"Broom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the garden hedge; so it drives stray human creatures to the door. A third came—an old gipsy woman—still stout and hearty, with green fresh brooms to sell. We bought some brooms—one of them was left on the kitchen floor, and the tame rabbit nibbled it; it proved to be heather. The true broom is as green and succulent in appearance in January as June. She would see the 'missis.' 'Bless you, my good lady, it be weather, bean't it? I hopes you'll never know what it be to want, my good lady. Ah, well, you looks good-tempered ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... round beehive ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave of the sky. The bare needle-like ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... street. Then she shook herself, and, hands on hips, danced a little defiant jig in her sabots as she went back to get the horse. Another girl came across a bridge. She was precisely of the opposite type, slender, creamy-skinned, and delicate-featured. She carried a brand-new broom over her shoulder through that desolation, and bore herself with the pride and ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... was no help to be got from her old servants, and that the best thing she could do was to mount on her broom and set off in pursuit of the children. And as the children ran they heard the sound of the broom sweeping the ground close behind them, so instantly they threw the handkerchief down over their shoulder, and in a moment a deep, broad river ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... recent agricultural fairs a farmer exhibited 109 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and cereals. These included the best qualities of Yellow Nansemond sweet potatoes, mammoth melons of all varieties, eggplant, sorghum and syrup cane, broom-corn, tobacco, grapes, cotton, peanuts, and many other things, some of which do not attain to so high a degree of excellence elsewhere farther north than the Carolinas. Peaches, apples, and prunes of superior ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... piece of pasteboard, but could find none. I told him a round stick would do as well as anything. Thereupon he went to the wood-shed, and I heard the saw go, and he soon returned to the dining-room (where I did the work), whittling off the end of a piece of broom-handle. I remarked to him that he need not whittle off the edges. 'Oh, well,' said he, 'I thought I would like to have it nice.' When I had successfully cast the mould of the right hand, I began the left, pausing ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... broom, she advanced resolutely to the attack, and an instant later, to my loud distress and to Samuel's unspeakable horror, she had whisked him across the kitchen and through the back door ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... bestowed—have they not all been converted into poisons? Who dares to drink a light summer wine now? Are not all vegetables abjured, peaches thrown to the pigs, and strawberries ventured upon only by little boys who sweep the streets, with the broom in one hand and the pottle in the other? Are not melons rank poison, and cucumbers sudden death? And in the winter, sir, are we better off? Instead of the wholesome frosts of olden days, purifying the air and the soil, and bracing up our nerves, what have we but the influenza, which ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... won't be one Texan in arms a month from now! I'm willin' to give my word that here are six of us who will be in arms then, roarin' an' rippin' an' t'arin'! They'll sweep the country clean, will they? They'll need a bigger broom for that job than any that was ever ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an' a spar' rib or so would have been all you'd ever found of him agin. I've never yit laid eyes on the man I couldn't settle with a single sweep, an' when a lone woman comes to wantin' a protector, I've never seen the husband that could hold a candle to a good stout broom. That's what I said to Jinnie when she got herself engaged to Fred Boxley. 'Married or single,' I said, 'gal, wife, or widow, a ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... doll out of a good-sized cork—one from a Champagne bottle is best, because broader at the base; into this base insert a number of stout bristles, as in Fig. 1. If you can not procure bristles, fine broom-corn will answer the purpose. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I have to cut a stick of blue beech to make a broom for sweeping the house, sister of mine, and that is for your use, Miss Kate, and in the next place, I have to find, if possible, a piece of rock elm or hickory for axe handles: so now you have the reason why I take the axe ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... outward woman stands to me in lieu of the housemaid's broom, and the united authority of the Captain and Mrs. Crompton make up the mistress between them. And the worst of it all is, that though I have to endure the tyranny, I have not got the follower. It is as hard upon Mr. Shand as ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Andalusia. My mind is suddenly ablaze with its sunshine, with its opulent colour, luminous and soft; I think of the cities, the white cities bathed in light; of the desolate wastes of sand, with their dwarf palms, the broom in flower. And in my ears I hear the twang of the guitar, the rhythmical clapping of hands and the castanets, as two girls dance in the sunlight on a holiday. I see the crowds going to the bull-fight, intensely living, many-coloured. And a thousand scents are wafted across my memory; ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the field toward the group in the woods came the girl. Off to the side of these woods were extensive fields of broom straw that lay outside the course. But they looked "birdy," those fields, and the girl ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... McWriggler, his western friend, Ald. Toper, the president of the association, Rivers, Bottlesby and Capt. Flannigan, were elevated into an open "bus," and drawn by their enthusiastic admirers through the principal streets of Bayton. They had hoisted a broom in the front of their vehicle as ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... woman went up in a basket, Seventy times as high as the moon; What she did there I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?" "Only to sweep the cobwebs off the sky, And I shall be back ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... ornamentation. Extreme cleanliness smiles at the observer from the most hidden corners. In the little garden it reaches such a pitch that it hardly dares to smile. The garden does not look as if it were cleaned with a hoe and broom; it looks as if it had been brushed. The little beds that stand out so sharply against the yellow gravel of the walks look, not as if they had been dug by a cord, but as if they were drawn on the ground with a ruler and compasses, the box edging ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... doing is worth doing well. (To Rock.) Look now at the marks of your boots upon the ground. Get up out of that till I'll bustle it with the broom! ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... started on a small steamer, to go down the Clyde. It has been a very, very exciting day to us. It is so stimulating to be where every name is a poem. For instance, we start at the Broomielaw. This Broomielaw is a kind of wharf, or landing. Perhaps in old times it was a haugh overgrown with broom, from whence it gets its name; this is only ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... 27: Laneham gives a splendid list of Romances and Old Ballads possessed by this said CAPTAIN COX; and tells us, moreover, that "he had them all at his fingers ends." Among the ballads we find "Broom broom on Hil; So Wo is me begon twlly lo; Over a Whinny Meg; Hey ding a ding; Bony lass upon Green; My bony on gave me a bek; By a bank as I lay; and two more he had fair wrapt up in parchment, and bound with a whip cord." Edit. 1784, p. 36-7-8. Ritson, in his Historical Essay on Scottish ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... office of the editor of "The Financial Pilot" had fallen into a state of sordid dilapidation. If the janitor had received orders never to use a broom or a duster there, he obeyed them strictly. Disorder and dirt reigned supreme. Papers and manuscripts lay in all directions; and on the broad sofas the mud from the boots of all those who had lounged upon them had been drying for ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... who backed out of danger—the woman had reached for the broom by the wall—"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new preacher; I just dropped ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... should strike the railroad at Follonica; and we merely asked of intermediate places that they should not detain us. We dined in Grossetto at an inn of the Larthian period,—a cold inn and a damp, which seemed never to have been swept since the broom dropped from the grasp of the last Etrurian chambermaid,—and we ate with the two-pronged iron forks of an extinct civilization. All the while we dined, a boy tried to kindle a fire to warm us, and beguiled his incessant failures with stories ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... stood there, wild-eyed and tearful, a thought made its way through the kinky hair into her bewildered brain. She darted back into the house, and reappeared with a broom. ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... Mrs. Mason came hurrying into the room. Not seeing anyone there but their cat, who was standing right beside the dough, they of course thought it was she that had caused all this trouble. So Diana grabbed up a broom and would have pounded her to a jelly in her anger at spoiling all her nice bread dough, but pussy was too quick for her. She saw what was coming and flew out the door and hid under the currant bushes in the garden, from which place she ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... "temple sweeper" goes over the ground around the altar with a broom; then the regular priest, a dignified gray-headed man with a long ungirt purple chiton, and a heavy olive garland, comes forward bearing a basin of holy water. This basin is duly passed to the whole company as it stands in a ring, and each in turn dips ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... beside a heap of half-read books, marked newspapers, clippings and letters, a welter of concerns which he refused to have removed by the broom of the caretaker, and now and again as he wished to show me something he rose and hobbled a step or two to fish a book or a letter out of the pile. He was quite lame but could move without a crutch. He talked mainly of his good friends in Boston and elsewhere, and alluded to his enemies ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... pitched their camp beneath a gum tree upon the edge of the wood. It was October, and the gum was the colour of blood. Behind it rolled the autumn forest; before it stretched a level of broom-sedge, bright ochre in the light of the setting sun. The road ran across this golden plain, and disappeared in a league-deep wood of pine. From an invisible clearing came a cawing of crows. The sky was cloudless, and the evening wind had not begun to blow. The small, shining leaves of the gum ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... preparing our coffee." Then I would moderate my steps in order to get my breath a little, while I scanned the little windows and laughed with anticipated pleasure. The door opens, and Mother Gredel, with her woollen petticoat and a big broom in her hand, turns round and exclaims: "Here he is! here he is!" Then Catherine runs up, always more and more beautiful, with her little blue cap, and says: "Ah! that is good; I was expecting thee!" How happy she ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... and her rival, Lady Binks, formed the attraction. But whatever may have been the gallant things he was saying, they were soon ended in the bustle consequent upon the sudden rushing in of the brave Captain McTurk, followed by the enraged Meg Dods, with no less a weapon in her hand than a broom-stick, with which she was striving to belabor the shoulders of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... quiet a little village to-day, the neighbourhood of Ockley has seen some wild doings. Holmbury Hill, to the north, was once one of the principal settlements of the "Heathers," or broom squires, who still survive, a more respectable and a weaker folk, under Hindhead and elsewhere. Here one of their chief occupations was smuggling; indeed, the range of hills round Ewhurst and Holmbury Common served as a kind of halfway house for the gentlemen who were riding with silk ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... is just nothing else to do, but turn to on the beds now, wrong end first, but next year you'll know," she answered me with indulgent compromise in her voice. "And I guess we'll find some broom and mop work yet to be done. Come on, Mrs. Tillett. I guess Nancy can mind the baby ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of twelve years of age, used to fall into fits of sleep, and afterwards she told her parents, and the judge, how an old woman and her daughter, riding on a broom-stick, had come and taken her out with them. The daughter sat foremost, the old woman behind, the little maid between them. They went away through the roof of the house, over the adjoining houses and the town gate, to a village some way off. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to go to court in. My sister said I could not take my brother's suit. He told me to take it and bring it home in good condition at night. My sister is supposed to be the plaintiff, but she did not make the complaint. The landlady came in and hit me three times in the head with a broom. My sister called her in and then she threw a piece of wood after me. Sister started crying, but she did not get hit. The landlady got hit. When I fell down I striked her with my head and hurt my head bad. I think I hit ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... detail. On one particular occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman and three other persons, "No woman was ever more miserable than I during my married life." And at another she had said, "All new, all fine! A new broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only loved ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... wot it is," said the night-watchman, trying to sneer— "pure jealousy." He had left his broom for a hurried half-pint at the "Bull's Head"—left it leaning in a negligent attitude against the warehouse-wall; now, lashed to the top of the crane at the jetty end, it pointed its soiled bristles towards the ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... surgeon had intrusted the task of clearing away the dirt to certain men. A sorry job they made of it. For accumulated nastiness that waiting room was an Augean stable and the two soldiers who dawdled about in it with brooms lacked woefully in the qualities of Hercules. Putting a broom in a man's hands is the best argument in favor of woman's suffrage that I know of, anyhow. A third man who helped at chores in the transformed lunch room had gathered up and piled together in a heap upon the ground near us a bushel or so of used ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... laments (and rightly) the absence in the tropic forests of such grand masses of colour as are supplied by a heather moor, a furze or broom-croft, a field of yellow charlock, blue bugloss, or scarlet poppy. Tropic landscape gardening will supply that defect; and a hundred plants of yellow Allamanda, or purple Dolichos, or blue Clitoria, or crimson Norantea, set side by side, as we might use a hundred Calceolarias or ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he grumbled a good deal. When he got his pay he went over to Thompson's saloon, and he didn't leave it until all the money was spent. When his wife heard of it she was mad, and I expect she gave Joel a taste of the broom handle." ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... blankets, and how we suffered with the cold! I shall never forget that night of December 18th, 1862. We would form little columns of twenty or thirty men, in two ranks, and would just trot round and round in the tall weeds and broom sedge to keep from chilling to death. Sometimes we would pile down on the ground in great bunches, and curl up close together like hogs, in our efforts to keep warm. But some part of our bodies would be exposed, which soon would be stinging with cold, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Cheap whips should not be introduced into the oesophagus for the purpose of dislodging the foreign body. There is always danger of the whip becoming broken off, and the broken part lodging in the oesophagus. Neither should such rigid objects as a broom or rake handle be introduced, because of the danger from serious injury to the walls of the pharynx and oesophagus. The flexible probang, which is usually made of spiral wire covered with leather, is a very useful instrument to relieve choke when in the hands of an experienced ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... several miles long—over three—and averages 100 yards in width at the top. All the slopes are one solid mass of shrubbery—laurel, juniper, dwarf conifers, holly oak, and brilliant flowers innumerable. I brought back a bunch of Cytisus whose individual flowers might have been our broom (C. Scoparius). ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... world is shabby in the way It treats a fellow too; It just endures him while he works, And kicks him when he's through. It's ruthless, yes; let him make good, Or else it grabs its broom And grumbles: "What a clutter's here! We can't have ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... washed dishes to their obvious places upon the shelves and with a broom she battled with the dust upon the floor and drove it out the open door. Then she swept up the hearth, singing as she swept, and tidied the arrangement of books, bait and tobacco upon the mantel, ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here, and one ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... will wait a moment," said Mrs. Gordon, "I will get a broom and brush the snow from you before it melts. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... barbed arrow head was found near Bardney, with an orifice large enough to receive a broom handle. {108c} ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Even the petty officers of the ship are not free from being made the objects of the sport, and passengers of especial prominence have often been treated to a bath in a tub of cold water or had their faces lathered with a broom as a shaving brush while a bar of old iron served the purpose ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... Axe (in cover). Axle-grease. Bacon. Barometer (pocket). Bean-pot. Beans (in bag). Beef (dried). Beeswax. Bible. Blacking and brush. Blankets. Boxes. Bread for lunch. Brogans (oiled). Broom. Butter-dish and cover. Canned goods. Chalk. Cheese. Clothes-brush. Cod-line. Coffee and pot. Comb. Compass. Condensed milk. Cups. Currycomb. Dates. Dippers. Dishes. Dish-towels. Drawers. Dried fruits. Dutch oven. Envelopes. Figs. Firkin (see p. 48). Fishing-tackle. Flour (prepared). ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... also have noticed something else. Plants in the drier soil have generally {72} narrow leaves and the grasses are rolled up and fine, whilst those on the damp soil, including the grasses, have usually broad leaves. Thus in the dry sandy soil you may find broom, spurrey, sheep's fescue, pine trees, all with narrow leaves; whilst on the moister soil you may find burdock, primroses, cocksfoot and other broad-leaved plants. Figs. 34 a and b show some plants we found ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... broom, and would liked to have broken it over the head of the brutal sailor, but he was not ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... proceeding from steading to steading in the sparse woods of Andred where is sometimes an open heath, and sometimes a mile of oak, and often a clay swamp, and, seen from little lifted knolls of sand where the broom grows and the gorse, the Downs to the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the April day, O brighter than the golden broom, O blither than the thrushes' lay, O ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... comfort of wearing them. Now do tell me, candidly,—what impropriety is there in a woman showing her leg and foot, more than in another woman showing her hand and arm? The evil lies in your own thoughts. You see the Bavarian buy-a-broom girls passing before your windows every day, with petticoats cut three or four inches shorter than mine. You perceive no harm in that. 'It is the fashion of her country,' you cry. Custom banishes from our minds the idea of impropriety; and the naked savage of the woods is as modest as the closely ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... chosen well girl. The oracle guaranteed you a safe road to tread through life. As to the dust of which it speaks, it exists no doubt in a certain sense, but this hand wields the broom that will sweep it away. Solemnize your marriage in Alexandria as soon as you will, but then come to Rome, that is the only condition I impose. A thing I always have at heart is the introduction of new and worthy members into the class of Knights, for it is in that way alone ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "What is that broom handle for?" questioned the red-haired girl, wondering if she would be expected to crack the desperado ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... shelves; in short, in addition to a pallet bedstead and bed that were very rarely used, a most glorious muddle of the odds and ends and collections dear to the heart of a country lad, all of which were under an interdict not to be touched by the brush, broom, ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... old worn-out broom-end! She's of a good old family—quite good enough for his, you may take your oath! Why, my girl! the thing's not worth burning your fingers with. You've brought me here on a goose-errand. I'll go and have ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... stark, staring mad or not," whispered Susan, "but he's in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all the other cats, and they're nosing round, and I don't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can't think ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Park, about three or four feet high, with a covering of something between feathers and hair, of a dark brown colour, without wings, but in the place thereof two or three little branches coming down like sprigs of Spanish broom, long great legs, with feet only of three claws, and without a tail; I must make this description of it, and so may make others understand me. But when I am told that the name of it is CASSUARIS, I may then use that word to stand in discourse for all my complex ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... (PIGNUT. BROOM-HICKORY.) Leaflets 5 to 7 (usually 7), oblong-ovate, acuminate, serrate, smooth. Fruit pear-shaped to oval, somewhat rough, splitting regularly only about half-way. Nut large (1 1/2 to 2 in. long), brownish, somewhat obcordate, with a thick, hard shell, and poor, bitter ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... tailed it as it went past and hung on, kissing any bits he could reach. When the mother reappeared they were worrying the baby between them as a couple of hound puppies worry the hind leg of a cub. She beat them faithfully with a broom and hove both of them out into the wide wet world, and we all slept in a bog that night, and William was much abused and loathed. But that was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... notice of his inspection. One bluejacket was whitewashing the inboard part of the cable. The boatswain, believing he was not doing it as quickly as he might, passed a deprecating remark. The sailor in an instant seized a broom which lay near, and lifted it to strike the boatswain, but hesitated, and laid it down. He was put under arrest then and there, the charge against him being "Attempting to strike a superior officer." The boatswain demanded a court-martial, which was held later ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... been three weeks shut within my mew, A-painting for the great man, saints and saints And saints again. I could not paint all night— Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. {50} There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song— 'Flower o' the broom, Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! Flower o' the quince, I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? Flower o' the thyme'—and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,—three ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... 'spirit' standing over his grave. And no wonder if he walked; a decent 'ghost' would feel unhappy in such a 'yard,' then a receptacle for native impurities. We represented the case to Mr. Alexander Allan, who succeeded poor Captain O'Brien, and that active and energetic 'new broom' at once took steps to abate the nuisance. The 'ghost' has not been seen since its last home has been surrounded by a decent paling and inscribed 'Ci-git Thiebaut.' The same pious service was then done for one of our countrymen, Mr. Crawford ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... legal broom's a moral chimney-sweeper, And that's the reason he himself's so dirty; The endless soot[532] bestows a tint far deeper Than can be hid by altering his shirt; he Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... stone-pines, and little streams in all directions flowing over the brown sandstone. The country is like some parts of rural England—Devonshire or Sussex. Not only is the sandstone here, as there, broken into deep gullies; but the vegetation is much the same. Tufted spleenwort, primroses, and broom tangle the hedges under boughs of hornbeam and sweet-chestnut. This is the landscape which the two sixteenth-century novelists of Siena, Fortini and Sermini, so lovingly depicted in their tales. Of literature absorbing in itself the specific ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a broom: exaggeration indeed is a necessary part of his equipment. Garibaldi could not understand that Italy was not ripe for a simple religion of love for wife, child and neighbor, paying one's debts, and earning one's daily bread by honest toil. He could not appreciate ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... with somewhat of anxiety to get sundry things out of the way, which yet there seemed no other place for; a frying pan was set up in a corner; a broom took position by the fire place; a pail of water was lifted on the table; and divers knives and forks and platters hustled into a chimney cupboard. Little room enough when all was done. At last the woman caught up the sprawling baby and ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... the plain behind them, Peronnik and his steed found themselves in a narrow valley in which was a grove of trees, full of all sorts of sweet-smelling things—roses of every colour, yellow broom, pink honeysuckle—while above them all towered a wonderful scarlet pansy whose face bore a strange expression. This was the flower that laughs, and no one who looked at it could help laughing too. Peronnik's heart ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr. Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are forms and superstitions, then I institute the Order of the New Broom, and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... many such officials in France and elsewhere, he would have been content with an assurance that I had "nothing to declare" and the offer of my keys, but I was mistaken. This particular official was perhaps a "new broom." It may be that he had caught some smugglers not long before, and the excitement had not yet worn off. At all events, instead of allowing me to pass he ordered me to open ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... Explain why cobwebs do not fall from the ceiling; why dust clings to a wet broom; why a postage stamp does ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... and having seized her darling pig by the two ears, does, with the assistance of a policeman, who kindly takes him by the tail, extricate his porkship, to the great joy of herself. The animal scampers, grunting, up the alley, as Mr. Korner, in his shirt sleeves, throws his broom after him, and the policeman surlily says he wishes it ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... behind a hayrick. I was so startled that I turned to fly, and in my precipitancy tripped on a tussock and fell. Mr. Diggles came to my assistance, and, when he had helped me to my feet and brushed me down with a birch broom he was carrying, I could do nothing less than buy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... such hard fare began to sink under the accumulated difficulties of their journey. In this situation they were stopped by a wide and rapid though shallow river. Sir Isumbras, taking his eldest son in his arms, carried him over to the opposite bank and placing him under a bush of broom, directed him to dry his tears, and amuse himself by playing with the blossoms till his return with his brothers. But scarcely had he left the place when lion, starting from a neighbouring thicket, seized the child and bore him away into the recesses of the forest. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... putting down the cloth, before commencing, to prevent the carpet from getting soiled. In the country, a room would not require sweeping thoroughly like this more than twice a week; but the housemaid should go over it every morning with a dust-pan and broom, taking up every crumb and piece she may see. After the sweeping she should leave the room, shut the door, and proceed to lay the breakfast. Where there is neither footman nor parlour-maid kept, the duty of laying the breakfast-cloth rests on ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... aggressive. As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a broom ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... long rolls of snow, and one was crossed on his chest, holding a broom. An old hat of Mr. Bobbsey's on top of the snow man's head ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... tall awkward young countryman, with a cap set on one side of his head, was busying himself with sweeping off the floor of the piazza, but in a very leisurely manner; and between every two strokes of his broom he was casting long looks at Ellen, evidently wondering who she was, and what she could want there. Ellen saw it, and hoped he would ask her in words, for she could not answer his looks of curiosity but she was disappointed. As he reached ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... OF THE ROOM BY THE NURSE.—The furniture should be wiped off with a damp cloth and the floor swept with a broom covered with a damp cloth wrung out of a 1-20 (five per cent) carbolic acid solution; besides this the floor must be rubbed thoroughly with a damp cloth every second or third day. If the disease is contagious ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the yellow broom, The ancient poets sung it, And sweet it is on summer days To lie at ease ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... where he will find the young lady who lives there?" said she archly, jerking her head and a broom ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the septuagenarian "mother." The strangers were shown through the dormitories, the kitchen, the laundry, the garden, the community-room, where embroidery, painting and study diversify the labors of the broom and the dishcloth, and everywhere the same exquisite neatness struck the eye. Everything used in the house was of the coarsest description—the linen like sack-cloth, but speckless; the delf as thick ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... select some slender, elastic sapling; that of the hickory is the best, and is generally to be found in open woods—if not, some other kind will answer very well. It should be about five or six feet in length, (trimmed of its branches,) and in diameter need be no larger than an axe-handle or a broom-stick. When this is decided, some spot about five feet distant from the sapling should then be selected. The hatchet and knife will now come into excellent use, in cutting the sticks for the little inclosure ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... pillars within had acquired, by time, a sombre hue, which accorded with the architecture; and the gloom increased its dimensions to the eye by hiding its parts; but now it all bursts on the view at once, and the sublimity has vanished before the brush and broom; for it has been white-washed and scraped till it has become as bright and neat as the pots and pans in a notable house-wife's kitchen—yes; the very spurs on the recumbent knights were deprived of their venerable rust, to give a striking proof that a love of order in trifles, and taste for proportion ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... over dry ground? Why did she go only through the water? The horseman meanwhile squatted down among the broom, rested his gun upon his knee, made sure that it was cocked and that the powder had not fallen from the pan, and noiselessly crouched down, gazing after the retreating steed, as she reached the opposite bank. Suddenly she drew in her tail, bristled her mane, pricked up her ears. Her eyes ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... and looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, which she had ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... worried her; I could see they did. She never said any thing; but she would get up, take up the hat, brush the table with her handkerchief, and hang the hat in its right place, or send the house-girl with the broom after his ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... when it contains and supports great clouds, and large blue spaces are seen between them. On the hillsides the fields here and there are yellow and the corn is in sheaves. The birds are mostly dumb, the glory of the furze and broom has passed, but the heather is in flower. The trees are dark, and even sombre, and, where they are in masses, look as if they were in solemn consultation. A fore-feeling of the end of summer steals upon me. Why ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... nature. Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: 'Well,' says Math, 'we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect.' Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... which have most enriched and diversified both flowers and fruits. The dodders and mistletoes rob juices from the stem and branches of their unfortunate hosts; more numerous still are the unbidden guests that fasten themselves upon the roots of their prey. The broom-rape, a comparatively recent immigrant from Europe, lays hold of the roots of thyme in preference to other place of entertainment; the Yellow Rattle, the Lousewort, and many more attach themselves to the roots of grasses—frequently with ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... "Then I took my broom and swept the ground. I had not been hired as one of the camp sweepers, and so could move about and sweep where I chose. No one ever asked me any questions. The soldiers heeded me no more than if I had been ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... when Sherman with ten thousand of his destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department headquarters in that State capital; ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... the word, so strong and baleful, To make it what it was before! There it skips with pail on pailful— Would thou wert a broom once more! Still new streams he scatters, Round and ever round me— Oh, a hundred waters Rushing in have bound me! No—no longer Can I bear it. No, I swear it! Gifts and graces! Woe is me, my fears grow stronger, Look what grinnings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... dawned upon him that there were novel disproportions in the world. "Lord sakes," he cried, sitting up and looking animated for the first time, "but them's mortal great thissels growing out there on the bank by that broom. If so be they be thissels? Or 'ave I been forgetting?" But they were thistles, and what he took for tall bushes of broom was the new grass, and amidst these things a company of British soldiers—red-coated as ever—was skirmishing in accordance with the directions of the drill book ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the dishes now; and as she took the broom in hand to begin sweeping out the kitchen, Tim gave a frightened growl, and fled ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... takes off one of my great crimes. You know I have deprived the court of the privilege of living in the palace, and I have given them wherewith to find lodgings in the city. Here go the ladies with their bundles under their arms, and the lord high-steward has a broom sweeping after them as they go. This charming individual in the corner with a hunting-whip, is myself. And here is the pith of the joke. 'Rooms to let here. Inquire of the proprietor on the first floor.' [Footnote: Hubner, i., p. 190.] What do ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... tail between his legs and crept through the doorway, keeping one eye on the broom that Mrs. Green held in her hand. And as soon as he was safely outside he gave two or three sharp yelps, telling Miss Kitty Cat that he would watch for her the very first time she set foot ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... very long room, as plain and even sordid as the drawing-room was inviting: the unpapered walls were a cold drab, and wanted washing; there was a thick cobweb up in one corner, and from the ceiling hung the tail of another, which the housemaid's broom had scotched not killed: that side of the room they entered by was all books. The servant said, "Stay here a moment, sir, and I'll send her to you." With this he retired into the drawing-room, closing the door softly after him: once closed it became invisible; it fitted like wax, and left ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... be more and more careful. A false blow with pick or chisel might destroy irreparably some important bony structure. Bit by bit he traces out the position and lay of the bones, working now mostly with awl and whisk-broom, uncovering the more massive portions, blocking out the delicate bones in the rock, soaking the exposed surfaces repeatedly with thin "gum" (mucilage) or shellac, channeling around and between the bones until they stand out on little pedestals above the quarry floor. Then, after the gum or shellac ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... be accounted for when the form of early mound-dwellings is taken into consideration, and when it is remembered that among savage tribes there are often taboos connected with the door, the two-faced god being essentially a deity of the door. Besides this the fertility rites connected with the broom should be taken into account. The second should be compared with similar accounts of transformation into animals among the cults of other nations. Mr. A. B. Cook's comment on the Greek ritual applies quite as well ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... times are coming!" cried Simon the cobbler, who was close by, with his coarse laugh. "The cardinal took a girl from the streets for the Queen of France; but wait a little and we shall see the time when she will have to sweep the streets with a broom, that the noble people may ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... dealing with souls. My lessons on those lines have thus far been dearly purchased; for I have ignorantly, zealously, made many mistakes, thus for the time being, hindered, more than aided their spiritual progress. To illustrate: A janitor's child has a toy broom. Papa has just swept one part of the hall and is about to remove the accumulated dust. "Papa, let me help you," and forthwith the child sweeps a large portion of the dust over the already cleaned floor. Papa sighs, sadly smiles, says ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... between the rocky wall which divided the island, and a chain of sandy hills, which hid the sea and sheltered the valley from the wind. Fritz and I ascended one of these hills, on which a few pines and broom were growing, and perceived beyond them a barren tract, stretching to the sea, where the coral reefs rose to the level of the water, and appeared to extend far into the sea. Any navigators, sailing along ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a "fender," a tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... basement, and received such sweeping and dusting and polishing, such scouring and scrubbing, that it was a marvel Miss Hepsy was not exhausted at the end of it. She had just turned out the parlour chairs into the lobby, and was busy with broom and dust-pan, sweeping up invisible dust, when Ebenezer brought her Mr. Goldthwaite's letter. So much did it upset her, that he had to depart without his glass of cider, for she took no more notice of him than if he had been one of the pillars at the door. It was eleven o'clock almost; ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... for instance, a smooth top coat, the consistency of the two kinds of concrete should be alike, and the top coat should be applied almost immediately after the bottom layer is put in place. Where concrete is used to hold water, a coat of neat cement should always be put on with a broom or a whitewash brush, mixing the neat cement with water in a pail, and it does no harm to go over the surface three or four times, the object being to thoroughly close the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... Piroo that he struck the man; but the sweeper, who was generally accustomed to winding up his performance by a grand broom fight with some brother of the same craft, was quite ready for an affair that could only increase his popularity. Catching up his jharroo, or broom, he began to shower blows upon the unfortunate Piroo, yet never ceasing to dance round him so grotesquely ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... was used to, were still advantages. The halls were warmed by a furnace, and she came to like the little logs burning in her rooms. In the care of her own fire, she went back to the simple time of her life in the country, and chose to kindle it herself when it died out, with the fagots of broom that blazed up ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the broom in a corner.] 'Tis no end to the vexation. But she'll have to wait on herself. I've no time to play the dancing bear. And that ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... and college lads in boating costume. It was wonderful how much these holiday makers were willing to do for the entertainment of the passing travelers. A favorite pastime in this peaceful region was the broom drill, and its execution gave an operatic character to the voyage. When the steamer approaches, a band of young ladies in military ranks, clad in light marching costume, each with a broom in place of a musket, descend to the landing and delight the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... II.'s reign in 1154 to the end of Richard III.'s on Bosworth Field in 1458. The name was adopted by Geoffrey of Anjou, the husband of Matilda, the daughter of Henry I., whose badge was a sprig of broom (which the name denotes), and which he wore in his bonnet as descended from the Earl of Anjou, who was by way of penance scourged with twigs ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Downing Street, might be invaluable! One noble man, at once of natural wisdom and practical experience; one Intellect still really human, and not red-tapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there in that dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules-like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, and say as with a fiat, "Here shall be truth, and real work, and talent to do it henceforth; I will seek for able men to work here, as for the elixir of life to this poor place ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... they chew betelnut and smoke tobacco, and although intoxicants are forbidden, they tap the toddy palm and drink of its easily fermented juice. Where metal finds its way into domestic utensils it is usually in the form of tin water-bottles and ewers. Every native possesses a sweeping broom, sleeping mats, coarse or fine, and bamboo or grass baskets. Most families use an iron pan for cooking, with a half cocoa-nut shell for a ladle. A large nut shell filled with palm-oil, and containing a pith wick, is the ordinary Malay lamp. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... pointed out Brutus to Mme. de Noriolis. Brutus was there, quite near us, untied, peacefully crunching little tufts of broom. ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... hospitalized with a broken back; Dr. Castle, a broken leg; Dr. Angelillo, Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Maranos and four lab technicians severely burned; Dr. Grossblatt and two assistants, badly clawed; Dr. Cahill, clawed and burned; and no one knows what's wrong with Dr. Zimmerman. He's locked himself in the broom closet and refuses to come out. Twelve other people will be out a day or two with minor injuries, including your secretary who was pursued by Elvira, the orangutan, and is now being ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... far, that I begged my Friend Sir ROGER to go with me into her Hovel, which stood in a solitary Corner under the side of the Wood. Upon our first entering Sir ROGER winked to me, and pointed at something that stood behind the Door, which, upon looking that Way, I found to be an old Broom-staff. At the same time he whispered me in the Ear to take notice of a Tabby Cat that sat in the Chimney-Corner, which, as the old Knight told me, lay under as bad a Report as Moll White her self; for besides that Moll is said often to accompany ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of grateful at that, and sticks out a soft, lady-like paw for me to shake. Say, that wasn't such a slow play, either! He was too groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near winnin' me right there. I sets Swifty to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a glass of ice-water, and in a minute or so ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... and arrange the dining room. It came awkward to me at first, but, after the madam told me how, I soon learned to do it satisfactorily. Then I had to wait on the table, sweep the large yard every morning with a brush broom and go for the mail once a week. I used to get very tired, for I was young and consequently not strong. Aside from these things which came regularly, I had to help the madam in warping the cloth. I dreaded this work, for I always got my ears boxed if I ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... the old woman and the niece came in,—the latter with a head not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom,—and testified surprise at sight of me and the fire. To whom I imparted how my uncle had come in the night and was then asleep, and how the breakfast preparations were to be modified accordingly. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... taken the cat on his lap, and in a chair tipped back against the wall, with a broom splint between his teeth, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... let the black steed pass, And syne she let the brown, And then she flew to the milk-white steed, And pulled the rider down: Syne out then sang the queen o' the fairies, Frae midst a bank of broom, She that has won him, young Tamlane, Has ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... his soul in uneasiness and fear. But she rose to a real outburst of house-work, turning him away as she shoved the furniture aside to her broom. He stood hanging miserable near. He wanted her back. Dread, and desire for her to stay with him, and shame at his own dependence on her drove him to anger. He began to lose his head. The wonder was going to pass away again. All the love, the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... name, and then noticed for the first time that both father and son wore in their velvet caps a short dry sprig of the broom-plant. He sprang to the ground and came forward on foot, bareheaded, and stood beside the Duke's ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... drums. Twice on such a day, once the day before, thrice the next day, till by and by it was the common thing. High-stepping childhood, with laths and broom-handles at shoulder, was not fated, as in the insipid days of peace, to find, on running to the corner, its high hopes mocked by a wagon of empty barrels rumbling over the cobble-stones. No; it was the Washington ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... hold the position of a gentleman. I have always done so. I do so still. It is the custom of this place that each of the inmates of a cell shall take his morning's turn of sweeping it out. I occupy a cell with a bricklayer and a sweep, but they never offer me the broom!' When a friend reproached him with the murder of Helen Abercrombie he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Yes; it was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very thick ankles.'—Pen, Pencil ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a broom. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and disdainful, and treated her young husband in the most contemptuous way; and Geoffrey avoided her in return, spending most of his time in hunting in the woods, where he used to wear the spray of broom that became the cognizance of his house, and caused their surname of Plantagenet. Perhaps it was in contrast to his wife's haughtiness that he chose to adopt this plant, considered as the emblem of humility, and reminding her ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the students because "every one of them has a mother"; now there is a red-haired shopkeeper sitting in it, a very stolid man who drinks tea from a copper teapot. And here are the gloomy gates of the University, which have long needed doing up; I see the bored porter in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow.... On a boy coming fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression. Altogether the dilapidated condition ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sofa with quick movements. She rose and gazed at him in bewilderment; the broom fell from her hand and she swayed to and fro. Pelle caught her, and she leaned inert and helpless against him, and remained thus for a considerable time, pale and with closed eyes. When at last he turned her inanimate face toward him and kissed, it, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared from the household broom, a gossamer arena of two years' standing, which makes a dense span of a length of about two feet from a clump of dried hydrangea blossoms to the sill of a transom-window, and which, of course, somewhere in its dusty spread, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... and putting out the fire, and then the worst had passed. The earth around was on fire in spots, house and mill were gone, leaves, brush, and logs were swept clean away as if shaved off and swept with a broom, and nothing but soot and ashes ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... more in the outskirts of the woods, and the time comes for others besides the squire's guests to take their education in hand, and teach pheasants at least that they are no native British birds. These are a wild set, living scattered about the wild country; turf-cutters, broom-makers, squatters, with indefinite occupations, and nameless habits, a race hated of keepers and constables. These have increased and flourished of late years; and, notwithstanding the imprisonments and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... foreigner is as bigoted to his original dinginess and discomfort, as the Turk to the Koran. Nothing but fear or force ever changes him. The French invasions were desperate things, but they swept away a prodigious quantity of the cobwebs which grow over the heads of nations who will not use the broom for themselves. Feudalities and follies a thousand years old were trampled down by the foot of the conscript; and the only glimpses of common-sense which have visited three-fourths of Europe in our day, were let in through chinks made by the French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Broom," said the Hatter. "There's been another election. Evidently the Democrats won, as there goes the Donkey, waving his ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Mary leaned forward to reach for the turkey-wing hanging beside the tongs. There had always been a turkey-wing beside her Grandmother Ware's fireplace. That is why Mary insisted on using one now instead of a modern hearth-broom. It suggested so pleasantly the housewifely thrift and cleanliness of an earlier generation which she loved to copy. She had prepared this wing herself, stretching and drying it under a heavy weight, and binding the quill ends into a handle with a piece ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hands atop her broom in a solemn and hieratic gesture; her face was full of lines, as though time had autographed it many times over ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... just been delighted with Mrs. Ward's article. She has swept away the greater part of Wace's sophistries as a dexterous and strong-wristed housemaid sweeps away cobwebs with her broom, and saved a lot ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... "I'll keep it shut." Her curiosity was excited. She took a book and tried to read, but the letters danced up and down before her eyes, and she couldn't help listening. Bridget was making a most ostentatious noise with her broom, but through it all, Katy seemed to hear other sounds—feet on the stairs, doors opening and shutting—once, a stifled giggle. How queer ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... "Lawdy, no'm. De broom wus de law!" Then she laughed. "Jus' say you wanner be married and de couple git together 'fore witnesses and step ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... explaining the identity of the Sicily Flora with that of South Italy, by its having been wholly upraised within the recent period; and, so I believe, with mountain-chains separating floras. I do not remember Humboldt's fact about the heath regions. Very curious the case of the broom; I can tell you something analogous on a small scale. My father, when he built his house, sowed many broom-seeds on a wild bank, which did not come up, owing, as it was thought, to much earth having been thrown over them. About thirty-five ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... cloth, a white bodice and kirtle, a yellow silk turban wound low over her brown curls, and long coral pendants in her ears. Her ears had been pierced against a piece of cork by her great-aunt when she was seven years old. In those germless days she had worn bits of broom-straw, plucked from the common sweeping-broom, in the lobes until the holes were healed and ready for little ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... sniper myself, so I sent Jenks to chase a broom and picked my own men for this job that mattered. I'd no sooner done it than Ruggles marched up and asked to be made one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... use, dame Peake; they won't be gammon'd, take notice. If you have any old broom-handles, throw 'em out directly, and if not, throw all the brooms you have in the house out of window—throw out all your sticks—throw Peake out. I'm for the gown, take notice. Down with the town! down ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle |
