"Varnish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contain the figures to be exhibited, and in these light parts the glass is covered with a more or less transparent tint, according to the effect required. The easiest way is to draw the figures with water colors on thin paper and afterward varnish them. To imitate the natural motions of the objects represented, several pieces of glass placed behind each other are occasionally employed. By removing the lantern to different distances, and at the same time altering, more or less distinct, at the pleasure of ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... of wood, and every board had been made ready by his own hands, and set in the sun and dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal, but wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all polished, and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you spoke in this nest your voice sounded pure ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mode of completing the curing process has some advantages over the other, as by it the meat is subject to the action of creosote, a volatile oil produced by the combustion of the sawdust, which is powerfully antiseptic. The process also furnishing a thin covering of a resinous varnish, excludes the air not only from the muscle but also from the fat; thus effectually preventing the meat from becoming rusted; and the principal reasons for condemning the practice of removing the ribs from the flitches of pork are, that by so doing the meat ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... knee. The metal of each was tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry trumpet, and the threads of its party-colored sling, though fretted and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-drum, beneath its cracked brown varnish. I could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms and a legend running, "Per Mare Per Terrain"—the motto of the marines. Its parchment, though black and scented with wood-smoke, was limp and mildewed; and I began to tighten up the straps—under which the drumsticks had been loosely ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... nose again and stirred the varnish round and round in its little saucer with his piece of sponge and took to his whistling in a whisper for a few moments. Then he says "You would call it a ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... a circular sort of plate a larger rampant fire-dragon is embroidered in costly silks and gold. When the latter dress is worn his cap is of similar shape to that worn when in mourning, only it is made of the finest black, instead of white, horse-hair, stiffened with varnish. ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... one of the royal domains, he managed to please the two kings, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., which proves he made the most of his nonentity; and even the liberals liked him; but his conduct and life were covered with the finest varnish; language, noble manners, and deportment were brought by him to a state of perfection. But, as the old prince said, it was impossible for him to continue the traditions of the Cadignans, who were all well known to have ruined their wives, for the duchess was running through her property ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... the pattern approved and required of contractors by the Navy Department. These fins are made of wood and light steel tubing, reinforced with wire, covered with aeroplane linen rubber painted and finished with varnish. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... excessive dry heat, and should always be kept in a press when not in use. A warped frame is fatal. If you do not use a tennis bag, your racket should be protected in a waterproof case. It is a good plan, after use in the wet, to rub the surface of the strings with a little beeswax or varnish. Most makers keep a special preservative ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... been wont to hatch their works merely with the point of the brush. But although many had made investigations and sought for something of the sort, yet no one had found any good method, either by the use of liquid varnish or by the mixture of other kinds of colours with the distemper. Among many who made trial of these and other similar expedients, but all in vain, were Alesso Baldovinetti, Pesello, and many others, not one of whom succeeded in giving to his ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... arrival at Versailles. "He was nothing more than an old wrinkled balloon, out of which all the gas that inflated it has gone," says St. Simon: "he went off to Paris and to Villeroi, having lost all the varnish that made him glitter, and having nothing more to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... soft wood it lasts for three or four touches and then gets "furred" at the point, and if of very hard wood it slips on the glass. Bamboo is good; but the best of all—that is to say for broad stick-lights—is an old, sable oil-colour brush, clogged with oil and varnish till it is as hard as horn and then cut to a point; this "clings" a little as it goes over the glass, and ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... sycamore wood of proper shape. Upon this draw the design with a pencil, trace over the pencil-marks with Indian ink and a fine crow-quill; then fill in the ground with Indian ink and a camel's-hair brush. After two or three days, varnish with ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... taste of any one who will turn up his nose at castor-oil or quinine and yet meekly swallow a chrysalis with varnish on the outside. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... clear. In the common fear of the new danger the contending factions drew apart, friend and foe uniting in the universal effort to gain a place of safety. The wind caught the blaze and fanned it upward in a solid sheet of flame which blistered the varnish of the Richard's stern-deck. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... mischievous phrases in which a rotten Morality, a radically false and vicious Public Sentiment, disguise themselves, is that which characterizes certain individuals as destitute of financial capacity. A 'kind, amiable, generous, good sort of man,' (so runs the varnish,) 'but utterly unqualified for the management of his own finances'—'a mere child in everything relating to money,' &c. &c.—meaning that with an income of $500 a year, he persisted in spending $1000; or with an income of from $2000 ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... suffers from timidity, from meanness, from selfishness, what a delight to depict the man who is brave, generous, unselfish! Of course the quality of a man's mind flows into and over his work, but that is rather like the varnish of the picture than its tints—it is the medium rather than the design. The artistic creation of ideal situations is often a sort of refuge to the man who knows that he makes a mess of the beautiful and simple relations of life. The artist ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... surface answer better than gutta-percha, and one inverted within another forms, when travelling, an admirable lid-box for the protection of glass bottles, rods, &c. On the Continent wooden dishes coated with shellac varnish ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... himself, and affected at all times a studious politeness of manner. He had been a good deal abroad, and as he constantly adopted the airs and the graces of a fashionable person, the boys had felicitously named him French Varnish. But Mackworth was a dangerous enemy, for he had one of the most biting tongues in the whole school, and there were few things which he enjoyed more than making a young boy wince under his cutting words. When Kenrick came to school, his wardrobe, the work of Fuzbeian ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the boat is therefore unserviceable. The general character of the materials of which inflated boats are constructed precludes any effectual repairs, as the intense heat of the sun decomposes the varnish with which the canvas is covered; it first becomes soft and adhesive, and then changes to a substance like tar, which does not consolidate with a lower ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... powers, the experience of their courage and the revelation of their inherent brutality. The substratum of primitive ferocity which exists at the bottom of most of us rushes to the surface, on occasion, with curious vehemence, and under the skin-deep varnish of modern civilisation, our hearts swell sometimes with a nameless sanguinary fury, and visions of carnage rise up before us. Inhaling the hot and acrid exhalations of his horse, Andrea Sperelli felt that none of the delicate perfumes affected ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... at the Capitol, the "Rape of Europa," by Paul Veronese, that would glow with wonderful brilliancy if it were set in a magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight,—this joyous, exuberant, warm, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... learned, too, from our own as well as the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... He trotted, he cantered, he galloped; he progressed in jerks, in jumps, in somersets; he crawled up-stairs like a little Scotch plaid spider, on "all fours;" he came down stairs on the banisters, the balance of power lying between his steel buttons and the smooth varnish of the mahogany. On several memorable occasions, he has narrowly escaped pitching head first into the hall lamp. His favorite method of locomotion, however, consisted in a series of thumps, beginning with a gentle tread, and increasing in impetus by ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... genuine and educative only as it represents a reaction of the information into the individual's own powers, so that he can bring them under control for social ends. Culture, if it is to be genuine and educative, and not an external polish or factitious varnish, represents the vital union of information and discipline. It designates the socialization of the individual in his whole outlook upon life and mode of dealing with it." I have had a large number of graduate ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... hardness, and capacity of giving light, in all which respects it is superior to every other species of candle. This candle is nearly translucent, and can be made to exhibit the wick, when the candle is held up between the eye and the light, while the surface is as glossy as polished wax or varnish. The principal ingredient is lard; and the value of this manufacture can be hardly exaggerated. Taking durability into account, it can be made as cheap as any other candle; and there exists no single element of comfort, convenience, profit, and economy, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... and fine combined Paint, wax, and varnish brushes Foot rule Tape measure Putty knife Pointing trowel ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... the wind for his pilot, our argonaut seeks no improvement upon his aerial raft. Like the bow and arrow, it long ago reached perfection, and, though he may cherish some choice and secret recipe for varnish or be the inventor of an improved valve, he generally builds with a birdlike reliance on instinct and tradition. Gas-bag, netting, concentrating-ring, basket, valve, anchor, drag-rope and exploding cord,—what has the century of ballooning added ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... table, Standing on the chairs, That's the way the legs are broken and the cushion tears! How'd you like to pay the bill for varnish and repairs? ...
— More Goops and How Not to Be Them • Gelett Burgess
... an agonized remorse. There may have been some hypocrisy in it, some struggling to cover up the baser elements in his infatuation for her. What human emotion of upward tendency has not at least a little of the varnish of hypocrisy on certain less presentable spots in it? But in the main it was a creditable, a manly remorse, and not altogether the writhings of jealousy and jealous fear of ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... neokupata. vacate : forlasi. vaccinate : inokuli. vacillate : sxanceligxi. vain : vana; vanta. valet : lakeo, servisto. valley : valo. value : valoro; sxati, estimi; taksi. valuation : taks'o, -ado. valve : klapo. various : diversaj. varnish : lak'i, -o. vase : vazo. vast : vasta, ampleksa. vat : kuvego. vault : arkajxo, vegetable : legomo, vegetajx'o. -a; kreskajxo. vegetate : vegeti. vehicle : veturilo. veil : vual'o, -i. vein : vejno. vellum : veleno. velvet : veluro. venerable : respektinda. venerate : respektegi. vent ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... cluster, around the twigs of the trees, Fig. 17, a. These clusters are uniform in diameter and cut off squarely at the ends. The eggs are white, and are firmly fastened to the twigs and to each other, by a brown substance, like varnish, which dries, leaving the eggs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... child or overlies a child; "to lay" is the causal derivative of "to lie," and is followed by two objects, e.g. to lay the table with a cloth, or to lay a cloth on the table; similarly, to overlay a surface with varnish, or to overlay a child with a blanket, or with the nurse's or mother's body. The instrument can be left unexpressed, and a person can be said to overlay a child, i.e. with her own body, a pillow, &c. Thus, while "overlie" covers the case where the woman herself lies over the child, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... years after its first appearance in Europe that any effort was made to utilize it. About the year 1820 it began to be used in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters, India-rubber threads being mixed with the materials used in weaving those articles. It was also used in blacking and varnish, and some years later, Mackintosh brought it into prominent notice by using it in his famous water-proof coats, which were made by spreading a layer of the gum between two pieces of cloth. The gum was thus protected from the air, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... was reached and Torrington village, the goal of the pilgrimage, was in sight, quite without warning the panting monster had stopped and all attempts to urge it farther were of no avail. There it stood, its motionless engine sending out odors of hot varnish and little ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... the varnish department!" exclaimed Mr. Needham. "Look out, everybody! There are barrels of alcohol and turpentine in there! They'll blow the whole place up! Better get back, boys," he added. ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... and wholesale and retail dealer in Beach's Patent Shaving Soap, Beach's Liquid Opodeldoc, and Black Varnish, &c., ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... a perfectly beautiful oak chest! That's genuine! One can see it at a glance. The lovely elbow-grease polish can never be imitated. So different from the faked-up, over-carved things glittering with varnish that one sees so often nowadays. What a shame to keep it hidden away ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... been established the child should be wrapped in a warm flannel with hot water bags or cans near it, and left until the mother has been cared for. Infants at birth are covered with a white greasy substance, vernix caseosa, or cheesy varnish; it is removed by applying olive oil, vaselin or fresh lard, and afterward rubbing the skin gently with a soft cloth. The eyes and mouth should be washed out with pure warm water—or a saturated solution of boric acid, used. Separate ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Lionardo stood for days looking at his fresco, and for weeks never came near it; how the monks of the Annunziata at Florence were cheated out of their painting, for which elaborate designs had yet been made; how Leo X., seeing him mix oils with varnish to make a new medium, exclaimed, "Alas! this man will do nothing; he thinks of the end before he makes a beginning." A good answer to account for the delay was always ready on the painter's lips, as that the man of genius works most when his hands are idlest; Judas, sought in vain ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... he said, 'that must go; and, between Pleydell and Mac-Morlan, they'll cut down my claim on it to a trifle. My character—but if I get off with life and liberty I'll win money yet and varnish that over again. I knew not of the gauger's job until the rascal had done the deed, and, though I had some advantage by the contraband, that is no felony. But the kidnapping of the boy—there they touch me closer. Let me see. This Bertram was a child at the time; his evidence ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... am naturally anxious to make clear to you now that we have intermarried, now that you are my stepson-in-law. You're young, you know, you're young, and you're hard and fast. Only years can give a mind tone—mitigate the varnish of education. I gather from this letter—and your face—that you are one of the party that participated in that ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... in again; "there is a coat of St. Petersburg varnish upon it; no amount of washing will make it come clean. You may whisper as much as you like, Mr. Paklin, but you won't get anything out ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... with a very hard lead pencil, on ground glass, then to cover the ground surface with varnish, which rendered the glass ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... Moths, your gold-eyed plumage furl, Bow your wide horns, your spiral trunks uncurl; Glitter, ye Glow-worms, on your mossy beds; Descend, ye Spiders, on your lengthen'd threads; Slide here, ye horned Snails, with varnish'd shells; 30 Ye Bee-nymphs, listen in your ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Woods, ordinary, manufactured into doors, frames, windows, and shutters, without paint or varnish, and wooden houses, unmounted, without paint ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... gay coaching party, and many such another rattles through this world with the footmen and the shining trappings and the pomp of paint and varnish. Oddly enough, no one speaks for moments, while they whirl down the avenue beneath the stately trees. "Where shall I drive you to?" finally says Ripon to ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the manner in which Azuma-zi hung about the monster he became suspicious. He dimly perceived his assistant was "up to something," and connecting him with the anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnish in one place, he issued an edict, shouted above the confusion of the machinery, "Don't 'ee go nigh that big dynamo any more, Pooh-bah, or a'll take thy skin off!" Besides, if it pleased Azuma-zi to be near the big machine, it was plain sense and decency ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... This was in the days just after the cross-Channel flight, and experimenters all over the world were building monoplanes, some of them machines of the weirdest description. The craft built by this enthusiast seemed all right in its appearance; nothing had been spared, for instance, in the way of varnish. When wheeled into the sun, for its first rolling test under power, it looked an imposing piece of work. Friends were in attendance, photographers also; and the would-be aviator was in faultless flying gear. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... attorney's daughter, with the commonest of faces, and the most unprecedented of bonnets. She and her husband had lately "set up" a waggonette, the expense of which just made it difficult for them to live upon their means, and the varnish of which added a care to life.) "Fancy driving down High Street in that!" she continued; "and just when everybody is going ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... daguerreotype could do. There was his name cut on the beam, John Carville. It may seem absurd to you people, but do you know, I realized then, as I looked up and saw my father's name on that beam, nearly smothered with countless coats of varnish, I realized how a young man of family feels, a Cecil, say, a Talbot or a Churchill, when he sees his ancestors' names in the history books. My father had done something, he was something. I don't know anyone who can better that ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... afterwards mix them together over a moderate fire; then pour upon them, while on the fire, 6 ozs. of clear boiled linseed oil, and keep stirring the whole from time to time; take it off the fire, and, when pretty cool, pour in 12 ozs. of essence of turpentine. This varnish is for coaches ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... competition in trade will not allow it. We must use all material, perfect or imperfect; we cannot afford to select. We must cover knots and imperfections with composition and pass them on. We must use the cheapest glue, and save an infinitesimal sum in the length of our dowels; we must varnish instead of polishing, or "the other man" will get the better of us. If we did not do these things our furniture would be better, but "the other man" would sell more, because he could ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... place or plate, i.e. the surface of a medium sphere, may be taken as twenty-seven square inches, a quantity considered as sufficiently large for the comparison of different substances. Great care was taken in finishing well the inducing surfaces of the ball h and sphere a, a; and no varnish or lacquer was applied to them, or to any part of the metal of ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... nature that rapid desiccation would convert it into a tough, leathery substance, it melts at the sight of the sun, leaving as a relic of existence its last meal—a handful of grit-covered with a transparent film of varnish, which the first wavelet of the flowing tide dissolves. Yet on the reef in a pool such an individual endures complacently water heated to a temperature of 108. Though feeble and of such readily dissolvable texture, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... genius, his craft and egotism, were frustrated occasionally by his temper, which, I am afraid, with all its external varnish, was of the sort which is styled diabolical. People said also, what is true of most terrorists, that he was himself quite capable of being frightened; and also, that he lied with too fertile an audacity: and, like a man with too ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bedding one bedstead one tabel and workstand six or eight chairs crockery ware &c. Tooles and machinery as follows 1 planing machine 1 upright boaring machine 1 circular saw, irons for an upright saw morticing machine 1 turning lathe and belting 1 doz of hand screws 1 copper pot to make varnish in, two dimejons 3-5 gls. each for varnish and oil tooles for cutting bench screws &c likewise 1 cow 3 cosset sheep 1 yew & 2 wethers the cow 11 years old and little lame in one foot otherways a veryry good cow, also a ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... coaxed into approaching the house. It was late in September, and a day of perfect calm. As we looked from the broad piazza, there was a glassy smoothness over all the bay, and the hills were coated with a film, or rather a mere varnish, inconceivably thin, of haze more delicate than any other climate in America can show. Over the water there were white gulls flying, lazy and low; schools of young mackerel displayed their white sides above ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a residence abroad to an American woman is an absence of the kindly deference to which, by virtue of her womanhood alone, she is accustomed at home. The much-vaunted politeness of the French nation is the thinnest possible varnish over real impertinence or actual rudeness. None of the true, heartfelt, genuine courtesy that is so freely accorded to our sex in our own favored land is to be met with here. "A woman is weak and defenceless," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... medallion picture in the atrium, with heads of Mars and Venus, gave rise to the second appellation. The colors of this picture are still quite fresh, a result which Signor Fiorelli attributes to his having caused a varnish of wax to be laid over the painting at the time of its discovery. Without some such protection the colors of these pictures soon decay; the cinnabar, or vermilion, especially, turns black after a few days' exposure to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... did not beg alms. This was the attitude of his mind, but unhappily it was often apparently contradicted by the cringing of his body and the wheedling of his tongue. In attempting smoothness he fell into oiliness; where he aimed at polished brilliance, the result was blazing varnish. Had he known what to pray for, he would have supplicated heaven that he might meet eyes able to see the man beneath the ape. Such eyes, dimly penetrating with an unexpected vision, he had won to his side in the Benyon brothers; the rest of the world still stuck on ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... jar of liquid cement, dry glue (for melting up for papier-mache), dry paper pulp, plaster of paris, Venetian turpentine, boiled linseed oil, boracic acid, some refined beeswax, a little balsam-fir, white varnish, turpentine, alcohol, benzine and a student's palette of tube oil colors (such as vermilion, rose madder, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow middle, zinc white, cobalt blue, French ultramarine ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... her cap, just ask if they are dyed with aniline colors; and if the answer is "Yes," you may know that they came from the coal-tar. Besides the dyes, we shall also have left naphtha, useful in making varnish, and various oils that are used in more ways than I can stop to tell you, or you would care now to hear. If your cousin Annie has a jet belt-clasp or bracelet, and if you find in aunt Edith's box of old treasures an odd- shaped ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... in 1825, made an important step in advance of the experiments of Arago, and produced what is properly known as the electro-magnet. He bent a piece of iron wire into the form of a horseshoe, covered it with varnish to insulate it, and surrounded it with a helix, of which the spires were at a distance. When a current of galvanism was passed through the helix from a small battery of a single cup the iron wire became magnetic, and continued so during the passage of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... have lost an eye, a leg, or an arm, or are otherwise maimed, because dishonest workmen wrought deception into the articles they manufactured, slighted their work, covered up defects and weak places with paint and varnish. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... pliability. Leather requires oil to preserve its pliability, and if not supplied will become brittle, crack, and break easily under strain. Inferior dressings are always harmful, and no dressing should be used which contains acid or varnish. Acid burns the leather as it would the skin, and polish containing varnish forms a false skin which soon peels off, spoiling the appearance of the shoe and causing the leather to crack. Paste polish containing turpentine should ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... old symbol of the angel with the cup. He will try if he cannot explain them better in those two little pictures below; which nobody ever looks at; the great Roman sarcophagus being put in front of them, and the light glancing on the new varnish so that you must twist about like a lizard to see anything. Nevertheless, you may make out ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... fact, a waterside inn, with its name, The Saracen's Head, painted in black letters along its whitewashed front and under a swinging signboard. Looking up at the board Mr. Molesworth discerned, beneath its dark varnish, the shoulders, scimitar, and grinning face of a turbaned Saracen, and laughed aloud between incredulity and a sense of terror absurdly relieved. This, then, was Sir John's ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not to bee a degree or intension of love, or any single affection (as the Schooles rather confined then defined zeale) neither yet any mixt affection (as the later, rather compounded then comprehended the nature of it) but an hot temper, higher degree or intension of them all. As varnish is no one color, but that which gives glosse & lustre to all; So the opposites of zeale, key-coldnes and lukewarmnesse, which by the Law of contraries must bee of the same nature, are no affections, but severall ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... survived his father. He had taught, taken pupils, made a fair income. He had had no break of travel, no touch with the world; a few foreign tours in the company of an old friend had given him nothing but an emotional tincture of recollections and associations—a touch of varnish, so to speak. Suddenly the remembrance of some of the things which Jack Sandys had said that morning came back to him; "real things" the boy had said, so lightly and yet so decisively. He wondered; had he himself ever had any touch with realities at all? He had been ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the window. The snow was lying deep on the fields, like a shimmering coat of varnish; the world was bathed in the light of a pale, wan moon. The forest-trees stood out here and there in blue points, like teeth. Large and brilliant the stars looked down, and above the milky way, veiled in vapours, hung the sickle ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... been old hands at the game. The way they got in and opened the safe shows that. But there's one little thing that puzzles me. One of them was careless enough not to wear gloves, and I'm bothered if I know what he was trying to do. I've traced his finger-marks on the new varnish on the window sashes in every one of the downstairs rooms. They are very distinct ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... outward appearance, then reminded him how long a time had passed, since it had been provided with a new cushion. It likewise expressed the opinion, that the oaken figures on its back would show to much better advantage, by the aid of a little varnish. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with fine sand-paper, and repeat the process three times. Then glue the leaves and ferns on, irregularly scattered, or in regular bouquets and wreaths, as suits your fancy. Apply a coat of isinglass, dissolved in water, to the whole surface, and when that is dry, three coats of copal varnish, allowing each to dry before the next is put on. The effect is very handsome. And, even without painting the objects black, this same style of leaf and fern-work can be applied to earthen vases, wooden boxes, trays ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... sorting out, marking and packing; the innumerable details of the toy trade, that great industry upon which Paris places the sign-manual of its refined taste. There is a smell of green wood, of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets, on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about, clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the debris of the treasures ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... direction of her eyes; 'they fixed it all themselves—it was their present to me. Pretty of them to think of it, wasn't it? I call it an immense improvement, and, you see, it's stuck on with some patent cement varnish, so it can't rub off. You get the effect better if you stand here—now, see how well the colours come out in ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... with which we of the back country were bred to regard the metropolitan varnish which was thus undermining the ancient Berkshire habits and speech along our one great artery, it was always, I am bound to admit, a high day for the dweller in uncorrupted Berkshire when business or pleasure drew him from his home in the downs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... dusty oleanders planted in half casks stood beside the doorway. A long bar with its tin measuring cups was on the left as you entered. The large room was decorated with casks painted a gay yellow, bright with varnish, and gleaming with copper taps ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of course, the Bible should be added. But whoever should read the debates in Congress might fancy himself present at a meeting of the city council of some city of Southern Gaul in the decline of the Empire, where barbarians with a Latin varnish emulated each other in being more than Ciceronian. Whether it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or for whatever reason, it is certain that very few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... continued for long to tramp the valley with his razor. Now, his place is the picture of prosperity: stuffed birds in the verandah, cellars far dug into the hillside, and resting on pillars like a bandit's cave:- all trimness, varnish, flowers, and sunshine, among the tangled wildwood. Stout, smiling Mrs. Schram, who has been to Europe and apparently all about the States for pleasure, entertained Fanny in the verandah, while I was tasting wines in the cellar. To Mr. Schram this was a solemn office; his serious gusto warmed ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which seemed to her presently the oddest and also the most interesting that she had ever in her life seen. Its owner had got together, apparently, the old bits of furniture that his mother did not want any longer; there was an old table, devoid of all varnish, in the floor, covered, however, with a nice green cloth; two or three chairs were the table's contemporaries, to judge by their style, and nothing harder or less accommodating to the love of ease ever entered surely a cabinetmaker's brain. The wood of which ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... lost," he said, "that must go; and, between Pleydell and Mac-Morlan, they'll cut down my claim on it to a trifle. My character—but if I get off with life and liberty, I'll win money yet, and varnish that over again. I knew not the gauger's job until the rascal had done the deed, and though I had some advantage by the contraband, that is no felony. But the kidnapping of the boy-there they touch me closer. Let me see.—This ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... So our housie being rather large (two rooms and a kitchen, not speaking of the coal-cellar and a hen-house,) and having as yet only the expectation of a family, we thought we could not do better than get John Varnish the painter, to do off a small ticket, with "A Furnished Room to Let" on it, which we nailed out at the window; having collected into it the choicest of our furniture, that it might fit a genteeler lodger and produce a better rent—And a ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... and vitriol, powder them and spread them on paper like a varnish, then write on it with a pen wetted with spittle and it will turn as black ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... rather impressed upon me the necessity of preserving the outline of these tell-tale marks while they were still plain to the eye. Taking out my penknife, I lightly ran the point of my sharpest blade around each separate impression till I had fixed them for all time in the well worn varnish of ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... nothing. I'm thinking it wouldn't be a bad thing to put a rope round the chest and tow it alongside for half an hour; then we could open it at our ease. Or if we just tied the box up and kept him from getting any water maybe that would do as well. Or the carpenter could put a coat of varnish over it ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the roadside a loosened rail was wrenched; an honest cow, picketed at pasture, had her tether shortened a dozen feet in two strokes of the boy's knife. In five minutes more, amid many warnings from Miss Herron against scratching the varnish, one end of the rail was made fast to the rear axle of the carriage, and the other ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... my heart,' as the saying is, climbing in opposition to my heart's desire, which was to return to my mother, since she had not, by her kiss, given my heart leave to accompany me forth. That hateful staircase, up which I always passed with such dismay, gave out a smell of varnish which had to some extent absorbed, made definite and fixed the special quality of sorrow that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory guise, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... door open and, crossing the bare stone landing, opened the door of another room, similar to his. They were somber apartments at the top of the deserted house, which had once been a nobleman's residence. The doors were still heavy, though blistered with time and lack of varnish. There were the remains of paneling upon the wall and ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not flow over glass? Solution too thick, glass greasy. 2. Rubber peels off on drying? Dirty glass. 3. Negative not dense enough? Use more bromide and longer development. 4. Gelatine cracks on being pulled off? Add more glycerine. 5. Gelatine not thick enough? Gelatine varnish too thin, not strong enough. 6. Does not dry sufficiently hard? Too much glycerine.—E.H. Jaques, Reported ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting for hire by the bridge; the waterman cleaning them with a parti-coloured mop spies me eyeing his vessels, and before I know exactly what is going on, and whether I have yet made ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... been taken off the picture which imaginative persons used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany. Nor, perhaps is any country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours. England is every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not enclosed are more and more carefully looked after. Whether in our climate open-air living was ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the parish asking for such furniture as individual parishioners were willing to give. Late in the afternoon she arrived at the rectory with a very large load, and the next day Jonathan was made to set to work with his tools, and she started in with some paint and varnish, and the result seemed eminently satisfactory to her, even though her hands were stained, she had had no dinner, and her hair was stuck to her head here and there in shiny spots. As they were leaving the house to return home for supper, she ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... all copper varnish ebonite, magnifying power 4 times—reach 20 km., in its dark leather case, is the only one which answers the needs of the fighting man. Sent post-free against money order of 50 ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... over on the stove. It was an ugly little parlor that was to be her reception-room for the next year at least, with red-and-green ingrain carpet of ancient pattern, hideous chromos on the walls, and frantically common furniture setting up in its shining varnish to be pretentious; but the girl had not seen it yet. She was filled with a great homesickness that had not possessed her even when she said good-by to her dear ones at home. She suddenly realized that the people with whom she was to be thrown were of another world from hers, and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... pretence that she did not know how to keep it looking as good as new. This dusting was soon a desired occupation to her, and the furniture, instead of losing its value in her eyes, became ever more precious. To use things without hurting them or soiling them or scratching the woodwork or clouding the varnish, that was the problem which soon became the mania of the old maid's life. Sylvie had a closet full of bits of wool, wax, varnish, and brushes, which she had learned to use with the dexterity of a cabinet-maker; she had her feather dusters and her dusting-cloths; and she rubbed away ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... come nearer perfect demonstration than is commonly imagined. But much of this is not to be expected, whilst the desire of esteem, riches, or power makes men espouse the well-endowed opinions in fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good their beauty, or varnish over and cover their deformity. Nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the understanding as a lie. For though many a man can with satisfaction enough own a no very handsome wife in his ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... admitted to regulate and improve a Shepherd's life by its Bucolicks? For since tis a product of the Golden Age, it will shew the most innocent manners of the most ancient Simplicity, how plain and honest, and how free from all varnish, and deceit, to more degenerate, and worse times: And certainly for this tis commendable in its kind, since its design in drawing the image of a Country and Shepherd's life, is to teach Honesty, Candor, and Simplicity, which ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... balsam, which, while retaining all the good qualities of the former method, is not subject to any of its disadvantages. This consists in diluting the balsam with an equal bulk of turpentine, and using it as a varnish, pouring it on like collodion, flowing it toward each corner, and pouring it off into the bottle from the last corner, avoiding crapy lines by slowly tilting the plate, as in varnishing. If the plate be warmed previously, the varnish ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... still younger bantling, now an empire twice as populous as Europe was at that period. Under the equally rugged hand of the young princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Russia was having her Mongolian epidermis indued with the varnish Napoleon so signally failed to scrape off, and was for the first time taking a place among the great powers of the West. The curtain, in short, was in the act of rising on the Europe of to-day. Anson had lately brought the Pacific to light, and Cook was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... up by the collar and carried him to the edge of the water—it was about six inches deep,—and threw him in,—with much the same force as, let us say, a pen is thrown into ink or a brush dipped into a pot of varnish. ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... man of this world" than a Launcelot or a Hotspur,—is as evidently the mainspring of Henry's enterprise and life as of the contract between King Philip and King John. The supple and shameless egotism of the churchmen on whose political sophistries he relies for external support is needed rather to varnish his project than to reassure his conscience. Like Frederic the Great before his first Silesian war, the future conqueror of Agincourt has practically made up his mind before he seeks to find as good reason or as plausible excuse as were likewise to suffice the future conqueror of Rosbach. In a ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Japan varnish is very improper for your positive pictures; it often cracks, and is long in drying. Black lacquer varnish, procurable at Strong's, the varnish makers in Long Acre, is the best we have been able to procure. 2nd, The solution for development will keep any length ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... offer as a suggestion to PHOTO, that if he wishes to use collodion pictures for the purpose of dissolving views, he should first copy them in the camera as transparent objects so as to reverse the light and shade, then varnish them with DR. DIAMOND'S solution of amber in chloroform, when they will bear the application of transparent colours ground in varnish, such as are used for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... with him till all the rest come. We went up and saw the Duke dress himself, and in his night habitt he is a very plain man. Then he sent us to his closett, where we saw among other things two very fine chests, covered with gold and Indian varnish, given him by the East Indy Company of Holland. The Duke comes; and after he had told us that the fleet was designed for Algier (which was kept from us till now), we did advise about many things as to the fitting of the fleet, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a photographic picture should be taken on the glass plate, and then varnished. The painter should then apply his colours to the opposite side of the glass, using the photographic image as his outline. The colours would then be burnt in, and the varnish and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... tree as the "candle-nut.'' In the Sandwich Islands the nuts are strung upon strips of wood and used as torches. The oil is exported to Europe for candle-making. A. cordata flourishes in China, where it is known as the varnish- tree, on account of the lac contained in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of gazing at them as they are in improving their own minds. They are visitors, pure and simple, and they are characterized by such an air of newness that even the flies avoid them for fear of sticking to the varnish. ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... "Is the varnish starting to wear off?" I inquired with a secret gulp of womanish self-pity. He saved the day by declaring I was just as crazy and just as adorable as I ever was. Then he asked me, rather sadly, if I was bored. "Bored?" I said, "how could I be bored with all these discomforts? ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early noms de plume]; that's enough—he is known at the city limits. Take notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. The varnish goes, and the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... prose account of one "Symonne de Byrtonne," and, in still others, the whole of the short-verse pieces, "Songe to Aella" and "The Accounte of W. Canynge's Feast." These scraps of vellum are described as about six inches square, smeared with glue or brown varnish, or stained with ochre, to give them an appearance of age. Thomas Warton had seen one of them, and pronounced it a clumsy forgery; the script not of the fifteenth century, but unmistakably modern. Southey describes another as written, for the most part, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 43' E. The calm continued till noon the next day, during which time we observed the variation to be 10 deg. 33' E. I now ordered the carpenters to work to caulk the decks. As we had neither pitch, tar, nor rosin, left to pay the seams, this was done with varnish of pine, and afterwards covered with coral sand, which made a cement far exceeding my expectation. In the afternoon, we had a boat in the water, and shot two albatrosses, which were geese to us. We had seen one of this kind of birds ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... which he was examining began upon the brass-work on the right-hand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had scratched the varnish from the surface. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... after a good night's sleep set out, the next morning, to obtain work. He went into the street, and after a while read upon a sign, "Furniture varnished." He went into the shop and asked for work. The man asked him if he could varnish well. Henry replied, "Yes, I can." He was very skilful, and he had varnished his canes sometimes, and he felt ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... Nations back to the ways of God. Eloquent high-lacquered pinchbeck specimens these, expert in the arts of Belial mainly;—fitter to be markers at some exceedingly expensive billiard-table than sacred chief-priests of men! "Greeks of the Lower Empire;" with a varnish of parliamentary rhetoric; and, I suppose, this other great gift, toughness of character,—proof that they have persevered in their Master's service. Poor wretches, their industry is mob-worship, place-worship, parliamentary ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... the Jallonka wilderness on the 23rd. They passed the ruins of two small towns, burnt by the Foulahs, and the fire had been so intense as to vitrify the walls of several huts, which at a distance appeared as if coloured with red varnish. The coffle crossed the river Wonda, where fish were seen in great abundance. Karfa now placed the guides and young men in the front, the women and slaves in the centre, and the free men in the rear, and in this order they proceeded through ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... with care for itself, perfectly protecting the surface of the belly from any violence. At first we find a decided constipation; the droppings if passed are small and hard, coated with a viscous varnish or even with false membranes. In from 36 to 40 hours the constipation is followed by diarrhea. The alimentary discharge becomes mixed with a sero-mucous exudation, which is followed by a certain amount of suppurative matter. The animal becomes rapidly exhausted and unstable, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... this part of our subject, corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy by the "keeping her embroidery from the moth," that I was going to tell you only how to take better care of pictures, how to clean them, and varnish them, and where to put them away safely when you went out of town. Ah, not at all. The utmost I have to ask of you is, that you will not pull them to pieces, and trample them under your feet. "What!" you will ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... him: this was veritably his brother's room. If it were not an exact copy of one of the many studios that Adriance had fitted up in various parts of the world, wearying of them and leaving almost before the renovator's varnish had dried, it was at least in the same tone. In every detail Adriance's taste was so manifest that the room ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... somewhere near the beginning of that period. It is an early specimen of the class of black-figured vases, as they are called. The propriety of the name is obvious from the illustration. The objects represented were painted in black varnish upon the reddish clay, and the vase was then fired. Subsequently anatomical details, patterns of garments, and so on were indicated by means of lines cut through the varnish with a sharp instrument. Moreover, the exposed parts of the female figures—faces, hands, arms, and ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... supposed that when pigments are locked up in varnishes and oils, they are safe from all possibility of change. The assumption would be more warranted if we had an impenetrable varnish—and even that would not resist the action of light, however well it might exclude the influence of air and moisture. But, in fact, varnishes and oils themselves yield to changes of temperature, to the action of a humid atmosphere, and to other influences: their protection of colour ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... her garden in shape for the winter. In spite of her year's training at Mrs. Gray's capable hands, she made mistakes; she burnt the grape jelly, and forgot to put the brown sugar into the sweet pickle, and took the varnish off the dining-room table by polishing it with raw linseed oil, and boiled the color out of her sheerest chiffon blouse; and they laughed together over her blunders. Then, when evening came, she was all in white again, and there was the simple supper served by candle-light in the little dining-room, ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... a new method in wall decoration, but one that was entirely practicable. Glass would not craze like tiles or mosaic; it would not crinkle as will canvas; it needed no varnish. It would retain its color, freshness, and beauty, and water would readily cleanse ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... may be prepared by the same process as that given for plants. Leaves will retain their autumn tints if their surface is covered with varnish or paraffin, which will ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... young shepherdess of bronze complexion and great symmetry of limb, was the only sound that disturbed the Christmas-like peace of the apartment,—a peace which held the odors of evergreens, new toys, cedar boxes, glue, and varnish in a harmonious combination that ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... I could trust. I cannot tell how soon they may find reason to change their minds on the subject. Their satisfaction may only be that they have not tried to rub the varnish off the gilding so much as I, and therefore the gilding itself still shines a little ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... varnish, one shilling and threepence a gallon, six-and-threepence," said Tweedie, raising his voice a little; "have you got ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... and carefully locked up his own, that he might more effectually discourage the attempt—considering that, in students, it was beginning at the wrong end—yet was he himself a great experimentalist. He frequently used wax and varnish; the decomposition of the latter (mastic) would sufficiently account for the appearance those pictures wore. We see others that have very much faded; some that are said to be faded may rather have been injured by cleaners; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... for weeks after the trout season is, legislatively, "open." Jonathan is "busy." I am "busy." We know that, if April passes, there is still May and June, and so, if at the end of April, or early May, we do at last pick up our rods,—all new-bedight with red silk windings, and shiny with fresh varnish,—it is not alone the call of the trout that decides us, but another call which is to me at least more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, there is no May and June in which to heed it. It is the ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... fittings glistened with varnish, mirrors and brass rods reflected the light at every angle, and the building was packed from roof to floor with boots. The shelves were loaded with white cardboard boxes containing the better sort of boot. But there was not room enough on the shelves, and boots and shoes ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... he will surround himself with a flood of grandeur and loveliness, and fill himself, if he be capable of such filling, with a flood of romance. The tropics will unfold to him all that vegetation in its greatest richness can produce. In Paris he will find the supreme of polish, the ne plus ultra of varnish according to the world's capability of varnishing. And in London he will find the supreme of power, the ne plus ultra of work according to the world's capability of working. Any one of such journeys may be more valuable ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... [which the Termagant did]; and give back her hold of Savoy [partial hold, of no use to her without the Passes] to the King of Sardinia." And of the JENKINS'S-EAR question, generous England will say nothing? Next to nothing; hopes a modicum of putty and diplomatic varnish may close that troublesome question,—which springs, meanwhile, in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... servant-girl to hand the dishes. She made a resolution to ask him again and provide both these luxuries. To-day she would take him into the parlour and make Ellen show off her accomplishments, which would help put a varnish of gentility on the general coarseness of the entertainment. She wished she had asked Mr. Pratt—she had thought of doing so, but ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... curtains sagged, and the furniture was shabby, and the walls were faded and dingy; what though the great beams in the dining-room were dirty and the carpets in the halls bedraggled, and the onyx gapping in great cracks upon the warped walls of the office; what though the paint had faded and the varnish cracked all over the house! To Margaret Mueller and also to the eldest Miss Morton, who only managed to breathe below her locket when they were under the stars, it was a dream of marble halls, and the frowsy Freddie Kollander and the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... plush than to go over it as the skilled workmen have done. Let us buy less ephemeral stuff, to be set adrift and stove in when we have skimmed over it. Let us season our reading, polish it, grain it, varnish it, repolish it and revarnish it, until we are just like it ourselves—clear, concise, intelligent. How enjoyable it is to ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... thing else, are made in this money, of which there are some pieces at Siraff, inscribed with Chinese characters. The city of Canfu is built of wood and canes interwoven, just like our lattice-work of split canes, the whole washed over with a kind of varnish made of hempseed, which becomes as white as milk, having a wonderfully fine gloss. There are no stairs in their houses, which are all of one storey, and all their valuables are placed in chests upon wheels, which in case of fire can easily ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... of Venus on the Pacific shores. Music, recalling the genius of the inspired masters, sways the varying emotions of the multitude. The miners' evenings are given up to roaming from one resort to another. Here, a certain varnish of necessary politeness restrains the throng of men; they are all armed and in the flush of physical power; they dash their thousands against impregnable and exciting gambling combinations at the tables. With no feeling of self-abasement, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... a dash Into business life as 'agents' — something not requiring cash. (You can always furnish cheaply, when your cash or credit fails, With a packing-case, a hammer, and a pound of two-inch nails — And, maybe, a drop of varnish and sienna, too, for tints, And a scrap or two of oilcloth, and a yard or two of chintz). They would pull themselves together, pay a week's rent in advance, But it never lasted longer than a month ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... should think I do know him; I am proud to know him, for I venerate him. He is only a french polisher and by no means handsome, his face is furrowed and seamed by care and sorrow, his hands and clothing are stained with varnish. Truly he is not much to look at, but if any one wants an embodiment of pluck and devotion, of never-failing patience and magnificent love, in my friend you ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... The varnish of unconscious affectation was transparent enough for Ferdinand to see through. The little old woman minced and bridled, and took quaintly sentimental airs, but she was moved a great deal, though in what way he could not guess. He sat and talked to her with a magnificent unbending, and she ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray |
