"Broom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door, which, ever since, has obstinately refused to let itself be shut, was thrown violently open, while an odd-looking pile of articles lay in the middle of the room, which, upon investigation, was found to consist of a pail, a broom, a bell, some candlesticks, a pack of cards, a loaf of bread, a pair of boots, a bunch of cigars, and some clay pipes (the only things, by the way, rendered utterly hors de combat in the assault). But one piece of furniture retained its attitude, and that ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... fine for cleaning the range. Slip your hand into the foot and rub hard, or place an old whisk broom inside. It will make the sides and front of the range clean and shiny. In fact, you will seldom need to ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... that tune o' his, It crawled on scalp and skin, Till sudden—'long o' choir-practice— The belfry bells swung in; The piping cove he turned and passed, Till through the golden broom A mile along we saw him last Go lone-like up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... nature. Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: "Well," says Math, "we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect."[271] Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... took coach, and to our office, and there sat till it was late; and so home and to bed by day-light. This day was kept a holy-day through the towne; and it pleased me to see the little boys walk up and down in procession with their broom- staffs in their hands, as I ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... up the wreath-frames with a sigh and opened the door again. She would have a long, wild walk home, but she could creep in through her bedroom window, which would not latch, and she could make a great fire of dry broom and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... passed, the head teacher said to me, "The adjoining recitation room needs sweeping. Take the broom ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... are the remains of a walled village and castle, and less than half-way up the ruins of a castle of the Knight-Templars. The road up to the summit is by the first narrow path beyond the castle, ascending through beds of wild thyme and bushes of the prickly broom. The next hill is the Rocher-Noir, having on its eastern side, right above the bed of the Cagnes, a "foux," an immense cave called the Riou, containing a large basin of water, whence flows a copious stream. It is 3m. from ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... montebaxos, or coppice shrubs (as you might call them), and we know tomillares, or undergrowth; but in Corsica nature heaps these together with both hands, and the Corsican, in despair of separating them, calls them all macchia. Cistus, myrtle and cactus; cytisus, lentisk, arbutus; daphne, heath, broom, juniper and ilex—these few I recognised, but there was no end to their varieties and none to their tangle of colours. The slopes flamed with heather bells red as blood, or were snowed white with myrtle blossom: wild roses trailed everywhere, and blue ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... little Patience on the dining-room floor with a linen picture book, brought in a broom and dustpan from the kitchen and began furiously to sweep the parlor. When the dust cleared somewhat she emerged with the dustpan heaped with sweepings and the corners of the room still untouched. She hung the coats and hats in the entry and rubbed off the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... were slowly converging toward a point fifteen thousand miles off-planet and over the sunset line. The Space Scourge bore the device of a mailed fist clutching a comet by the head; it looked more like a whisk broom than a scourge. The Lamia bore a coiled snake with the head, arms and bust of a woman. Valkanhayn and Spasso were taking their time about screening back, and he began to wonder if they weren't maneuvering the Nemesis into ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... for I did not have a village of my own, no birthplace, any more than I had a father or mother—the village where I spent my childhood was called Chavanon; it is one of the poorest in France. Only sections of the land could be cultivated, for the great stretch of moors was covered with heather and broom. We lived in a little house down by ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... as the noise outside reached his ears, Hal made for the closet, which stood in one corner of the room. He found the door unlocked, and the interior empty, save for a broom and a duster ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... boy—"a nail to hang his hat on," and nothing else. It was "Henry's nail" from January to January, year in and out, and no other member of the family was allowed to appropriate it for any purpose whatever. If the broom by chance was hung thereon, or an apron or coat, it was soon removed, because that nail was "to hang Henry's hat on." And that nail did much for Henry; it helped make him what he was in manhood—a careful, systematic, orderly man, at home and abroad, on his farm and in ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... of the Haute-Loire—the highlands of Auvergne—is harsh; it has been called the French Siberia. There are upland moors like deserts across which sweep fierce winds, where the golden broom and the purple heather—flowers of the barren heights—are all that will flourish. There are, indeed, secluded valleys filled with muskmallows and bracken, but these are often visited by wild tempests, and sudden floods may make the whole ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... Brompton signifies Broom Town, carrying suggestions of a wide and heathy common. Brompton Square, a very quiet little place, a cul-de-sac, which has also the great recommendation that no "street music" is allowed within it, can boast of having had some distinguished residents. At No. 22, George Colman, ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... may trust it; for the clod of these parts delights in the chase like any bare-legged Paddy, and casts away flail and fork wildly, to run, shout, assist, and interfere in all possible ways, out of pure love. The descendant of many generations of broom-squires and deer-stealers, the instinct of sport is strong within him still, though no more of the king's deer are to be shot in the winter turnip-fields, or worse, caught by an apple-baited hook hung from an orchard bough. He now limits his aspirations to hares ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... cough. The great four-post bed blocked up the little window. The remains of a meal were still on the big round table. Some clothes were drying by the hearth; a thin tortoise-shell cat was licking up a stream of milk that was filtering slowly across the floor, in the midst of jugs, cans, a broken broom, some children's toys, and two or three boots. The bed looked as though it had not been made for days; the quilt and valance were deplorably dirty; but the poor creature herself looked neat and clean, and her hair was drawn off from ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... our human arrogance we call the lower animals? There is many a respectable spider who would justly feel himself calumniated by any comparison between him and any one of twenty Parliamentary lawyers we could name; yet the spider spins its own web, and seeks its own nook of refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... attention to the gentlemen of the court, but all were as silent as statues and as immoveable. Their clothes, strange to say, were fresh and new as ever: and not a particle of dust or spider-web had gathered over the furniture, though it had not known a broom for a hundred years. Finally the astonished prince came to an inner chamber, where was the fairest sight ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... prayers." "Hatoon, don't try to pray like me, or like any body; but just tell God how you feel and what you want." "May I tell God just what is in my heart?" Being assured on that point, she fell on her face, weeping aloud, saying amid sobs, "O God, I am not fit even for an old broom to sweep with," and could say no more. This was doubtless the most worthless thing the poor woman could think of in her humble home. But it was not long ere she could join others in their little meetings for prayer; and she still lives, honoring the Saviour, whom she loves. She is the mother ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... pastrycook's shop a poor, industrious man with a wooden leg, who usually sweeps the dirty corner of the walk which turns at this spot to the Wells, held his hat to Ben, who, after glancing his eye at the petitioner's well-worn broom, instantly produced ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... seemed wholly impossible to believe that this respectable-looking person could be a dangerous character, yet the nature of his offence and the consequences of it were apparent when the State called to the stand an old broom-maker, who had bought from Browne one of the lots belonging to the Petersen estate. Holding up three stumps where fingers should have been, he cried ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... came—such a picture in his Greek garments as made even the men exclaim at him—and began to pose us. It happened one of us had very good limbs, one medium good, and the third had, apparently, walked on broom-sticks. When Mr. Booth slightly raised the drapery of No. 3 his features gave a twist as though he had suddenly tasted lemon-juice, but quick as a flash ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... place, I have to cut a stick of blue beech to make a broom for sweeping the house, sister of mine, and that is for your use, Miss Kate, and in the next place, I have to find, if possible, a piece of rock elm or hickory for axe handles: so now you have the reason why I ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... stairs, and all those landing-places together, with the main one at bottom, resembles not a little a balcony for musicians, in some jolly old abode, in times Elizabethan. Shall I tell a weakness? I cherish the cobwebs there, and many a time arrest Biddy in the act of brushing them with her broom, and have many a quarrel with my wife and daughters ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... most of the day on his favourite walk by the river, where his wife and some of the children joined him in the afternoon. Mrs. Burns saw that her husband was busily engaged "crooning to himsell," and she loitered behind with the little ones among the broom. Presently she was attracted by the poet's strange and wild gesticulations; he seemed agonised with an ungovernable joy. He was reciting very loud. Every circumstance suggested to heighten the impression of fear in ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices. There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of it as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has ever been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the fact. It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the Academy of Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bake-shops. I was going quietly along, when the sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as they rushed by. I scrambled ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... cattle, they can oblige him to quit his prey, by dropping a piece of money, their pipe, hat, or any other article they have about them at the time. They do not permit the hare to be often mentioned, for fear of drawing it into their corn-fields. To make hens lay eggs, they beat them with an old broom. In families where the wife is the eldest child of her parents, it has been observed that they always sell the first calves, being convinced, that, if kept, they would not thrive. To speak of insects or mischievous ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... shall wear no silken gown, No maid shall bind your hair; The yellow broom shall be your gem, Your braid ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... Chichester felt the sting of controversy in unnecessary vandalism. But it may be admitted that destruction, like a storm, carried at least some virtue in its clouds. In attempting to sweep away the accumulated refuse heaped within the building, some precious things fell before the broom of zealous furnishers, and were lost for ever in the dust raised by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... at once. It appeared that the injured girl had boasted she had money enough in her pocket to buy a donkey at the Triana Market. 'Why,' said Carmen, who had a tongue of her own, 'can't you do with a broom?' Stung by this taunt, it may be because she felt herself rather unsound in that particular, the other girl replied that she knew nothing about brooms, seeing she had not the honour of being either a gipsy or one of the devil's godchildren, but that the Senorita Carmen would shortly ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... joint has a clamouring ache. I pass the time visiting other factories and hunting for a place to board in the neighbourhood of the pickling house. At the cork works they do not need girls; at the cracker company I can get a job, but the hours are longer, the advantages less than where I am; at the broom factory they employ only men. I decide to continue with tin ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... classes, he managed to see something of Lola Montez. "I must," he says, "have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon.... I always had a strange and great respect for her singular talents. There were few, indeed, if any there, were, who really knew the depths of that ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... witch saw there was no help to be got from her old servants, and that the best thing she could do was to mount on her broom and set off in pursuit of the children. And as the children ran they heard the sound of the broom sweeping the ground close behind them, so instantly they threw the handkerchief down over their shoulder, and in a moment a deep, broad river flowed ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... two woods, a dead porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood had nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand, already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... warm hearth, and a bright hearth, and a hearth swept clean, Where tongs don't raise a dust, and the broom isn't seen; Where the coals never fly abroad, and the soot doesn't fall, Oh, that's the fire for a man like me, in cottage or ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... he repeated, "we'll have it slick here in a minute. Let me take the broom. You've got it wrong side up. By Harry, we've got the deluge inside the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... tossed in a basket, Seventeen times as high as the moon; But where she was going no mortal could tell, For under her arm she carried a broom. ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... and the thing left, the memory of a painted picture and what we call the immortality of a name, was hardly more desirable than mere oblivion. Even David Hume, as he lay composed beneath that "circular idea," was fainter than a dream; and when the housemaid, broom in hand, smiled and beckoned from the open window, the fame of that bewigged philosopher melted like a raindrop in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brethren there, lest, perchance, some philanthropists set about mending the evil, to the loss of the primitiveness in which Hebron at present revels. This is the pity of it. When you employ a modern broom to sweep away the dirt of an ancient city, your are apt to remove something else as well ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... just got up, and who was sweeping the room, stopped his work, got into a corner behind the tables, put down his broom, and held his breath. He plunged his fingers into his hair, and scratched his head, a symptom which indicated attention to what was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... know what to make of such actions and finally demanded an explanation, and when it was not forthcoming threatened him with the broom, which she had used as a weapon ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... the plain of Blato lay extended before us, some nine or ten miles in length and four in breadth. The land, which must be extremely fertile, is cultivated in the spring, but only those cereals which are of the most rapid growth are produced; such as millet, Indian corn, and broom seed, from which a coarse description of bread is made. The Lichnitza, which runs through it, is a mere stream. It takes its rise near the Austro-Bosnian frontier, and loses itself in the hills which surround Blato. The plain is porous and full of holes, from ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door jars, and so ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Even little Maggie pushed her bobbin-box into a safe place near the overseer's desk and tipped it up and dusted it out with a handful of waste. At the foot of the long winding stairs Mrs. Kilpatrick was putting away her broom, and she sighed as she locked the closet door; she had known hard times before. "They'll be wanting me with odd jobs; we'll be after getting along some way," ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... have gaps in them—walls' buttressed that totter—and floors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them; and I never made a better sketch than ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... moorlands Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, Have ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... having been pushed up out of reach for the day. The St. Clair ran off, and Miss Macy followed; but the two others consulted, and Lansing ran down to waylay the chambermaid and beg a broom. By the help of the broom handle my cap was at length dislodged from its perch, and restored to me. But I was angry. I felt the fiery current running through my veins; and the unspeakable saucy glance of St. Clair's eye, as I passed her to take my place in the procession, threw fuel on the fire. ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sphinx at home". In the same trial he condescended, in the midst of that burning eloquence of which we have spoken, to make two puns on the defendant's name. The word "Verres" had two meanings in the old Latin tongue: it signified a "boar-pig", and also a "broom" or "sweeping-brush". One of Verres's friends, who either was or had the reputation of being a Jew, had tried to get the management of the prosecution out of Cicero's hands. "What has a Jew to do with ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... intimate friends in the city, whose family were removing, proposed to her to go with her to the new house, and, taking some articles in her own hand, by way of trial artfully put into her hand a broom, whilst she kept her in free conversation on some speculative points, and this she faithfully carried across Boston Common, from Summer Street to Hancock Street, without hesitation ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... I: 'Cross Moore, if you put your fut across my threshold I'll sartain sure take the broom to you—an' ye'll find ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... at home." And, as Therese remained silent, immovable, Fusellier came near her with his broom, hiding with his left hand his ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... anchor in the bay of Monte Christo a boat was sent on shore, the people of which found two dead men lying near a river. One of these seemed to be young and the other old, having a rope made of a substance like Spanish broom round his neck, and his arms extended and tied to a piece of wood in the form of a cross. Having been long dead, it could not be known whether these people were Christians or Indians, but it was considered an evil omen. The next day, twenty-sixth November, the admiral sent on shore in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... of Perth was to be the Queen of Beauty; and the combatants were to be such knights as Robertson, Howieson, and of course Speug. Each knight was to be in armour, and Nestie freely suggested dish-covers would be useful as breastplates, broom-handles would come in conveniently for lances, and as ponies were now forbidden, sturdy boys of the lower forms would be used instead. The two knights who challenged one another would rush from opposite ends of the lists, meet in the centre, lance upon ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... play inside the stockade even if they did squabble with the neighbors' children. Rebecca must have sung a ballad betimes as she cooked venison or wild turkey at the hearth, or swept the floor with her rived oak broom. For Daniel could whittle a broom for her while he sat meditating aloud on his past adventures. Daniel was satisfied. Rebecca could see that. Now with the colony established in the wilderness Daniel Boone had realized the dream ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... athwart one of those heroes. He quite came up to her conception—nay, more than came up to it! She regarded Jeff with feelings approaching to awe. The idea of love in connection with a damp, dirty, wounded, nose-plastered, hair-ravelled giant, with beard enough to make an average hearth-broom, never entered her fair head. If suggested to her she would have laughed it to scorn—had it been possible for one so bright and "funny" to ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... identical with that of Quiroga, under similar circumstances, and with the same result. The detector was, however, an English seaman, now captain of a well-known steam-vessel, who forming part of a crew one of whom had lost a sum of money, broke off ten twigs of equal length from a broom, and distributed them among his shipmates, with the same observation as was used by the Argentine chief. Two hours later he examined them, and found that the negro steward had shortened his allotted twig. The money was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... consider—did not feel, while he climbed with careful footsteps up the rugged path to Dinas, lighted only by the moon, whose beams were continually obscured by the flying clouds. Pushing his way between the furze and broom bushes, he was careful to let no stray branch catch Valmai's face or hair, and as he reached the farm-yard in the rear of the house, he was delighted to feel a strong and swift ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... own room to wash and dress; which process completed, he entered the dining-room to find the table laid with tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the place, for there remained traces of the previous night's dinner and supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a dressing-gown exposing a hairy ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... barbering, basket-making, blacksmithing, bookbinding, bookkeeping, bricklaying, broom-making, building trades, cabinet-making, calcimining, carpentry, chalk-engraving, cementing, chair-making, china-painting, construction work, cooking, clay-modeling, coopery, dairying, domestic science, drawing, dress-making, electricity, embroidery, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... Gould to lie down on her bed and recover from lunch; the curate to take the air and photographs for his magic lantern lectures to be delivered in the parish-room at home; and Mrs. Johnson to find a feather broom. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... and the old man resumed his sweeping, muttering crossly into his long, white beard. As she came down the other side of the street half an hour later, she was watching Schulte from the corner of her eye. He was leaning on his broom, watching her. Seeing that she was going to pass without stopping he called to her and went slowly across the street. "You would make good tenants," he said. "I had to sue Bischoff. You can have it for forty—if you'll pay for the changes you want—you ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... killed!" he said. "An' there won't be one Texan in arms a month from now! I'm willin' to give my word that here are six of us who will be in arms then, roarin' an' rippin' an' t'arin'! They'll sweep the country clean, will they? They'll need a bigger broom for that job than any that ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... what went on except from the gossip of the rest. My place was in the kitchen, and I had too much to do that day to be loitering round in the halls, leaning on a broom-handle, and listening at keyholes," and she cast a glance of scathing contempt in ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... do—all except Chee-Chee, who had hands, and could do things like a man. But they soon got used to it; and they used to think it great fun to watch Jip, the dog, sweeping his tail over the floor with a rag tied onto it for a broom. After a little they got to do the work so well that the Doctor said that he had never had his house kept so tidy or so ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... sum did not impress Sara so much as it should, the child concluded to drop finances for a while and attend to baby, who was busily engaged just then in pulling straws out of the broom, a loss the well-used article ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... had them in charge was obliged to make them fast or ruin himself.—With respect to the mode of filling the depots, the police are Turks in their treatment of the lower class; they strike into the heap, their broom bruising as many as they sweep out. According to the ordinance of 1778, writes an intendant,[5334] "the police must arrest not only beggars and vagabonds whom they encounter but, again, those denounced as such or as suspected persons. The citizen, the most irreproachable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is good enough to be grateful to me for presenting him to the living, but I do not know how to be grateful enough to him for accepting it. I really cannot think how I should have endured to see Andrewes' place filled by some new broom sweeping away every trace of our dear friend and his ways. Clerke's good taste in the matter is most delicate, most admirable, and very pleasant to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and briskly applying a light whisk-broom to the coat, she hummed one of the songs her father taught her when he was in his buoyant or in his sentimental moods, and that was a fair proportion of the time. It used to perplex her the thrilling buoyancy and the creepy melancholy which alternately mastered her father; but as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... settled down to a thorough enjoyment of their floating home. Madge, who was looking particularly pretty in her sailor suit of blue serge, had been energetically sweeping the decks. Now she paused for a moment to lean on her broom and survey ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... stark, staring mad or not," whispered Susan, "but he's in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all the other cats, and they're nosing round, and I don't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can't think what's ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Going to the gate of the courtyard, the Patrona would call, "To the brooms, to the brooms, muchachas," adding, if it were foggy, "A very fine morning for the brooms, little ones;" and out would come running a cluster of Indian girls carrying each a broom. At the work they would go, sweeping as clean as a floor the courtyard and ground for a ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... Mehay rises before day-break and seizes a broom. Rapidly and thoroughly, he makes the ward as dean as his own heart. He never forgets any corner, and he manages to pass the brush gently under the beds without waking his sleeping comrades, and without disturbing those who are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... tell of many colored weddin's. We jes' jumps over de broom an' de bride she has to jump over it backwards and iffen she couldn' jump it backwards she couldn't git married. Dat was sho' funny, seein' dem colored gi'ls a tryin' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... still standing where Rebecca had left her, heard the front door of the house shut. After a few minutes she took the broom from its peg in the corner, went through the icy north parlor, past Rebecca's room, to the front door. The snow heaped on the outer threshold had fallen in when Rebecca opened it, and there was a quantity on ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... red-haired shopkeeper sitting in it, a very stolid man who drinks tea from a copper teapot. And here are the gloomy gates of the University, which have long needed doing up; I see the bored porter in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow.... On a boy coming fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression. Altogether the dilapidated condition of the University buildings, the gloominess ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... been in Templeton almost long enough," the young man resumed, laughing, "to set up as a candidate for the public favour, if I rightly understand the claims of a denizen. By what I can gather from casual remarks, the old proverb that 'the new broom sweeps clean' applies with singular fidelity throughout ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... I have deprived the court of the privilege of living in the palace, and I have given them wherewith to find lodgings in the city. Here go the ladies with their bundles under their arms, and the lord high-steward has a broom sweeping after them as they go. This charming individual in the corner with a hunting-whip, is myself. And here is the pith of the joke. 'Rooms to let here. Inquire of the proprietor on the first floor.' [Footnote: Hubner, i., p. 190.] What do ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... bells clang out. The mountains gray Have scarlet tips, proclaiming dawning day; The hamlets are astir, and crowds come out— Bearing fresh branches of the broom—about To seek their Lady, who herself awakes Rosy as morn, just when the morning breaks; Half-dreaming still, she ponders, can it be Some mystic change has passed, for her to see One old man in the place of two quite young! Her wondering eyes search carefully and long. It may be ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... him bits of broken meat, And scattered crusts, and crumbs, to eat; And kept him there for her commands To pare potatoes, and scour pans, To wash the kettles and sweep the room; And she beat him dreadfully with the broom; And he staid as long as he could stay, And again, ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... she 's to leave London, Mr. Woodseer. I've seen Kit Ines. And she 's to have one of the big houses to her use. I guessed Kit Ines was his broom. He defends it because he has his money to make—and be a dirty broom for a fortune! But any woman's sure of decent handling with Kit Ines—not to speak of lady. He and a mate guard the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a broom, which was the first thing he saw. The Scarecrow arrived with a coil of clothes-lines and ropes which he had taken from the courtyard, and in his trip up the stairs he had become so entangled in the loose ends of the ropes that both he and his burden ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Castle is an immense place. You had better ship off, as soon as all is ready here and you can arrange it, the servants whom I engaged; and I am not sure that we shall not want as many more. There has hardly been a mop or broom on the place for centuries, and I doubt if it ever had a thorough good cleaning all over since it was built. And, do you know, Uncle, that it might be well to double that little army of yours that you are arranging for Rupert? Indeed, the boy told me himself that he was going to write ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... with anger; and seizing her broom-stick, she rushed out of the room, down the steps, and into the courtyard, while her long, thin, white hair flew wildly about her face and shoulders, and her red eyes glared like two red coals in her head. (I have omitted to notice that this ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... him, with an authentic Parmalee gesture, to place them by the table. The valet obeyed, though spilling many letters from the top of the overflowing basket. These, while his master seated himself, he briskly swept up with a broom. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... summer sky, the Mornings gay, And Jane was young and chearful as the Day. Not yet to Love but Mirth she paid her vows; And Echo mock'd her as she call'd her Cows. Tufts of green Broom, that full in blossom vied, And grac'd with spotted gold the upland side, The level fogs o'erlook'd; too high to share; So lovely JANE o'erlook'd the ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... a cheerful home for a girl to grow up in. The mother, who idolized her husband as the music lord of the future, was left to a lifelong battle with broom and dustpan, to neverending conciliatory overtures to the butcher and grocer, to the making of her own gowns and of Caroline's, and to the delicate task of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... how hard I dashed them, they landed on the mosquito-net where they made a fluffy jerk and remained, far from being dead. At last, in about half an hour the slaughter of the grasshoppers was ended. I fetched a broom and swept them out. The janitor came along and asked ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... It is so stimulating to be where every name is a poem. For instance, we start at the Broomielaw. This Broomielaw is a kind of wharf, or landing. Perhaps in old times it was a haugh overgrown with broom, from whence it gets its name; this is only my ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... space in which a drum major could not lie at full length. This is called the garden. Issuing shiveringly from the earth is a little tree, long, spare and sickly, which seems always to be in winter, for it has not a single leaf. This broom is called a poplar. The remainder of the garden is strewn with old potsherds and bottoms of bottles. Among them one notices two or three list slippers. In a corner on top of a heap of oyster shells is an old tin watering can, painted green, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... pastrycook's shop, a poor, industrious man, with a wooden leg, who usually sweeps the dirty corner of the walk which turns at this spot to the Wells, held his hat to Ben, who, after glancing his eye at the petitioner's well worn broom, instantly produced his twopence. "I wish I had more halfpence for you, my good man," said he; ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... is done, run a broom straw into the middle of it; if it comes out clean and smooth, the cake will do ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... doing is worth doing well. (To Rock.) Look now at the marks of your boots upon the ground. Get up out of that till I'll bustle it with the broom! ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... She seized a broom, and held it between us, ready to beat me if I ventured to attack the kitten. But I wagged my tail, and Puss ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... a broom from a corner, and as Bruno stood upright on his hind legs the switchman put the broom over the dog's shoulder and ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... monkey took the broom and began to sweep, but only succeeded in raising such a dust that they were nearly blinded, and had to run out of the house and sit on the door-step until ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I'd married some nice woman I might have had 1,000 steers of my own, and a chance to make rules and regulations for my feller-citizens—and then again I might have took to gambling and drinking and raising blazes, and broke my poor wife's broom-handle with my hard head. So I reckon we'll let it slide as it is. Now you straddle that cayuse of yours and come along with me and I'll show you ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... hall staring at the younger Ralestones as they came through from the kitchen. They had both changed into their oldest and least respectable clothes. Ricky, in fact, was wearing a pair of Val's slacks and one of Rupert's shirts, and they were burdened with a broom which was long past its youth, several smaller brushes, and a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... broom and swept out the kitchen; Mr. Rowles brought in a handful of mustard-and-cress as a relish for bread-and-butter. And soon they were all seated at ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... me a broom, and I'll set to work in a twinkling," said Marcus, jumping down from the balusters, with a deafening stamp of his ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... grateful at that, and sticks out a soft, lady-like paw for me to shake. Say, that wasn't such a slow play, either! He was too groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near winnin' me right there. I sets Swifty to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a glass of ice-water, and in a minute or so his voice ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... commonly the dullest, so these authors, while they are afraid to make you laugh or cry, out of pure good manners, make you sleep. They are so careful not to exasperate a critic, that they never leave him any work; so busy with the broom, and make so clean a riddance, that there is little left either for censure or for praise: For no part of a poem is worth our discommending, where the whole is insipid; as when we have once tasted of palled wine, we stay not to examine it glass by glass. But while they ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... perhaps the butternut, Juglans cinerea, all of which might have been seen at Gloucester. It is clear from his description that he saw at Saco the hickory, Carya porcina, commonly known as the pig-nut or broom hickory. He probably saw likewise the shag bark, Carya alba, as both are found growing wild there even at the present day.—Vide antea, p. 67. Both the butternut and the hickories are exclusively of American origin; and there ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too—not a black one with gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... ceased; the vigorous broom of the north wind was sweeping the broken storm-clouds across a gray sky. The drive to the yacht club was ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... as earthen pot with water wherewith to wash, another full of water to drink, with a cup; a broom, a mat whereon to lie, and a large basin with a cover, changed every fourth day. The prisoners had three meals a day; and their health so far as food could contribute to it in such a place, was cared for in ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... wine-merchant is one of the oldest established in Paris, it does not follow that the retail sale of wine was exclusively carried on by special tradesmen. On the contrary, for a long time the owner of the vineyard retailed the wine which he had not been able to sell in the cask. A broom, a laurel-wreath, or some other sign of the sort hung over a door, denoted that any one passing could purchase or drink wine within. When the wine-growers did not have the quality and price of their wine ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... give the observant mind a hint as to the true nature of those thick and flattened expansions. For whenever what look like leaves bear flowers or fruit on their edge or midrib, as in the familiar instance of butcher's broom, you may be sure at a glance they are really branches in disguise masquerading as foliage. The blossoms in the prickly pear are large, handsome, and yellow; at least, they would be handsome if one could ever see them, but they are generally covered so thick ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... are laughing in their sleeves at him all the time, and who brags about the meerschaum pipe which the seducer of his own daughter gives him as a birthday present! Why, if I thought that you had had any idea of this abomination, I would sweep you out of this room with the very broom with which I now sweep up the fragments ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... chamber-maid, young, attractive, with a figure just budding into womanhood. I was sitting one day studying my Tacitus and growing enthusiastic over the virtues of the ancient Teutons, while she was sweeping my room. Suddenly she stopped, bent down over me, in the meantime holding fast to the broom, and a pair of fresh, full, adorable lips touched mine. The kiss of the enamoured little cat ran through me like a shudder, but I raised up my Germania, like a shield against the temptress, and ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... trump up, let alone the Wednesday and Friday services. Who's Mr. Halloway? What does anybody know about him beyond that the Bishop recommended him, as if a Bishop must know what's what better than other people, forsooth! Don't tell me!" said Mrs. Upjohn, in unutterable scorn. "He's a new broom, and he's raising a big dust, and I would liefer have Mr. White back and let ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... alone and thoughtful, hearing a sudden noise he turned about, and saw at the end of the colonnade, by clear daylight, a tall woman, in her countenance and garb like one of the tragical Furies, with a broom in her hand, sweeping the floor. Being amazed and extremely affrighted, he sent for some of his friends, and told them what he had seen, entreating them to stay with him and keep him company all night; for he was excessively discomposed and alarmed, fearing that if he were left alone ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... fine fellow he looks) came up and rode beside me, and said, 'I know you are a person of kindness; do not tell this story in this country. If Effendina (Ismail Pasha) comes to hear, he may "take a broom and sweep away the village."' I exclaimed in horror, and Mustapha joined at once in the request, and said, 'Do not tell anyone in Egypt. The Sheykh-el-Ababdeh is quite true; it might cost many lives.' The whole thing distressed me horribly. If I had not been there they would have beaten ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... and applied would spiritualize a broom and duster and all the utensils of a home or ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... her old time gaiety, she sang like a thrush as she worked. She bubbled over with the sheer joy of living, until the very sight of her gladdened one. And she simply couldn't make her feet behave! She danced with the broom one morning, to the great amusement of ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three- mewed falcon, was not brighter than hers. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... its waters. Nearly half a century passed before the face of a white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a broom. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... he arrived at home, a little after midnight, he found the place deserted, and was compelled to usher his friend in through the parlor window; that from top to bottom the mansion gave evidence of not having seen a broom or a dust-brush since the departure of the family; that Jane had not been seen in the neighborhood for one full week—this came from those living on adjoining property; that Ellen had been absent since early that morning, and was not expected to ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... I to myself with a smile, 'after the sword, the hammer; after the hammer, the broom; you are going downstairs, my old boy, but you are ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... fair mornings of the spring, when the birds were returning thanks to their Maker for the coming again of the seed-time, and the busy bee goeth forth from her cell, to gather honey from the flowers of the field, and the broom of the hill, and the blue-bells and gowans, which Nature, with a gracious and a gentle hand, scatters in the valley, as she walketh forth in her beauty, to testify to the goodness of ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... well-known exhibitor and judge some time back. It was he who owned that excellent little terrier Ch. Bushey Broom, who created quite a furore when first exhibited at the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... side street in Cincinnati. For five years she scrubbed the floors in an office building and then got a place as dish washer in a restaurant. Her hands were all twisted out of shape. When she took hold of a mop or a broom handle the hands looked like the dried stems of an old creeping vine clinging to ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Peter, a broom-maker. Gertrude, his wife. Haensel } Gretel } their children. Witch, who eats little children. Sandman, who puts little children to sleep. Dewman, who wakes little children up. Children. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon |
