casket, whence he produced a bundle of very ragged and smoky old bits of parchment and scraps of potsherds. These he placed in the hands of his attendants, who received them kneeling. From the very bottom of the casket he extracted some thin plates of a greyish metal, lead, I believe, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... revised edition. 1 vol. 12mo. In box. Printed on fine hand-made paper. Parchment ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... and the lawyer, and given their power to the masses. Although the science of politics was in its infancy, he relied on the dawning enlightenment to establish rational liberty, and the equality between classes and religions which is the perfection of politics. The world ought to be governed not by parchment and vested rights, but by plain reason, which proceeds from the complex to the simple, and will sweep away all that interposes between the State and the democracy, giving to each part of the nation the management of its own affairs. He is eager to change everything, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... penalty "of 100 dozen of good sufficient oare or coale, the one-half to be forfeited to the King, and the other halfe to the myner that will sue for the same." The originals of this foregoing, and of the seventeen succeeding "Orders," written on parchment, are preserved in the office of the Deputy Gaveller at Coleford. The forty-eight signatures to it are almost effaced, and about half have "marks" affixed to them, but the whole are written in ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... beyond, and thence into a garden that seemed a very forest of small rose trees. Around the walls ran a shelf upon which were set a number of circular boxes, while lying upon the table were several bulky rolls of papyrus, in parchment wrappers ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Pani's hand and gave it an exultant beat as if it had been a drum. It was near enough like parchment that had been beaten with many a drumstick. She was used ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone and parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what you call seeing, whether you might not call her blind. Perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne children, suckled them and ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waxed so hot that he was on the point of seizing hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black parchment endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in David's picture of "The Sabines," screamed at him, "Don't touch it, or I'll fly at ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... law of action and re-action, engendered the further legend about the existence of three special angels who acted as powerful antidotes to these devils, and whose names, "Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sanmangeloph," if written on a piece of parchment suspended round the neck of children afforded ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... office, the only furniture in which consisted of a worn red carpet, a large engraving of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, and a table covered with green baize. I recall also a little bronze horse which he used as a paper weight. He had a shrewd wrinkled face of the color of parchment, a thick yellow wig, and a blue cape coat. His practice consisted almost entirely in drawing wills and executing them after the decease of their respective testators, whom he invariably outlived, and I think he regarded me somewhat in the light of a legal joke. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... imitating the American romancer, who, great analyst as he was, had, by simple induction, been able to construct an alphabet corresponding to the signs of the cryptogram and by means of it to eventually read the pirate's parchment ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... for at the burial of the Princess Caroline he was so intoxicated that he could scarcely walk, but reeled about with a crown 'coronet' on a cushion, to the great scandal of his brethren. His method of composing was somewhat singular. He had a number of small parchment bags inscribed with the names of the persons whose lives he intended to write; into these bags he put every circumstance and anecdote he could collect, and from thence drew up his history. By his excesses ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of Arts indeed! That degree, if no other, was well bestowed. Universities are unjustly accused of fixing science in stereotype. That diploma is enough of itself to redeem the honors of academical parchment from centuries of learned dullness ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... to be aged a score. (To Christy.) God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or there's right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... the end of it I found a small parchment parcel, carefully sealed up with red sealing-wax, and an official kind of stamp over it which had been before concealed in an inside pocket cunningly secreted in the waist-part ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the naturalist, opening the folds of a large parchment. "Why, this is the sign-manual of the philosopher, Jefferson! The seal of state! Countersigned by the minister of war! Why this is a commission creating Duncan Uncas ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of 1765. That act imposed certain duties upon every species of legal writing. It declared invalid and null every promissory note, deed, mortgage, bond, marriage license, business agreement, and every contract which was not written upon paper, vellum, or parchment impressed with the stamp of the imperial government. For these, fixed rates were stipulated. In this measure the Americans perceived another head of the Hydra, Despotism. The Writs of Assistance touched the interests of commercial men; the Stamp Act touched the interests of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... be his buckler against any future need, Sir Oliver rode home, uplifted. For once it were safe to do so, that parchment should be spread before the eyes of Sir John Killigrew and Rosamund, and all might ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the hermit drew from his bosom a scroll of parchment, which he unrolled slowly. This, he said, was a copy, made by himself, of part of the Gospel. He had meant, he said, to have copied the whole of it, but war had put an end to his labours at the ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... rare that, after forty years' residence in the country, he only succeeded in seeing perfect copies of the first and seventh volumes with fragments of the second. Portions of one of the books, printed in gold leaf upon parchment, were found in Peking by an English soldier and sold for ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... after this incident the trio at Jenkins Creek were aroused, while sitting at their mid-day meal, by the tinkle of sleigh-bells. Their sitting-room window was filled chiefly with parchment, but there was one square of it filled with glass. Through this, as from a loop-hole, the inmates could reconnoitre any one who ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... which that which was placed in the middle had under it a big, fat, great, grey, pretty, small, mouldy, little pamphlet, smelling stronger, but no better than roses. In that book the said genealogy was found written all at length, in a chancery hand, not in paper, not in parchment, nor in wax, but in the bark of an elm-tree, yet so worn with the long tract of time, that hardly could three letters together ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... beneath the feet of the Emperor,—in dust and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of Poland—parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good promise—which Alexander gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas took away ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... city in the celebration of religious rites, by offering sacrifices and oblations in the Jewish manner. The writings which are now printed together in our Bibles, as the Old Testament, were, in those days, written separately on parchment rolls, and kept in the temple. The priests produced from the rolls the one containing the prophecies of Daniel, and they read and interpreted some of these prophecies to Alexander, which they considered ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... rolled in a muddy and yellow orbit—the nose, short yet coarse, was distended at the nostrils like a satyr's—and the thick but pallid lips, the high cheek-bones, the livid and motley hues that struggled through the parchment skin, completed a countenance which none could behold without repugnance, and few without terror and distrust: whatever the wishes of the mind, the animal frame was well fitted to execute them; the wiry muscles of the throat, the broad chest, the nervous hands and lean gaunt arms, which were bared ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... they felt that the business of a change at this stage might be disagreeable. In fact Lee found it so. When he called on Gerard and requested the omission of both, Gerard replied that the king had already approved the treaty, that it was now engrossed on parchment, and that a new arrangement would entail "inconvenience and considerable delay." But finally, not without showing some irritation at the fickleness of the commissioners, he was brought to agree that Congress might ratify the treaty either with or without these articles, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... conclave. The scare caused by the first rumours of the Spanish plot was revived in tenfold magnitude. Morgan's wounded arm was a mute witness to the daring and activity of the foe. The knight and the forester could describe every lineament of the would-be assassin. The yellow, parchment face, the spare, sinewy body clad in black doublet and hosen, had been seen for a moment by many a forester. And the woodland men, brimful of superstition, had already invested him with ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Francisco the priest of Japan, abroad to study strange lands, sat in his lacquer chair, with face like soft-yellow and wrinkled parchment. Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely bidden to the Val d' Osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm here will welcome a prophet. I shall go ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... young man could see, through the dense clouds of dust (which, as the Antiquary said, had been ancient and peaceful enough only an hour ago) the chamber of Mr. Oldbuck, full of great books, littered with ancient maps, engravings, scraps of parchment, old armour, broadswords, and ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... as it was when it came from the Cabinet, not as it looked when the committees of Congress had laid their hands upon it. For when the committees of Congress had struck out the proviso respecting exchange, it was not worth a rush; it was not worth the parchment it would be engrossed upon. The great desire of this country is a general currency, a facility of exchange; a currency which shall be the same for you and for the people of Alabama and Louisiana, and a system of exchange which shall ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... reward for their austerities in a future life. One such was pointed out to us, who had never left the Eremo for more than fifty years, a tall, very gaunt, very meagre old man with white hair, hollow cheeks, and parchment skin, a nose like an eagle's beak, and deep-set burning eyes—as typical a figure, in its way, as the rosy mountain of a man whom we met travelling down ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... total subversion of a system under which she is admitted to have flourished for a century, and which has never within North Britain been attended with the inconveniences charged against it in the sister country, where, by the way, it never existed? Even if the old parchment should be voted obsolete, there would be some satisfaction in having it looked out and preserved—not in the Register-Office, or Advocates' Library, where it might awaken painful recollections—but in the Museum of the Antiquaries, where, with the Solemn League ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... intolerably hot in the car, and the men were all in shirt sleeves. The sun came in through the windows, a tired and ancient sun, yellow as parchment and stretched out of shape in transit. It tried to enter in triumphant squares and produced only warped splotches—but it was appallingly steady; so much so that it disturbed Anthony not to be the pivot of all the inconsequential ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to Captain Ullmer. Groping at his idea, I rode forward, and as the papers were being returned with a mere glance on the part of the quarantine leader, I politely asked if I might see the assignment of the original contract. But a quizzical smile met my request, and shaking out the heavy parchment, he rapped it with the knuckles of his disengaged hand, remarking as he returned it to his pocket, "Sorry, but altogether too valuable to allow out of my possession." Just what I would have done with the beribboned document, except to hand it over to Sponsilier, is beyond me, yet I was vaguely ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... all bent up as small as a child, and his body was nothing but a light-grey parchment-like skin and bones. His eyes had lost their colour, and were quite bright and blind. Of the monks who sixty-nine years before had conducted him to the cell not one survived.... And he had scarcely been carried out into the sunlight when he too, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... a student body already there, also "set up their chairs" and began to teach. Other teachers and more students came. In this way a studium was created. About these teachers in time collected other university servants— "bedells, librarians, lower officials, preparers of parchment, scribes, illuminators of parchment, and others who serve it," as Count Rupert enumerated them in the Charter of Foundation granted, in 1386, to Heidelberg (R. 103). At Salerno, as we have already seen (p. 199), medical instruction arose around the work of Constantine of Carthage and the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No new flux'd rake show'd fairer skin; Nor Phyllis after lying in. With snuff was fill'd his ebon box, Of shin-bones rotted by the pox. Nine spirits of blaspheming fops, With aconite anoint his chops; And give him words of dreadful sounds, G—d d—n his blood! and b—d and w—ds!' Thus furnish'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in his disordered strides, "kiss me, wife, for those words! They have helped thee to power, and lit me to revenge. If thou wouldst send love to thy sister, take graphium and parchment, and write fast as a scribe. Ere the sun is an hour older, I am on ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the way grease paint is put on. In a corner of the room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the gentlemen keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting ready Venus' tights and tunic. Mme Jules was a woman of no age. She had the parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old maids whom no one ever knew in their younger years. She had indeed shriveled up in the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and amid the most famous thighs and bosoms in all Paris. She wore everlastingly a faded black dress, and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... forgotten shelves and chests, and found forgotten things. That which had drawn the boy from the first always drew and absorbed him—the annals of his own people. Many a long winter evening the pair turned over the pages of volumes and of parchment, and followed with eager interest and curiosity the records of wild lives—stories of warriors and abbots and bards, of feudal lords at ruthless war with each other, of besiegings and battles and captives and torments. Legends there ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... preposterous age. He was bald; he had neither eyebrows nor eyelashes. A wiry mustache, yellow with nicotine, alone remained. Great wrinkles lay below the eyes and along the jaw, under a skin stretched like parchment over the bony protuberances of ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... three softas awoke the Chief Mufti and Ispirizade, and laid before them a letter written on parchment which they had discovered lying in the middle of a mosque. The letter was apparently written with ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... easily deceive the ignorant and simple-minded, boasted of acting and speaking by the Spirit of God. I would like to know how an Ezekiel would be received who should say that God made him eat for his breakfast a roll of parchment; commanded him to be tied like an insane man, and lie three hundred and ninety days upon his right side, and forty days upon his left, and commanded him to eat man's dung upon his bread, and afterward, as an accommodation, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... required much more audacity, cunning, or strength, on the part of the king, than it had before, to invade the people's liberties with impunity. Still, Magna Carta, like all other written constitutions, proved inadequate to the full accomplishment of its purpose; for when did a parchment ever have power adequately to restrain a government, that had either cunning to evade its requirements, or strength to overcome those who attempted its defence? The work of usurpation, therefore, though seriously checked, still went on, to a great extent, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... Christianity knows no other heavenly occupations than singing and making music, the prospect of the Philistine, la Strauss, is truly not a very comforting one. In the book of confessions, however, there is a page which treats of Paradise (p. 342). Happiest of Philistines, unroll this parchment scroll before anything else, and the whole of heaven will seem to clamber down to thee! "We would but indicate how we act, how we have acted these many years. Besides our profession—for we are members of the most various professions, and by no means exclusively consist ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a little longer, chatting and listening. Mrs. Cheriton told them of her parrot, who was old too, and who spoke Spanish and French, and did not like English; she showed them her books, many of which were bound in white vellum or parchment. "It is a fancy of John's," she said, "to have all my belongings white. I think he still remembers his Aunt Phoebe. Do you ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains—a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... apparently content. Miss Monro was very kind. Dixon's lameness was quite gone off. Only Mr. Dunster came creeping about the house, on pretence of business, seeking out her father, and disturbing all his leisure with his dust-coloured parchment-skinned careworn face, and seeming to disturb the smooth current of her daily ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... shrivelled piece of parchment in the British Museum to-day, attests to the keeping of this appointment. That old Oak at Runnymede, under whose spreading branches the name of John was affixed to the Magna Charta, was for centuries held the ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... within tooth' of a French tracery —may be necessary, to bite its glass. But the cusp, cuspis, spiny or spearlike point of a thirteenth century illumination, is not in the least necessary to transfix the parchment. Yet do you suppose that the structural convenience of the redent entirely effaces from the mind of the designer the aesthetic characters which he seeks in the cusp? If you could for an instant imagine this, you ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... as that figure seemed, the brain behind it was forever active, forever vigilant and alert. The deep-set eyes under their lids that hung as loose as old parchment were always fixed on the life that flowed past them. No face, as those eyes opened and closed like the gills of a dying fish, escaped their inspection. Every man who came within their range of vision was duly examined and adjudicated. Every human atom of that forever ebbing ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... shirts. I invented a preparation that makes linen as smooth and as easy to write on as parchment." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... round the cursed room, a swaying, swirling maelstrom of death, while the air grew thick with miasma, the floor foul with shreds of shrouds, and yellow parchment, clattering bones, and wisps ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram |
