"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fled Dizzily. Sure some God was in these things! And the holy women back to those strange springs Returned, that God had sent them when the day Dawned, on the upper heights; and washed away The stain of battle. And those girdling snakes Hissed out to lap the waterdrops from cheeks And hair and breast. Therefore I counsel thee O King, receive this Spirit, whoe'er he be, To Thebes in glory. Greatness manifold Is all about him; and the tale is told That this is he who first ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... beach the other day, watching the waves lap toward her, sat a woman, cultured, very beautiful and wise in woman's way and among the fairest and the best of all earth can produce. There are many such as she. Barely longer ago than the other day, as time is counted, a rugged man, gentle as resolute and noble, became ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of three sheets, of such thickness as to give the required factor of safety under the maximum pressure for which the boiler is constructed. The circular seams are ordinarily single lap riveted though these may be double lap riveted to meet certain requirements of pressure or of specifications. The longitudinal seams are properly proportioned butt and strap or lap riveted joints dependent upon the pressure ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... during the last five or six years, and he looked like a veritable mountain of flesh overlaid with rolls of fat. And she noticed that he must have fallen asleep while smoking, for his pipe—a short black pipe—had fallen into his lap. Then she stood still, stupefied with amazement—the burning tobacco had been scattered in the fall, and the cloth of the trousers had caught fire, and through a hole in the stuff, as large already as a hundred-sous piece, she saw the bare thigh, whence ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the shelter-house, everybody having gone to bed—Miss Patty, the Van Alstynes and myself. The Dickys were on good terms again, for a wonder, and when we went in they were in front of the fire, she on a box and he at her feet, with his head buried in her lap. He didn't even look up ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... there, and we are here; we will slay every foe and every attacker (with the power got from thee). Go thou now to Mother Earth, who is wide opened, favorable, a wool-soft maiden to the good man; may she guard thee from the lap of destruction. Open, O earth, be not oppressive to him; let him enter easily; may he fasten close to thee. Cover him like a mother, who wraps her child in her garment. Roomy and firm be the earth, supported by a thousand pillars; from this time on thou (man) ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... contentment can be introduced into the human soul. If the Divine law could be altered so that it should agree with man's sinful inclination, he could be happy in sin. The commandment having become like his own heart, there would, of course, be no conflict between the two, and he might sin on forever and lap himself in Elysium. And undoubtedly there are thousands of luxurious and guilty men, who, if they could, like the Eastern Semiramis, would make lust and law alike in their decree;[1] would transmute the law of holiness into a law ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... moors, my last walk in the garden, and round the house; I had fed, with her, our pet pigeons for the last time—the pretty creatures that we had tamed to peck their food from our hands: I had given a farewell stroke to all their silky backs as they crowded in my lap. I had tenderly kissed my own peculiar favourites, the pair of snow-white fantails; I had played my last tune on the old familiar piano, and sung my last song to papa: not the last, I hoped, but the last for what appeared to me a very long time. And, perhaps, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... fairies are heard moaning and rattling at the window boards, the chimney-head, and the door. "In the name o' God, bring back the bairn," she exclaims. In a moment up flew the window, the human child was laid unharmed on the mother's lap, while its guilty substitute flew up the chimney with ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... do assure you, and you will see finer things than most children will tonight. Steady, now, and do just as I tell you, and don't say one word whatever you see," answered Nursey, quite quivering with excitement as she patted a large box in her lap, and nodded and ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... had, but, to use an illustration of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,—a great feat, only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom, and, with the fool in "Lear," forces you, like a child, to smile through warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... long a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That's born into the world ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the firelight a girl leaned forward, her eyes fastened upon a drawing she held in her lap. One could see only vague outlines. The light danced over the figure of the girl, her bright, reddish-gold hair, cut short and held in place with an amber comb, her slender shoulders, the unconsciously graceful poise ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... place had sought him by appointment. He became attorney-general when Aaron Burr gave it up for the United States Senate; and a year later, by the casting vote of Governor Clinton, the Council made him a Supreme Court judge. In 1801 the chief-justiceship dropped into his lap when Livingston went to France and Lansing became chancellor, just as the chancellorship would probably have come to him had Lansing continued a candidate for governor. In 1803 he wanted to be mayor of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... pale,—it was wan—it was sickly. There was a purplish shadow under her soft, dark eyes, which I had not observed before, and her figure looked thin and drooping. I gazed into the sad, loving depths of her eyes, till mine were blinded with tears, when throwing my arms across her lap, I laid my face upon them, and wept and sobbed as if the doom of the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... immediately to the point—that we are all inclined to condone an offense against property in the case of a man whose motive is the worthy one of providing the means of a "decent" manner of life for his wife and children. If it is added that the wife has been "nurtured in the lap of luxury," that is accepted as an additional extenuating circumstance. That is to say, we are prone to condone such an offense where its aim is the honorific one of enabling the offender's wife to perform for him such an amount of vicarious consumption of time and substance as is demanded by the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... will never cease," cried Mrs. Rout joyously at the old lady in her armchair by the fire. Mr. Rout's mother moved slightly, her withered hands lying in black half-mittens on her lap. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... suppressed breath. But when taking a softer tone, love, affection, happiness inspired the theme, and Luke sought to paint the bliss that should be theirs in his new estate; when he would throw his fortune into her lap, his titles at her feet, and bid her wear them with him; when, with ennobled hand and unchanged heart, he would fulfil the troth plighted in his outcast days; in lieu of tender, grateful acquiescence, the features of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... course, but he might have shown some compunction, which he utterly failed to do. The little creature hopped away on three feet, and Mrs. Dallas, with pretty foreign words of pity, followed it and brought it to the fireside where she sat down with it on her lap, and stroked and soothed it, laying the wounded little paw against her lips and making, what seemed to Noel, munificent atonement for the injury ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... boy's zealous efforts, the intense cold had taken such hold of the poor man that he was almost unconscious. The warmth of the bearskin, however, restored him a little, and Cheenbuk, sitting down beside him, took his head upon his lap, and tried to shelter him from the storm, which had burst forth and was raging furiously by that time—fine snow filling the atmosphere, while the wind drove it in huge volumes ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... ever so many beautiful things up in the sky, mother!" said little Eddie, as he sat in his mother's lap, leaning his head ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... breakfast, no Father was there—only Mother, with tear-swollen eyes, who tried to smile at Billikins, and could not. He felt in his tender little heart that something was wrong, and so he just climbed on Mother's lap, and put both his arms round her neck. Mother pressed him tightly ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... almost a note of anguish in Mrs. MacNairn's answer, even though her voice was very low. I involuntarily turned my head to look at her, though of course it was too dark to see her face. I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung together in her lap. ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Duchess of Argyle and Lord Vere. The Duchess, who always talks of puss and pug, and who, having lost her memory, forgets how often she tells the same story, had tired the company at Dorset-house with the repetition of the same story; when the Duke's spaniel reached up into her lap, and placed his nose most critically: "See," said she, "see, how fond all creatures are of me." Lord Vere, who was at cards, and could not attend to them for her gossiping, said peevishly, without turning round or seeing where the dog was, "I suppose he smells PUSS." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... fairly inconspicuous. Some of the new rags from cotton or woolen mills come in pieces from a quarter to a half-yard in length and the usual width of the cloth. These can be sewed together on the sewing machine, lapping and basting them before sewing. They should lap from a quarter to a half inch and have two sewings, one at either edge of the lap. If sewed in this way they can afterward be torn into strips, using the scissors to cut across seams. It can be performed very speedily when one is accustomed ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... the summer, shone with gladness, as Nature walked on bank and brae, in maiden pride, spreading and showing her new flowery mantle to the sun. The very airs that stirred the glittering trees were soft and genial as the breath of life; and the leaves of the aspine seemed to lap the sunshine like the tongues of young and happy creatures that delight ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and pallid countenance. She was neatly dressed in figured dimity, with a bright ribbon at her throat. A pair of expressive brown eyes regarded Mary Louise with questioning earnestness. Over her lap lay a coverlet; her slender white fingers rested upon the broad ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... so that the Poet, when a few minutes later he woke, found himself lying with his head in her lap. She spoke first, in an imperative tone: "You are well now. Your head does not ache. You are ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... sad triers of a carver's powers and temper, and, indeed, sometimes of the good humour of those in the neighbourhood of the carver; for a sudden tilt of the dish may eventuate in the placing a quantity of the gravy in the lap of the right or left-hand supporter of the host. We will endeavour to assist those who are unacquainted with the "gentle art of carving," and also those who are but slightly acquainted with it, by simply describing the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... crossing his arms on his chest, began to walk about the pavilion. She caught up her hair, twisted it hastily into a knot, and secured it with her comb. As she did so, a small cluster of double violets dropped into her lap. She had gathered them the preceding afternoon, had carried them as an offering to Elsie, who insisted that she should wear them in her hair, "they looked so bonnie just behind the little roguish ear." ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... world will suck you down; but do not be all vinegar, or the world will spit you out. There is a medium in all things; only blockheads go to extremes. We need not be all rock or all sand, all iron or all wax. We should neither fawn upon every body like silly lap-dogs, nor fly at all persons like surly mastiffs. Blacks and whites go together to make up a world, and hence, on the point of temper, we have all sorts of people to deal with. Some are as easy as an old shoe, but they are hardly ever worth more than the other ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... said not a word. She merely sat with her hands in the lap of her spotted pale-blue dress, faintly ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... in a chair with his brawny arms folded behind his head and his eyes half closed. Harrigan, tilted back hi a chair, rested his feet on the edge of a small table and swept the guitar which lay on his lap. In the midst of a high note he saw the ominous pair standing in the door, and the music died abruptly on ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... little old man sobbed, as he stumbled towards her chair and fell to his knees before her, burying his face in her lap. ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... a dazzling toilet scarcely authorized by the place and her isolation; before her, mounted on a chair, trembled a tiny lap-dog, which she stroked from time to time with her beautiful hands. After convincing himself that he was not mistaken, la Peyrade was about to dart upon that celestial vision, when he was forestalled by a dandy of the most triumphant type. Without throwing aside his cigar, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the steps and approached a group of people sitting under a large copper-beech tree. A still, hot summer morning does not incline the mind or the body to activity, and all of them had sunk into attitudes of ease. Mrs. Lane's work was reposing in her lap; her sister, Miss Jane Chambers, had ceased the pretense of reading; the Rector was enjoying what he kept assuring himself was only just five minutes' peace before he crossed over to his parsonage and his sermon; Lady Claudia Territon and Miss Katharine Bernard were each in possession of a wicker ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... a very hot day in July, and she fell asleep on a seat under a tree with her glass ball in her lap; she had been staring at it, I suppose. Any way she slept on, till the sun went round and shone full on the ball; and just as he, Mr. Jephson, that is, came into the gate, the glass ball began to act like a burning glass and her skirt began to smoke. Well, he waited a bit, I think, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... I saw God's sun pursuing His westward course, to ocean's lap of gold; And yet at morn the East he was renewing With wide-spread, rosy tints, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... insensible into the queen-mother's apartments. When she opened her eyes, her head-more like a marble piece of sculpture than a living head—was resting on the blind queen's lap, she felt Atossa's warm kisses on her forehead, and Cambyses, who had obeyed his mother's call, was standing at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no perfume except in M. de Lamartine's verses. Let us fix our attention on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down, and the goat bending its pliant branches as it browses on the foliage. Here is a very small detail in the ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to help our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a naturalist who will answer for us the questions suggested by this simple spectacle. And what have we now before us? The various relations of the animal's organization to the vegetables on which ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... buttons, sounded his bugle loudly. As they rolled by farmhouses, heads would appear curiously at the windows, while children ran out to watch that important event,—the passing of the daily coach. One rosy-cheeked girl in a blue pinafore tossed a bunch of yellow cowslips up into Mrs. Pitt's lap, calling out, "Cowslips, lady; thank ye!" When a sixpence was thrown down to her, she smiled, courtesied primly, and then disappeared into the nearest cottage,—one of plaster and ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... because she wanted them; at such times as she intended to; and that she had the boy first and five years the older, so that he could look after his sister when they went into company. Also she walked up and sat upon Adam's lap whenever she chose, ruffled his hair, pulled his ears, and kissed him squarely on the mouth, with every appearance of having help, while the dance on the front porch with her son or daughter was of daily occurrence. And anything funnier than Agatha, prim ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... track of a horse and cart to the stable and found Gideon's old mare at her hitching-post; the cart was empty, the muddy lap-robe dragging over the wheel. At the post-office they told me Gideon had started for the mine an hour and a half ago. 'Hasn't he got out there with that telegram yet?' they added. From the telegraph office, where they knew Gideon's hours, they had sent a message ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... a bawbee for the sense of your words, Tim," answered Janet; and she hastened herself and flung the letter into Christina's lap, saying:— ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... it, perhaps in resentment of Johnson's having talked with some disgust of his ugliness, which one would think a PHILOSOPHER would not mind. Dean Marlay wittily observed, 'A lady may be vain, when she can turn a wolf-dog into a lap-dog.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... he came to a good stopping-place in his book; the two men had got to quarrelling, and his interest flagged a little. He pushed Mr. Corkle off his lap and got up yawning and went to ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... dictatorial. Observe too to what lengths of liberty and equality the relations between the sexes are carried. You would hardly believe how much freer domestic animals are there than elsewhere. It is proverbial that little lap-dogs are on the same footing as their mistresses, or as horses and asses; they walk about with their noses in the air and ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... knee-deep in water. By putting your rod over your right arm, and fixing the butt into your pocket, it may, however, be done; the line takes care of itself, and the flies will be below you somewhere out of danger. There must have been down there a 10-in. sea trout at the very lap of the water on the stones—perhaps it had followed the fly in from the stream; anyhow, there it was on the Killer when I had lighted the pipe, and I gave it freedom, without including it in the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the paper, and went nearer to the light in order to see better. Marie Antoinette leaned forward, folded both hands in her lap, and looked at Campan with an expression ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... silent; and with a suffused face, ran to his nurse. Whilst in her lap, he poured out his morning orison. It was a simple but affecting request. Julia knelt also; and Alice, laying a hand on each, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to come out in December, but there were times when the Doctor wondered if she was really as keen about it as she pretended to be. He found her once or twice, her usually active hands idle in her lap, and a pensive droop to her ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... such things?" she went on, letting the hands that held the paper drop into her lap helplessly. "You don't look bad. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... painter, and architectural labors were put upon him, so that as a sculptor we have no more works of his to mention except an unfinished group which was in his studio at the time of his death. It represents the dead Christ upon his mother's lap, with Joseph of Arimathea standing by. This group is now in the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore, or the Cathedral of Florence. The mausoleum of Julius II. caused Michael Angelo and others so much trouble and vexation that the whole affair ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... at the little table and looked across it at his Cousin Alicia, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very much absorbed by its pages. The bright brunette complexion had lost its glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady's manner was suppressed—on account of her father's illness, no ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... is!" and the excited boy thrust one hand into his pocket and triumphantly pulled out the small buckskin bag; and, swiftly turning the bag bottom side up, dumped its contents into his mother's lap; and the next moment, the two women and the two girls were as excitedly examining the big nugget and the rude skin map as ever they had been examined ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... lady's hands did not fall at her sides, but shifted about on her lap as if they did not belong to her. Her wandering, senseless eyes stopped their movements, and in them suddenly appeared an expression of deep meaning. The old princess made a terrible, superhuman effort to recover her presence of mind and regain ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Panchu came back, his ascetic fervour considerably worn off. His eldest boy and girl nestled up to him, crying: "Where have you been all this time, father?" His youngest boy filled his lap; his second girl leant over his back with her arms around his neck; and they all wept together. "O sir!" sobbed Panchu, at length, to my master. "I have not the power to give these little ones enough to eat—I am not free to run away from them. What has been my sin that I should ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... behind his glasses, and moaned a little. Malone waited with his hands tense in his lap. At last Kettleman said, "It's on West Street, near Chambers. That's downtown." He gave Malone an address. "That's where it is," he said. "But you won't do anything to the boys, will you? They're basically good boys. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... until she could espy The wan, grey river lap the leaden bank Wherefrom there sprouted sparsely sedges rank, And there the road had end in that sad boat Wherein the dead men unto Minos float; There stood the ferryman, who now, seeing her, said, "O living soul, that ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... was grave and full of pride, he was gay and fond of music; and although there was no music to me equal to the tom-tom, yet I did not always wish for excitement. I often was melancholy, and then I liked to lay my head in the lap of one of my wives, under the shady forest behind my house, and listen to his soft music. At last he went to a town near us where his father lived, and as he departed I gave him gold-dust. He had been sent to my father to be formed into a warrior, but he had no strength of body, and he had no soul; ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sitting at her parlour window, with the rescued child on my lap, whom I could not bear for a moment out of my sight, watching the smoking brands that had once composed my home, and sadly pondering over our untoward destiny, when Mrs. —-'s servant told me that a gentleman wanted to ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... position till, instead of her full face, her profile was turned toward him. Looking away toward the paddock that lay brilliant in sunshine on the skirts of the apple orchard, she asked in low slow tones, twisting her hands in her lap: ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... forgetting all about the fruit which we had started to seek, we re-entered the boat and set out upon our return to Eden, which we reached shortly before sunset. As we worked our way back through the winding channels Billy beguiled the time by taking our newest acquisition upon his lap and endeavouring to free it from the clinging tangle of web in which it had enveloped itself, and so agreeable did the operation appear to be to the animal that it lay quite passive, permitting itself to be handled freely; and eventually, to Billy's ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... carries the courds and whey on their head. Surly she had a gay burden; and never rested till she came to that place wheir its standing even now. They talk also that she brought the 5 pillars on which its erected till above a mans hight in hir lap wt hir. I mocking at this fable, I fell in inquiry whence it might have come their, but could get no information; only it seimed probable to me that it might have bein found in the river and brought their. On the top of this stone I monted, and metted[107] it ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... youthful maiden, When thou weepest, weep thou sorely; 360 If thou weepest not yet freely, Thou shalt weep when thou returnest, When to mother's house thou comest, And thou find'st thy aged mother Suffocated in the cowshed, In her dying lap a straw-sheaf. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... schoolboy: and they are not less to man when arrived at years of discretion. It is good for us to have some regular and stated occupation. Man may be practically too free; this is frequently the case with those who have been nurtured in the lap of opulence and luxury. We were sent into the world under the condition, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." And those who, by the artificial institutions of society, are discharged from ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... finish the first piece of work, how will it be with the others? I came forth to seek a king's daughter who is said to dwell here, but I have not found her, and I will go farther." "Stay here," said the maiden, "I will help thee out of thy difficulty. Thou art tired, lay thy head in my lap, and sleep. When thou awakest again, thy work will be done." The drummer did not need to be told that twice. As soon as his eyes were shut, she turned a wishing-ring and said, "Rise, water. Fishes, come out." Instantly the water rose on high like a white mist, and moved away ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... en—va!" and I said it, not once, but again and again, each time more emphatically than before. Nobody paid the slightest attention, however, except, perhaps to find an extra spice of pleasure in tormenting me. If I had been a yapping miniature lap-dog, with teeth only pour faire rire, I could not have been treated with greater disdain by the crowd. I glanced hastily round to see if Sir Samuel had not taken alarm; but, sitting beside his wife in the big crystal cage, he seemed blissfully unconscious of danger to his splendid Aigle. Instead, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a petition as that. I know all you have done, and yet I ask you now, in remembrance of the boyish love that bound you and my father together, to lessen her bodily anguish by the sacrifice of a little more; that she, nursed in the lap of luxury, may not pass from life with starvation as her companion. My brother's gift is expended; and during the last three weeks I have earned but twelve shillings; my pupils are out of town. Do, for ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... dear!" they cried, in their own language, of course, and the two smallest hid their faces down in their father's lap and cried salty tears on his beautiful blue robe. But he didn't seem ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... work-houses. I have seen some two hundred of them on a winter's evening, when the frost has sharply bound up the lakes in the parks and the fountains in Trafalgar Square, shivering in semi-nudity on the bare and bitter pavement, waiting for admission. The houses of the rich—where lap-dogs were fed on hot and savory steaks, or even on daintier poultry—were standing around, and the heavens were as brass to the wails of the wretched crowd. I have been fairly staggered at such sights. I remember that one occasion a man dropped dead in the street where I was, while on his way ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tell much," she said. "We went a gallop nearly all the way, and got there just as the doctor rode up. There was a woman sitting on the ground with the lady's head in her lap. The doctor poured something into her mouth, but all that I heard was, 'She is not dead.' Then I was led off by a man to a little distance. After awhile she was taken to the carriage, and we came home ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... flowers are not so sweet—they remind me of my child's grave; the sea does not look the same—it reminds me of my boy!" and she rocked herself backwards and forwards for some time, while Valmai stroked with tender white fingers the hard, wrinkled hand which rested on her lap. "Well, indeed," said the old woman at last, "there's enough of my sorrows; let us get on to the happy time when your little life began, you and your twin sister. When you were washed and dressed and laid sleeping together in the same cradle, no one could tell ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... crept into her arms, feeling that no harm could come to her in such loving shelter. It was long before she was calm enough to tell all that had happened, but at length sitting by her mother's side with her head on her lap, she related what ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... the child. Once he despaired, but, looking up, caught a momentary glint of steel in Nancy's eyes. His very fear that she might detect his weakness compelled him to continue. For ten hours she sat with the child on a pillow in her lap, apparently impassive, yet conscious of the slightest change in the hot, gasping breathing. Occasionally the doctor arose and passed into the room where the others lay, to see that they were not suffering through lack of attention. Returning from one of these silent visits, just as the sun shot ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... Cumber, the meek and unassuming curate entered into an abode of misery and sorrow, which would require a far more touching pen than ours to describe. A poor widow sat upon the edge of a little truckle bed with the head of one of her children on her lap; another lay in the same bed silent and feeble, and looking evidently ill. Mr. Clement remembered to have seen the boy whom she supported, not long before playing about the cottage, his rosy cheeks heightened ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... when he blessed the sons of Joseph, cross hands and lay the blessing where we would not. There are providences unto which we would have the blessings entailed; but they are not. And these are providences that smile upon the flesh, such as cast into the lap health, wealth, plenty, ease, friends, and abundance of this world's good: because these, as Manasseh's name doth signify, have in them an aptness to make us forget our toil, our low estate, and from whence we were; but the great blessing ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... enough already, when it comes to that," she continued, folding her hands resignedly in her convex lap. "There was that artesian ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... the apartment. Against another was built a rickety sort of bunk. This was the only vestige of furniture to be seen. The floor was thickly covered with mud and dirt, in the midst of which, near the fire, was seated an old Indian with a pan of boiled corn on his lap, which he was scooping up with both hands and devouring ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... me, Phil. Will you pardon me if I leave you alone for a moment?" she said, arising and starting toward the grand stairway. The letter, which she had forgotten for the moment, fell from her lap to the rug. In an instant he had stepped forward to pick it up. As he stooped she realized what had happened, and, with a frantic little cry, stooped also. Their heads were close together, but his hand was the first to touch the missive. It lay with the address upward, plain to ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... below! There lances and glances each long-pronged fork,[A] As through the wild flames it is quick at work, Till the red blood squirts and seethes and sings, As through the red flame each squirtlet springs, The flames lap round her like forked levin; The priests send up their prayers to heaven; But what these prayers are to do when there, It is likely they could not themselves declare Yet all this while, in her agony, She made no murmur, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... I cannot help being down in the mouth,' (why, it is a string of pearls) 'to think you have not got a son like Hardie.'" At this unfortunate reflection it was Julia's turn to suffer. She deposited the letter in her lap, and fired up. "Now, have not I cause to hate, and scorn, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... eyes—upon his face. I saw that he was going to bow to me. With (as it seemed to me) all the blood in my veins rushing to my face, my head swimming, my heart beating, I dropped my eyes to the play-bill upon my lap, and stared at the crabbed German characters—the names of the players, the characters they took. "Elsa—Lohengrin." I read them again and again, while my ears were singing, my heart beating so, and I thought every one in the theater knew and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... more especially with honest Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the old lady was sitting darning (she was always darning; she used to begin darning the things before they were a week out of the draper's shop), would her tears fall upon her work, as she saw Mary sitting with her child in her lap, smiling, while the audacious Tom twisted a flower in her hair, in the way that pleased him best. To see anything wrong, and to say nothing, was a thing impossible. She knew that speaking to Mary would only raise a storm, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to the old woman. "Calm your agitation—oh! let not a word, a gesture, betray our secret! Stay! I will read to you!" And she seized the Bible, then a dangerous book to produce thus openly before Catholic agents of the court, and took it on her lap. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the saddler's shop, with one of his children on her lap, watching whilst he fashioned for her a saddle, which the citizens of Vaucouleurs were to give her. Bertrand and I were to present the horse she was to ride, and I had also sent to my home for a certain holiday suit and light armour made for a brother of mine who had died young. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... kindly is she, Who nurses young rivers and sends them to sea. And, nestled high up on her sheltering lap, Is a little red house with a little straw cap That bears a blue feather of smoke, curling high, And a bunch of red roses cocked over one eye. And the eyes of it glisten and shine in the sun, As they look down on Gosh with a twinkle ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... and found him lying on the grass, his head on the lap of a dark-skinned, ear-ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen to fall from the bench near by, another maritime man in the crowd ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... on at his heels, seemed to be going even easier. However, the half-mile saw Tempest three yards ahead and still going. Then, to our concern, we saw Redwood's stride lengthen a little, and watched inch after inch of the interval shrink, until at the end of the third lap there was scarcely more difference than there had been at the end of the first. Yet our man ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... want of food, for Adrienne had eaten her last morsel, half a roll, at breakfast, she continued to toil; but the work was nearly done, and the dear girl's needle fairly flew. Of a sudden she dropped me in her lap and burst into a flood of tears. Her sobs were hysterical, and I felt afraid she would faint. A glass of water, however, restored her, and then this outpouring of an exhausted nature was suppressed. I was completed! At that instant, if not the richest, I was probably the neatest and most tasteful ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... have envied him his children if it had been their lot to die without leaving an heir to their estates. Certainly, nobody under the sun enjoyed complete happiness, but why did the plums always fall to the lot of those who were already sitting in the lap of luxury? And how was it that the prizes always fell to the organisers of the great lottery? The disinherited had to be content with the mass said at evening prayers; to their share fell morality and those virtues which the others despised and of which ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... month of rest and of home nursing Abner undertook a second tour (in Iowa and Wisconsin, this time) to make sure of his re-established health and to build up again his shattered finances,—for sickness, even in the lap of ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... balm, Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste: Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: Another side, umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps Luxuriant; mean while murmuring ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... in the same house with Fluff, an Angora cat of great beauty. Teddy has been carefully taught, and his manners are delightful. Often when passing the chair where Fluff lies asleep, Teddy will put up his black nose and give her face a friendly lap. Fluff stretches out her fore-feet sleepily, but she does not object in the least. Sometimes Teddy is too rough in his play, and Fluff taps him gently with her soft paw to remind him that she is not as strong as ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... years old," he went on. "I am in the last lap of physical well-being, even though my mind should continue to flourish. And you are—how much younger! I ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... preferred him under the ground to above it, and heartily wished him bad luck; but he troubled himself little about that. In the whole valley the noble abbey alone showed fight to this demon, for it has always been a doctrine of the Church to take into her lap the weak and suffering, and use every effort to protect the oppressed, especially those whose rights and privileges ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... sitting in the light of the window, as usual, with one of the mystic books of Emanuel Swedenborg open on her lap. She solemnly lifted her hand on our appearance, signing to us to occupy our customary corner without speaking to her. It was an act of domestic high treason to interrupt the Sibyl at her books. We crept quietly into our places. Mary waited until she ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not unusual. It ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her every chance to show him favor. The youth of twenty-five and the girl of twenty-four roamed together in the long, tufted grass or lay in the sunshine and looked out over the sea. The prince would rest his head in her lap, and she would tumble his golden hair with her slender fingers and sometimes clip off tresses which she preserved to give to friends of hers as love-locks. But to the last he was either too high or too low for her, according to her own modest ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... tentative dots, which is nothing other than the dreadful thing resolved on, as of necessity, as naturally as the adventurous bow-legged infant pitches back from an excursion of two paces to mother's lap; and not much less innocently within the mind, it would appear. The dash is a haven reached that would not be greeted if it stood out in words. Could we live without ourselves letting our animal do our thinking for us legibly? We live ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thereof, the said Iennet Bierley & Ellen Bierley, taking this Examinate with them, went to Salmesburie Church, and there did take vp the said child, and the said Iennet did carrie it out of the Church-yard in her armes, and then did put it in her lap and carryed it home to her owne house, and hauing it there did boile some therof in a Pot, and some did broile on the coales, of both which the said Iennet & Ellen did eate, and would haue had this Examinate and one Grace Bierley, Daughter of the said Ellen, to haue eaten with them, but ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... on the sofa, leaned her head against the velvet corner as though very tired. Her small hands lay in her lap listlessly, palms up-turned. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... with the Squirting Cucumber (Momordica elaterium). It is a native of Turkey, but has been found also in Japan. It is also found in the East, and we read of it in the history of Elisha: "One went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild Vine, and gathered thereof wild Gourds, his lap full."[59:1] It is not quite certain what species of Gourd is here meant, but all the old commentators considered it to be the Colocynth,[59:2] the word "vine" meaning any climbing plant, a meaning that is still in common use ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... with a crevice An owl would build in, were he but sage; For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis In a castle of the Middle Age, Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber; When he'd be private, there might he spend Hours alone in his lady's chamber: Into this crevice ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... been called, was clever, rich, and pretty, and knew well how to ingratiate herself with the friend of the hour. She was a greedy, grasping little woman, but, when she had before her a sufficient object, she could appear to pour all that she had into her friend's lap with all the prodigality of a child. Perhaps Mrs. Bonteen had liked to have things poured into her lap. Perhaps Mr. Bonteen had enjoyed the confidential tears of a pretty woman. It may be that the wrongs of a woman doomed to live with Mr. Emilius as his wife had touched their ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... cross de river to de Sand Hills to see bout grandmammy cause she been took down wid de fever en was bad off. Pa Cudjo tell her de river been mighty high, but dat he would risk to take us. Say, Ma, she get in de boat wid Pa Cudjo en take me in her lap en dey start cross de river. De wind, it begin gettin higher en higher en de boat, it go dis way en den it go de other way. Cose I never recollect nothin bout dat day cause I won' nothin, so to speak, but a sucklin child den. But I hear Pa Cudjo speak bout ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... for when she was sick and sulky, the little squaw gave her bits of maple-sugar and parched rice out of her hand. At last Silvy grew tame, and would suffer herself to be taken out of her house, to sit on her mistress's shoulder, or in her lap; and though she sometimes ran away and hid herself, out of fun, she would not have gone far from the tent of the good Indians, on any account. Sometimes she saw the red squirrels running about in the ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill |
