"Mantelpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bed," added the figure with a sound that was like the falling of an executioner's axe. And, as if to emphasise the arrival of the remorseless moment, the clock just then struck loudly on the mantelpiece—seven times. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... first person of the opposite sex seen in the morning was the observer's valentine. We find Madam Pepys lying in bed for a long time one St. Valentine's morning with eyes tightly closed, lest she see one of the painters who was gilding her new mantelpiece, and be forced to have him for her valentine. Anna means, doubtless, that the first person she chanced to see that morning was "an ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... little clock in his mantelpiece struck two, which was a miserable hour, sundered so ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... fell off the mantelpiece, the cannisters fell off the shelf; the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... about the third step that I must be right. Anybody with any sense wouldn't keep anything dangerous in their downstairs library. It would be too much like a safe-cracker storing his nitro in the liquor cabinet or the murderer who hangs his weapon over the mantelpiece. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... upon the Chancellor of the Augmentations who stood in the shadow of the tall mantelpiece. He was twisting his fingers in his thin grey beard that ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the closed door with the frightened eyes of a woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room—the futile little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such environments—the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things which he could not do. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the shape of grape bunches; and the leaves and berries are of such a deep, rich crimson in the late autumn that they sometimes make the slopes of the hills appear as if they were on fire. If any little girl would like to dress the vases on the parlor mantelpiece prettily, she could not do better than collect a handful of these delicate tendrils with their scarlet leaves, and use them as a background to the lovely little autumn flowers—late primroses, stars-of-Bethlehem, wild honeysuckles, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "handsome." From the centre of the ceiling a massive gilt chandelier, elaborately festooned with damaged garlands, shed, when it was lighted, a dim and troubled gloom down on the threadbare Axminster carpet. Above the white marble mantelpiece, the old French mirror, one of the few good things left over from a public sale of Mrs. Carr's possessions, reflected a pair of bronze candelabra with crystal pendants, and a mahogany clock, which had kept excellent time for half a century and then had stopped suddenly one day while ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... I'll go out an' take a look around the barn an' pens," said Phineas, depositing the candles on the mantelpiece. "See if everything's still there after the storm. No, Mr. Gwynne,—you set down. No need o' you goin' out there an' gettin' them boots o' your'n ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... seeing her hunt out and tread upon such things, and used to chaff her about it. At that time I was—as I am still—fond of lying at full length on a thick hearthrug before a good fire. One evening as I was lying in this way and we were alone, A. crossed the room to reach a bangle from the mantelpiece. Instead of reaching over me, she playfully stepped upon my body, saying that she would show me how the hay and straw felt. Naturally I fell in with the joke and laughed. After standing upon me a few moments she raised her skirt slightly and, holding ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... had risen and was standing in his favourite attitude, his elbow on the mantelpiece. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pattern-books—and books about all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (which were also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two human ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... not seen it! She was looking intently at her clock, which stood on the mantelpiece, and the embarrassment increased in midst of a glacial silence. Turning her face towards her daughter, the old woman, from whose eyes flashed fierce malice, said: "On Monday, you must take me away from here, so that I can see ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the pleasant flicker of the fire that burned between the polished sheets of Flemish tiles on either side of the hearth. A great globe stood in the corner furthest from the door, with a map of England hanging above it. A piece of tapestry hung over the mantelpiece, representing Diana bending over Endymion, and two tall candles in brass stands burned beneath. The floor was covered ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... himself at his table and prepared to begin work. Then he bethought him of the letter, which he had carelessly thrown on the mantelpiece. He tore it open, and drew out ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... in which he sat possessed very little furniture and no signs of comfort. There were a quantity of books piled on the floor and mantelpiece, and the centre space was filled by an enormous bureau heaped with a mass of printed and written papers, for besides his extensive correspondence he was part-editor of one of the Anarchist journals, which he enlivened by daring and sarcastic contributions. The fragment of the ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... promiscuously. In conclusion, anyone who knows me will refuse to believe that I have ever accepted more business than that to which I have been able to give proper attention. It is not my custom to crowd my mantelpiece with papers appealing to me in vain for my consideration. At this moment I have not a single matter demanding my care, except a bundle sent in to me three ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... brought in, all huddled and shivering; and although she was a little afraid at first, she soon got warmed up and sat on the edge of the mantelpiece and ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... vainly struggled for words, Rosalinde Eysvogel stood beside the lofty mantelpiece, weeping softly. Before Siebenburg appeared, spite of the early hour and the agitating news which she had just received, she had used her leisure for an elaborate toilette. A long trailing robe of costly brocade, blue on the left side and yellow on the right, now floated around her tall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... called herself Eunice (perhaps, because she was worth looking at, perhaps because she had partly risen at my words), he slipped toward a door I had before observed in the wainscoting on the left of the mantelpiece, and softly opened it upon what looked ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... found the house ornamented with some new trophy of his exploits. He was delighted to find that a miniature barkentine, which he had built with corks, paper, and thread when he was seven years old, still stood on his mother's mantelpiece. Even at that age his powers of observation had been evident, and he had forgotten no detail of sails ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... widow, Mary Anne Waller, and Louisa, motionless too, their heads bent. There was an end of candle in a basin behind the bed, which threw circles of wavering light over the coarse whitewash of the roof and on the cards and faded photographs above the tiny mantelpiece. ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the mantelpiece, pulled a bell-cord which hung from the ceiling, a distant bell was heard ringing in noisy fashion, and a moment afterward Pegeen put in ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into our attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce itself to not being ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... functionaries, except with the prefect of Caen and the general in command.... Their association with the prefect intimates their belief that they might need him. All pay their respects to the general of division; his mantelpiece is strewed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the room was a group of photographs on the mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents, both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young—a striking-looking woman, ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enormous rough stone fireplace, doubly cheering after their long drive through the cool October evening. A brass lamp of antique design, with perforated shade of the same material, was suspended from the ceiling, and helped illumine this strange apartment. From each end of the mantelpiece an immense high-backed sofa projected into the room, cushioned and padded, and looking as if built into its present position with the house. The walls were covered with odd portraits, whose frames were crumbling in decay, and the window curtains adorned with ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Hotel, and, not finding me in, invited me up to his house near York Gate, Regents Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the wall—that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... charmed the view. The subjects were all pastoral, the scenes were all sunny. There was a guitar and some music on a sofa; there were cameos, beautiful miniatures; a set of Grecian-looking vases on the mantelpiece; there were books well arranged in two ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... loyalist concluded his narrative the enthusiasm which had been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seemed to disapprove of this levity. He shook his head and replaced the figure on the mantelpiece. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... time, dark in spite of two windows that opened on Union Square, with dull curtains and carpet, and heavy, respectable-looking furniture in somber colors. The place was saved from utter dismalness by a coal fire under the black marble mantelpiece,—brilliantly reflected in a long mirror that hung between the two windows. This was the first time Fred had seen the room, and he took it in quickly, as he put down ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... very pretty, neat little sitting-room, with the picture of a ship over the mantelpiece, and lumps of coral and large shells, and shell flowers, on it, and bows and arrows, and spears and models of eastern craft, and canoes from the Pacific, and some stuffed birds and snakes, and, indeed, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... Elva chose at least half a dozen different rooms in succession—this, because it had such a lovely little fireplace and mantelpiece; that, because it had such funny little cupboards; the other, because it had such ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... mark behind them still surviving in the town. Near the junction of East Street with South Street there still exists at the back of the second shop, in the former street (a repository for fancy needlework), a room lined with good oak wainscoting, with finely carved mantelpiece, over which is an inscription, richly carved in relief, with the letters "Ao Di" to the left, and to the right the date "1573;" while above, in the centre, are the initials "J H" and "M H;" separated by ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs and up came the doctor. He was an old friend, very good-natured, and he made fun with Lucy about having turned into a spotted leopard, just like the cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker's mantelpiece. Indeed, he said he thought she was such a curiosity that Mrs. Bunker would come for her and set her up in the museum, and then he went away. ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he said, stopping beneath an unusually large skull of a lion, which was fixed just over the mantelpiece, beneath a long row of guns, its jaws distended to their utmost width. "Ah, you brute! you have given me a lot of trouble for the last dozen years, and will, I suppose ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... and DeWitt stood staring at Porter with horror in their eyes. The clock ticked for an instant then DeWitt gave a groan and bowed his head against the mantelpiece. Katherine ran to him and tried to pull his ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... "be silent!" There was a moment of absolute stillness, broken only by the ticking of the little crystal clock on the mantelpiece, and then Mrs. Graham continued: "I must ask you not to speak again, my daughter, until I have finished what I have to say; and even then, I trust you will keep silence until you are able to command yourself. You are to stay with my old nurse, Mrs. Hartley, at her farm near Glenfield. ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the mantelpiece a woman choked suddenly and felt for her handkerchief. Behind her two men turned sharply and walked toward the window; but the little old man and the little old woman did not notice it. They had forgotten everything but the enchanting array ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... dining room of the home felicitous—a golden-oak room, with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart from the mantelpiece; and, last, two figures of connubial bliss, smiling and waxen, in rocking chairs, their waxen infant, block-building on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... granted. It is of a possible marriage I wish to speak to you this morning, my Karen. We will talk of it quietly." Madame von Marwitz raised herself in her chair to stretch her hand and take from the mantelpiece a letter lying there. "This came this morning, my Karen," she said. "From our ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... nine had not ceased striking on the clock standing on the mantelpiece in Mr. Gorham's study when James Riley was formally and seriously ushered by his father into these, the sacred precincts, where none entered except by its owner's invitation; but it was a far different James from the man who had called upon Mr. Gorham some weeks earlier. The younger Riley's ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... color; leaning minarets threatening to fall and never falling, luckily for their coating of enamel, which the intrepid traveller Madame De Ujfalvy-Bourdon, declares to be much superior to the finest of our crackle enamels—and these are not vases to put on a mantelpiece or on a stand, but minarets ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... examine these ornaments, or to handle the books, instead of having to pick up a title here and there by chance.—From the shelves, her eyes strayed to the pictures on the walls; one, in particular struck her fancy. It hung over the mantelpiece, and was a man's head seen in profile, with a long hooked nose, and wearing a kind of peaked cap. But that was not all: behind this head were other profiles of the same face, and seeming to come out of clouds. Laura stared hard, but could make nothing of it.—And ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two, three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,' ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... leaned against the mantelpiece in his quarters talking to his wife. They had just returned from some entertainment and Millicent, in beautiful evening dress, lay in a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... smoke came from a great flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... snatched the pink morsel to safety. Straight to the fire she carried it, and once more held it to the flames. But again she found it impossible to burn the thing. Once, twice, she tried. But each time something seemed to clutch back her wrist. At last she shrugged impatiently and laid the Angel on the mantelpiece beside the square old marble clock, which marked ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... she repeated aloud to herself in the silence. Then she rose quickly to her feet and leaned against the smooth white marble mantelpiece, and buried her face in her small white hands for ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... this to your mother when she comes in. See!—I will put it on the mantelpiece," she said to Harold; "and you must not touch these parcels until mother opens them herself. Yes; I will come again. Now, good-by." Her bonnet was decidedly crooked as she stepped into the carriage, her jacket was also much crumpled; but there was a very sweet feel of little ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... struck and gave me warning that Love and Comus were calling me to bestow new delights upon me. With my pockets full of gold and silver, I left the ridotto, hurried to Muran, entered the sanctuary, and saw my divinity leaning against the mantelpiece. She wore her convent dress. I come near her by stealth, in order to enjoy her surprise. I look at her, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... neglecting you." With his left hand the rogue picked up an ash-tray and stepped to my side. Then he backed to the mantelpiece, whence he picked up and brought me a handful of cigarettes, laying them on the broad arm of my chair. "I'm afraid the box has gone," he said regretfully. "May I mix you ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward over the mantelpiece. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... not know what befell the melancholy plaque that intruded his presence upon us last week," said the vase. "We pitched him off the mantelpiece, and he was ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... it for very poor wages, he felt now and then Charlie's immense superiority to himself, and, in a mood of pity, when, as they were standing one day in Mr Noel's private room to say a lesson, he caught sight of their two selves reflected in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and realised the immense gulf which separated them—a gulf not of void chaos and flaming space, but the deeper gulf of warped affections and sinful thoughts—he had felt a sudden longing to be other than what he was, to have ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... leisure for dreams." He stood up suddenly and leaned against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere had become electric. "A good thing, too, as far as some of us are concerned. The last thing for a columnist to indulge in is dreams. Fine hash he'd have ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the difference of national characteristics, the German tendency to make love by crying (so he put it) as contrasted with the laughing philosophy of his own country. At the end he apologized for talking so much, and pointed out to me a photograph of Coralie that stood on the mantelpiece more than half-hidden by letters and papers, saying, "I suppose she set me off; somehow she seems to me a sort of ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... when the negro had appeared and asked for Mr. Lundy. She had told him her husband was out, and then the colored man had wanted something to eat. She had refused to give him anything, and then, seeing the watch on the mantelpiece, he had snatched the timepiece and run. She had screamed for assistance and then fainted ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... the room, putting away papers and shutting drawers and winding up the eight-day clock on the mantelpiece a clear three days before it needed it, with a mixed motive of clearing up before her departure and making it clean and bare as befitted a place where heroes came to do business; and she was more than unaware that Mr. Philip was watching her like an ambushed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... he realised that the House had won, that his hopes were satisfied, that the Buller crowd had been routed, that the cup would shimmer on the mantelpiece. A wave of wild exultation came over him. The House poured over the touch-line, yelling and shouting. It was all "a wonder ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... portmanteaux. His brushes and razors were spread out on the blotched marble of the chest of drawers. A stack of newspapers had accumulated on the centre table under the "electrolier", and half a dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases and toilet bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic, almost sinister, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the best bed were two little pockets as in the time of our grandfathers; also there was a Chevalier looking-glass and on the dressing-table a pin-cushion with pins arranged in a pattern. The fire-place and the mantelpiece were of white marble and had on them two white vases picked out in bright green, a clock with a bronze upon it representing a waiter dressed up partly in fifteenth-century plate and partly in twelfth-century mail, and on the wall were two Jewish texts, each ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in Dencroft's. The play of the team improved weekly. And its spirit improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a goal and a try to a goal. Dencroft's was not depressed. It put the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... West flung the words from between set teeth, and with them he abruptly turned his back upon Babbacombe, lodging his arms upon the mantelpiece. "I am not going into details on that point or any other. But the fact is there, and you know it. You have never been absolutely straight in your dealings with me. I knew you weren't. I always knew it. But how crooked you were I did ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... we had the keys, and this was the moment that Noel chose for dropping them. Why he was fingering them where they lay on the mantelpiece the author does not know, and never will know. There is something about 'previously demented' in some Latin chap—Virgil or Lucretius—that seems to hit the nail on the head. The keys fell on the cracked hearthstone with a clang that Oswald, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... room, the wainscoting of which was of dark oak, with a high mantelpiece, elaborately carved in the same wood, with groups of dead game and flowers, and a few choice pictures let into the panels,—upon an easy-chair, that once had been splendid with morocco and gold, sat ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hall one morning after breakfast when I was opening a parcel of books which had arrived for me. It was a fine, sunny day, and the sun lit up the portrait framed in the panelling over the mantelpiece, an old and skilful copy (at least I suppose it was a copy) of Reynolds' fine portrait of James, tenth Earl of Shropshire. Father Payne regarded the picture earnestly. "Isn't he magnificent?" he said. "But he was a very poor creature really, and came to great grief. My ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, stood a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch, just as the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside, then flung herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little table on which she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil had 'placed' ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... amount must always be sent to Garden Green. There came a time when he broke in upon the last five pound note of his savings. He realized the position without any actual misgivings. He denied himself regretfully a tiny mezzotint of the Raphael "Madonna," which he coveted for his mantelpiece. He also denied himself dinner for several evenings. When fortune knocked at his door he was, in fact, extraordinarily hungry. He still had faith, notwithstanding his difficulties, and no symptoms of dejection. He was perfectly well aware that this need for food was, after ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and stood beside him, resting one foot on the fender and one hand on the mantelpiece; and he saw, with swift seeing, the shapeliness of the long, thin fingers and the graceful, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... he pointed his finger to a letter lying on the mantelpiece. I arose and picked it up. It bore ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... a remarkable Renaissance mantelpiece, which is embellished with the arms of the Allied Towns of Bruges and Ghent, between which are the standard bearers of the doughty Knights of Courtrai, and two statues of the Archduke Albert and his Lady, all surrounding a statue of the ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... were very elaborately furnished; the hangings were heavy and sumptuous. A massive oak mantelpiece harboured a fire of gas-logs. There were a few—not many—apparently personal belongings about the rooms; bric-a-brac and photographs—the latter mostly of actors and opera singers. In Althea's bedroom we ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... can talk sensibly and feel properly, I have no need to stand staring upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained my friend's purse-strings in the purchase), nor his five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world,—eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... entered the dark hallway and struck a light in the front room. A wood fire was smouldering on the andirons in the wide brick chimney place. An open book, face downward, was on the centre table. Two embroidered slippers lay as though hurriedly kicked off, one under the sofa beyond the mantelpiece, the other half way across the worn carpet. Striking another match at the doorway, Ray passed on to the little inner room,—the bed chamber. On the bed, carelessly thrown, were the young officer's best and newest forage cap, undress uniform ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... 'The Cave' was now elaborately furnished. A large mirror in a richly gilt frame reached from the carved marble mantelpiece to the cornice. A magnificent clock in an alabaster case stood in the centre of the mantelpiece and was flanked by two exquisitely painted and gilded vases of Dresden ware. The windows were draped with costly hangings, the floor was covered with ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... mantelpiece hung a picture, a landscape painting. A flock of sheep wandered through a misty valley. There were great mountains in the background, their slopes and tops dimly, discernible through a haze. The haze and the mist wreaths would certainly soon clear away, dispersed by a rising ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... with the contented look of a man who is in a warm room and has on his feet comfortable flannel-lined slippers, the soles of which are buried in a thick carpet. At the fireside my wife was cutting out something and smiling at me from time to time; a new book awaited me on the mantelpiece, and the log on the hearth kept shooting out with a hissing sound those little blue flames which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... opposite Graham's, and as she went in, leaving the door open, Horace, who had followed her without any very definite purpose, looked in. It was a tolerably large room, with a door to the left opening into a smaller apartment, Utrecht velvet chairs and sofa, a mantelpiece also covered with velvet, on which stood a clock, a tall looking-glass, and two lighted wax candles; a table in the middle with some packs of cards, and a liqueur bottle and glasses, and a bed on one side opposite the fireplace. The window looked on to a side street, noisy with the incessant ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... impaired, but rather enhanced and invigorated, by the mahogany bookcase full of imperishable printed matter, the horsehair sofa netted in a system of antimacassars, the waxen flowers in their glassy domes on the marble mantelpiece, the Canterbury with its spiral columns, the rosewood harmonium, and the posse of chintz-protected chairs. Mr. Knight, who was a sincere and upright man, saw beauty in this apartment. It uplifted his soul, like soft music in the gloaming, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... passed through a pine door, and there was the general's room—a bare and shabby room, with a large desk in front of the two windows that overlooked the street, a shaded lamp, more papers and a telephone. The room had a fireplace, and in front of it was a fine old chair. And on the mantelpiece, as out of place as the chair, was a marvellous Louis-Quinze clock, under glass. There were great maps on the walls, with the opposing battle lines shown to the smallest detail. General Foch drew my attention at once ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... me, what's the good of my saying anything?" she retorted. "Oh, how horrid you are to-day, Mark. I don't believe you love me a bit, any more." And leaning her head against the mantelpiece, she burst ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... exclaimed. I was so much interested in his story, as well as flattered by the confidence he was placing in me, that my ill-humour vanished. I went and stood with my shoulder against the mantelpiece, and he, passing to and fro between me and the light, continued ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... delight of it in that wilderness—but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that region a veritable fairy's chamber. ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the dining-room she stopped aghast. The walls had been distempered a particularly hideous drab; the curtains were mustard yellow; the carpet was a dull brown; the mottled marble mantelpiece, for which she had been intending to substitute one in walnut wood with tiles, still shone in slabs of petrified brawn; there was a huge mahogany sideboard of a kind she had only seen in ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... drawer full of letters. No! he could not take all his life away with him: He laid the drawer on the desk, then went into the drawing- room. A jug of milk and some bread stood on an album-table. The Prince lighted the fire, burnt some papers, and stood by the mantelpiece drinking his milk and eating the bread, for he had grown hungry during the day.... The milk was sour, the ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... then she stood up, tall and slim in her severe clothes, her high boots. The gilt clock on the mantelpiece said it was only five o'clock. There were five more hours before she ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... She went over and stood by the mantelpiece, and looked at a large, somewhat faded miniature which held a place of honor among a group of many other ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... expression on his face, picked up a photograph from the floor, and hung it neatly in its place over the mantelpiece. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... men went upstairs, and were ushered into the best room in the inn, where the officer received them lolling at his ease in an armchair, his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a long porcelain pipe, and enveloped in a gorgeous dressing-gown, doubtless stolen from the deserted dwelling of some citizen destitute of taste in dress. He neither rose, greeted them, nor even glanced in their direction. He afforded a fine example ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... been said before, to all good things an end must come at last, and when the old-fashioned Connecticut clock on the mantelpiece clanged out the midnight hour, as if by magic a hush came over the company and the jollities came to an end. Then followed a rush for capes, and coats, and jackets, and shawls, and hats. Then came good-byes and good-nights, and then the girls all kissed Huldy ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing Time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace with ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... which can crush a tree or pick up a needle, they conquer a province and they pick a pocket. As soon as a German is quartered in a room he sends for a box and some straw; carefully and methodically packs up the clock on the mantelpiece, and all the stray ornaments which he can lay his hands on; and then, with a tear glistening in his eye for his absent family, directs them either to his mother, his wife, or his lady-love. In vain the proprietor protests; the philosophical warrior utters the most noble ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... gang, excepting Gilbert, knew, a flat with a private entrance. He was glad to take off his clothes and rub himself down; for, in spite of his strong constitution, he felt chilled to the bone. On retiring to bed, he emptied the contents of his pockets, as usual, on the mantelpiece. It was not till then that he noticed, near his pocketbook and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into his ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... young man, with a little bit of fair moustache and still less chin, no practice to speak of, and a considerable quantity of unpaid bills. A man of such features and in such circumstances invites temptation. At the present moment, though his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his feet rested on the mantelpiece, his mind seemed not quite at ease. He looked back upon a number of fortunate events that had not occurred, and forward to various unpleasant things that might occur, and then he took a letter from his pocket ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... get a light. Matches are not yet invented. So he takes from the shelf over the mantelpiece an old tin or brass candlestick with a piece of tallow candle in it, and with the tongs takes a coal from the ashes, and holds the candle wick against the coal and gives a few puffs with his breath. If he have good luck, he lights the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar |
