"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room under the thatch, in which Eleanor now hid herself. A mere large closet of a room, though it boasted of a fireplace, happily. A small lattice under the shelving roof let in what it could of the light of a dying November day. The bed with its sick occupant, two ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... clay, and one or two of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, nor was ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... certain seasons, that I was obliged to cover all within the pale with long poles, in the form of rafters, leaning against the rock, and loaded them with flags and large leaves of trees, resembling a thatch. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... being white-washed. The little retreat is most delightful, and I am sure you and Lady Beaumont would be highly pleased with it. Coleridge has never seen it. What a happiness would it be to us to see him there, and entertain you all next Summer in our homely way under its shady thatch. I will copy a dwarf inscription which I wrote for it the other day, before the building was entirely finished, which indeed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... to guard against such an event, which is a calamity in this country, the dike is covered with a kind of thatch-work of willow twigs, which has to be renewed every three or four years. Occasionally the outer surface of the embankment is faced with masonry, the stone for which has to be brought ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... on coming home was to buy up his mother's croft, re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person to take ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... though in some cases with desperate valor, yet in all without effectual result. Konigseck sits in Chotusitz;—and yet withal the Russians are not out of it, will not be driven out of it, but cling obstinately; whereupon the Austrians set fire to the place; its dry thatch goes up in flame, and poor old Konigseck, quite lame of gout, narrowly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... look again upon the Taj; and the prospect of living with it was a real enchantment; but I pondered most the kind of house that would be provided for the General Commanding the District, how many the dining-room would seat, and whether it would have a roof of thatch or of corrugated iron—I prayed against corrugated iron. I confess these my preoccupations. I was forty, and at forty the practical considerations of life hold their own even against domes of marble, world-renowned, and set about with gardens where the bulbul sings to the rose. I smiled across ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... regal welcome give, Ye thousands crowding round; Shout for the once lorn Fugitive, Whose soul no solace found Save in that SELF-RELIANCE—match For adverse worlds, alone— Which cheer'd the Tutor's humble thatch, Nor left him on the throne. The WANDERER MULLER'S sails they furl— The Wave-encounterer, who, When Freedom leagued with Crime to hurl Up earth's foundations, from the whirl Where vortex'd Empires raged, the pearl ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... things, while resting under the modest little portal of the hotel, whose former magnificence, when a hermit cell, might still be discernible in a few remaining remnants of the rich Gothic lintel yet mingling with the matted straw and the clinging ivy of the thatch. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... place at the church, in order to do great damage to those in the fort; and firing without cessation, they did not allow our men to fire a shot through its loopholes and windows. Others of the enemy hastened by another side to gather bundles of thatch by uncovering the roofs of the houses; and by fastening together what wood and bamboo they could gather, and pushing this contrivance toward the fort, they set it afire. The fire burned a quantity of rice and abaca (which is the hemp of this country), and many men were choked by the smoke. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... pitch sweals in and out as tallow sweals from a candle. It is always in slow motion under the heat of the tropic sun; and no wonder if some of the cottages have sunk right and left in such a treacherous foundation. A stone or brick house could not stand here; but wood and palm-thatch are both light and tough enough to be safe, let the ground give way ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... sometimes. She had a single room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch. There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and of course ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... But there was no public executioner; and there are many records of the flight of guilty persons, though an intention to make "the punishment fit the crime" is evident. No one was allowed to build a house close to the walls, and thatch was forbidden. A blasphemer was pilloried for a day (a list of illegal words and phrases is attached to this section). Workmen were forbidden to receive more than the wage prescribed, butchers had to accept the price fixed for meat by the justices, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... with the girls in the wash-house," said Halldis. "All chattering together like starlings on a thatch. All talking at once, and none listening. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... occasionally mentioned before: They are all built in the wood, between the sea and the mountains, and no more ground is cleared for each house, than just sufficient to prevent the dropping of the branches from rotting the thatch with which they are covered; from the house, therefore, the inhabitant steps immediately under the shade, which is the most delightful that can be imagined. It consists of groves of bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts, without underwood, which are intersected, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... The city which they construct is a marvel of industry. They first make with grass a sloping roof; giving it the form of a mushroom or an open umbrella, and they place it in such a way that it is supported by the trunk of a tree and one or two of the branches. (Fig. 29.) This thatch is prepared with so much care that it is absolutely impenetrable to water. Beneath this protecting shelter each couple constructs its private dwelling. All the individual nests have their openings below, and they are so closely pressed against one another that on looking at ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... them. It was some time before the first train started and they had to walk up to town. Beyond the limit of the hot springs town, there is a road for about one block running through the rice fields, both sides of which are lined with cedar trees. Farther on are thatch-roofed farm houses here and there, and then one comes upon a dyke leading straight to the town through the fields. We can catch them anywhere outside the town, but thinking it would be better to get them, if possible, on the road lined with cedar trees where we may not be seen ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... came all the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same thing once ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... the great storm in the spring of '97, the year that we had two great storms. This was the first one, and I remember it very well, because I found in the morning that it had lifted the thatch of my pigsty into the widow's garden as clean as a boy's kite. When I looked over the hedge, widow—Tom Lamport's widow that was—was prodding for her nasturtiums with a daisy-grubber. After I had watched her for a little I went down to the "Fox and Grapes" ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They made me think of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... just after school, one hot day, in the Illinois September. Our crowd had gone down to the pond back of the school-house, and two of us were paddling around on a raft made of sawmill slabs. One of the two—who always had more dare-deviltry than sense under his skull thatch—was silly enough to 'rock the boat,' and it went to pieces. You couldn't swim, Howard, but if you hadn't forgotten that trifling handicap and wallowed in to pull poor Billy Mimms ashore, I should have been ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... first care to supply. For this purpose Ned and I tore off and cut down a number of branches from the trees which grew near; and finding, in a hollow some way down the hill, a pool with rushes growing round it, we collected a sufficient supply to aid materially in forming a thatch. We left Pedro meantime to clean the floor, and to light a fire, though we only had some cocoa and a little Indian ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... some stores, and returning, late in the evening, too tired to put away my packages, had retired to rest at once. My little maid, who was not so fatigued as I was, and slept more lightly, woke me in the night to listen to a noise in the thatch, at the further end of the store; but I was so accustomed to hear the half-starved mules of Cruces munching my thatch, that I listened lazily for a few minutes, and then went unsuspiciously into another heavy sleep. I do not know how long it was before I was again awoke by the child's loud screams ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... of land, and allows him to choose his own plot, it takes a little time to settle. He must locate and survey his land and build his hut. All new-comers build the hut, as it is cheap and quickly built. From fifteen to fifty dollars will put up a good thatch hut which will answer all purposes for at least three years. The land cleared, coffee, ginger, sugar-cane, edoes, cassada, oranges, limes, plums, bread-fruit, pawpaws, can be planted. It takes three years for coffee to yield; five to six ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... both burn together." Franconnette rushed to the door and pleaded for mercy. "Go back," cried the crowd, "you must both roast together." They set fire to the rick outside and then proceeded to fire the thatch of the cottage. "Hold, hold!" cried a stern voice, and Pascal rushed in amongst them. "Cowards! would you murder two defenceless women? Tigers that you are, would you fire and burn them ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... showing the date of 1666, was a long way ahead of the first log cabins erected by the Pilgrims—farther than most of us realize, accustomed as we are to glass instead of oiled paper in windows; to shingles, and not thatch for roofs. It is fitting that this ancient and charming dwelling should be associated with one of the most romantic, most striking, names in the Plymouth Colony. There are few more picturesque personalities in our early history than Myles ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... the thatch from the roof of a little house beside the road, but as the plying ankus made his head ache he couldn't stay long enough to finish that job but scooted uproad again in full pursuit of a Ford car, while an angry man shoved his ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that it had been done out of honour to him. 'Why did you point your guns to the ground?' 'That you might see our intention was to show you respect.' 'But the pebbles flew in my face; why did you not point in the air?' 'Because we feared to burn the thatch on your houses.' 'Well, then, give me ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... opened with wind, as usual, from the N.E. The weather was cooler than yesterday. I visited a group of cottages, or rather huts, and received a present of a korna for holding water. The thatch of these primitive habitations was of bou rekaba stalks. The korna is allowed to twine itself over the roofs, as the woodbine over our cottages, and looks very pretty. This group of cottages was inhabited by a single family,—alas! ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... fishing-boats. A large, low cottage, full in our front, seemed highly illuminated; for the light not only glanced from every window and aperture in its frail walls, but was even visible from rents and fractures in the roof, composed of tarred shingles, repaired in part by thatch and divot. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... there, and that it may be termed the paradise of the world. He says that the spondyles of the backbones of the huge serpents there are used to sit on, as our women sitt upon butts. He taught them to build hovels, and to thatch and wattle. I wish I had a good account of his abode there; he is "fide dignus". I never heard of any man that lived so long among those salvages. A ship then sayling by, a Portughese, he swam to it; and they took him up and made use of him for a seaboy. As he was ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... hunter of beasts and a fighter of men. I discovered fire and covered my nakedness with the skins of animals. I builded cunning traps, and wove branches and long grasses and rushes and reeds into the thatch and roof-tree. I fashioned arrows and spears of bone and flint. I drew iron from the earth, and broke the first ground, and planted the first seed. I gave law and order to the tribe and taught it to fight with craft ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... Man's Wife never left it until she was borne forth into the securer refuge of the narrow house that needed none of her care-taking. Upon the low green thatch lies heavily the shadow of a mighty monument that, to the satirist's eye, has a family likeness to the stone pile which ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... glance at the old church tower and pausing again to look out over the water at the island's outer sentinel, the "Lone Cypress." We paused yet another time down where the marsh reeds lined the way. Grasping handfuls of the coarse grass, the Commodore started to illustrate how the colonists bound thatch, doubtless from that very marsh, to make roofs for their flimsy cabins. But the marsh furnished something besides grasses; and before the Commodore's explanation had gone far, his auditors had gone farther. He valiantly ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... was silent comfort and there was so much going on; so much that even the "miserable women" could not hear, though they were free to come and go. But one day when Down was purring on Bija's lap in the straw thatch which was all the three had for lodging, a passer-by paused ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... thy muse stark dead, should raise her up, And teach her yet more charming words and skill, Than ever Coelia, Chloris, Astrophil, Or any of the threadbare names inspired Poor rhyming lovers, with a mistress fired. Come, then, and while the snow-icicle hangs At the stiff thatch, and winter's frosty fangs Benumb the year, blithe as of old, let us, 'Midst noise and war, of peace and mirth discuss. This portion thou wert born for: why should we Vex at the times' ridiculous misery? ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... established under thatch, and with sliding lights before it, the Admiral's favorite Munich glass, mounted by an old ship's carpenter (who had followed the fortunes of his captain) on a stand which would have puzzled anybody ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... on. Oh the sweet, cool, clean freshness of a native house! It would not be fair to call it a hut, for that suggests squalor, or makeshift, whereas these houses are works of art. The roof rises inside like a great dome, the inner thatch being intricately woven in patterns, while the floor is made of clean pebbles, neatly laid and covered with fine mats. In the centre of the house the main pole stands like a tall mast, with several cross-bars where the furniture—rolls ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... a masterly piece of pen work. There is not a feeble or tentative stroke in the whole of it. The color is brilliant and the textures are expressed with wonderful skill. The student ought to carefully observe the rendering of the various roofs. Notice how the character of the thatch on the second cottage differs from that on the first, and how radically the method of rendering of either varies from that used on the shingle roof at the end of the picture. Compare also the two gable chimneys with each other as well as with the old ruin seen over the tree-tops. ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... have been a child's finger without the result being a whit less ruinous? Shakespeare may have seen a Stratford cottage struck by one of Jove's thunderbolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted thatch and clear away the bits of the broken chimney. What would he have said if he had seen Ypres as it is now, or returned to Stratford, as French peasants are returning to their homes to-day, to find the old familiar ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... may burn and roast, you spirit of hell!" cried the farmer, and cast the fire on the thatch. Presently the whole house ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... street, in which stood a market cross much resembling a broken milestone; though the sittings of the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall; though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; though the best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were of bare rafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with shutters for want of glass; though the humbler dwellings were mere heaps of turf, in which barrels ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to fish them out again. The place was next set on fire in every direction, when the party, each man carrying such booty as he had managed to pick up, left the fort to the destruction awaiting it. The flames spread amid the wooden and thatch-roof buildings, till the surrounding stockades caught fire, and the whole hornets' nest was one ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... a rich man, Or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch To shelter me from the cold, And there shall the Sussex songs be sung And the story of ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... dresser; there was there neither dish, nor cup, nor plate, nor even the iron pot in which all the cookery of the Irish cottiers' menage is usually carried on. Beneath his feet was the damp earthen floor, and around him were damp, cracked walls, and over his head was the old lumpy thatch, through which the water was already dropping; but inside was to be seen none of those articles of daily use which are usually to be found in the houses ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... uncertain weather, it followed that the climate of Meseglise shewed an unduly high rainfall, and we would never lose sight of the fringe of Roussainville wood, so that we could, at any moment, run for shelter beneath its dense thatch of leaves. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... whereby Annie found her soul shut out to wander in a night of dismay. The woman who told the fact saw nothing of consequence in it; Mrs. Melville, to whom she was telling it, saw nothing but perhaps a lesson on the duty of having chimneys regularly swept, because of the danger to neighboring thatch. But had not Annie been seated in the shadow, her ghastly countenance would, even to the most casual glance, have betrayed a certain guilty horror, for now she knew that she had found and given away what she ought at once to have handed back to its rightful owner. ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... bidder, for in the town of Guisborough there are scattered many fragments of richly-carved stone, and Ord, one of the historians of Cleveland, says: 'I have beheld with sorrow, and shame, and indignation, the richly ornamented columns and carved architraves of God's temple supporting the thatch of ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... ground, at the rate, I suppose, of a pint of water in a minute. The ferns grew immensely thick there; but someone had thinned out a few of the roots from the ground, leaving the uprooted plant with the ferns still living, to form a rough kind of thatch above a piece of earth big enough for a man's body. In the scented shade of this thatch, with the side of his face turned towards me, a big, rough, bearded man sat, filing away some bright steel irons which were riveted on his ankles. He swore continually in a low whisper as ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... sad and strange. He shoo-ed them from the clinking latch, And from the weeded, ancient thatch, Upon the lonely ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... thickness of his wrist and the greatness of his fingers made authentic the mighty frame of him hidden under loose dungaree pants and cotton shirt, buttonless, open from midriff to Adam's apple, exposing a chest matted with a thatch of hair as white as that of his head and face. The depth and breadth of that chest, its resilience, and its relaxed and plastic muscles, tokened the knotty strength that still resided in him. Further, no bronze and beat of sun and wind availed to hide the testimony of his skin that he was all ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... aira and arundo. This colossal gramen looks like the donax of Italy. This, the arundinaria of the Mississippi, (ludolfia, Willd., miegia of Persoon,) and the bamboos, are the highest gramens of the New Continent. Its seed has been carried to St. Domingo, where its stalk is employed to thatch the negroes' huts.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Kachyens entered, placed above a bamboo ladder, which seemed to, serve instead of steps. Although the sun had scarcely set, the village was wrapped in a strange silence, the sound of our footsteps alone being heard. The smoke that seemed to be forcing its way through stray holes in the thatch amply convinced us, however, that the inhabitants were within doors, and, turning to our Arab guide, I asked him if he could distinguish among the many huts the one in which we expected to find the Maw-Sayah. He seemed a little uncertain at first, but after wandering ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... become a ruin since I saw it last. The winter's winds had lifted the thatch, and the wall on one side had tumbled in. There was no sign of the old life we lived there. The little window from which the guiding light had shone so often was fallen to pieces. Even the friendly hearth within was ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... white or potato color or something," said Lathrop, to whom Harry confided his expectation, "this red thatch of mine is a nuisance. At school I was always Brick-top or Red-Head and out here the natives all look at my carrot-colored top-knot as if they'd like to scalp me and keep it for ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the scene is a fairyland—the silver flood of the harbor motionless as glass, the wooded meadows dank with bloom, the air odorous of woodland smells, the blue hills rimming round the sky, and against the woods of the north shore the chapel spire and thatch roofs and slab walls of the little fort, the one oasis of life in a wilderness. {38} As the sails rattled down and the anchor dropped, not a soul appeared from the fort. The gates were bolted fast. The Jonas runs up the French ensign. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... which lies 250 feet east of the Visitor Center may have served a spacious house which once stood nearby. It may be assumed that the missing surface structure was circular, probably of brick, had a small door, and was roofed over with thatch or sod for insulation. ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... material to make them was scarce in New England. Old sails were often used instead, being stretched over poles,—perhaps after the fashion of a Sioux teepee. When these could not be had, the men built huts of sods, with roofs of spruce-boughs overlapping like a thatch; for at that early season, bark would not peel from the trees. The landing of guns, munitions, and stores was a formidable task, consuming many days and destroying many boats, as happened again when Amherst landed his cannon at this ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... seventy years old, but as Rick well knew, he had the vigor and keen mind of a man twenty years his junior. Under the battered master's cap was a thatch of white hair ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... one of these boats and freight it with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... moment a heavy step sounded on the stairs. Past the maid's white-strapped shoulder I could see a familiar thatch of gray hair, and in a moment I was face to face with Doctor Stewart. He was very grave, and his customary geniality ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... them an idea for providing some dwelling-place. At any rate the earliest and simplest notion for constructing a habitation was that of digging holes in the ground and roofing them over with a light thatch. Hence we have the pit ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... up the sky that night. The little thatch houses, and the children in their quaint garbs moving against the flames composed a strange Oriental ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... enumerated in the Great Life, and not even planned before his time, are the major and minor churches, the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers' little houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen was a poor building of brushwood and thatch, six or seven paces from the guest house, the blaze of which, when it caught fire, could be seen from the glass windows of the west end of the lay church. The wooden cells of the brothers lay round this in a ring. The guest house roof was of shingles. This kitchen fire took place at the last visit ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... off his straw hat, and gave his head a vicious rub, before having another good look back at the thatch-roofed summer-house of a place. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... might judge by its patronage. It was housed in a recess in the wall of the traveling trench, and was open to the sky. There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque that ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... heaps of people with influenza, debilitated others for their lives long, worried everybody with colds, etc. I have had three influenzas: but this is no wonder: for I live in a hut with walls as thin as a sixpence: windows that don't shut: a clay soil safe beneath my feet: a thatch perforated by lascivious sparrows over my head. Here I sit, read, smoke, and become very wise, and am already quite beyond earthly things. I must say to you, as Basil Montagu once said, in perfect charity, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... three children. At his father's death, he had but 100l. in ready money, and he was obliged to go into a poor mud-walled cabin, facing the door of which there was a green pool of stagnant water; and before the window, of one pane, a dunghill that, reaching to the thatch of the roof, shut out the light, and filled the house with the most noisome smell. The ground sloped towards the house door; so that in rainy weather, when the pond was full, the kitchen was overflowed; and at all times the floor ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... led between the white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... try who will dip his own hair into the now fashionable 'anturic' baths. The outer coat should be distinctly long, but not long in the 'fancy' or show sense. Still, it should be long enough to hang as a thatch over the soft, woolly real coat of the animal and keep it dry so that a good shake or two will throw off most of the water; while the under coat should be so thick and naturally oily that the dog can swim through a fair-sized river and not get wet, or be able to sit out ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... imperishable wrinkles lined his pinched cheeks. He was just as careless about his sparse hair as in the days of old. It was never by any chance sleek and orderly. The habit of running his fingers through his thatch still clung to him, significant reminder of the perplexities that filled his daily life over the ledgers and day- books. In all other respects, however, he was a ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... writing baldness is creeping insidiously up each side of my head. It is executing flank movements from the temples northward, and some day the two columns will meet and after that I'll be considerably more of a highbrow than I am now. At present I am craftily combing the remaining thatch in the middle and smoothing it out nice and flat, so as to keep those bare spots covered—thinly perhaps, but nevertheless covered. It is my earnest desire to continue to keep them covered. I am not a professional beauty; I am not even what you would call a good ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... after a moment's thought he replied, "There is some truth in your remark- you are overgrown, and I suppose I shall have to build you a thatch somewhere, For to-night you can rest under ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... I presume it must be the same animal, and it is singular that the names should vary so little. I have never seen an instance of its poisonous powers, but I have seen a whole company of sepoys run out of their quarters because they have heard the animal make its usual cry in the thatch of the building; they say that it drops down upon ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... and of olive complexion. They adorned themselves with an embroidery skilfully interwoven with feathers and beads, and dressed their hair in a variety of braids, like those at Saco. Their dwellings were conical in shape, covered with thatch of rushes and corn-husks, and surrounded by cultivated fields. Each cabin contained one or two beds, a kind of matting, two or three inches in thickness, spread upon a platform on which was a layer ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... fierce, bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in the paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way into the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... Through the unbroken thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered—not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces. But south of us, along the ascending trail by which we had come, the westering sun glowed red across a ledge of rock, from which the hill fell sheer ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... trim them, stick them upright in the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together with vines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, lift that onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch it with ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... filled with brushwood, fire was set to the hut, and we heard the crackling of the palm thatch, while thick, stifling white smoke burst in upon us ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... out, but it wasn't all gone, as you might have expected. You see, it had been out of use for some time, sir, and there was mostly nothing but old broken ploughs and lumber there; and what's more, there was a deal of rain early in the week, as you may remember, sir, so the thatch was pretty sodden, being out o' repair and all—and so was the timber, for the matter o' that, for there's no telling when it was last painted. So the fire didn't go quite so fierce as it might, you see; else I should expect it ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... luau. But in the old times of strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to lift his hand and the entire population of a district ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles, beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of the hula, such as La'a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, did not allow ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... get at that anonymous letter-writer, he would teach him not to meddle and stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should remain stagnant!... A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of rain spattered on the thatch above him. He remained indifferent, tracing a pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a little rustic table. Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for her,' he thought. 'Nothing else matters at my time of life.' A lonely business—life! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the Norwegians; they seemed rather to wait ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... jujube-trees the blushing dewdrops falter; The peacock wakes and leaves the cottage thatch; A deer is rising near the hoof-marked altar, And stretching, stands, the day's ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession, an incident which would doubtless have occasioned some surprise had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbed ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... slouched listlessly in the saddle, it was almost impossible to think of him as a matured man. The receding chin, and coarse, loosely opened mouth, the pale, lifeless eyes set too closely together under a low forehead, with a ragged thatch of dead, mouse-colored hair, and a furtive, sneaking, lost-dog expression, proclaimed him the outcast that ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... rich Englishman would greatly have helped the failing fortunes of the family; it was not enough that the poor people about, knowing Lady Macleod's wishes, had no thought of keeping a salmon spear hidden in the thatch of their cottages. Salmon and stag could no longer bind him to the place. The young blood stirred. And when he asked her what good things came of being a stay-at-home, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... The former thatch of half-curly and indeterminately yellowish fuzz had changed to a rough tawny coat, wavy and unbelievably heavy, stippled at the ends with glossy black. There was a strange depth and repose and Soul in the dark eyes—yes, and ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... partition at one end of it, to screen off the humble truckle-bed where Grace Acton forgets by night the troubles of the day; and the remainder of the little apartment, sordid enough, and overhung with the rough thatch, black with cobweb, serves for the father and mother with their recent nursery. Each room has its shattery casement, to let in through linchened panes, the doubtful light of summer, and the much more indubitable wind, and rain, and frost of wintry nights. A few articles of crockery ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hail in keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been reading, and in the other a pair of big ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... arrangement was after the Mexican custom of building, with rooms along the outer walls all opening into a big patio, or open court. A cross-wall separated this court from the large corral inside the outer walls at the rear. A portal, or porch, roofed with thatch on cedar poles, ran around the entire inner rectangle, sheltering the rooms somewhat from the glare of the white-washed court. A little world in itself was this Bent's Fort, a self-dependent community in the solitary ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... sounds were heard, like the howls of a large dog which had lost its master: they were the cries of the deer in their distress, seeking for a place of shelter. Nature seemed to be in convulsions, and to have declared war in every element. The loose thatch under which we had taken refuge was soon penetrated, and we were completely deluged. We soon quitted this miserable hole, preferring to move our stiffened and almost deadened limbs, covered with the fearful little leeches, which terrible infliction deprived us of the strength ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud are all that lie between, Save one dull pane that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: Here on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to decide what folk'll bear, and what they will not. Or why would Red Colin ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lamp was to be seen; nor in the whole street; nor in the whole town, so far as eye could reach. The house to the right was a roof rather than a house; nothing could be more mean. The walls were of mud, the roof was of straw, and there was more thatch than wall. A large nettle, springing from the bottom of the wall, reached the roof. The hovel had but one door, which was like that of a dog-kennel; and a window, which was but a hole. All was shut up. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... flags cut from the brooks, but more usually with straw, and practically the cottage is now built, for there are no indoor fittings to speak of. The chimney is placed at the end of the room set apart for day use. There is no ceiling, nothing between the floor and the thatch and rafters, except perhaps at one end, where there is a kind of loft. The floor consists simply of the earth itself rammed down hard, or sometimes of rough pitching-stones, with large interstices between them. The furniture of this room is of the simplest description. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the bucks, a lot of women and children there, makin' thatch, cookin', and repairin' the pig-proof fencin'. I stayed a bit, and then came on board again, an' we made snug ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... doubled and twisted in the middle, and used for fixing the thatch of a roof, are called spars: they are commonly ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... they inherit anything save a little plot of land which they sow with rice—not to sell, but only for what is necessary for their families. Their houses are built on four posts; their walls are of bamboo and thatch, and are very small. Such was the spoliation committed on a people so poor and wretched that they would say: "Father, I will give the king twenty reals of eight annually, so that they will spare me from repartimientos;" but, having investigated, all their property ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... in striking here," and Friedel sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust into the thatch. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and even then congealed snow stood doggedly in the streets, while the country roads were like newly ploughed fields after rain. The heat from large fires soon penetrated through roofs of slate and thatch; and it was quite a common thing for a man to be flattened to the ground by a slithering of snow from above just as he opened his door. But it had seldom more than ten feet to fall. Most interesting of all was the novel sensation experienced as ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... tea, And makes contentment and joy agree With the coarsest boarding and bedding: Love, that no golden ties can attach, But nestles under the humblest thatch, And will fly away from an Emperor's match To dance at a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... house a few trees were growing. Some were cherry trees, and one was a birch, with long, slender branches which swayed in the wind, and with every breeze its leaves touched the dilapidated moss-covered straw thatch of the roof; when the stronger gusts of wind bent its boughs to the wall, and pressed its twigs and the waves of leaves against the roof, it would seem as if the tree loved the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... but mony, Or any friend to bring me from this bondage, I would Thresh, set up a Cobler's shop, keep Hogs, And feed with 'em, sell Tinder-boxes, And Knights of Ginger-bread, Thatch for three Half pence a day, and think it Lordly, From this base Stallion trade: why does he eye me, Eye me ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... interrupted him, shrugging up his shoulders, with a look of compassion, "Bridget and Magdalen! why, this is madness and dreaming! Hark ye, Master Holly-top, your wits are gone on wool-gathering; comfort yourself with a caudle, and thatch your brain-sick noddle with a woollen night-cap, and so God be ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and went, entered the pigeon-house and left in agitated manner, cooing loudly; they circled above the dwelling, sought the trees, alighted on the thatch of the cabin, descended to earth ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... myself her friend! (So she wished that I were more) Jogging toward her journey's end At Saint Jean au Bois before, Where her father's acres fall Just without the abbey wall; By the cool well loiteringly The shaggy Norman horses stray, In the thatch the pigeons play, And the forest round alway Folds the hamlet, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow; The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, He ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... they marched, when at length the village of Plymouth Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its manifold labors. Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke from the chimneys Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily eastward; Men came forth from the doors, and paused and talked of the weather, 500 Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing fair for the Mayflower; Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the dangers ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... house has two doors, one of which is used only by women in this condition. During her impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family, and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.[213] The Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women at such seasons in the outer verandah of the house for eight days, and will not let them enter the kitchen or the cowhouse; during this time the unclean woman may not cook nor even touch ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... lower reach of the Chagres as it curves its seven deep and placid miles from where Uncle Sam releases it from custody, to the ocean. Its jungled banks were without a break, for the one or two clusters of thatch and reed huts along the way are but a part of the living vegetation. Now and then we had glimpses across the tree-tops of brilliant green jungle hills further inland, everywhere were huge splendid trees, the stack-shaped mango, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... after this conversation Paul was awakened by a patter upon their skin and thatch roof. It must have been two or three o'clock in the morning, and he had been sleeping very comfortably. He lay on furs, and the soft side of a buffalo robe was wrapped close about him. He could not remember any time in his life when he felt ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the cloak." And this done, with Edmund's hand, Rose scrambled up into the loft. It was only the height of the roof, and there was not room, even in the middle, to stand upright; the rain soaked through the old thatch, the floor was of rough boards, and there was but very little of the hay that had served as a ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extinguisher apparatus which is still to be found suspended above the pulpit in some old-fashioned country churches. All the windows of the old house were of diamond panes, and those of the upper story projected from the roof of solid and venerable thatch. A pair of doves had their home in a wicker cage which hung from the wall, and their cooing was like the voice of the house, so peaceful, homely, and Old-world was ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... the meadows on that lowest slope which undulates around the higher hills of Jarvis two or three hundred houses roofed with "noever," a sort of thatch made of birch-bark,—frail houses, long and low, looking like silk-worms on a mulberry-leaf tossed hither by the winds? Above these humble, peaceful dwellings stands the church, built with a simplicity ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... he chirped. "I see we have the same taste in lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us—hey? But a shakedown under a snug thatch, with a tap of red wine such as I have not had out of my own country. What a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... senores," (Why not? sirs). He explained, however, that there was nought to eat. After eating elsewhere, we made our way back to our lodging-place, a typical Zapotec hut, a single room, with dirt-floor, walls of canes or poles, and thatch of grass. The house contained a hammock and two beds of poles, comforts we had not known for days. I threw myself into the hammock; Ernst lay down upon one of the beds; the man and woman, squatting, were husking corn for our horses; a little girl was feeding ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent of the peat. Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke a house—any one, that is to say, who did not save the smoke for his thatch. And who was so particular as Sheila had been about having the clothes come in from the washing dried so that they should not retain this very odor that seemed now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the longest boughs in a row against the side of the fallen tree. This left a little place beneath their slope into which it was possible to creep. Archie smiled with satisfaction, and proceeded to thatch the sloping roof with moss and bits of bark. Then he grubbed up the green cushion and transferred ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... of raw-looking leather that was held together by two leather lacings, while on his feet were a kind of sandal shoes that appeared to be made of the same leather. He must have constructed both belt and shoes himself, and he hadn't any hat at all upon his crimson-gold thatch of hair. I looked at him so long that I had to look away, and then when I did I looked right back at him because I couldn't believe that ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With, fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... rain, and the first drops would soon come pattering through the leaves. It was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of the open plain. This happened only where the path lay much upon the slope, and there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood at some distance below the level at which I chanced myself to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of foreshortened distance, miniature fields, and Lilliputian houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment in the aperture, and ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... left the V hut warm and comfortable, and on my return found it very different. I fear we had not put enough thatch upon it, and the ten days' rain had proved too much for it. It was now neither air-tight nor water-tight; the floor, or rather the ground, was soaked and soppy with mud; the nice warm snow-grass on which I had lain ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... north. The snow lay all over the ground, like soft feathers, and the hay-ricks looked as though each one wore a dunce-cap, like the dull boy in Dame Week's school over by the green. The icicles hung down by the thatch, and the little birds crouched shivering in the bare ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... park near his birthplace. This interesting memorial consists of a square pillar surmounting three stone steps, with an inscription on each side. The visit was productive of mingled feelings to Haydn. He took his friends to see the old thatch-roofed cottage, and, pointing to the familiar stove, still in its place, modestly remarked that there his career as a musician began—a reminiscence of the now far-away time when he sat by his father's side and sawed away on his ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... very moment, her grandmother was preparing the evening meal. And, beyond, in the village was the little old stone church and Father Murphy's square bit of a house with its wide doorstep and its roof of thatch, and Widow Mulligan's and the Denny's and the ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... long, low building, with a narrow paving in front from end to end, of stones cast up by the plough. Its walls, but one story high, rough-cast and white-washed, shone dim in the twilight. Under a thick projecting thatch the door stood wide open, and from the kitchen, whose door was also open, came the light of a peat-fire and a fish-oil-lamp. Throughout the summer Steenie was seldom in the house an hour of the twenty-four, and now he hesitated to enter. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... chief constable to take a seat and tell everything he knew about the previous night's events, without equivocation or reserve. He took a chair at the table, his bright bird's glance wandering from one to the other of the faces opposite him as he smoothed with one claw-like hand the thatch of iron-grey hair which hung down over his forehead ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... house was of logs, the glassless windows were of deerskin parchment, the door-lock and the door-hinges were of wood, the latch string was of deerskin, the fireplace and the chimney were of clay, the roof thatch was of bark. The abode was clean, serviceable, and warm; and yet it was a house that could have been built thousands of years ago. But consider, for instance, Oo-koo-hoo's comfortable lodge; a similar dwelling, no doubt, could have ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... from some mismanagement of the fusee, used for the cannon, a spark from which communicating with the thatch of the public storehouse so rapidly spread into a flame, that it was only by the most daring courage that the powder, some casks of provisions, and a few other stores were rescued from ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... think they did? One of them, a wauf, drucken-looking scoundrel, fired a gold ring over the window, and mostly set fire to the thatch house opposite—which was not insured. Yet where think ye did the ring go to? With my living een I saw it taken out of auld Willie Turneep's waistcoat pouch, who was sitting blind fou, with his mouth open, on one of the back seats; so, by no earthly possibility ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the noblest poem of antiquity. 12. Every stalk, bud, flower, and seed displays a figure, a proportion, a harmony, beyond the reach of art. 13. The natives of Ceylon build houses of the trunk, and thatch roofs with the leaves, of the cocoa-nut palm. 14. Richelieu exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, and banished the confessor, of the king. 15. James and John study and ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... crop contents me; and the storm That pelts my thatch breaks not my rest, While to my heart I clasp the beauteous form Of her ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... hills, for the most part cleared of forest, hemming it in on either side, and a glimpse of lofty blue mountains towering skywards far away to the North-East, is a long straggling collection of atap (thatch made of leaves of nibong palm) and kajang (mats of ditto) houses, or rather huts, built on piles over the water, and forming a gigantic crescent on either bank of the broad, curving stream. This is the city of ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... twilight in the canon; but the birds in the upper boughs' of the sycamores caught the tokens of the coming day, and began to twitter in the dusk. Their notes fell on Ramona's sleeping ear, like the familiar sound of the linnets in the veranda-thatch at home, and waked her instantly. Sitting up bewildered, and looking about her, she exclaimed, "Oh, is it morning already, and so dark? The birds can see more sky than we! Sing, Alessandro," and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his fingers through his own neatly trimmed thatch, and seemed to forget where he was for ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... yellow pareus, watching the roasting breadfruit. There must be poverty-stricken folk indeed, for I saw that the houses showed no sign whatever of the ugliness that the Marquesan has aped from the whites. Yet neither were they the wretched huts of straw and thatch which I had seen in the valley and supposed to be the only remnants of the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because there was a pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a moth, and after the moth a golden fly, and three gnats, and a mouse ran along the dry ground with a curious ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... who had been on the waggon—by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... them, and are generally built of bamboo, though many have their principal timbers of teak or eng-wood. The floors are usually of split bamboo, and the roof of elephant-grass, or "thekka," as the thatch of dried leaves is called, forms a good protection against the summer sun or monsoon rains, while the walls are formed of bamboo mats, often coloured and woven into some pretty ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... about: very sleepy, rusty, irregular little places; huts and cattle-stalls huddled down, as if shaken from a bag; much straw, thick thatch and crumbly mud-brick; but looking warm and peaceable, for the Four-footed and the Two-footed; which latter, if you speak to them, are solid reasonable people, with energetic German eyes and hearts, though so ill-lodged. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the Vampire), as I see them with the eye of clear-seeing. What beautiful hair! it hangs down like the tail of the cow of Tartary, or like the thatch of a house; it is shining as oil, dark as the clouds, black as blackness itself. What charming faces! likest to water-lilies, with eyes as the stones in unripe mangos, noses resembling the beaks of parrots, teeth like pearls set in corals, ears like those of the redthroated ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... found the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down the smithy—a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of the ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... desperation, and sent flights of fire-arrows into the fort to burn the straw-thatched houses. The flames caught in many places; but with the help of the Indians they were extinguished, though several Frenchmen were wounded, and there was great fright for a time. But the thatch was soon stripped off and the roofs covered with deer and bear skins, while mops fastened to long poles, and two large wooden canoes filled with water, were made ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... the table. Faraday received a coy bow from Mrs. Peck, who had given her hair an extra bleaching for this occasion, till her pinched and powdered little face looked out from under an orange-colored thatch; Mrs. Wheatley was there too, with a suggestion of large white shoulders shining through veilings of black gauze; and with an air of stately pride, Mrs. Ryan presented him to Lord Hastings. This young man, sitting next Genevieve, was a tall, fair, straight-featured Englishman of gravely ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... had not been for the smoke, whirled and beaten about by the breeze, she would have thought the house was not really a human habitation, but a bit of the moor itself risen up, so brown and rough and weather-beaten it looked under its old lichen-grown thatch. But the smoke was real smoke, and Esther, stepping nearer, saw one window lit by the leaping, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... it your proneness to domestication, For he dwells in man's barn, and I build in man's thatch, As we say to each other—but, to our vexation, O'er your safety alone ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sometimes on flat boats, worked by ropes, were exciting and picturesque. For rustic interiors along the road side, there were the huts of the working people, rough trellises of tree-trunks interwoven with branches; green as arbors while fresh, a coarse thatch when dry. There was always a large open space in front, sheltered by the projecting thatch of the house, and furnished sometimes with a rough table and benches. Here would be the women at their work, or ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... type of Celt. The wild thatch of his scrubbing-brush hair shone purple in the light. Scrape his face as he would, the purple shadow of his beard seemed ingrained in his white white skin. Black-browed and black-lashed, he had the luminous blue-gray-green eyes of the colleen. There was a curious ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... dikes and heap it into creamy cones that sparkle in the sunshine. The dikes are narrow, raised pathways beside the basins and between them. As you walk along on top of them, you can smell a faint violet perfume from the salt. Thatch is put over the cones to protect them from the rain, and there they stand till some of the impurities drain away. This salt is not perfectly white, because the workmen cannot help scraping up a little of the gray or reddish clay with it. ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... make the thatch to cover the roofs of the houses, or shelter over their boats. Neatly fastened together with split rattans, they form the walls of the house. From the juice of the tree they make a fermented drink something like sweet beer, also ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the Earls of Westmorland, lay the long, straggling, and rather poverty-stricken village of Woodnewton. Like many other Northamptonshire villages, it consisted of one long street of cottages, many of them with dormer windows peeping from beneath the brown thatch, the better houses of stone, with old mullioned windows, but all of them more or less in stages of decay. With the depreciation in agriculture, Woodnewton, once quite a prosperous little place, was now terribly shabby ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... of his force through an orchard divided from the south end of the house by a narrow lane, over which a barn abutted. Its high blank wall had been loopholed on both floors and was quite unassailable, but its roof was of thatch. And as he studied it, keeping his men in cover, a happy inspiration occurred to him. He sent back to the camp for an oil-can and a parcel of cotton wadding, and by three o'clock had opened a brisk fire of flaming bullets on the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... three or four years past had been housed, and kept out of the enemy's reach by the difficulty of approach and their retired situation. Here the general fixed himself, much to his liking, in a cane brake, about a quarter of a mile from the river, which however was soon cleared to thatch the huts of himself and his men. Some lakes which skirted the high land, rendered the post difficult of approach, and here was forage for horses, and beef, pork, rice, and green corn** for the men, in the greatest abundance. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... moving camels of the Tuareg who escorted us. Behind, followed the women of the tribe, my mother among them, two by two, the yoke upon their necks. There were not many men. Almost all lay with their throats cut under the ruins of the thatch of Gao beside my father, brave Sonni-Azkia. Once again Gao had been razed by a band of Awellimiden, who had come to massacre the ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... had been left behind in the nest spread himself out to his full size. He was now, you know, a householder; but his grandeur did not last long: in the night red fire broke through the windows, the flames seized on the roof, the dry thatch blazed up high, the whole house was burnt, and the young sparrow with it; but the young married couple escaped, fortunately, with life. When the sun rose again, and every thing looked so refreshed and invigorated, as after a peaceful ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... tissue compared with which the finest silk is only canvas, and the cavity is shaped so as exactly to fit the eye, while the brow projects over like a roof of a veranda, to keep off falling dust and rain from injuring it while the lid is open; and the eyebrows, like a thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a man earns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter the eye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say that electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... fireplace, and great patches of plaster had been brought down by the rain on the south-west side. Just underneath the window was the pigstye. Outside nothing had been done to the house for years. It was not brick built, and here and there the laths and timber were bare, and the thatch had almost gone. Houses were very scarce on the farms in that part, and landlords would not build. The labourers consequently were driven into Abchurch, and had to walk, many of them, a couple of miles each way daily. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... remains of a ruined barn. The yard was empty; no trace of farm implements or human labor to be seen. "Which is the inspector's house," inquired Anton, in dismay. The driver looked round, and at last made up his mind that it was a small one-storied building, with straw thatch and ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... return to tea. Our bungalow was of the usual type, consisting of cement floor, roof of crossed bamboos and two feet of sun-grass thatch, supported by immense teak posts, hard as iron and bidding defiance to the white ants. The walls were of mats. Tea-gardens usually had a surface of 300 to 1000 acres; some were on comparatively level ground, some on ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... simplicity. Multitudes of visitors from all parts of the world yearly visit this relic of Old Shanklin. Pretty thatched cottages can be seen in many parts of the Island, but nowhere is there such a combination, there being three different styles of roof in thatch, the setting in a background of trees completing the illusion of the country. In the angle where the figures stand is the rustic fountain on which hangs the shield with the verse written by the poet Longfellow when staying at Hollier's Hotel, ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... guns, but there is no platform, or road for guns, round it on the inside. A number of respectable merchants and tradesmen reside in this town, where they are better protected than in any other town in Oude. It contains a population of between twenty and thirty thousand persons. They put thatch over the mud walls during the rains to preserve them. The fortifications and dwelling-houses together are said to have cost the family above ten lacs of rupees. There are some fourteen old guns in the fort. Though it would be difficult to shell a garrison ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman |
