"Varnished" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... following solvent:—Amyl-acetate, 4 volumes; petroleum naphtha, 4 volumes; methyl-alcohol, 2 volumes; pyroxyline, 4 to 5 ounces to the gallon of solvent. Hale used petroleum naphtha to hasten the drying qualities of the varnish, so that it would set on the article to be varnished before it had a chance to run off. It is, however, the non-hygroscopic character of the solvent that makes the varnish successful. This formula is very largely used for the production of pyroxyline varnish, which is ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... soon after; his trousers were fastened tightly under the varnished boots which showed off his small feet to perfection. His tightly-fitting coat was closely fastened, except on the chest, where it opened to show the lace shirt-frill; and a fine cravat, twisted several times round ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... The coffin was of varnished sycamore wood, ornamented on the outside with gods in their shrines and inscriptions relating to the name and titles of the deceased, painted in red and green. The face was carved out of a separate piece of wood, with the conventional beard attached to ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... next place, the building stood in a genuine cottage garden. It was close to the road. The southern boundary was plain oak paling, made of upright pieces which Hope had varnished so that the color was now a fine amber; the rest of the boundary was a quick-set hedge, in the western division of which stood an enormous oak-tree, hollow at the back. And the garden was fair with humble flowers—pinks, sweet-williams, crimson nasturtiums, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... prominent part of the interior arrangement of these rooms is the oven, covering about six feet square, with a brick chimney in the houses of the wealthy, but without chimney in those of the poor, so that the smoke must pass through the door giving a varnished appearance to the entire ceiling ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... Diou-djen-dji, in the midst of burning noonday heat. At the foot of the stairs lay Chrysantheme's wooden shoes and her sandals of varnished leather. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... our varnished and velvet-carpeted civilisation, it is well that we should be brought back to the old essential candours which forever underlie the frills and frippery. It is well that the stark bones of the aboriginal skeleton with its raw "unaccommodated" flesh should peep ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... thought of many trivial things that I might not do or see again if I were drowned. I swam up in a slanting direction, hoping to avoid the boat that I had struck. Suddenly I saw all the boats in the lock quite clearly just above me, and every one of their curved varnished planks and the scratches and chips upon their keels. I saw several gaps among the boats where I might have swam up to the surface, but it did not seem worthwhile to try and get there, and I had forgotten why I wanted to. Then all the people leaned over the sides of their boats: ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... much namby-pamby-ism.... Went to colored church to hear Douglass. He seems without solid basis. Speaks only popular truths.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems to be no longer my calling.... I stained and varnished the library bookcase today, and superintended the plowing of the orchard.... The last load of hay is in the barn; all in capital order. Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman.... The teachers' ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... corncob pipes are the chief industry. Think of them stacked up in bright yellow piles in the warehouse. Think of the warm sun and the wholesome sweetness of broad acres that have grown into the pith of the cob. Think of the bright-eyed Missouri maidens who have turned and scooped and varnished and packed them. Think of the airy streets and wide pavements of Boonville, and the corner drug stores with their shining soda fountains and grape-juice bottles. Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watching the broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... could get up, but over a chasm, and with alarming creaks. Now it is all firm, but no handrail yet. Painters still at work, and whitewashers. Porch door up, with two birds in stained glass—looks fine—proposed new name, "Dicky-bird Lodge." Bath fixed, but waiting to be varnished—luxurious!... ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... gallant officer, and privately for riding races, drinking port, fighting duels, and seducing women. He believes himself to be one of the most honourable and deserving beings in the world. About Waterloo Place, of afternoons, you may see him tottering in his varnished boots, and leering under the bonnets of the women who pass by. When he dies of apoplexy, THE TIMES will have a quarter of a column about his services and battles—four lines of print will be wanted to describe his titles and orders ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brilliant glow. The freshly varnished woodwork smelt of polish. She did not say another word, but returned to her book, her delicate fingers turning over the leaves as, standing with bent ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... dare swear they won't sell for above half the money at the rate of broken silver, five shillings an ounce.'—'You need be under no uneasiness,' cried I, 'about selling the rims; for they are not worth six-pence, for I perceive they are only copper varnished over.'—'What,' cried my wife, 'not silver, the rims not silver!' 'No,' cried I, 'no more silver than your saucepan,'—'And so,' returned she, 'we have parted with the Colt, and have only got a groce of green spectacles, with copper rims and shagreen cases! A murrain ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... neat-fitting garments he wilfully shed And sacked himself strangely in checks instead; Denuded his chin, but retained at each ear A whisker that looked like a blasted career. He painted his neck an incarnadine hue Each morning and varnished it all that he knew. The moony monocular set in his eye Appeared to be scanning the Sweet Bye-and-Bye. His head was enroofed with a billycock hat, And his low-necked shoes were aduncous and flat. In speech ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... lightly down into the cockpit with a naive expression of surprise at the yacht's immaculate order. The sails lay precisely housed, the stays, freshly tarred, glistened in the sun, the brasswork and newly varnished mahogany shone, the mathematically coiled ropes rested on a deck as spotless as ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... led into the long room of the workshop, where various patterns of muskets, rifles, pistols, and swords were stars, crosses, wedges, over the walls, and a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied the middle place, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the day of doom With the drizzling gray Of an English May, There were few in the railway waiting-room. About its walls were framed and varnished Pictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished. The table bore a Testament For ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... fair green lawn. The low golden light before sunset flooded the lawn so that Mr. Pilkington walking in it was strangely and gloriously illuminated. Everything about him shone, from his high silk hat to the tips of his varnished boots. His frock coat and trousers of grey summer suiting clung to his figure like a warm and sunny skin. All over Mr. Pilkington and round about him there hung the atmosphere of the City. Not of the actual murky labyrinth, roofed with fog, but of the City as she stands transfigured before the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... before yesterday at Elia laelia Chudleigh's. There was a concert for Prince Edward's birthday, and at three, a vast cold collation, and all the town. The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on One another's backs, and loaded with terrenes, filigree, figures, and every thing upon earth. Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden china. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... room, extending two-thirds of the distance from left to right, is, for reasons of space economy, scantily furnished with the bare necessities—a bureau with mirror in the left corner, rear—two straight-backed chairs—a table with a glass top in the centre. The floor is varnished hardwood. The walls and furniture are painted white. On the left, forward, a door to the hall. On the right, rear, a double glass door opening on the porch. Farther front two windows. The porch, a screened-in continuation of the room, contains only a single iron bed, painted ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... been with conscious pride that the brave and loyal commander gazed around him on the noble frigate and her gallant crew. The white decks, the tiers of cannon polished like varnished leather, with the breechings and tackles laid fair and even over and around them; the bright belaying-pins, holding their never-ending coils of running gear—the burnished brass capstan—the great boom—board to the boats ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of our tarantas, made, for the sake of lightness, of woven elm withes, and varnished dark brown, was shaped not unlike a baby carriage. Such a wagon body costs about eight dollars in Kazan, where great numbers of them are made. It was set upon stout, unpainted running-gear, guiltless of springs, in cat's-cradle fashion. The step was a slender iron stirrup, which revolved in its ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... low in the neck, the big bow of his cravat, the style of his clothing, from the round hat to the varnished shoes, suggested an idea of French elegance; but otherwise he was the very type of a fair Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and the short, curly, golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy, fresh, almost pouting ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... varnished carriages and brown vans, green omnibuses and red cabs, pale loads of yellow straw, rusty-red iron cluking on pointless carts, high white wool- packs, grey horses, bay horses, black teams; sunlight sparkling on brass harness, gleaming from ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Commons given in the note that Pepys denied ever having had an altar or crucifix in his house. In the Diary there is a distinct statement of his possession of a crucifix, but it is not clear from the following extracts whether it was not merely a varnished engraving of the Crucifixion which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... wedding-day: And the ninneyhammer let her go—he let her! Do you reckon I'd let a woman I'd fetched home Go gallivanting off at her own sweet will? No wench I'd ringed, and had a mind to hold, Should quit the steading till she was carried, feet-first And shoulder-high, packed snug in a varnished box. The noodle couldn't stand up to a woman's tongue: And so, lightheels picked up her skirts, and flitted, Before he'd even bedded her—skelped off Like a ewe turned lowpy-dyke; and left the nowt, The laughing-stock ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... fixing in position those portions which were to effect a transformation in the appearance of the yacht's bows, another party, under Milsom, was similarly employed in altering the appearance of the vessel's handsome stern, and the third party, under Perkins, was clothing the brightly varnished masts in tight-fitting canvas coats, painted in the all-pervading grey which was to be the colour of the vessel when the work of disguising her should be complete; fixing a bogus fighting top on the ship's foremast; enclosing the chart-house in ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... from his house to the canoe in a haole coffin, oiled and varnished and new. It had been made by a ship's carpenter, who thought he was making a boat that must not leak. It was very tight, and over where the face of Kahekili lay was nothing but thin glass. The chiefs had not screwed on the outside plank to cover the glass. Maybe they did not know the manner of haole ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... anon, he would be the officer, and shine forth in a fancy forage cap, cocked jauntily over a profusion of well-waxed curls, a richly braided surtout, with military overalls strapped down over highly varnished boots, whose hypocritical heels would sport a pair of large rowelled long-necked, ringing, brass spurs. Sometimes he was a Jack tar, with a little glazed hat, a once-round tie, a checked shirt, a blue jacket, roomy trousers, and broad-stringed pumps; and, before ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... The Brandeis' seat was well toward the rear, as befitted a less prosperous member of the rich little congregation. This enabled them to get a complete picture of the room in its holiday splendor. Fanny drank it in eagerly, her dark eyes soft and luminous. The bare, yellow-varnished wooden pews glowed with the reflection from the chandeliers. The seven-branched candlesticks on either side of the pulpit were entwined with smilax. The red plush curtain that hung in front of the Ark on ordinary days, and ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell. The painted ceiling was carefully taken down and saved from destruction by one of the heads of the firm. The chief articles of interest remaining are a handsome overmantel in one of the private rooms of the firm, and a curious ceiling. The former is of wood, and is varnished and painted in various tones of bronze and gold. The carving upon it is very elaborate and enigmatical. The panelled ceiling has some affinity with it, but has been modernized, and is not so interesting. The front of ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... lifeboats of course excepted, are clinker built and of yellow colour, the natural elm being only varnished. And it is fine to see on a stormy day the splendid way in which they are handled, visible one moment on the crest and the next hidden in the trough of a wave, or launched or beached on the open shingle in ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... I can do," she said, and lightly jumped into her little, softly upholstered, open carriage, its brightly-varnished splash-guards glistening in the sunshine, and opened her parasol. The footman got on the box and gave the coachman a sign. The carriage moved, but at that moment she touched the coachman with her parasol ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... inconsiderate document of the sort I had ever seen. He was the commander and owner of the only tug-boat on the river, a very trim white craft of 150 tons or more, as elegantly neat as a yacht, with a round wheel-house rising like a glazed turret high above her sharp bows, and with one slender varnished pole mast forward. I daresay there are yet a few shipmasters afloat who remember Falk and his tug very well. He extracted his pound and a half of flesh from each of us merchant-skippers with an inflexible ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... a screen on the right hand, a screen covered, as had been the one in his own nursery, with a patchwork of pictures varnished over. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of men, and they said they never would return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest-temple, and upon the varnished ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... continually by half-insane people called "cranks," and by the professional Socialists, mainly foreigners. Both the President and Vice-President are well-dressed men. President McKinley, when I was granted an audience, wore a long-tailed black "frock coat" and vest, light trousers, and patent leather or varnished shoes, and standing collar. The Vice-President was similarly dressed, but with a "turn-down" collar. The two men are said to make a "strong team," and it is a foregone conclusion that the Vice-President will succeed President McKinley. This is already talked of by ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... flowers, which have found, I suppose, the particular arrangements of the season suit them; or rather, I suppose that an outburst of a particular flower in a particular year shows that the previous year was a good seeding-time. This year has been remarkable for two plants so far, a sort of varnished green ground-weed, with a small white flower, and a dull crimson dead-nettle; both of them have covered the ground in places in huge patches. This is both strange and pleasant, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vanity did not expose him to some temptation; and I think that in this matter his attitude was in every way creditable. He showed, indeed, the prejudice entertained by many of the rationalist divines for the freethinkers who were a little more outspoken than himself. The deist whose creed was varnished with Christian phrases, was often bitter against the deist who rejected the varnish; and Pope put Toland and Tindal into the Dunciad as scandalous assailants of all religion. From his point of view it was as wicked to attack any creed as to regard any creed as exclusively true; and certainly ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... not seem to hear, but rose and opened a small Dutch corner-cupboard, inlaid with parrots and tulips, and darkly varnished. From it ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to Grace that she had better go out into the little kitchenette at the rear of the apartment and see if she couldn't find the materials for preparing some coffee. He himself sat down at the little writing desk, and proceeded once more to examine its varnished surface with the greatest care. He had thought, if the letters had been sealed here, there would in all probability be some tiny spots of the black sealing wax upon the desk top, but he could discover nothing. Presently he heard Grace calling to him ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... being made towards aerial navigation. M. Prosper Meller, of Bordeaux, proposes to construct an aerial locomotive 200 metres in length, 62 wide, and 60 high, the form to be cylindrical, with cone-shaped ends, as best adapted for speed. The outer case is to be varnished leather, which is to be filled with gas, and to contain five spherical balloons. A net, which covers the whole, is to support sixteen helices by ropes, eight on each side; and to these two galleries are to be attached, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... farmland through my own sawmill and used it for a variety of purposes. It is probably the strongest wood for its weight except spruce. I have used it successfully to make propellers which operate electric generators for deriving power from the wind. Because butternut is so light and, properly varnished, resists weathering and decay to so great an extent, I have found it the best material I have ever tried for such construction. In building a small electric car for traveling around the orchards, I used butternut rather than oak or metal, which saved at least 100 pounds of weight, an important ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... in these islands are Coromandel cheremallays, but fine, Siam girdles or sashes, salalos, but fine, ballachos and chelleys, are in most request. Likewise China taffetas, velvets, damasks, great basons, varnished counters, crimson ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... wonderful little old inn, the only one in the place, and took my meals in a dining-saloon fifteen feet by nine, with a portrait of George I (a print varnished to preserve it) hanging over the mantel- piece. On the second evening after dinner a young gentleman came in— the dining-saloon being public property of course—and ordered some bread and cheese and a bottle of Dublin stout. We presently fell into talk; he turned out to be an officer from the ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... porter or other stipendiary visitor of my hotel, caused to shine out with startling refulgence the morning splendors in which Papa Joliet had arrayed himself. He wore a courtly dress, appropriate to the most formal possible ceremony; his black suit was glossy; his hat was glossy; his varnished pumps were more than glossy—they were phosphorescent. Gloves only were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... he told us, a year or two ago, when taste was even different to what it is now! And he was thinking of altering it and having it pure Louis XIV. At present it was composed of saddle-bag coverings, varnished mahogany and a stencilled fleur-de-lys wall with crossed battle-axes upon it, between pictures and some china plates, while the table was lit by two huge lamps from the ceiling, shaded by old gold silk shades with frills. It was as gay as possible, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... name of Robert, to construct a balloon. This they did, but instead of applying the Montgolfier motive power—heated air—they used hydrogen gas, procured by the action of diluted sulphuric acid upon iron filings. Their balloon, which was made of thin silk, varnished with a solution of elastic gum, was a much nearer approach to the balloon of modern days than that of Montgolfier. It was a great success; it rose and remained suspended at a height of 100 feet, in which state ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... eight from time to time—one gloomily from the gaol, another from the gable of an almshouse, with a preparative creak of machinery, more audible than the note of the bell; a row of tall, varnished case-clocks from the interior of a clock-maker's shop joined in one after another just as the shutters were enclosing them, like a row of actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of the curtain; then chimes were heard stammering out the Sicilian Mariners' Hymn; so that chronologists ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... composed, doubtless, of many elements, but what shone out of it as if the whole place and time had been a great picture, from the hand of genius, presented to him as a prime ornament for his collection and all varnished and framed to hang up—what marked it especially for the highest appreciation was his extraordinarily unchallenged, his absolutely appointed and enhanced possession of it. Poor Fanny Assingham's challenge amounted ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, from which hung a rather broad black riband. His thin figure looked stiff even in an arm-chair. His big brown-red hands held the book up. His legs were crossed, and his feet were strongly defined by the snowy white spats which partially concealed the varnished black boots. He looked a distinguished old man as he sat there—but he ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... shone with the white lacquer of a recent washing with coarse soap, he was dressed very neatly in his Sunday broadcloth, and he wore a black-and-white check tie which she had never seen him wear before, and his fingers looked like varnished bulging pods in tight black ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... with mother-of-pearl handles. Around the walls hung a number of paintings, which, with one exception, were landscapes or ocean-views; and as Dr. Grey sat watching the shimmer of lamp-light on their carved frames and varnished surfaces, they seemed to ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... this did Sir William Phips present when he sat in Grandfather's chair after the king had appointed him governor of Massachusetts. Truly there was need that the old chair should be varnished and decorated with a crimson cushion, in order to make it suitable for such a ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her during the last few hours. She raised her veil as she mounted the narrow staircase which led to the one private room at the Hotel de Lorraine. She entered, without tapping, the room at the head of the stairs, pushing open the ill-varnished door with its white-curtained top. At first she thought that the little apartment ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heels of his varnished boots together with a click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he fell into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the varnished hat shrugged his shoulders, and raised his eyebrows in doubt. He evidently had never heard of the rue Falguiere. "Yes, rue Falguiere, the old ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Bixby, spreadin' out his varnished finger-nails helpless. "And yet, I am sure he would very much like to have a chat with his ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... are not utterly worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded with old tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-skuttles traversing our streets. These have not yet completed their useful course; the less corroded parts are cut into strips, punched with small holes, and varnished with a coarse black varnish for the use of the trunk-maker, who protects the edges and angles of his boxes with them; the remainder are conveyed to the manufacturing chemists in the outskirts of the town, who employ them ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... of things that I want to ask him if he ever turns up," Peter replied. "I only hope he will be decent to us. I am sure he would if he knew how hard we are trying to learn. One thing I am anxious to know is why on earth they don't dry the freshly varnished patent leather in the factory. Look at the work it makes for the men to bring it out here in the yard and stand it up against these hundreds of wooden racks. I should think by this time it would have dawned on somebody that it would be lots ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... cottages about a century ago, the greater part of them had been long deserted; and their fallen roofs, blackened gables, and ruinous walls, showed Desolation's triumph over Poverty. On some huts the rafters, varnished with soot, were still standing, in whole or in part, like skeletons, and a few, wholly or partially covered with thatch, seemed still inhabited, though scarce habitable; for the smoke of the peat-fires, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... afraid you were disappointed last night at finding no picture by the Shannon. {93} Mayhap you had asked Mr C[hurchyard] to come and give his judgment upon it over toasted cheese. But the truth is, the picture has just been varnished with mastick varnish, which is apt to chill with the cold at this season of the year: and so I thought it best to keep it by me till its conveyance should be safer. I hope that on Monday you will get it. But I must tell you that, besides the reason of the varnish, I have had a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... by Porphyry and Plutarch. Thus Eusebius in the Praeparatio Evangelica first attacks the Egyptian interpretations of their own bestial or semi-bestial gods. He shows that the various interpretations destroy each other, and goes on to point out that Greek myth is in essence only a veneered and varnished version of the faith of Egypt. He ridicules, with a good deal of humour, the old theories which resolved so many mythical heroes into the sun; he shows that while one system is contented to regard Zeus as mere fire and air, another system recognises in him the higher reason, while Heracles, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... devotion to the study of physics and astronomy, I, Hans Pfaal of Rotterdam, at length determined to construct a balloon of my own along original lines and to try a flight in it. Accordingly I had made an enormous bag out of cambric muslin, varnished with caoutchouc for protection against the weather. I procured all the instruments needed for a prolonged ascent and finally prepared for the inflation of the balloon. Herein lay my secret, my invention, the thing in which my ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... deny our own sence and betray the Truth, if we should not resent so great a sinne and danger, as is the breach of a solemne Covenant, sworn with hands lifted up to the most High God: Which breach however varnished over with some colourable and handsome pretexts, one whereof is the Liberty & Common Right of the free People of England, as once Saul brake a Covenant with the Gibeonites, In his Zeal to the ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... of these ludicrous facts.—Will he deny? cries Nash—and here he has woven every tale the most watchful malice could collect, varnished for their full effect. Then ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... oxygen which forms one of its constituents; and it is principally to insure the expulsion of oxygen that air is excluded. The examples which illustrate the resulting effects are numerous and varied. Eggs have been varnished so as to exclude air, and have retained the vital principle in the chick for years; and it is a familiar domestic practice, to butter the outside of eggs as a means of keeping them. The canisters of preserved provisions, however, are the most direct and valuable result of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... bought, thy varnished coat And well proportioned frame My house adorned, and no one scorned Thee ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the old window had taken its place. In the same church was an old oak rood-screen in the Perpendicular style with some gilding and colouring still remaining. Some repairs had been specified, but I beheld in its place a new screen of varnished deal. 'Well,' replied the builder, more genial than ever, 'please God, now I am about it, I'll do the thing well, cost what it will.' The old screen had been used up to boil the work-men's kettles, though 'a ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... sheets flapping in the morning wind on the clothes-lines. She was in the midst of this occupation, forgetting her journey, forgetting Paris, even the place where she was, when a stout, thick-set, bearded man, with varnished boots and a velvet jacket, over the torso of a ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Aloft her elegant pavilion bends, And living shade of vegetation lends, With ever propagated bounty blessed, And hospitably spread for every guest: No tinsel here adorns a tawdry woof, Nor lying wash besmears a varnished roof; With native mode the vivid colours shine, And Heaven's own loom has wrought the weft divine, Where art veils art, and beauties' beauties close, While central grace diffused ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... and passed a window that displayed a pyramid of varnished kegs backed by a mirror with a ram's head painted on it in colours. Beyond was the side entrance. Over the door hung a glass sign, one word in large red letters: "DANCING." She caught the odour of cheap wine and stale beer. Again she said, "I ain't going ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... life, I possess an art that will produce your employers considerable wealth." Upon this, the slave going to the master of the house informed him of what the supposed dervish had said, when the treacherous cook came to inquire after the promised riches. "Give me only some reeds and canes, varnished of different colours," said the sultan, "and I will make a mat, which if you carry to the palace and present to the vizier, he will purchase it for a thousand pieces of gold." The desired articles were furnished, and the sultan setting to work, in a few days finished a mat, in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the view, their spoutings refined to steam by distance. And there are fields of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished surface of their drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent groves of palm; and an effective accent is given to the landscape by isolated individuals of this picturesque family, towering, clean-stemmed, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... both banks of the stream with straight rows of green, round tree-tops. The sun glistened off the varnished leaves; the wheels of irrigating machines sounded from the distance like humming insects. The moisture rising from the canals, joined the clouds from the chimneys of the motors, to form a thin veil of mist over the countryside, that gave a pearly transparency to the golden light ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... regiment has no say as to who joins it, it's bound to rag,' Infant began. 'Why—why, they varnished me when I joined!' He squirmed at the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... toys; and in this way he made a thousand wooden parrots. They were as like real parrots as possible. They had each two wings, two legs, two eyes, and a sharp beak. And when the Rajah had finished them all, he painted and varnished them and put them, one afternoon, outside the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... it. The skin, manufactured from new, unbleached linen stock, is carefully stretched in place, and when perfectly dry is from one-tenth to three-sixteenths of an inch thick. Removed from the model, it is water-proofed, the frame and fittings completed, and the boat varnished. In short, in this class of boats, the shape, style, and finish are precisely that of wooden ones, of corresponding dimensions and class, except that for the usual wooden sheathing is substituted the paper skin ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... God, that we may be self-reliant and self-sufficient, and proudly neglectful of all the divine forces that come down into life to brighten and gladden it, it is a lie, false and fatal; and of all the falsehoods that are going about this world at present, I know not one that is varnished over with more apparent truth, that is smeared over with more of the honey that catches young, ardent, ingenuous hearts, than that half-truth, and therefore most deceptive error, which preaches ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... can any one be rationally expected to stick to anything in this weather, except, perhaps, the newly varnished surface of his desk? And how can even the firmest of resolutions be prevented from melting and vanishing away, with the thermometer at more degrees than one likes to mention? You remember the old proverb: "Man proposes, but his mother-in-law finally disposes." The bearing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... to be disposed of, and the holder of the lucky ticket will find himself suddenly owner of a mediaeval castle with an unlimited number of dependencies—vineyards, woods, pastures, and so forth—all only waiting the new master's arrival—while inside, all is swept and garnished (not to say, varnished)—the tables are spread, the wines on the board, all is ready for the reception but ... here 'plain speaking' becomes necessary—it prevents quarrels, and, could the projector get people to practise it as he does all would be well; so he, at least, will speak plainly—you ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... quite sufficient for the beginner. These pins are also gilt, under the impression that gilding tends to prevent the corrosion of verdigris which the juices from the bodies of some moths, the Hepialidae especially, induce. This is not so; the Continental black varnished pins are better safeguards, but prejudice forbids their use. Messrs. Tayler now make all their sizes in "enamelled black" to order, at the same ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... them. And toward the last, when I thought it over, There by my window, growing clearer About myself, as my pulse slowed down, And looked at one of the mills I bought— Which I didn't have the slightest need of, As things turned out, and I never ran— A fine machine, once brightly varnished, And eager to do its work, Now with its paint washed off— I saw myself as a good machine ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... judgment, however, to quite disregard the warning, and he turned it over curiously in his mind as he went to his dressing-room. Emerging a few minutes later in the black-and-white of faultless evening dress, without a speck on his varnished shoes, he moved down along the front of the cages, addressing to the occupant of each, as he passed, a sharp, authoritative word ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... them over that these constellations are as whitely bright to small eyes that look from below, from the ooze of the bog or the roots of marsh grass, as they are to our great eyes that look from above. Of an early September morning in the clear stillness I feel that they loom like varnished planets of the sky in their own lowly heaven of coruscating dew that coats all things with a milky way of white fire drops, a dew that has risen all night from the warmth below and, chilled by the cold blue ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... paper on to the varnish coating of the plate, and, after clearing out the lines with graving needles, the plate is etched with a mixture of 1 vol. of water and 4 to 7 vols. of nitric acid, either by application or immersion; in the latter event the back of the plate must be varnished over. When the metal is bitten by the acid to about 1-75 of an inch in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the noblest souls; and a late important step in my life has kindly taken me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase, are indeed but lighter and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... we clattered into the curious little convent-church town of Nivelles, and found the tiny square before the Black Eagle Inn full of refugees who had trudged in from towns beyond, the liverymen, after taking off their varnished high hats to scratch their preplexed heads, announced that Brussels was where they belonged and to Brussels they would return that night, though their spent horses dropped in the traces on ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... if there is any wood, highly polished and varnished wood, are the only materials fit for patients' utensils. The very lid of the old abominable close-stool is enough to breed a pestilence. It becomes saturated with offensive matter, which scouring is only wanted to bring out. I prefer an earthenware lid as being always cleaner. ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... there which he had made himself, his tools being a knife made out of a nail hammered flat and the edge sharpened, and a piece of broken glass. It was admirably fashioned, and except that it was not varnished, would have been taken for such an instrument as you buy in a shop; its tone, too, was pleasing, and Billy could discourse excellent music on it. It was in the manufacture of these fiddles that his time was passed; the fact that he had but one hand ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... storm. With new disquiet Mr. Traill remembered a matter that had annoyed him in the morning, and that he had been inclined to charge to mischievous Heriot boys. Low down on the outside of his freshly varnished entrance door were many scratches that Bobby could have made. He may have come for food on the Sabbath day when the place ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... short gaiters. So eager was he to commence, that he no sooner espied a piece of water, than, with trembling hands, he put his rod together, and displayed his nets, laying his basket, gaping for the finny prey, on the margin of the placid waters. With eager gaze he watched his newly-varnished and many-coloured float, expecting every-moment to behold it sink, the inviting bait being prepared 'secundum artem.' He had certainly time for reflection, for his float had been cast at least an hour, and still remained stationary; ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... warmth but the stale exhalation of dead summers. The very statues seemed to drowse like watchers by a death-bed. Lizards shot out of the cracked soil like flames and the bench in the laurustinus-niche was strewn with the blue varnished bodies of dead flies. Before us lay the fish-pond, a yellow marble slab above rotting secrets. The villa looked across it, composed as a dead face, with the cypresses ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the first time, that the second vehicle was not a humble conveyance like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped. The driver was a young man of three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth, stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves—in short, he was the handsome, horsey young buck who ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of friends and time. All the rest had departed homewards, and I sought to find them. The dark evening shades were casting sombre tones in the galleries—I was a very little boy of seven or eight—and the stuffed lions and bears and wolves seemed looming or glooming into mysterious life; the varnished sharks and hideous shiny crocodiles had a light of awful intelligence in their eyes; the gigantic anaconda had long awaited me; the grim hyaena marked me for his own; even deer and doves seemed uncanny and goblined. At this long interval of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... color. The mohair furniture—cold at all temperatures of the room and slippery in every position of the body. The little marble-top table on which rested a glass case holding a stuffed blue jay clutching a varnished limb: tail and eyes stretched beyond the reach of muscles. Near the door an enormous shell which, on summer days, the cook blew as a dinner horn for the hands in the field. A collection of ambrotypes which, no matter how held, always caused the sitter to look as though the sun ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... when subjected to pressure. I recommend a rod having a root 9 feet, and a top of 5 feet, making together 14 feet in length, as the most useful; a fir root, and top of good sound lance wood, well painted, ringed and varnished, makes a neat and serviceable rod. For trolling, your top should be stiff and strong. For worm not so ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... circular saw instead of the quiet, steady scraping of a "cutter." Here all the woodwork of the carriages is executed, and when ready they are hoisted through a large trap-door in the roof to the second story, where they are painted and varnished, and, if first-class, "up-holstered." In a store-room above stairs, are piled heaps of cushions ready for the most expensive carriages; at a table is a boy stuffing with horse-hair the leathern belts ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Beechnut, "the yellow and the blue were blended together in the eye, and that made green. Yellow and blue always make green. Arielle colored my top, after my father had made it, and then my father varnished it over the colors, and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... something noteworthy. All the pictures lacked the charm (no doubt I am a barbarian to think it one) of being in brilliant frames, and looked as if it were a long, long while since they were cleaned or varnished. The light was so scanty, too, on that heavily clouded day, and in those gloomy old rooms of the palace, that scarcely anything ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... J. A. C. Charles. The first suggestion was to copy the process of Montgolfier, but Charles proposed the application of hydrogen gas, which was adopted. The filling of the balloon, which was made of thin silk varnished with a solution of elastic gum, and was about 13 ft. in diameter, was begun on the 23rd of August 1783, in the Place des Victoires. The hydrogen gas was obtained by the action of dilute sulphuric acid upon iron ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the most scrupulous and pedantic fashion. The slender stems of the fruit-trees standing in the flower-beds looked very pretty in their coats of light blue and rose tints, and pale yellow, and other colours. Leberfink had varnished them, and so beautified Nature. Moreover they saw in the trees the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... split and should be fastened with brads. The half-round hoops of barrels will be found very useful in trimming, especially for filling-in purposes, and by using them the operation of splitting is avoided. After the box is trimmed, the rustic work should be varnished, in order to thoroughly preserve it, as well as ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... long time Lecoq puzzled over this problem. Then, with Fanferlot, he tried an experiment. In his room was an iron box varnished like the safe. Taking the key of this box from his pocket, he ordered Fanferlot to seize his arm just as he put it near the lock. The key slipped, pulled away from the lock, and sliding along the surface of the door, left ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... let a woman git out of the wagon there now than she's crazy for a pink nubia, and a shell breastpin, and a dress-pattern, and a whole bolt of factory and a set of chiny cups and saucers and some of this here perfumery soap. And that don't do 'em. Then they let out a yell for varnished rockin'-cheers with flowers painted all over 'em in different colours, and they tell you they got to have bristles carpet—bristles on it that long, prob'ly!" The injured man indicated a length of some eighteen or ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the trees—a sinuous sheeting of the country-side like red-gold armour. But Howat knew that at the first stir of air the leaves would be in stricken flight, the autumn accomplished. Caroline dragged him impetuously down into the garden, among the brown, varnished stems of the withered roses, the sere, dead ranks of scarlet sage. "He hugged me," she told him; "I was quite breathless. It was in a hall, dark; but he didn't say anything. What do you think?" There was nothing definite that he might express; and he patted her ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... large piece of pork, had invited this monster, which was now writhing in pain in the water. The gunnery instructor shot it, and with a jigger we hauled it aboard. It was then cut open, and a dexterous marine took out its back-bone, which he cleaned and varnished, and passing a steel rod through the various ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... phrases, and hurried to his carriage. At the sight of its varnished panels he recovered his self-complacency and courage, and began to talk fluently about chariots and horses, whilst the children of the family followed to take leave of him, saying, "Are you going quite away, Charles? Will you never come back to play with us, as you used ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... not witness the arrival of these visitors with much pleasure,—the dandies more especially, who shod in varnished leather, always over-dressed, musked, and starched, attract, so they think, too much the attention of the young girls. Fathers, mothers, and, above all, lovers, are at once on the look out. They mistrust these fine gentlemen, whom they always designate by the appellation ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Berlin generally a way for horses and carriages, you would scarcely expect such elegant apartments. The moment you crossed the threshold you were in another world. Everything rich, tasteful, new; the walls superbly papered; the woodwork painted like snow and varnished like a mirror: Brussels carpet, then not over-common in the richest houses; lounges, chaises longues, sofas, divans; a strong smell of Russia binding from splendid volumes on the table, and gleaming from mahogany book-cases; beautiful paintings and engravings; a lavish display ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... she talked much and Cartwright hardly listened, and looked across the lake. A canoe drifted out from behind a neighboring point, and its varnished side shone in the fading light. Then a man dipped the paddle, and the ripple at the bow got longer and broke the reflections of the pines. A girl, sitting at the stern, put her hands in the water, and when she flung the sparkling drops at her companion her laugh came across the lake. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... of the forecastle, a tall, fine-looking, hard-a-weather fellow, was standing on the shank of the sheet anchor, with his arms across, and his well-varnished canvas bat drawn so much over his eyes that it was difficult to tell whether he was awake, or merely dozing in the sun, as he leaned his back against the fore-topmast backstay. The seaman, however, had been attentively watching the young party all the time, and, rather fearing that mischief might ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... good taste, but of what their owners think good, rises the wooden building with skylight roof of "The Administration of Forests and Waters." It is on a beautiful knoll, and has a wooden frame with tongued and grooved panels, the whole varnished to show the natural grain of the timber. On the panels outside are arranged the tools and implements of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Seldonskip and bid him hence to speed. But sometimes action swift doth breed regreet; An as I on the future cogitate, Methinks excuses which might satisfy Uninterested minds may weakly fail To ease paternal irritation, when Its offspring, bearing hence a varnished tale Of wrongs which from imagination's womb Were born and yet with specious sound do ring. Hence I must speedily with subtle skill Frame a dispatch which like to plaster kind May ease the irritation of the sore And thus mar not a happy intercourse. The mind of ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in. Among the vanquished was the master chimney-sweeper, whilom incredulous at Staggs's Gardens, who now lived in a stuccoed house three stories high, and gave himself out, with golden flourishes upon a varnished board, as contractor for the cleansing ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... preparing for the Adjutant-General a report of a little affair during which one of his men had been obliged to snuff out the lives of a couple of Mexican horsethieves and seriously damage a third. Writing was laborious work for the Captain of Rangers, though he told no varnished tale. His head and shoulders were hunched over the table and his fingertips were cramped close to the point of the pen. Each letter as it was set down had its whispered ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... cottonwoods and a fenced irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest air that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see or think of Arizona, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... more accomplished he noticed that "Reddy" took more pains with his toilet. Every morning Skipper's coat was curried and brushed and rubbed with chamois until it shone almost as if it had been varnished. His fetlocks were carefully trimmed, a ribbon braided into his forelock, and his hoofs polished as brightly as Reddy's boots. Then there were apples and carrots and other delicacies which ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... Wolds. When you leave them and descend, there is a country of water, drains, and deep ditches, that require a real water-jumper. Two points specially strike a stranger—the complete hereditary air of the pack, and the attendants, so different from the piebald, new-varnished appearance of fashionable subscription packs. Smith, the huntsman, is fourth in descent of a line of Brocklesby huntsmen; Robinson, the head groom, had just completed his half century of service at Brocklesby; and Barnetby, who rode Lord Yarborough's second horse, was many years in the same capacity ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... seven hundred tourists for a continuous journey of five days! Here, too, are five hundred horses, all of which can be harnessed at twenty-four hours' notice; and, since the Park is so remote, here also are the company's blacksmith and repair shops. Within the stables, also, are the beautifully varnished coaches, varying in cost from one to two thousand dollars, and made in Concord, New Hampshire, twenty-five hundred miles away. On one of these I read the number, "13-1/2." "Why did you add the fraction?" I inquired of the Manager of Transportation. "Because," ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... come and cast Chantegreil's crime in his daughter's face. What peaceful bliss! They would have opened a wheelwright's workshop beside some high road. No doubt, he cared little for his ambitions now; he no longer thought of coachmaking, of carriages with broad varnished panels as shiny as mirrors. In the stupor of his despair he could not remember why his dream of bliss would never come to pass. Why did he not go away with Miette and aunt Dide? Then as he racked his memory, he heard the sharp crackling of a fusillade; he saw a standard fall before ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... was a somber chamber furnished in red plush, with a complication of shades and gray-white net curtains at long windows and a deep green carpet. There was a fireplace, with a grate, supported by varnished oak pillars and elaborate mantel and glass, a glittering reddish center-table with a great many small odd shelves below, a desk with sheaves of hotel ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... before Hezekiah was up, the chief brought to his room a new outfit of clothes—a silk hat, frock-coat, shepherd's-plaid trousers and varnished boots with spats. ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... her to the house now, and it was well for her that her friendship with Tibbie Dyster had begun. But as she saw Alec day after day at school, the old colours began to revive out of the faded picture—for to her it was a faded picture, although new varnished. And when the spring had advanced a little, the boat was got out, and then Alec could not go rowing in the Bonnie Annie without thinking of its godmother, and inviting her to join them. Indeed Curly would not have let him forget her if he had been so inclined; for he ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... had his own servant with him, and the man now came up and said that a meal was ready, and they at once entered the cabin. It was roomy and comfortable, and was, like the rest of the boat, of varnished teak. There were large windows in the stern; it had a table, with two fixed benches; and there were broad, low sofas on each side. Above these the muskets were disposed, in racks; while at the end by ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... hoofs. The rider, now close enough for Miss Carmichael to distinguish the features, was a thorough dandy of the saddle. No slouching garb of exigence and comfort this, but a pretty display of doeskin gaiter, varnished boot, and smart riding-breeches. The lad—he could not have been, Miss Carmichael thought, more than twenty—was tanned a splendid color not unlike the bloomy shading on a nasturtium. And when the doughty horseman made out the girl standing in the doorway, he smiled with a lack of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... budding, to say nothing of pots of violets that perfumed the whole place whenever they took it into their purple heads to bloom. The floor was carefully swept, the chairs had not a speck of dust upon leg or round, the long settle near the fireplace shone as if it had been just varnished, and the eight-day clock in the corner had had its white face newly washed, and seemed determined to tick the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... up once last night. What a perfect morning!" The old woman paused, her hand on the loaf of bread, to gaze out of the open door into the garden. The sea sounded. Through the wide-open window streamed the sun on to the yellow varnished walls and bare floor. Everything on the table flashed and glittered. In the middle there was an old salad bowl filled with yellow and red nasturtiums. She smiled, and a look of deep content shone in ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... chairs in formal array; portraits in gilded frames; and best of all, a "whatnot," a thing to fit a corner, having many shelves and each shelf loaded with fascinating objects that maddened one because they must not be touched. Varnished pine-cones, flint arrow-heads, statuettes set on worsted mats, tiny strange boxes rarely ornamented—you mustn't even shake them to see if they contained anything—a small stuffed alligator in ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... top, on which there stands, by way of ornament, the inevitable white china tea-service, covered with a half-effaced gilt network. The floor is sufficiently uneven, the wainscot rises to elbow height, and the rest of the wall space is decorated with a varnished paper, on which the principal scenes from Telemaque are depicted, the various classical personages being colored. The subject between the two windows is the banquet given by Calypso to the son of Ulysses, displayed thereon for ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... considered mean and unworthy of the Government's patronage. Each ship must have an experienced surgeon, whose wages must be paid like those of other persons employed, and an apothecary's room and outfit. The ship must be painted and varnished, and overhauled at every trip; the upholstering and furnishing must be often renewed; stolen articles must be replaced; and the breakages of table-wares constantly renewed. All ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... and companion way are of mahogany, and with the decks, spars, and rail, are varnished, the rest of the hull being painted black, white, or green, and that portion below the water-line being varnished, and dusted over with bronze powder, and when perfectly dry, varnished again, giving the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... one say in the teeth of professional authority? When great-grandfather and great-grandmother Plunkett came back to us at the end of a month, they were newly varnished and in bright, tasteful frames, and no one would ever have detected that the old gentleman's eyes did not resemble each other closely. Since then I have often heard Josephine declare her gratitude that she ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... contrasted shades of grey or green, no dado, no distemper on the walls; the woodwork was grained and varnished after the manner of the Philistines, the walls papered in dark crimson, with heavy curtains of the same colour, and the sideboard, dinner-waggon, and row of stiff chairs were all carved in the same massive ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... from the outer vestibule on the western side of the building by a massive partition of dark oak, and it retained the solid beams and panelled walls of Elizabethan days; but the oak had been barbarously painted, grained and varnished. Only the staircase was so heavily and richly carved, that it had defied the ingenuity of the comb engraver. It occupied the further end of the hall, opposite the entrance door, and was lighted dimly by a small heavily leaded, stained-glass ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... face of the country seamed and split by barrancas or ravines, hundreds, ay, thousands of feet deep, and filled with the most abundant and varied vegetation. The sky, too, was of the deep glowing blue of the tropics, the sort of blue which seems varnished or clouded with gold. But this ardent climate and teeming soil are not without their disadvantages. Vermin and reptiles of all kinds, and the deadly fever of these latitudes, render the low lands uninhabitable for eight months out of the twelve. At the same time there are large districts which are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... about, like unclean animals, at the skirts of that society into whose inner recesses they would fain gain admittance, picking up greedily, here and there, in their eaves-dropping career, some scrap or morsel of truth out of which they weave a well-varnished tale wherewith to delight the ears of the vulgar and the coarse-minded? There are such men and such women; God ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... highwayman; yet the virtuous virgin resolves to run away with him, to live among the banditti, and wait upon his trollop, if she had no other way of enjoying his company. This senseless tale is, however, so well varnished with melody of words and pomp of sentiments, I am convinced it has hurt more girls than ever were injured by the lewdest ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... surface. For instance, does anybody (not Dutch) call upon walls to behave as if they were mirrors? Yet as I went up the rather steep stairs of the Villa van Buren I could see each movement I made, each rise and fall of an eyelash repeated on a surface of brilliantly varnished walnut. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... congratulating himself as the price of the works of his well-chosen artists rises in the scale, and the value of his art treasures is enhanced. But why should he call them his? He is only their custodian. He keeps them well varnished, and framed in gilt. But he never passes through those gilded frames into the world of beauty that lies behind the painted canvas. He knows nothing of those lovely places from which the artist's soul and hand have drawn their ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... them, with the exception of the latter, presenting aught like an approach to a useful truth. The magazine is, however, as a whole both curious and characteristic. It shows, as in a mirror, the enormous ambition, the uneasy vanity, the varnished vulgarity of the Southerner, his claims to scrupulous honor, outflanked and contradicted at every turn by an innate tendency to exaggerate and misrepresent, and his imperfect knowledge employed as a basis for the most weighty conclusions. And ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 12th.—Left Augusta a week ago this morning for ———. Nothing particular in our drive across the country. Fellow-passenger a Boston dry-goods dealer, travelling to collect bills. At many of the country shops he would get out, and show his unwelcome visage. In the tavern, prints from Scripture, varnished and on rollers,—such as the Judgment of Christ; also a droll set of colored engravings of the story of the Prodigal Son, the figures being clad in modern costume,—or, at least, that of not more than half a century ago. The father, a grave, clerical ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at every step of their long, crooked legs. They were deformed from pushing the plough which makes the left shoulder higher, and bends their figures sideways; from reaping the grain, when they have to spread their legs so as to keep on their feet. Their starched blue blouses, glossy as though varnished, ornamented at collar and cuffs with a little embroidered design and blown out around their bony bodies, looked very much like balloons about to soar, whence issued two ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 'Jehovah'; his religion was only the vague belief in a deity-had delivered Saul into David's hands, and it would be a kind of sin not to kill him. How many bloody tragedies that same unnatural alliance of religion and murderous hate has varnished over! Very beautifully does David's spirit contrast with this. Abishai represents the natural impulse of us all—to strike at our enemies when we can, to meet hate with hate, and do to another the evil that he would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... districts for the term of three years, and thirty-four delegates from the autonomous province of Croatia-Slavonia. The entrance to the diet is guarded by a frosty-looking servitor in an extravagant Hungarian uniform, jacket and hose profusely covered with brilliant braids, and varnished jack-boots. The deputies when in session are quiet, orderly and dignified, save when the word "Russian" is pronounced. It is a word which arouses all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... man with the nose exclaimed, 'an heirloom which—in short, a highly respectable heirloom—a work of art. This is varnishing day. Would you like to see the work of art varnished? Then come with me.' He laid aside the burlesque air, and said seriously: 'There will be nothing ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray |
