"Straw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his head. "That's all too fur away from home fur me. The women are afraid o' the water, and they'd never let me go alone. I kind o' just drifted into this New York business, but if I undertook to go across the ocean, that would be the last straw. And I'm afraid I couldn't get on to the manners and customs over there. They say everything's different from here. To tell the truth, I'm timid where I don't know the ways. If I was like you—I shouldn't wonder ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... practised upon her. Christine admitted that the girl could make plenty of money, and would continue to make money for a long, long time, bar accidents, but her final conclusion about Alice was: "She will end on straw." ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... defensive forces, their body would have been alive and active; as it was, it atrophied and grew inert. Broadly speaking, the same was true all over the country. Redmond was willing to make bricks for the War Office to build with; they insisted that he should make them without straw. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... in the other rooms, the floors were of brick, and the walls half-way up were hung with burlap. Where the burlap ended, a narrow shelf ran around the entire room, set with all sorts of household utensils, chiefly fiaschi of wine in straw cases. Like everything else about the place, the napery was ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Argile, sadly, "and yet, do you know, Iain, you did me a bad turn yonder. You made mention of my family's safety, and it was the last straw that broke the back of my resolution. One word of honest duty from you at that time had kept me in Inner-aora though Abijah's array and Jeroboam's horse and foot were coming down ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... months thirty thousand of them left their homes. They took only their wagons, bedding, and provisions, leaving their other possessions to the mercy of the expected despoiler. Before locking the doors of their houses for the last time, they strewed shavings, straw, and other combustibles through the rooms so that the work of firing the city could be done quickly. A score of men were left behind to apply the torch the moment it became necessary,—should a ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Jamaica, and anchored off Port Royal. A singular circumstance occurred during our stay there: a girl was discovered who had been concealed on board at Cork by some of the sailors in a bundle of straw unbeknown to the captain of the ship. This being the best place for shipping her back to England, she was obliged to leave her accomplices at once, and I being sergeant of the watch was called to take her on shore to Port Royal ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... apparently vanquished his foe, "you come with me." His companion followed quickly as Gallegher climbed to one of the haymows, and crawling carefully out on the fence-rail, stretched himself at full length, face downward. In this position, by moving the straw a little, he could look down, without being himself seen, upon the heads of whomsoever stood below. "This is better'n a private box, ain't ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... that in the long-delayed fulness of time somebody will want to be driven somewhere. (This nobody ever does, since the distance to any house is so small, and a porter follows with luggage on a barrow.) It carries on its floor a quantity of fresh straw, in the manner of the stage coaches, in which the problematic passenger, should he ever appear, will no doubt bury his feet. On its side, just below the window that is not made to open, it carries the legend that shows that it belongs ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the Colonna were weary of fighting against so many, and their powder was not good, so that they fell back from the main gateway, and the Orsini rushed in and filled the arched ways around the courtyard, and set fire to the hay and straw in the stables, and fought their way up the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... came to him and said, "John, you must send that creature away. Now the farmers and the old ladies are afraid to send their animals to you—just as we were beginning to be well off again. Now we shall be ruined entirely. This is the last straw. I will no longer be housekeeper for you if you don't ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Huntington on Guantanamo Bay that the streets of Caimanera have been covered with straw saturated in oil, in order that the city may be destroyed when the Americans evince any disposition to take possession. The Spanish gunboat Sandoval, lying at one of the piers, has been loaded with inflammables, and will be burned with the city, her commander declaring ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... trample down the grass and scoop out a hollow, as no doubt their wild parents did, when they lived on open grassy plains or in the woods. Jackals, fennecs, and other allied animals in the Zoological Gardens, treat their straw in this manner; but it is a rather odd circumstance that the keepers, after observing for some months, have never seen the wolves thus behave. A semi-idiotic dog—and an animal in this condition would be particularly liable to follow a senseless habit—was ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... money, intellect, if existence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this, only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful of bricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and sense of being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form of dissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as you liked, if you did not like it? Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He forgot that he had often ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... not remember why there was no tent for the Emperor at Austerlitz; but the soldiers made a kind of barrack of limbs of trees, with an opening in the top for the passage of the smoke. His Majesty, though he had only straw for his bed, was so exhausted after having passed the day on horseback on the heights of Santon, that on the eve of the battle he was sleeping soundly, when General Savary, one of his aides-de-camp, entered, to give an account of the mission with which he had been charged; and the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... kept themselves afloat by new issues of currency, until its purchasing power was reduced almost to nothing. Preposterous sums were demanded for the simplest articles: hundreds of dollars for a basket of fruit, and thousands of dollars for a straw hat. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... about a year younger than her cousin. Her dress showed moderately good taste, with the usual fault of a desire to imitate an elegance which she could not in reality afford. She wore a black jacket, fur-trimmed, over a light grey dress; her black straw hat had a few flowers in front. Her figure was good and her movements graceful; she was nearly as tall as Julian. Her face, however, could not be called attractive; it was hollow and of a sickly hue, even ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... deliberately to draw the short straw. He grinned when he discovered what luck he had had, as though not so very much ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... endeavor to take their lives. But none can pass the mighty guardians stationed about every faithful soul. Some are assailed in their flight from the cities and villages; but the swords raised against them break and fall as powerless as a straw. Others are defended by angels in the form ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... grown extensively in northern Italy and in Belgium. For this product spring wheat is very thickly sown in a soil rich in lime. The thick sowing produces a long, slender stalk; the lime gives it whiteness and strength. Plaiting straw is also exported from China and Japan. British merchants ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... of that following, the more that the evil in his blood struggled so fiercely with such a mortal pain as he went. In Fredericksburg, one of the old family-homesteads had been taken for a camp-hospital. As they laid Gurney on a heap of straw in the library, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was surprised to hear the sound of a rapid and pleasant conversation, in which a masculine and feminine voice were intermingled in a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara sitting knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young man seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung on the ground, while he was looking up into her face, as young men often do into pretty faces seen by moonlight. Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of Boston ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... landed with a jaunty air, but feeling rather weak, While all the French and English girls cried out, "C'est magnifique!" They reck'd not of his bilious hue, but murmur'd quite ecstatical, "Blue coat, brass buttons, and straw hat,—c'est tout-a-fait piratical!" He hadn't got his land-legs, and he walked with faltering step, But still they thought it comme-il-faut, those Damsels ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... but we'll care for you as best we can," said our hero, and this was done, although the guerrilla was kept at the stable, on a bed of straw. ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... said good-morning, and went whistling down the village street, the wind from off the sea tempering the downpour of the sun on white cliff and sand, and lifting the wide rim of his torn straw hat to caress ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the sleepy-eyed Peterson went into the chicken house at 4:30, there were eleven of the golden eggs resting on the straw nests. ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... this? Why must they be forced back into a world that they disliked, and that had no place for them? If he were as capable as she, there would be no need. But society has discovered a clever way of binding each man to his bench! While he brooded, Alves watched the gentle hills, straw-colored with grain, and her eyes grew moist at the pleasant sight. She glanced at him and smiled—the comprehending smile of the mothers ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the Boyne, variegated with some woods, planted hedgerows, and gentle hills. The cabins continue much the same, the same plenty of poultry, pigs, and cows. The cattle in the road have their fore legs all tied together with straw to keep them from breaking into the fields; even sheep, and pigs, are all in the ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... world—most of which he carried in a sling—seemed in a particularly happy frame of mind this morning judging from the buoyancy with which he stepped. This had communicated itself to the gayety of his attire, for he was dressed in a light-gray check suit, and wore a straw hat (the first to see the light of summer) with a green ribbon about the crown,—together with a white waistcoat and white spats, the whole enriched by a red rose bud which Corinne had with her own hands ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe. The house wife's, spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly, Held out to lure thy roving eye. Then, onward stealing, fiercely spring Upon the futile, faithless thing. Now, wheeling round with bootless skill, Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still, As oft beyond thy curving side ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... desperate attempt to escape. According to the Milanese chronicler Prato, he bribed one of his guardians, with gold supplied, as we learn, from Padre Gattico, by the friars of S. Maria delle Grazie, and succeeded in making his way out of the castle gates hidden in a waggon load of straw. But he lost his way in the woods that surround Loches, and after wandering all night in search of the road to Germany, he was discovered on the following day by blood-hounds, who were put upon his track. After this, his captivity became more severe. He was ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... disdained to occupy the bed of straw which graced his dwelling, but climbing to a board which surmounted the ridge of the roof, would lie upon that narrow ledge, ready to pounce upon any one ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... window, which commanded a view of the veranda. Miss Macy had dropped into the vacant chair, with her little feet stretched out before her, her cheeks burning with heat and fire, her eyes partly closed, her straw hat hanging by a ribbon round her neck, her brown hair clinging to her ears and forehead in damp tendrils, and an enormous palm-leaf fan in each hand violently playing upon this charming picture of ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... water, and when it boils up skim it, and throw in the pippins with a bit of lemon-peel. Keep up a brisk fire; throw the syrup over the apples as they boil, to make them look clear. When they are done, add lemon-juice to your taste; and when you can run a straw through them they are done enough. Put them, without the syrup, into a bowl; cover them close, and boil the syrup till you think it sufficiently thick: then take it off, and throw it hot upon the pippins, keeping them always ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... assuredly did look white. He had a pale face at the best of times, and it was embellished with straw-coloured hair. But at the present moment it had turned ghastly, and his frame seemed ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of it, one behind and one before at the handle-stick. Away we went, as had been preconcerted between us in the stable-yard of another schoolfellow of ours in the plot, who placed it near the gate and covered it over with loose straw, so that ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... it. The invaders actually held their machine guns at work in the burning village until the position was no longer tenable. The wind blew gustily that night, and all the hours long, the Germans collected their dead, built great pyres of wood and straw and cremated their comrades who had fallen on the field ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... rhizome is a creeping, branching rhizome of a pale yellowish white color, which, on drying, darkens to a straw color, or even a brown in places. When dry it is about the thickness of a thick knitting needle, swelling to the thickness of a quill when soaked in water. It is of uniform thickness, except near the leaf-bearing ends, which are thicker marked with numerous leafscars, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... no generals to plan our battles and direct our movements in the field." Acting on his advice, they chose the biggest Mice to be their leaders, and these, in order to be distinguished from the rank and file, provided themselves with helmets bearing large plumes of straw. They then led out the Mice to battle, confident of victory: but they were defeated as usual, and were soon scampering as fast as they could to their holes. All made their way to safety without difficulty except the leaders, who were so hampered by the badges of their rank that ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... was teaching the art of playing off fireworks. A philosopher observed to him: "This is an unfit sport for you, whose dwelling is made of straw." Utter not a word till thou knowest that it is the mirror of what is correct; and do not put a question where thou knowest that the answer must ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... said Jack, as we stumbled over the cans on our way to the Rattletrap, "that I'll go into the mining business up there myself. I'll just back the Blacksmith's Pet up to the side of a mountain, tickle his heels with a straw, and he'll have a gold-mine kicked out inside ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... of watching Central Grammar boys. That was the last straw. Ted felt the blood rush to his head and all looked ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... not condemn every form of human bondage. This stirred against them many of the clergy who, accustomed to having women sit silent during services, were in no mood to treat such a revolt leniently. Then came the last straw. Women decided that they would preach—out of the pulpit first, and ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... beds with box-borders in that garden; there are pear-trees reputed to give pears, real pears, more or less good to eat when they have ripened on the straw all through the late autumn. In our imagination, it is a spot of perpetual delight, a paradise, but a paradise seen the wrong way up: instead of contemplating it from below, we gaze at it from above. How happy they must be with so much space and all ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... straw hat and monocle were lost, though, but worse yet was the shout of laughter that arose from ship and shore, at his expense, mingled with cheers for the big sailor. Crestfallen enough, he was glad to sink back into the crowd and become inconspicuous, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... the last straw. She could not keep back her tears. She hurried into her coat and hat, and they went out together. As they descended the stairs, they happened to pass the little chorus girl and the grim old lady, and Celia could not help nodding and smiling at them. The chorus girl smiled back, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... at his club this evening, and joined tables with another acquaintance who was not parliamentary. Mr. Parkinson Seymour was a man much of his own stamp, who cared not one straw as to any difficulty which the Prime Minister might feel in filling the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. There were men by dozens ready and willing, and no doubt able,—or at any rate, one as able as the other,—to manage the taxes of the country. But the blue riband and the Lord ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Sir George associated with the historic harvest, and with Ridley, an early Australian colonist, was hardly of the Scriptural pattern. It was a subtle machine, invented for a harvest where the wheat-ears were needed, not the straw. The former were chopped off, collected in a sort of trough; and the straw was burned for manure. Here was waste, only there was no avoiding it, and, moreover, the meaning of 'waste' is defined by circumstances. The South Australian soil ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... forward as one of our best swordsmen defeated by a raw Briton, people may well say, 'Scopus has got one or two good men; there is Beric, he is a marvel; and Porus is good with the net; but as for the rest, I don't value them a straw." ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... It seems you do not know that I am an adept in all sorts of magic!" He ordered little school children to be brought, and they repeated the wonder done by Moses and Aaron; indeed, Pharaoh's own wife performed it. Jannes and Jambres, the sons of Balaam, derided Moses, saying, "Ye carry straw to Ephrain!"[162] whereto Moses answered, "To the place of many vegetables, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... English complexion deepened to the purple of mortification. The frank smile that told of his lordship's enjoyment of her discomfiture was the last straw. She rose ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... in a little sight, We learn from what in thee is credible The incredible, with bloody clutch and feet Clinging the painful juts of jagg-ed faith. Science, old noser in its prideful straw, That with anatomising scalpel tents Its three-inch of thy skin, and brags—'All's bare,' The eyeless worm, that boring works the soil, Making it capable for the crops of God; Against its own dull will Ministers poppies to our troublous thought, A Balaam come to prophecy,—parables, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... slender hip, while she clasped Martin Luther's chubby fingers in her other hand. And behold, the transformation of the young stranger was complete beyond belief! His yellow thatch was crowned by a straw hat, which was circled by a brand new shoestring, though it gaped across the crown to let out a peeping curl. Young Ez's garments even had proved a size too large and the faded blue jeans "britches" ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... young matrons, had almost completed this process; and that a providential peep in a milliner's window, which had suddenly solved for her the harassing problem of the spring hat (she had seen one she liked and with a flash of inspiration had seen how she could make one just like it out of her old straw and some feathers long at the bottom of her trunk) had sent her bounding back up her five flights of stairs with a song purring in ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... the representative of his country and its laws. We Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in consequence of our proud perogative of caring no more about our President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... jeer, and lie for a penny, or twopence, or sixpence, again. And also if thou canst make the rest of thy companions merry, by telling things that are false, of them that are better than thyself, thou dost not care a straw. Or if thou hearest a lie from, or of another, thou wilt tell it, and swear to the truth of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... waiting in the front hall when Ruth came slowly down the stairs. She had put on her brown straw hat, whose ribbons tied beneath her chin, and the pretty cape of blue cloth; for there was a sharp little March wind, although the sun shone brightly. Ruth's face was very sober; there were traces of tears on her cheeks. She wished that she had said she would ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... so because it is the truth, and doctor's orders," rapped out Mrs. Ellsworth. "I thought I had been upset enough for one evening, but this last straw had to ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... these—I will not swear to any particular one of them—were what the critics threw into the arena, and no one much blames the parsons and publicists for playing football with them. But the critics must have known that such questions were utterly irrelevant; that it mattered not a straw whether this statue, considered as a work of art, represented Jesus Christ ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the higher trees she caught sight below her of Mrs. Talcott's old straw hat moving among the borders; and, in the midst of the emptiness, the sight was strength and hope. The whole world seemed to narrow to Mrs. Talcott. She was secure and real. She was a spar to be clung to. The nightmare would reveal itself ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... with a sigh, as she re-arranged her battered old straw bonnet cocked up as if it were a hat, and took off the old scarlet uniform tail coat she wore over her very clean cotton gown, before going to the pot, wooden spoon in hand, to raise the lid and give the contents ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... and myself visited the cell of Wyatt, the murderer. We found him sitting upon the straw which covered the floor. He seemed to be somewhat indifferent when the chaplain first spoke to him, but upon his second speech, telling that Mr. Green had again called to see him, he sprung to his feet and shook hands with me—said he ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... not the voice of the community. It is the cry of those who feel their existence threatened, who only live upon lies, and must be extinguished when the inevitable day of reckoning comes which shall expose them. Even now the kind of man who catches at every straw of opinion which shall secure to him his sacred carnal rights, at no matter what cost of degradation and disease to women, is out of date, and we pay no ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the light of the fire, which old Tabus had fed with fresh straw and dry rushes, fell upon the face of the agitated girl. It revealed her thoughts plainly enough, and, pleased with the success of his warning, Bias exclaimed: "And Ledscha, you, too, will not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... winter, and early spring of 1846-47, before his departure from Vierzschovnia, the object being to secure a certain sum of ready money to clear off indebtedness. And it has been sometimes asserted that this labor, coming on the top of many years of scarcely less hard works, was almost the last straw which broke down Balzac's gigantic strength. Of these things it is never possible to be certain; as to the greatness of La Cousine Bette, there ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... house. It was quite a tour. Danton Hall was no joke to go over. Upstairs and down stairs; along halls and passages; the drawing-room, where they had been last night; the winter drawing-room on the second floor, all gold and crimson; a summer morning-room, its four sides glass, straw matting on the floor, flower-pots everywhere, looking like a conservatory; the library, where, perpetuated in oils, many Dantons hung, and where book-shelves lined the walls; into what was once the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... moment she caught sight of him? Francine consulted her instincts. She had just arrived at a conclusion which expressed itself outwardly by a malicious smile, when gentle Cecilia appeared on the lawn—a lovable object in a broad straw hat and a white dress, with a nosegay in her ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... anything, and dig a hole outside in the paddock," he went on. "Make a deep hole, a yard deep at the least—then get some straw, some paraffin, turpentine, anything that will burn furiously and quickly, and we will soon finish the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... woman was very ill at that time, and knew she was dying (she really did die a couple of months later), and though she felt the end approaching she never thought of forgiving her daughter, to the very day of her death. She would not even speak to her. She made her sleep on straw in a shed, and hardly gave her food enough ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... mes being all of duty we made us up 2 Straw bunks for 4 of us to lay in and as it hapened we did it in a good time for it was a ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... Deans had promised to get together three or four prominent labour leaders for tea and a frank talk, and the opportunity was one not to be missed. So the bishop, after a hasty and not too digestible lunch in the refreshment room at Pringle, was now in a fly that smelt of straw and suggested infectious hospital patients, on his way through the industry-scarred ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... spot near his doorsteps at Slabsides. Once when he sent me some of the roses he wrote of them thus: "The roses of my boyhood! Take the first barefooted country lad you see with homemade linen trousers and shirt, and ragged straw hat, and put some of these roses in his hand, and you see me as I was fifty-five years ago. They are the identical roses, mind you. Sometime I will show you the bush in the old ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the others? He arranged them all so that the butts of one end rested on the roof of the palace; the butts at the other end were across those he had bound pretty level in the tree. Then more and more were laid across, and a couple of thin straw mattresses on them; and though it took a tremendously long time, through Measles fumbling in the dark, it was surprising what a firm bridge that made as far as ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... perfectly certain the amount would never be raised. They wanted, for once, to get the credit of liberality for nothing. There were many men and many women who subscribed from one dollar up to one thousand, not because they cared a straw for the longitude, nor because they believed in the least in the project; but because they believed in Brannan, in Orcutt, in Q., or in me. Love goes far in this world of ours. Some few men subscribed because others had done it: ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... any seats in the church. They had all been broken up for camp-fires—even the oaken pulpit had gone. The great empty space had been roughly cleared of fallen masonry, which had been flung in heaps against the wall; on the stone floor filthy straw was thinly spread. On the straw lay row upon row of wounded men—very quiet for the most part; they had found that it did not pay to make noise enough to annoy the guards who smoked and ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... tithes which were of two kinds, the great tithe paid in agricultural produce, and the small tithe consisting in a head of cattle. The latter seems to have been especially obnoxious to the peasant. The sudden increase in the sale of indulgences, like the proverbial last straw, broke down the whole system; but any other incident might have served the purpose equally well. The prince-prelates were in some instances, at the outset, not averse to the movement; they would not have been indisposed to have converted their territories into secular fiefs of the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the sunshine!" Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind Rose, but made no angry answer; 100 From the lodge went forth in silence, Took the nets, that hung together, Dripping, freezing at the doorway; Like a wisp of straw he wrung them, Like a wisp of straw he broke them, 105 Could not wring them without breaking, Such the strength was in ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... grand-nephew. Peter Marmyduke Boyer is the full name. Governor of Iowy. The jedge has told me he was one of the first men of the present century. He'd all the genius of the Scroope family. Fact is, I used to think he was a straw man the jedge had made expressly to hang the honors of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... branches the four walls. The whole of it is covered thick with long clusters, which another month will ripen. On every grape and leaf there is a locust. Into the dry caves and pits, carefully strewed with straw, the harvest-men have (safely, as they thought just now) been lodging the far-famed African wheat. One grain or root shoots up into ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, nay, three or four hundred stalks: sometimes the stalks have two ears apiece, and these shoot into a number ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... mild, enlightened plebeian would reflect twice before enrolling himself. He would weigh the pros and the cons, and balance for a long time between the vices of the government, and the dangers of revolution. But the mob of the Monti would take fire like a heap of straw at the mere prospect of a scramble, while the Trastevere savages would rise to a man, if the Papal despotism were represented to them as an attack upon their honour. It would be better to have in ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... paper was stretched. An old hovel was cleverly drawn in charcoal upon the paper, and within it sat the Blessed Virgin with a lovely, happy face, upon which there was withal a shade of melancholy. At her feet in a little nest of straw lay the Infant Jesus—very lovely, with large serious eyes. Without, upon the threshold of the open door were kneeling two shepherd lads with staff and wallet. "You see," said the painter, "I am going to put your head upon one of these shepherds, and so people will know ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the picture of content as she sat eating, and at intervals taking further draughts of milk. The meal being over, the grandfather went outside to put the goat-shed in order, and Heidi watched with interest while he first swept it out, and then put fresh straw for the goats to sleep upon. Then he went to the little well- shed, and there he cut some long round sticks, and a small round board; in this he bored some holes and stuck the sticks into them, and there, ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... room in an old-fashioned New York house, with windows opening upon a garden that was trim and attractive, even in its wintry days—for the rose-bushes were all bundled up in straw ulsters. The room was ample, yet it had a cosy air. Its dark hangings suggested comfort and luxury, with no hint of gloom. A hundred pretty trifles told that it was a young girl's room: in the deep alcove nestled ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... to milk an' I didn' know how, I milked dat goat instid o' dat cow; While a Nigger a-settin' wid a gapin' jaw, Kept winkin' his eye at a tucky in de straw. ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... Rembrandtish relief by the light of a garish kerosene lamp upon the table: with one discouraged lock of hair hanging over his nose, and straw hat pushed so far back from his phrenological brow that its vast rim had the fine artistic effect of a huge saintly nimbus: Mr. BUMSTEAD sat gynmastically crosswise in an easy-chair, over an arm of which his slender lower ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... also much of this ideal detachment. Like the savage, he may make his bed wherever his right arm can support him, and from his simple and athletic attitude of observation, the property-owner seems buried and smothered in ignoble externalities and trammels, "wading in straw and rubbish to his knees." The claims which THINGS make are corrupters of manhood, mortgages on the soul, and a drag anchor on our progress towards ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... and enter Indra." Exactly the same images as are found above may be noted in IX. 87, where not the moon, but the plant, is conspicuously the subject of the hymn: "Run into the pail, purified by men go unto booty. They lead thee like a swift horse with reins to the sacrificial straw, preparing (or rubbing) thee. With good weapons shines the divine (shining) drop (Indu), slaying evil-doers, guarding the assembly; the father of the gods, the clever begetter, the support of the sky, the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... be that. Her doll is probably at the bottom of the ocean by this time. It could hardly have been got up and put in a box. I'm afraid you will find nothing more than straw or shavings in your treasure-trove, Russ. Don't count too ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... unchallenged, till she stood in the cell of Ruark; her eyes, that were alone unveiled, scanned the countenance of the Chief, the fevered lustre-jet of his looks, and by the little moonlight in the cell she saw with a glance the straw-heap and the fetters, and the black-bread and water untasted on the bench—signs of his misery and desire for her coming. So she greeted him with the word of peace, and he replied with the name of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vortex of Goldite's sudden revulsion Van was swept like a straw. There was no real chance for a hearing. His friends of the morning had lost all sense of loyalty. They were almost as crazed as those whom his recent success had irritated. The story of his row with Culver had spread throughout the confines of the camp. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... first advocate changes are ever looked upon as dreamers, if not as seditious and dangerous persons, and to force on a thing before the world is fit for it is to do harm rather than good. Theoretically, there is as much to be said for the views of the priest Jack Straw and other agitators, as for those of Wickcliffe; but their opinions will at first bring persecution and maybe death to those who hold them. These peasants will rise in arms, and will, when the affair is over—should they escape with their lives—find their condition even worse than ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... Moorish portico of the hotel a most picturesque group of negroes, of both sexes and of all ages, their ebony faces forming a strong contrast to the background of well-whitewashed walls. Some of the women were dressed in neat calico gowns, and wore broad-brimmed straw hats; some were in rags, hatless, shoeless, and barelegged; some had high-colored kerchiefs wound turban-like about their woolly heads; and some wore scarlet shawls, the sight of which would have driven a Spanish bull raving mad. There were coquettish mulatto girls with bouquets for sale, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... sand. Then half-clothed Caribs dashed into the water, and brought in on their backs the Valhalla's purser and the little native officials in their cotton undershirts, blue trousers with red stripes, and flapping straw hats. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Istanbul; laboratories to convert imported morphine base into heroin are in remote regions of Turkey as well as near Istanbul; government maintains strict controls over areas of legal opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... He had seen the policy of Walpole quietly carried out by the very men who had bellowed against Walpole, and had succeeded at last in driving him from office forever. He knew that no one now among those who used to call themselves "the Patriots" cared one straw whether Spain did or did not withdraw her claim to the Right of Search. His idea, therefore, was to get all the capable men of the various parties together, form them {246} into an administration, and leave them to enjoy their dignity ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... open the sticking door and strode in, Madame Alison loitering behind. He was met by a dirty lad whose gaping clothes were half hidden by a leather apron, and whose shoes protruded straw—a lad who smelt of the stable and ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... twenty pounds stripped, as wiry as a cat and as indefatigable as a Scotch terrier, and with an abnormally large pair of ears that stood out like oyster shells from the sides of a round, sleek head, he made no pretentions to physical splendour,—unless, by chance, you would call the perky little straw-coloured moustache that adorned his long upper lip a tribute to vanity. His eyes were blue and merry and set wide apart under a bulging, intellectual looking forehead, and his teeth were large and as white as snow. When he laughed ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... expressionless features and drooping, light-colored eyes. His straw-hued hair, brushed back from a sloping brow, hung lankly down upon his coat-collar. Long familiarity with China's ruling vice and contact with those who practiced it had brought about that mysterious physical alteration—apparently reflecting a mental change—so ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... a Ranger, and got notches on your gun." Blaze rolled and lit a tiny cigarette, scarcely larger than a wheat straw. "Well, you'd ought to make a right able thief-catcher, Dave, only for your size—you're too long for a man and you ain't long enough for a snake. Still, I reckon a thief would have trouble getting out of your reach, and once you got close ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Memphis, Alexandria, and half a dozen more. At last after a week's travel they reached Cossier, the little mud-walled village on the shores of the Red Sea. Here Bruce embarked in a small boat, the planks of which were sewn together instead of nailed, with a "sort of straw mattress as a sail," for the emerald mines described by Pliny, but he was driven back by a tremendous storm. Determined to survey the Red Sea, he sailed to the north, and after landing at Tor at the foot of Mount Sinai, he sailed down ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... esparto, vegetable hair, broom corn, willow, straw, palm, and other similar materials, manufactured into ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... impatient word I ever heard from his lips: "Do you wish our friend to hear you? I would rather never recover the power of this lost arm, than deprive his kind heart of the pleasure of his gift. And what of it? Yesterday I did not care a straw for an almanac; but in a little time it is perhaps the very book I should have desired. Every day has its to-morrow. Besides, I assure you it is a very improving study; even already I perceive the names of a crowd of princes never mentioned in history, and of whom, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... Day she donned her winter garments; on May Day she exchanged them for her summer ones, regardless of the temperature. She never made any compromises or concessions. She sweltered in her full regalia of wools on mild spring days; she weathered the early November blasts in her straw bonnet and silk shawl, without an extra kerchief around her stiff old neck. To-day she would not loosen her wraps as she sat waiting for Madelon in the warm room, but remained all securely pinned and tied as when ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his master, taking up his straw hat. "If anyone calls, say I could not wait any longer. Ah, there's the front-door bell. Just see ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... less capacity for friendship. The tempers of these clever cynics were so easy, and their minds so languid, that habit supplied in them the place of affection, and made them the tools of people for whom they cared not one straw. In love, both were mere sensualists without delicacy or tenderness. In politics, both were utterly careless of faith and of national honour. Charles shut up the Exchequer. Philip patronised the System. The councils of Charles were swayed by the gold of Barillon; the councils of Philip by ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blackened as if to heighten their attractions. The outer petticoat, worn on gala days such as this, differs from the common sort in being much finer in texture and workmanship, besides being dyed red and green, with intermediate bands of straw colour and broad white stripes of palm-leaf. It is made of long bunches of very light and soft shreds, like fine twisted grass, apparently the prepared leaf of a calamus or rattan. None of the women that I ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... with speed, A place of torment this indeed! A precious life, thyself to bore, And some few youngsters evermore! Leave that to neighbour Paunch!—withdraw, Why wilt thou plague thyself with thrashing straw? The very best that thou dost know Thou dar'st not to the striplings show. One in the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... her bosom. "There should only be peace and contentment where she dwells! But sometimes my life's long rebellion against sham and injustice stirs in my blood, and I long to pull down the ignorant people's idols of wood and straw, and set up ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... however, was to have been his sacrifice to her own detachment. There was no style, no state, unless she wished to forsake him. His idea had accordingly been to surrender her to her wish with all nobleness; it had by no means been to have positively to keep her off. She cared, however, not a straw for his embarrassment—feeling how little, on her own part, she was moved by charity. She had seen him, first and last, in so many attitudes that she could now deprive him quite without compunction of the luxury of a new one. Yet she felt the disconcerted ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... in the light of the rising moon. Shell-holes, torn trees, and ruined houses decreased in number. We passed a straw-thatched cottage nestling amid a group of bushes and poplars. A light shone from the window, a dog barked. A bat flitted silently past. It seemed as though the uproar of the cannonade ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... war broke out in Europe, with millions of working-men flinging death and misery at one another, men like Chaplin, the world over, regarded it as the last straw. Was it not bad enough that these exploited creatures should be used as factory-fodder? Must they be cannon-fodder too? Why should they fight to increase the economic power of German traders? of British manufacturers? The war was a capitalist war between capitalist ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled with straw, with her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat, with its large, white metal buttons, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... small boy stopped at the door of the Bilking mansion with a straw hat, at once identified as Mr. O'Rourke's, which had been found on Neal's Wharf. This would have told against another man; but O'Rourke was always leaving his hat on a wharf. Margaret's distress ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... from a distance, dispersed to assemble, the next day, with increased numbers, to witness the final disposal of one who had now become, in the minds of all, the monster outlaw of the settlement. The prisoner was then taken to an adjoining old and empty log-house, a straw-bed laid on the floor for him, and a strong guard placed over him, both within and around the house without; so that, being constantly under the eyes of vigilant, well-armed men, there should be no possibility of his escape, either by his own exertions, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the birds do, so do we, Bill our mate, and choose our tree. Swift to building work addressed, Any straw will help a nest. Mates are warm, and this is truth, Glad the young that come of youth. They have bloom i' the blood and sap Chilling at no thunder-clap. Man and woman on the thorn Trust not Earth, and have her scorn. They who in her lead confide, Wither ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rain, but cold out of the sun. Pretty fair going last night. Feet still sore. Cover on straw stack in middle of field. Warmer than the woods. Zeppelin just passed overhead going north. Meals: turnips, ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... perfect body was kept minimally modest by one of those scanty Martian sunsuits. A huge straw hat, woven of dried canal ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... not two days alike in it. Sometimes luck, plenty to eat, and a bed of dry straw in a barn—that was luxury. Sometimes a weary tramp in the pouring rain, no coppers and no supper. Under these last circumstances the "Nipper" was sharply reminded of the time when he was Frank Darvell, and lived at Green Highlands; shivering and hungry, his thoughts ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... and through the mists of the low meadows; her feet were loaded with earth from the ploughed fields; her nostrils filled with the cold, rich smell of the wet earth; the rank, sharp smell of swedes, the dry, pungent smell of straw and hay; the thick, oily, woolly smell of the folds, the warm, half-sweet, half sour smell of the cattle sheds, of champed fodder, of milky cow's breath; the smell of ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... in digesting, but, what is much more, in transforming food into fresh living material (assimilating it, as it is called), has often a fatal result for the bird. He is prohibited from fasting; his life is a fire of straw, which must be replenished unceasingly, or it will die out in the twinkling of an eye. Our own little birds—children—eat oftener than grown-up people, and if by any accident they are kept waiting ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Barraclough acceded, "if he isn't he certainly wore one—a black and white straw of a shape and pattern which I believe you moderns call 'boaters.' There, the kettle is boiling. Run along and leave ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... done it now, ye have. Bad luck to ye! wasn't I for iver tellin' ye that same. Shure, if it wasn't that ye're no bigger or heavier than a wisp o' pea straw, ye'd have druve me and the soup into the fire, ye would. Be the big toe o' St. Patrick, not to mintion his riverince ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... camphor are found in the pith. The wood of the Laurus is cut into small pieces and put, with plenty of water, into large iron boilers, which are covered with an earthen capital or dome, lined within with rice straw. As the water boils, the camphor rises with the steam, and attaches itself as a sublimate to the stalks, under the form of granulations of a grey color. In this state it is picked off the straw and packed up for ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... smoky light, had the rude and waste appearance of a ruin of three centuries old at least. A cask or two, with some broken boxes and packages, lay about the place in confusion. But the inmates chiefly occupied Brown's attention. Upon a lair composed of straw, with a blanket stretched over it, lay a figure, so still that, except that it was not dressed in the ordinary habiliments of the grave, Brown would have concluded it to be a corpse. On a steadier view he perceived it was only on the point of becoming so, for he heard one ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... part of German princes was placed by the peace of Augsburg [Footnote: See below, p. 136.] on an equal footing with that of the Catholic religion. Protestantism among the German princes proved a disintegrating, rather than a unifying, factor of national life. The rise of Protestantism was the last straw which broke German nationalism. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes |
