"Mother-of-pearl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... powdered pumice stone, wipe dry, wash, and polish with a little bath brick or sapolio. Clean carving knives and forks in the same way, going around the joinings with a rag-covered skewer. Spots can be removed from ivory handles with tripoli mixed with sweet oil; from mother-of-pearl with sifted whiting and alcohol, which is washed off and followed with a polishing with dry whiting and a flannel cloth. Cover rusted knife blades with sweet oil, rub in well, and leave for forty-eight hours, then rub with slaked lime. Britannia, pewter, and block tin in table use ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... presence or the absence of metal, and the occurrence of stone implements, are important. But it must be remembered that stone was used long into the 'Bronze' Age, and contemporaneously with copper. There is no sudden break between the two periods. Fragments of shell and mother-of-pearl, often with incised designs, are very characteristic of the earliest period. Coins are of late date; a tell with coins on it is certain to contain buildings as late as the fourth or third century B.C. (though it may also contain far older buildings as well). One of the most useful ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... up a river of mother-of-pearl in the gauzy dawn to this island sanctuary. The Deacon met us, amazed at our number, and led us to the silver gray house just beyond theirs on a little, lifting hill, where "Angerleek" ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the bugle died away over the woods. Night was falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray. We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures, his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old. He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for the best part of my life," he said simply, "and ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... a few notches, made years ago, afterwards by clasping the trunk with his arms, arching his body with the feet against the tree, and then walking up precisely in the mode of the Torres Strait Islanders. Like these last people too, they open the nut with a sharp stick, and use a shell (a piece of mother-of-pearl oyster) for scraping out the pulp. After a stay of half an hour we returned to the boat leaving the natives in good humour. Our search for a safe anchorage for the ship was unsuccessful, so ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... broke hot and hazy. The gray-green of the foliage on the mountains had a purple tinge in the early morning light, and the sea took on a mother-of-pearl gleam behind its amethyst, as it reflected the changing hues of the roseate sunrise. Over San Antonio and San Jacinto the sun rose gloriously, and in the freshness of the morning air the giant flying-fish of the Pacific leaped and gleamed across the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... saw. I never dreamed there were such lovely things in the world as some of the beaten silver and hand-painted china and Tiffany glass. There was a jewelled fan, and all sorts of things in gold and mother-of-pearl, and there was some point lace that she said was more suitable for a queen than a young American girl. Her father has so many wealthy friends, and they all ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... if she were trying to avoid a precipice, and shivered when that man, at whom she happened to be looking, turned upon her two lifeless, sea-green eyes, which could be compared to nothing save tarnished mother-of-pearl. ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... of mother-of-pearl was brought, and on it some exquisite little striped porcelain cups, standing not in saucers, but in silver filigree cups into which they exactly fitted. Lucy remembered her Chinese experience, and did not venture to ask for milk or sugar, but she found that the real Turkish coffee ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the head when you say that, Steve. They seem to know the mother-of-pearl inside lining of the shells will bring in some money. And I reckon they're piling the shells up in some cave or secret place, meaning to get them down the river in a ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Cambridge, not Oxford," said the scholar, with a knowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but that suddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber, with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted poor James there in the carriage as he sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth's spirits, and no word of yea or ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of an hour the coach was back. The Fairy, who was waiting at the door of the house, lifted the poor little Marionette in her arms, took him to a dainty room with mother-of-pearl walls, put him to bed, and sent immediately for the most famous doctors of the neighborhood to come ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... formerly ruled by a line of powerful princes as an independent fief, but now subject to a Dutch Governor, has become the capital of Celebes, and occupies an important commercial position. The wharves are filled with bales of copra, mother-of-pearl shells, plumage of native birds, dried fish, bundles of rattan, and precious woods from the primeval forests of the interior. The boom of the fisherman's drum echoes across the water in constant reverberations, a secularised relic of the religious past, originally serving the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... brilliant points, and, when the moon rose, it was accompanied by four mock moons bound in a halo that widely encircled the true orb. The moon-dogs shone intermittently with prismatic colors, like disks of mother-of-pearl, and the moon itself ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... possibly remember in all the years of your life put together, I would tell you what sort of face Puppet's was; that it was a bright face, with blue eyes, just the color of the blue ribbon that went first round the guitar's neck, and then round Puppet's; that Puppet's teeth were as white as the mother-of-pearl pegs that held her guitar strings at the bottom; that her cheeks were as white as the ivory keys; that her hair was long, and yellow—just the shade of the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... admired, there were always men about her, serenades rising from the lawn beneath her window, and Laurel herself had seen Olive's dressing table laden with bouquets in frilly lace paper. She had one now, in a holder of mother-of-pearl, with a gilt chain and ring. Her wide skirt was a mass of over-drapery, knots of moss roses and green gauze ribbons; while a silver cord ending in a tassel fell ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... lacks cylinder-stop. Mother-of-pearl lozenge set in butt, with initials, "J. R. L.". This is the first piece that I bought when I ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... studio calms me after the banal cackling of my clients. I almost think of ceasing to create raiment, I weary so of the stupidities of New York's four hundred. Corsets, heels"—her hands fluttered in repudiation. She sank full length upon the divan, lighting a cigarette from a case of mother-of-pearl. "Your husband is the only artist, Mrs. Byrd, who has succeeded in painting me as an individual instead of a beauty. It's relieving"—her voice fainted—"very"—it failed—her lids drooped, she ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... were arranged here and there throughout the gorgeous room. The low, and exquisitely carved French bedstead was half hidden by a flowing drapery of embroidered lace, which, depending from a small hoop of mother-of-pearl in the ceiling, hung like a tent over it. The toilette-table was elaborately furnished. Between its twisted rosewood pillars, which were inlaid with pearl, in graceful device, swung an immense oval mirror, set in a frame of the same materials. Near it stood a small marble table, supported ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... giving him certain skins of wild beasts, which may be rich furs, tobacco, turtles, hemp, artificial strings colored, chains, and such like things as at the instant they had about them. These are a fair-conditioned people. On all the sea-coast along we found mussel shells that in color did represent mother-of-pearl, but not having means to dredge, could not apprehend further knowledge thereof. This main is the goodliest continent that ever we saw, promising more by far than we any way did expect; for it is replenished ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... though not new, were well cut, I felt that I looked like one accustomed to put in and take out sums from banks. There was no trying for effect, no effort, no tie-pin. The stick I carried was a plain ash. The pipe, which I removed from my mouth, had no silver mounting. Ah, but it showed the tiny mother-of-pearl star which stamped it as a Bungknoll. There was going to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... going back to turn door-handles, the sitting in grotesque and untoward positions, the fondness for fingering any smooth and shiny objects, such as mother-of-pearl, develop into manias for change—change of scenery, of occupation, of affections, of people—change that inevitably necessitates misery; for breaking—breaking promises, contracts, family ties, furniture—but breaking, always breaking; ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... those fanciful children's dresses which are expensive as well as in good taste; his coat was skilfully fitted to his figure, his trousers came down in plaits from his waist to his boots of polished leather with mother-of-pearl buttons, and his ringlets were half hid by a velvet cap. The appearance of his guide, on the contrary, was that of the class who dwell on the extreme borders of poverty, but who there maintain their ground with no surrender. His old blouse, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... of guava-jelly is what I associate in memory with that delectable meal; and to this day I cannot taste the flavour of guava but I find myself back in Captain Coffin's sitting-room, cutting a third slice from the wheaten loaf, with the corals and shells of mother-of-pearl winking at me from among the china on the dresser, and Captain Coffin seated opposite, with the silver rings in his ears, and his eyes very white in the dusk and distinct within their ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... became aware of something unusual and strange at the opening of the tent. There was a soft, light step without, a guarded footfall. Then a tall, dark shadow distinctly appeared, with a glitter of mother-of-pearl ornaments and a waving of plumes. It stood there like a ghost of a vivid fancy, for a time. Gretchen's heart beat. It was not an unusual thing for an Indian to come to the tepee late in the evening; but there ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... three times and it opened as if by magic, for she could see no one. And she stepped into the garden of red roses, and in the distance across the Park she saw the Castle, and she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful. For it was built of mother-of-pearl, and the red and yellow gleams of the rising sun shone upon its glistening walls, and lit them up ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... vaguely conscious of the perpetual ebb and flow and murmur of people in the Boulevard, while the setting sun turned Paris to a marvellous water-colour, all pale lucent tints, amber and alabaster and mother-of-pearl, with amethystine shadows. Then, one by one, those of us who were dining elsewhere would slip away; and at a sign from Hippolyte the others would move indoors, and take their places down either side of the long narrow table, Childe at the head, his daughter Nina next him. And presently ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Hephaestion's mouth with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to head, adorned with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... course. Whenever we stopped for a trifling purchase or to visit some point of interest, a small crowd was sure to collect. The narrow lanes are lined in many sections by stores containing very attractive goods, curiosities, silks, fine China ware, ivory, scented woods, mother-of-pearl and carved tortoise shell, all goods of native manufacture. The remarkable patience and imitative skill of the Chinese enables them to produce very choice goods in these lines of art. The shops being all open in front, the entire contents can be seen by the passers-by. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... hiding-place, which receives light and air from a slit in the roof. This hollow in the wall goes as far as Timea's bedroom, where in former times Herr Brazovics' guests used to pass the night. The concealed passage ends in a glass door which is hidden from the room by a picture. This picture is a mother-of-pearl mosaic representing St. George and the dragon, and appears to be a votive image built into the wall. It has often been proposed to take the picture away, but Timea never would allow it. One of the pieces of mosaic can be slipped ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... golden spear! Wait till the fires arise! Wait till the sky drops down and touches the spear, Crystal and mother-of-pearl! The sunlight droops forward Like wings. The birds sing songs of sun-drops. The sky leans down where the spear stands upward. . . I hear music . . . It is the ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... English dresses, all rouged, and all with bad teeth: which you notice instantly from their contrast to the almost animal, too glossy mother-of-pearl whiteness and the regularity of the teeth of the laughing, loud-talking country-women and servant-girls, who with their clean white stockings and with slippers without heel quarters, tripped along the dirty streets, as if they were secured by a charm from the dirt: with a ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Lee, not to be outdone by anybody, produced, from no one ever discovered where, a mother-of-pearl manicure set for the delight and mystification of the hero; and even Lazy Daisy went so far as to cut some red and yellow tissue-paper into squares under the delusion that some time, somehow, she ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... square vertical shaft supporting a canopy, with a minaret or pinnacle surmounted by a rich gold and jewelled finial. The entire height of the throne is nine or ten feet. The materials are precious woods, ebony, sandal-wood, etc., with shell, mother-of-pearl, silver, and gold. ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... half-an-hour, at the end of which period she came downstairs dressed in an old yellow satin, with the poor shoulders exposed just as much as ever. She had mounted a tawdry cap, which Haggarty himself must have selected for her. She had all sorts of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in gold, in garnets, in mother-of-pearl, in ormolu. She brought in a furious savour of musk, which drove the odours of onions and turf-smoke before it; and she waved across her wretched angular mean scarred features an old cambric ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was far stronger than any English line of the same thickness. Their fishing-nets, though coarse, answered their purpose. They were often eighty fathoms in length. Harpoons, made of cane, were used to catch fish, and fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl. One used for trawling had a white tuft of dog's or hog's hair attached to it, to look like the tail of a fish. The fishermen watched for the birds which always follow a shoal of bonetas, and seldom returned without a prize. Both sexes were expert swimmers, and would dash out through the fiercest ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... use of, except upon public feasts or rejoicing days. Some, after they have trained them, take delight in riding them, and show their skill and dexterity in races; others put them to chariots of mother-of-pearl, adorned with an infinite number of shells of all sorts, of the brightest colours. These chariots are open; and in the middle there is a throne upon which the king sits, and shows himself to his subjects. The horses are trained up to draw ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... this, as the king wished to see all my scientific instruments, we walked down to the camp; and as he did not beg for anything, I gave him some gold and mother-of-pearl shirt studs to swell up his trinket-box. The same evening I made up my mind, if possible, to purchase a stock of beads from the Arabs, and sent Baraka off to Kufro, to see what kind of a bargain he could make with them; for, whilst I trembled to think what those "blood-suckers" ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... accustomed—which I have labored over all my life—is lacking, and a new palette takes its place—of mauve, violet, indescribable blues, and evanescent soap-bubble reds. The slopes of the hills are mother-of-pearl, their tops melting into cloud shadows so delicate in tone that you cannot distinguish where one leaves off and the ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... centuries whose work was superb, but the twenty-eight are deemed to be the immortals of this particular art. One of these great men, Ogawa Ritsuo, is famous for the number and variety of the materials—mother-of-pearl, coral, tortoise-shell, &c. &c., he used in his work. A profuse richness is its chief characteristic. One of his pupils imitated in his work various materials—pottery and wood-carving, and bronzes. The last famous artist in lacquer, Watanobe Tosu, died about thirty years ago. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... creature especially wont to produce this illusion is the Hamaguri,—a Japanese mollusk much resembling a clam. Opening its shell, it sends into the air a purplish misty breath; and that mist takes form and defines, in tints of mother-of-pearl, the luminous vision of H[o]rai and the palace of ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... seated behind the chariot of Hera, ready to do the bidding of her royal mistress. She appears under the form of a slender maiden of great beauty, robed in an airy fabric of variegated hues, resembling mother-of-pearl; her sandals are bright as burnished silver, she has golden wings, and wherever she appears, a radiance of light, and a sweet odour, as of delicate spring flowers, pervades ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... covering on her body; her hair, which was woolly in its texture, was partly plaited, partly frizzled, a cloth round her waist, and a piece of faded yellow silk on her shoulders, was all her dress. A few silver rings, on her fat fingers, and a necklace of mother-of-pearl, were her ornaments. Her teeth were jet black, from the use of the betel-nut, and her whole appearance was such as to excite disgust in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... they had been singing my praises and asking me to pity them and to do them good.) The chief Kahdoonahah danced with all his might during the singing. He wore a cap, which had a mask in front, set with mother-of-pearl, and trimmed with porcupine's quills. The quills enabled him to hold a quantity of white bird's down on the top of his head, which he ejected while dancing, by jerking his head forward: thus he soon appeared as if in a shower of snow. In the middle of the dance a man approached me with a ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... side where those great buildings were, secure and stately, and they would pillage, burn, and sack. But the day, tender and pale, had broken now, and the mist was tenuous; it bathed everything in a soft radiance; and the Thames was gray, rosy, and green; gray like mother-of-pearl and green like the heart of a yellow rose. The wharfs and store-houses of the Surrey Side were massed in disorderly loveliness. The scene was so exquisite that Philip's heart beat passionately. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world. Beside ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... wicker-ware; 34 with articles de Paris. Journal des Economistes, Janv., 1853, 107. According to the industrial almanac of Birmingham, there are in that city manufacturers of buttons in gold, silver, metal, mother-of-pearl etc.; manufacturers of hammers, ink-stands, coffin-nails, dog-collars, tooth-picks, stirrups, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... came in and sat down across the hearth from me, and neither of us said anything. The firelight flickered over the room, bringing out the faded hues of the old Japanese prints on the walls, gleaming in the mother-of-pearl eyes of the dragon on the screen, setting a grotesque god on a cabinet to nodding. And it threw into relief the strong profile of the man across from me, as he stared ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... family businesses that produce cement, textiles, soap, olive-wood carvings, and mother-of-pearl souvenirs; the Israelis have established some small-scale modern industries in an ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... occupies the three easternmost bays. The apse, as at Torcello, retains the bishop's throne and the bench for the presbyters apparently unaltered. The mosaics are singularly gorgeous, and the apse walls, as at Torcello, are inlaid with rich marble and mother-of-pearl. The dimensions are small—121 ft. by 32 ft. (See Kunstdenkmale des oesterreichischen Kaiserreichs, by Dr G. Heider ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... approved of his going. So the letter was written to tell the Baron he would come in a few weeks, as requested. Meantime his old master gave him an order for a zither of the best quality, to be made of handsome wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and as the price was of no consequence, he was to make it quite a specimen instrument, to show how well he could work. Stephan was very much pleased with the commission, and when, at the end of three ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... head is a little round black cap, from which escapes his pigtail. He stands bowing before us and shaking hands with himself, which, as a method of greeting, is perhaps better than our own way. He takes us into a dark gloomy room full of cabinets of black lacquer richly decorated with gold and mother-of-pearl. There are sombre carved wood chairs set back against the wall. It is all very costly, but to us it seems uncomfortable and funereal. The chief things that attract us are rows of little red pieces of paper of odd lengths hanging over strings from the ceiling, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... distillation alone, many persons have supposed that it was engendered in the process. Recently, however, crystalline paraffine has been obtained from ozokerite by dissolving the latter in warm amyl alcohol; on cooling the greater part separates out in crystals having the luster of mother-of-pearl. By repetition of this process, a substance is obtained that is scarcely to be distinguished from the paraffine obtained by distillation. Apparently there exists then in ozokerite, together with paraffine, other substances not capable of crystallization ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... watch the lady to see where she kept the sweet things: and began hiding, and sneaking, and following her about, and pretending to be looking the other way, or going after something else, till he found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away in a deep crack ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... among heavy, antique pieces of carving and slender specimens of colonial simplicity; divans covered with pillows of every delicate shade imaginable; exquisite etchings and dainty bric-a-brac. In an alcove formed by a large bay-window stood a writing-desk of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and on an easel in a secluded corner, partially concealed by silken draperies, was the portrait of Kate Underwood,—a childish, rather immature face, but with a mouth indicating both sweetness and strength of character, and with ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... could run no longer. She just lay down and died. Then the boy-child looked about for a place to put his sister's body. He looked at the fine branched trees, full of fruit, and saw that each single fruit was an agong, [61] and the leaves, mother-of-pearl. ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... blue plumage, a variety of small birds, and large bats in abundance. The produce of the sea we know but little of; it is reasonable to suppose, that the same sorts of fish are found here as at the other isles.[4] Their fishing instruments are the same; that is, hooks made of mother-of-pearl, gigs with two, three, or more prongs, and nets made of a very fine thread, with the meshes wrought exactly like ours. But nothing can be a more demonstrative evidence of their ingenuity than the construction and make of their canoes, which, in point of neatness and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... my eye most was his trousseau. Say! he was dressed to the minute, from the pink in his buttonhole, to the mother-of-pearl gloves; and the back of his frock coat had an in-curve such as your forty-fat sisters dream about. Why, as far as lines went, he had Jimmy Hackett and Robert Mantell on the back shelf. Oh, he was a ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... d'Argenson. In 1747 the Earl, then at Treviso, declined to be Charles's minister on the score of 'broken health.' {127a} Charles, as we saw, vainly asked the Earl for a meeting at Venice in 1749. Indeed, Charles got nothing from his adherent but a mother-of-pearl snuff-box, with the portrait of the old gentleman. {127b} The Earl dwelt, not always on the best terms, with his brother, Marshal Keith, at Berlin, and was treated as a real friend, for a marvel, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... completed the ornaments and furniture of the room, in which were neither tables nor chairs. A small table, about six inches high, is brought in when refreshments are served; it is of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, ivory, gold and silver, of choice woods, or of plain mahogany, according to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fine large garden, in which stood four Mahomedan mausoleums. The largest contains a sarcophagus of white marble, which is surrounded by wooden galleries extremely richly and handsomely decorated with mother-of-pearl. Here rests the Sultan Koshru, son of Jehanpuira. Two smaller sarcophagi contain children of the sultan. The walls are painted with stiff flowers and miserable trees, between which are ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... that I should find the Christian theology Aristotelian, over defined and excessively personified. The painted figure of that bearded ancient upon the Sistine Chapel, or William Blake's wild-haired, wild-eyed Trinity, convey no nearer sense of God to me than some mother-of-pearl-eyed painted and carven monster from the worship of the South Sea Islanders. And the Miltonic fable of the offended creator and the sacrificial son! it cannot span the circle of my ideas; it is a little thing, and none the less ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... waist by a belt of black leather. The great silver buckle of her belt seemed to depress the centre of her body, catching the light stuff of her white blouse like a clip. She wore a short black jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons and a ragged black boa. The ends of her tulle collarette had been carefully disordered and a big bunch of red flowers was pinned in her bosom stems upwards. Lenehan's eyes noted approvingly her stout short muscular body. Rank ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... to camp. Once or twice Dol got away from the trail, but he quickly found it again; and in due time emerged from the forest twilight into the broad glare of the sun, to see Squaw Pond lying before him like a miniature mother-of-pearl sea, so protected by its evergreen woods that scarcely a ripple ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... the right place, mind you," says an old woman carrying a burlap sack to hold whatever the good Lord will provide. "It's on top of something ... there's a lot of trinkets nearby and then there's a small bag with mother-of-pearl around it. That's the ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... furniture: that armchair was made of ten thousand pieces of gold, mother-of-pearl, and woods of various hues. Look at the robes of that period: what embroidery, what delicacy of material, how many colors! And the bronze swords, the brooches, bracelets, earrings and implements of tillage and crafts of various descriptions. All these were made ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... had forgotten the good old merchant, over whose shoulder we were peeping, while he read the newspaper. Let us now suppose him putting on his three-cornered gold-laced hat, grasping his cane, with a head inlaid of ebony and mother-of-pearl, and setting forth, through the crooked streets of Boston, on various errands, suggested by the advertisements of the day. Thus he communes with himself: I must be mindful, says he, to call at Captain Scut's, in Creek Lane, and examine his rich velvet, whether it be fit for my apparel on Election-day,—that ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... canoe that came had five men on board. Girdles of beautifully plaited cocoa-nut fibre round their waists were their only clothing, but some had wreaths of flowers and green leaves round their heads, and most of them wore mother-of-pearl shells, beads, &c., round their necks and in their ears. They do not tattoo, but brand their skins. All five came, and presently three more, and then another; but seeing a large double canoe with perhaps twenty men in her coming close, we ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... presents, carpets, carved and inlaid mother-of-pearl boxes, cabinets, and some curious saddles, also gold-embroidered cushions and slippers. Some Arab horses were announced with great pomp from the Sultan's stables. I was rather interested in them, thought it would be amusing to drive a long-tailed Arab pony in a little cart in the morning. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... of light from the planets, so depthless the shadows, that the forest around him seemed but a vast mosaic in mother-of-pearl and ebony. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... there is rust along the chains and around the hawse-holes. She might be mistaken for a whaler coming off a four years' cruise. And nearly that length of time has she been cruising, but not after whales. Her cargo, a full one, consists of sandal-wood, spices, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, and real pearls also—in short, a miscellaneous assortment of the commodities obtained by traffic in the islands and around the coasts of the great ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... fair waxed mustache and beautiful brown tail coat, so tightly buttoned with gilt buttons across his enormous chest, and imperceptible little feet so tightly imprisoned in shiny tipped female cloth boots, with buttons of mother-of-pearl; whose hobby was, I believe, to try and compensate himself for the misfortunes of war by more successful attempts in another direction. Anyhow he betrayed a warmth that made my small bosom a Gehenna, until she laughed ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... back. In order to bring about this result the Japanese, who originated the present commercial product, but who probably borrowed the original idea from the Chinese, call to their assistance the pearl oyster itself. The oysters are gently opened, small hemispherical discs of mother-of-pearl are introduced between shell and mantle and the oyster replanted. The foreign material is coated by the oyster with true pearly layers as usual, and after several years a sufficiently thick accumulation of pearly layers is thus deposited on the nucleus so that the oyster may ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... tarsia was more used for domestic furniture than for stationary decoration. The character of the design changed in consequence, and mother-of-pearl, ivory, tortoiseshell, silver, and other materials were used. The first Tuscan, or one of the first who did so was Andrea Massari of Siena. A few works in tarsia were still executed, but none of much importance. The choir of ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... geometrical designs—yet each separate piece plays well its part in working out the harmonious and decidedly pretty effect of the whole. All the furniture the large apartment boasts is a crimson-and-gold divan or two, a few strips of rich carpet, and an ebony stand-table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; but suspended from the ceiling are several magnificent cut-glass chandeliers. At night, when these Persian mirrored rooms are lit up, they present a scene of barbaric splendor well calculated to delight the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... over the pavement, which was encrusted with gold, mother-of-pearl, and glass; and, in spite of the polished smoothness of the ground, it seemed to him that his feet sank as though he were walking ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... but there were other things to catch the eye. At least a hundred hemispheres—little igloos of porcelain—were scattered about the floor of the cave. Each one was a different color. They shimmered and glittered. Scarlet, mauve, mother-of-pearl, the blue Capri, and the blue of cobalt. Pinks, yellows, oranges. Every possible shade had gone into those porcelain igloos. And the lighted walls of the cavern were covered from floor to ceiling with numberless figures, marching, fighting, working, playing. At first, Odin thought ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... perfectly docile, pulled out the little mother-of-pearl rosary that she always wore under her dress, and reverently murmured one of the prayers her mother had taught her. After which, as if beguiled by the association of ideas into thinking it bedtime, she curled herself up on the bench, and, with ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... bend in the avenue. The windows of the great house blazed a welcome. All the sky was mother-of-pearl and tender. In the air was the tang of spring. In the white light Marjorie saw Leonard's lips quiver and he frowned. She had a sudden twinge of jealousy, swallowed up ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... despised? Much art has been expended on clogs. They have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with ivory, and with mother-of-pearl. A clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too high or too heavy, most comfortable also. But if there be any who do not like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish lady, which is loose round the limb and tight ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... day (at Manihiki of all places) I had the pleasure to meet Dodd. We sat some two hours in the neat little toy-like church, set with pews after the manner of Europe, and inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the style (I suppose) of the New Jerusalem. The natives, who are decidedly the most attractive inhabitants of this planet, crowded round us in the pew, and fawned upon and patted us; and here it was I put my questions, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... midst of this, in glided Zoe, and seemed to extinguish everybody, and even to pale the lights, with her dark yet sunlike beauty. She was dressed in a creamy-white satin that glinted like mother-of-pearl, its sheen and glory unfrittered with a single idiotic trimming; on her breast a large diamond cross. Her head was an Athenian sculpture—no chignon, but the tight coils of antiquity; at their side, one diamond ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... amid mounds and ruins. We found green coins, pottery fragments, and shells with very lovely mother-of-pearl. The Dujail ran near by, and made a green streak through an arid waste. The whole landscape seemed one dust-heap, sand and rubbish. But by the brook were poppies, marguerites, delicate pink campions, wheat and barley growing as weeds ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... hunger, or the merciless tearing of sleep from his soul wrought magic and transformed him into a glowing, jeweled specter. He sprouted toes and long legs; he rose and inflated his sleek emerald frog-form; his sides blazed forth a mother-of-pearl waist-coat—a myriad mosaics of pink and blue and salmon and mauve; and from nowhere if not from the very depths of his throat, there slowly rose twin globes,—great eyes,—which stood above the flatness of his head, as mosques above an oriental city. Gone were the neutralizing lids, and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... for the river's surface seems to be convex) and to our right the country is flat, and in the green woods are the overgrown ruins of the once splendid city of Ava. Certainly, of my most pleasant recollections, this wide landscape, and all its light tints of mother-of-pearl, will remain one of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... figures, suggested a child amused with dolls yet; but a multitude of large books in gilt bindings suggested the active and methodical development of a young mind, which surely had dreams of Paradise on that lace and satin bed which covered a bedstead inlaid with mother-of-pearl. On all the furniture: small arm-chairs, tables, screens, which reminded one of butterfly-wings, mother-of-pearl rainbow-tints passed into milk-white. Spring tones, joyous motives, light and graceful forms, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... from the stimulus of light. On examining the eye by looking straight into it through the pupil, the anterior wall of the capsule appeared opaque in its whole extent, and of a color and luster like mother-of-pearl. On looking from the temporal side in an oblique direction into the pupil, there was visible in the anterior wall of the capsule a very small perpendicular cleft of about one line and a quarter ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... few small pearls are occasionally found enclosed in the nacre (or mother-of-pearl) of shells cut up for buttons, &c., but seldom of much value, though it is related that a few years back a pearl thus discovered by a workman, and handed over to his employer, was sold for L40, realising L150 afterwards. In March, 1884, Mr. James Webb, Porchester ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... venturesome, and they all sat down on the floor to make a selection. Reba chose a quaint, silver buckle, Reliance selected a mother-of-pearl card-case, Edna ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... it is possible to imagine. Faint, cloudy, indefinite luminous appearances—brilliant stars which move or hover among the sitters—globes or balls of light, like illuminated ostrich eggs, or spheres of mother-of-pearl lit up from within—pillars of light—are some of the many forms which this manifestation takes. But anything approaching to scientific evidence of the reality of the phenomenon is singularly scarce. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... the suggestion absurd. Joseph was always clean shaven; this youth had a smudgy moustache and a pair of incipient red whiskers. He was dressed in the loudest check suit I have ever seen, off the stage. He wore patent-leather boots with mother-of-pearl buttons, and a necktie that in an earlier age would have called down lightning out of Heaven. He had a low-crowned billycock hat on his head, and a big ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... would happen next. She had often seen the inside of the cabinet, so, beautiful as it was, it was not new to her, and she felt a little disappointed. Half of the space was filled up by tiny drawers and cupboards, all covered with thin sheets of mother-of-pearl, glowing with soft and delicate tints of pink and blue; but the other half was quite unoccupied, and so highly polished was the ebony, that the open space looked to Grace like a square-cut ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... starting up; "you have hit it, Jervis, as you always do. It must be mother-of-pearl. Polton, give me a pearl shirt-button out of ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... reflecting the gleam of hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... turned round to Debray, without answering her husband. "Read me something, M. Debray," she said. Debray, who was slightly disturbed at this visit, recovered himself when he saw the calmness of the baroness, and took up a book marked by a mother-of-pearl knife inlaid with gold. "Excuse me," said the banker, "but you will tire yourself, baroness, by such late hours, and M. Debray lives some ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... glory of the moon! That leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped of their linens; Stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother-of-pearl Till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them. They shudder and grow faint. And their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody, That Life, like a drunken player, Strikes out of their clear white bodies As out ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... sheep-skins round the tent, and by one of these three women were standing. Two of these were richly dressed in gowns of handsome striped materials. They wore head-dresses of silver work with beads of malachite and mother-of-pearl, and had heavy silver ornaments hanging on their breasts. Their hair fell down their backs in two thick braids. The other woman was evidently of inferior rank. All were leaning over a pile of skins covered with costly furs, on which a boy of seven or eight years old was ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... wearing thicker and thicker, uglier and uglier; till no heart any longer can be felt beating through them, so thick, callous, calcified are they; and all over it has now grown mere calcified oyster-shell, or were it polished mother-of-pearl, inwards almost to the very heart of the poor man:—yes then, you may say, his usefulness once more is quite obstructed; once more, he cannot go abroad and do business in the world; it is time that he take to bed, and prepare for departure, which ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... devoted to scented bottles—the intervening ones, containing perfumed head-dresses, formed of braids of ribands and gold lace, which descend to the ground. A warehouse of Turkish tables exhibited the luxurious ingenuity of the workers in mother-of-pearl. They were richly wrought in gold and silver ornaments. Within seven miles of Cairo, there still exists a wonder of the old time, which must have made a great figure in the Arab legends—a petrified forest lying in the desert, and which, to complete ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... quick if you would capture him," says William Hamilton Gibson, "for he is off in a spangling streak of glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the little insect; for in the space of a few seconds, as you hold him in your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull orange." A dead beetle loses all this wonderful lustre. Even on the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these jewelled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvae, or the tiny chrysalids suspended by their ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... they pointed to a land in the west, from whence they said it came; but the cupidity of the Spaniards was excited by strings of pearls round the arms of some of them. These, they said, were procured at the sea-coast on the northern side of Paria, and they showed the mother-of-pearl shells from ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... mere amateur—casually picked up a black-lip mother-of-pearl shell on an island some little distance away. It contained a blue pearl, the price of which gave him such a start in life, that he is now an owner of ships. May not other tides cast up on other shores other oysters whose lives have been rendered miserable ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Morris chintzes; or brown Windsor chairs, evidently imported straight from the kitchen. A battered old writing-desk had an incongruous look when placed next to a costly buhl clock on a table inlaid indeed with mother-of-pearl, but wanting in one leg; and so no valuable blue china was apt to pass unobserved upon the mantelpiece because it was generally found in company with a child's mug, a plate of crusts, or a painting-rag. A grand piano stood open, and was strewn with sheets of music; two sketching portfolios ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head and overrunning ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... curtains at the windows, and the mirrors of polished steel between the carved ivory lattices. Great porcelain vases, such as are never seen here, were disposed about the room, and jars of flowers of strange hues stood on mats of yellow wool. Furniture inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, and coral, decked the apartment, and a small, rich table held an exquisite tea-set. Swan had just been drinking from it, and the room was full of the fragrance. He toyed with the tea-cup, and half dozed. Then, rousing himself, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... belonged to the marquis and had erstwhile reflected the light beauty of his noble spouse. Pausing about as long as it would have taken a lady to adjust a curl, he peeped into a Dutch cabinet of ebony and mother-of-pearl and was studying a charming creature painted on ivory, whose head like that of Bluebeard's wife was subsequently separated from her lovely shoulders, when a light footstep behind him interrupted his scrutiny. Turning, he greeted the young girl, and, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Chinese clerks who looked after his affairs. His business was that of a coffee and opium merchant. He had a coffee estate at Bontyne, and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. About one he would return home, have coffee and cake or fried plantain, first changing his dress for a coloured cotton shirt and trousers and bare feet, and then take a siesta with a ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Good looked very grand and imposing when it assembled at daybreak before the palace gates. The uniforms of the girl soldiers were pretty and of gay colors, and their silver-tipped spears were bright and glistening, the long shafts being inlaid with mother-of-pearl. All the officers wore sharp, gleaming swords, and shields edged with peacock- feathers; and it really seemed that no foe could by any possibility ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... explored the recesses, and threw down to the laughing crowd embroidered shawls and scarfs yellow with age, soft muslins of antique pattern, stiff big-flowered brocades, scraps of gauze ribbon, gossamer laces. On one topmost shelf he came upon a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Felice reached up for it, and, moved by some undefined impulse, Richard came and stood by her side while she opened it. A perfume which he recognized arose from it as she lifted a fold of tissue-paper. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the circular divan in the centre of the polished terrazza floor. She wasn't really tired in the least, the indefatigable old sight-seer; but a respite from picture-gazing would enable her to turn the talk. She put up her mother-of-pearl lorgnon, and glanced round the walls; then, lowering it, she frankly raised her eyes, full of curiosity ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... chapter how the spectroscope splits up light-waves into their colours. But nature is constantly splitting the light into its different-lengthed waves, its colours. The rainbow, where dense moisture in the air acts as a spectroscope, is the most familiar example. A piece of mother-of-pearl, or even a film of oil on the street or on water, has the same effect, owing to the fine inequalities in its surface. The atmosphere all day long is sorting out the waves. The blue "sky" overhead means that the fine particles in the upper atmosphere catch the shorter ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... called away to his study, for a client has come to see him on urgent business, and we are left in the gracious society of his wife in the comfortable sitting-room. On the table the Japan tray, with its silver teapot, sugar-basin, milk-jug and spoon-box of mother-of-pearl and crystal, and its dark-blue real China cups and saucers, enjoys the company of two silver boxes, on silver trays, full of all sorts of 'koekjes' (sweet biscuits). Many Dutch families like to take a 'koekje' with their tea, tea-time falling in Holland ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... another, narrowing towards the top, so that the highest was very small. It sloped very much from the stern, and on it was a windlass used to lift the huge rudder. On either side of the next deck were two cabins, with a roof in front of them made of bits of mother-of-pearl instead of glass. What is called the nettings ran from aft round the greater part of the vessel. The beams of the deck projected beyond the sides, and each butt-end was ornamented with an ugly face carved and painted. Every face was different, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... through several chambers, decorated with much cost and barbarous splendour. The wainscot of one of the principal saloons is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, coral, and ivory; but the workmanship seems harsh and ungraceful. The ceiling is plastered with massive gilding, the effect of which is rather cumbrous than ornamental; "not graced with elegancy, but daubed with cost." Pillars, of a composition to resemble ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... She enjoyed dressing; everything that she put on seemed an adornment to her. She delighted in the rosy reflections of her skin, in her pretty light dress of a pinkish white material, in her broad sash of pink silk fastened behind with a buckle of mother-of-pearl, in her straw hat trimmed with bright pink ribbons on top and yellow-pink velvet ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... She knew how they sloughed from the inexhaustible ice-cap of Greenland's bleak continent and marched, stately as an army, down the mighty plain of the ocean. Fair beyond word were they, with jeweled crevasses and mother-of-pearl changefulness, indomitable, treacherous, menacing. Honora, closing weary eyes, still saw them sailing, sailing, white as angels, radiant as dawn, changing, changing, lovely ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... that a woman!) went into the front room as he had been bidden. On one of the family of chairs, in a corner, was a black octagonal case. He opened this case, which was not locked, and drew from it a concertina, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Then he went to the desk, and from under a pile of rent books he extracted several pieces of music, and selected one. This selected piece he reared up on the mantelpiece against two brass candlesticks. It was obvious, from the certainty ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... conflict, and produced dulness ... an Asiatic dulness, like Asiatic cholera. Maria Nikolaevna listened patiently to half an act, but when the first lover, discovering the treachery of his mistress (he was dressed in a cinnamon-coloured coat with 'puffs' and a plush collar, a striped waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons, green trousers with straps of varnished leather, and white chamois leather gloves), when this lover pressed both fists to his bosom, and poking his two elbows out at an acute angle, howled like a dog, Maria Nikolaevna ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the gloom was soft with mysterious invitations. George looked about the interior of the box; he saw the rich cloaks of the girls hanging up next to glossy masculine hats, the large mirror on the wall, and mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, chocolates, and flowers on the crimson ledge. He was very close to the powerfully built and yet plastic Lois. He could watch her changing curves as she breathed; the faint scent she used rose to his nostrils. He thought, with contained rapture: "Nothing in the world is ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... valuable finds in the shape of various small articles. One such chamber, uncovered by Layard, at Koyunjik, proved a perfect mine of treasures. The most curious relics were brought to light in it: quantities of studs and small rosettes in mother-of-pearl, ivory and metal, (such as were used to ornament the harness of the war-horses), bowls, cups and dishes of bronze,[F] besides caldrons, shields and other items of armor, even glass bowls, lastly fragments of a royal throne—possibly the very ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... that sprites and fairies were as common as peas this very minute, and would have thought it quite a matter of course if a wonderful gift had suddenly tumbled down the very stove pipe, or a beautiful lady come bursting through the wall, and offered to carry them off to fairy land in a mother-of-pearl chariot, drawn by milk-white doves. If a cat looked hard at her and mewed piteously, the little old woman would sigh, "Well, this is fairy work, I'll bet a crooked sixpence! She looks like an enchanted princess, poor thing! don't she, Timmy, dear?" ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... translucency, semiopacity; opalescence, milkiness, pearliness^; gauze, muslin; film; mica, mother-of-pearl, nacre; mist &c (cloud) 353. [opalescent jewel] opal. turbidity &c 426.1. Adj. semitransparent, translucent, semipellucid^, semidiaphanous^, semiopacous^, semiopaque; opalescent, opaline^; pearly, milky; frosted, nacreous. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was the only article on which the English smoker prided himself. It was made of various materials—wood, bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and silver: and the forms which it assumed were exceedingly diversified. Out of a collection of upwards of thirty tobacco-stoppers of different ages, from 1688 to the present time, the following are the most remarkable: ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... a point the bees dropped off by their own weight into the grass below, then rose again and either flew aloft in wide and circling flight or rushed headlong upon the swarm once more. Across the iridescent cluster passed a gleam and glow of peacock and iris, opal and mother-of-pearl; while from its heart ascended a deep murmur, telling of tremendous and accumulated energy suddenly launched into this peaceful glade of apple-blossom and ambient green. The frenzy of the moment held all that little laborious people. There ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... (15), a group of 80 coralline islands, belonging to Holland, W. of New Guinea; export mother-of-pearl, pearls, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 2," I said, "I am using splinters of mother-of-pearl. Last week, with No. 1, I used a steel ring hanging by its rim to a shred of linen, two safeties, and a hairpin found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... mosaics with their inlaying, and invented that form known as pietra-dura—polished bits of marble, agates, pebbles and lapis lazuli. Ivory was carved and used as bas-reliefs and ivory and tortoise shell, brass and mother-of-pearl used as inlay. Elaborate Arabesque designs inlaid were souvenirs of the Orient, and where the cabinetmaker's saw left a line, the cuts were filled in with black wood or stained glue, which brought out the ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... of sensation which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing its exceeding glory. I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... well enough that, close by the heather-bed, was the loveliest little well, just big enough to wash in, the water of which was always springing fresh from the ground, and running away through the wall. Beside it lay the whitest of linen towels, with a comb made of mother-of-pearl, and a brush of fir-needles, any one of which she had been far too lazy to use. She dashed the glass out of the wise woman's hand, and there it lay, ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... number of men, seemingly priests, who carried a grotesque-looking figure that Jack presumed to be an idol. The figure was made up of wicker-work—was of colossal height—the features, which represented nothing on earth beneath nor heaven above, were inconceivably hideous—the eyes were discs of mother-of-pearl, with a nut in the centre—the teeth were apparently those of a shark, and the body was covered with a ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... chariot of pearls and mother-of-pearl, drawn by two magnificent steeds with harness of straw-colored velvet ornamented with sapphires, ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... watery ways. Here are no grim grey towers of defence, but fairy palaces of white and coloured marbles, which rise from the waters below as if they had been built by the sea nymphs, who had fashioned them of their own sea-shells and mother-of-pearl. ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... Vermilion lacquer was invented in the time of Temmu, and soon five different colours could be produced, while to the Nara artisans belongs the inception of lacquer strewn with makie. Lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl was another beautiful concept of the Nara epoch. A special tint of red was obtained with powdered coral, and gold and silver were freely used in leaf or in plates. As yet, history does not find any Japanese painter worthy of record. Chinese and Korean ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... as mysterious as before. Of course they did not touch it with bare hands—all wore insulated mittens—but the dazzling stuff was certainly as hard as steel and as highly polished. It was neither transparent nor opaque, but translucent, "like pink mother-of-pearl," ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... and the satin shimmer of wall-paper, lights and shades of steel engravings, and elegant and graceful lady-treasures of gilded books and work-boxes and vases on shelf and tables. There was even a little piano, the only one in the village, with slender, fluted legs, and a mother-of-pearl ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... island of a group in the South Pacific; sometimes called the Society Islands, situated 2000 m. NE. of New Zealand; are mountainous, of volcanic origin, beautifully wooded, and girt by coral reefs; a fertile soil grows abundant fruit, cotton, sugar, &c., which, with mother-of-pearl, are the principal exports; capital and chief harbour is Papeete (3); the whole group since 1880 has become a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... some time, though: it can't go on like this," he said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing room, and opened the other door into ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... girls are to go in the lift at all, mind! It's my lift. You can use the other one, or go up the mother-of-pearl staircase, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... unshuttered windows of the Jewish houses where the families are gathered in festal array for the household rites of Passover week; turning over the chaplets, and rosaries, and anklets, and bracelets of coloured glass and mother-of-pearl, and variegated stones, and curious beans and seed-pods in the baskets of the street-vendors around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; stepping back into an archway to avoid a bag-footed camel, or a gaily caparisoned horse, or a heavy-laden donkey ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... squared proudly—a trick Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in its ruffles, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... utterance to her feelings, her attention was attracted by a pair of scrolls of black lacquer, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, suspended on the pillars, and she asked Hsiang-yuen to tell ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Chapter of the Garter was held in November, 1906, and was followed by a banquet. The regal appearance of the Duchess may be gathered from a description of her dress of cloudy white, embroidered with mother-of-pearl, a high diamond tiara on her dark hair and a magnificent bouquet of flowers, surrounded with a wealth of glittering diamonds ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... trade is chiefly in pearls, mother-of-pearl, shells, shark fins, etc. [66] The Sultan, in Spanish times, had a sovereign right to all pearls found which exceeded a certain size fixed by Sulu law—hence it was very difficult to secure an extraordinary specimen. The Mahometans trade at great distances ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... his feet ran down to meet the dazzling waters of the bay, the blue waters of the bay ran to meet a great stretch of absinthe green, the green joined a fairy sky of pink and gold and saffron. Islands of coral floated on the sea of absinthe, and derelict clouds of mother-of-pearl swung low above them, starting from nowhere and going nowhere, but drifting beautifully, like giant soap-bubbles of light and color. Where the lawn touched the waters of the bay the cocoanut-palms reached their crooked lengths far up into ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... visited the theatre and the opera. We can easily realise the excitement and joy Balzac felt in showing them all his treasures—the bust by David D'Angers, the precious Medici furniture of ebony encrusted with mother-of-pearl, the Cellini statuettes, and the pictures by Giorgione, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... plenty. They find conchs, mussels, and other shellfish on the reef, which they gather at low-water, and eat raw with bread-fruit before they come on shore. They have also very fine cray-fish, and they catch with lines, and hooks of mother-of-pearl, at a little distance from the shore, parrrot-fish, groopers, and many other sorts, of which they are so fond that we could seldom prevail upon them to sell us a few at any price. They have also nets of an enormous size, with very small meshes, and with these they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore loose and easy. Sitting down is my favourite posture. If I have a taste in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have me ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... indeed heard without, inquiring of nobody in a blandly conversational tone as she advances: 'Eh? Indeed! Are you quite sure you saw my mother-of-pearl button-holder on the work-table in my room?' is at once solicited for walking leave, and graciously accords it. And soon the young couple go out of the Nuns' House, taking all precautions against ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... nimbus. She smiles, and Her eyes, all light, have the incomparable effulgence of those pure sapphires which light up the entrance to the nave. Her slight form is diffused in a clear robe of flame, striped and ribbed like the drapery of the so-called Berthe. Her face is white like mother-of-pearl, and her hair, a circular tissue of sunshine, radiates in threads of gold. She is the Bride of Canticles. Pulchra ut ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... had absolutely no time to write. I got everything I wanted. Aunt Dora gave both of us an opera glass in mother-of-pearl in a plush case. We are going to all the school performances, Father's arranged it; he has subscribed to all the performances during the school year 19— to 19—. I am so delighted for Frau Doktor M. will come too. I do hope I shall sit next ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... things in his hand, which he offered personally to Louis, and then shook hands with us all and retired. Among these smaller presents were many fish-hooks for large fishing, laboriously carved from mother-of-pearl shell. One man came with one egg in each hand saying 'carry these to Scotland with you, let them hatch into cocks, and their song shall remind you of Tautira.' The schoolmaster, with a leaf-basket of rose apples, made his ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I went from the house, I was ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and I saw a tall, thin girl of nineteen, in a long muslin dress with a gilt belt from which, I remember, hung a mother-of-pearl fan. She came in, dropped a curtsy, and flushed crimson. Her long nose, which was slightly pitted with smallpox, turned red first, and then the flush passed up to her eyes ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... complete the whole, for in the old careless days Claire's garments had been purchased with a lavish hand, the only anxiety being to secure the most becoming specimen of its kind. There were long crinkly gloves, and a lace handkerchief, and a fan composed of curling feathers and mother-of-pearl sticks, and a dainty bag hanging by golden cords, and a cloak of the newest shape, composed of layers of different-tinted chiffons, which looked more like a cloud at sunset than a garment manufactured by human hands and supposed to ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... two sorts, admirably adapted in their construction as well to the purpose they are to answer, as to the materials of which they are made. One of these, which they call witlee witlee, is used for towing. The shank is made of mother-of-pearl, the most glossy that can be got; the inside, which is naturally the brightest, is put behind. To these hooks a tuft of white dog's or hog's hair is fixed, so as somewhat to resemble the tail of a fish; these implements, therefore, are both hook and bait, and are used with a rod of bamboo, and line ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr |
