"Combing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for combing the hair vary in size and in the strength of their teeth. Sometimes a comb made of boxwood was inlaid with ivory, and delicately pierced panels were inserted in the centre of the comb. In some ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... of my hospital with Indian corn and Peruvian bark. As I write this, three naked little Paddies are creeping about my floor, their mother having so far forgotten her duty as to leave them behind her, and I enjoy the privilege of washing and combing the frog-like little abominations. A pleasant occupation for my father's son! I don't know how long I shall have to stick here; probably till the very last of the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... I guess he thought he had me there, but I didn't go through the seventh reader for nothing. 'If you think I'm flattered,' I said to him, 'you're mistaken. She was the mess who used to sit out on a rock with her back hair down, combing away and singing like mad, and keeping an eye out for sailors up and down the river. If I had to work that hard to get some attention,' I said, 'I'd give up the struggle, and settle down with a cat and a teakettle.' At that ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... and sat down in a corner of the yard, just a heap of gray hair and unhappiness. Presently a man came and patted him and spoke kindly to him, but he took no notice. He thought how often he had been cross when Ethel had hurt him in combing his hair, though she had only been trying to make him look nice, and how sulky he had been many times when she wanted to play with him; and he thought if only he could get back he would be so good. All the bad things he had done in his life came into his mind as he sat in the yard. He remembered ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... our pursuit—a chase which he now seemed determined to direct—when even Tommy, the superstitious Tommy, declared they would throw us off the track a thousand miles. I could think of no plan, for altogether it did seem like combing out the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and strong and rather coarse features. He reminded you of the statues of Gog and Magog in the Guildhall in London. His hair came down over his forehead, and when he had been away from home for a week or two, so that his head got no combing but his own, it was in a sadly tangled mass. His eye was dull, except when it kindled in discussion, or when he was stirred to some utterance ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... well, when he experimented. He daubed it onto his hair with a wisp of cotton. His hair began to mat down, but he found that combing it out as he went along removed the worst of the wax and still left some of the color. It worked better ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... eighty times the amount an average dope fiend uses, enough to kill forty men, fifteen years at it too,—this is the record of Dopy Phil Harris, the human dope marvel found to-day by the California Board of Pharmacy in its combing of the San Francisco underworld. If poison were taken away from Harris for forty-eight hours, he would die within the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... without whimper or whining The task of the combing was done, And each lock was as smooth and as shining As long iris leaves in the sun— Soft as silk that ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... haled us to the Princess where she sat High in the hall: above her drooped a lamp, And made the single jewel on her brow Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, Prophet of storm: a handmaid on each side Bowed toward her, combing out her long black hair Damp from the river; and close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; Or like a spire of ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... her father was off on a hunt, she went out on top of the house and sat combing her long and beautiful hair, on the eaves of the lodge, when the buffalo king, coming suddenly by, caught her glossy hair, and winding it about his horns, tossed her onto his shoulders and carried her to his village. Here he paid every attention to gain ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... see you! And so early, too! Leetje, place a chair over there and get the footstool, but be in a hurry, or I'd rather do it myself. And how are you? Juffrouw Laps is coming too, you know—Myntje, you'd better be thinking of your dough and stop combing your head. That girl can't keep her hands off of her hair when there's company. But do take a seat—no, not in the corner; there's ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... white and drawn, and the redness of his eyelids more pronounced than ever as he faced Stott in the pale October dawn. He clutched at his beard with a nervous, combing movement, as he shook his head decidedly in answer to ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... House through the instrumentality of an unknown Georgia Negro, little past his majority. This is what Senator Smith said to Mr. Easterly; what Miss Wynn said to herself; and it was what Mrs. Vanderpool remarked to Zora as Zora was combing her hair on the Wednesday ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and especially to arrange their hair, an accomplishment in which she excelled many a noted coiffeur. The important evening came, and she exercised all her skill to adorn the two young ladies. While she was combing out the elder's hair, this ill-natured girl said sharply, "Cinderella, do you not wish you were going ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... same instant; for suddenly they stopped, and hurried away through the grass on opposite sides of the stone, as if remembered business had just called to them. Whatever the business was, the first mouse seemed to forget it very speedily, for in half a minute he was back upon the stone again, combing his fine whiskers and scratching his ears. This done to his satisfaction, he dropped like a flash from his seat, and disappeared into a small hollow beneath it. As he did so, a hairy black spider darted out, and ran away ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... six hours ago, and dashed on the rocks and on the reef in beautiful breakers, sending up now and then a tall jet of foam or a shower of spray. The hazy mainland shore line was very indistinct under the bright sky and lowering sun; while every bit of west-looking rock, and every sail, and every combing billow was touched with warm hues or gilded with a sharp reflection. The air was like the air nowhere but at the Isles of Shoals; with the sea's salt strength and freshness, and at times a waft of perfumes from the land side. Lois drank it with an inexpressible sense of exhilaration; while ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... taken long ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of the harem—threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and brigands—but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... on horseback rode up to reconnoiter the pass. He could not see over the wall, but in front of it and on the ramparts, he saw the Spartans, some of them engaged in active sports, and others in combing their long hair. He rode back to the king, and told him what he had seen. Now Xerxes had in his camp an exiled Spartan prince, named Demaratus, who had become a traitor to his country, and was serving as counselor to the enemy. Xerxes sent for him, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... seen. And pursued. But he got away easily, heading north. The whole island was searched, from the southern tip to the wall, and the police were ready to start an inch-by-inch combing of the game preserve by the end of the third day after he was seen. But he hit and robbed a chemical supply house in northern Pennsylvania, killing two men, so the search was ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the points of his collar wanted straightening the thousandth part of an inch, and that his sparse gray locks needed combing a wee bit further toward his cheek bones. These, with a certain rebellious fold in his necktie, having been brought into place, the guardian of the Exeter entered the crowded room, picked a magazine from the shelves and dropped into his ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a sailor to know that the fisherman spoke truth. A little later, he saw the white, combing foam break over the boat. He drew his breath quicker, and caught his under-lip between ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... occupy her long, and Esther soon was busy with her toilet, combing out and looping-back her curls, and bringing a plain dress of rich bombazine, with fresh bands of white crape, as had been worn the previous day. Katy's toilet was complete at last, and as Esther closed the door behind her, Katy, with a trembling hand, took from the drawer, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... the old clergyman, such as Dr. Chauncey, wearing a white wig, which the barber took from his head and placed upon a wig-block. Half an hour, perhaps, was spent in combing and powdering this reverend appendage to a clerical skull. There, too, were officers of the Continental army, who required their hair to be pomatumed and plastered, so as to give them a bold and martial aspect. There, once ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... begin painting heads or much detail in this picture till it's all settled. I do so believe in getting in the bones of a picture properly first, then putting on the flesh and afterwards the skin, and then another skin; last of all combing its hair and sending it forth to the world. If you begin with the flesh and the skin and trust to getting the bones right afterwards, it's ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... he continued to me: "O yes, a nurse or patient may break that rule, or almost any rule, and the patient may live. I had a patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she's as well as you or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain blowing in on him under the door—and he got well. As to Fontenette, all his symptoms so far ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... moment, Ensign. I shall surely be glad to hear all about that. But we must be brisk. Do you know that your Captain Trevor is combing the sea and the coast ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... this family, apparently, is troubled with too much bashfulness. One of them has unfastened her hair in the sun and is combing it out with her ringers, while conversing about their domestic affairs at the top of her voice with another, on board. I gather she has no other children except a girl, a foolish creature who knows neither ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Reputation, an affiable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two Young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... firstly sniffed of this most appetising aroma, then lifting my head espied the girl busily combing her long hair before that small mirror I have mentioned. Now although the place was illumined by no more than a farthing dip, yet this was sufficient to wake many fugitive gleams and coppery lights in these long, rippling tresses, so that I lay ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the fiber-combing house with the men, the woman visited with Laielohelohe, and she said mysteriously, "How is your husband? Does he not struggle and groan sometimes ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... she asked herself the question, the goodly steamer, happening to dip her lowest courtesy to a rude in-coming wave of giant proportions, shipped its combing crest, that poured through the latticed guard-rail and swirled across the deck, with a force, that sent poor Hope a drenched, doubled-up little heap of helplessness, pounding right into the midst ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... was changed, as if by magic. Several leaped to their feet. Gode, the Canadian, skilled in snow-craft, ran to a bank, and drawing his hand along the combing, shouted back— ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... possible that his great strike was right there at their door while they had been searching for it clear across Death Valley? It was like the crafty Wunpost always to head north when his mine was hidden safely to the south; and yet how had it escaped the eyes of the prospectors who had been combing the hills for months? Where was it possible for a mine to be hid in all that expanse of peaks? She sat down on the summit ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... slender brown fingers combing his long beard, his white djellaba trailing behind him along ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the worst transgressions are not the passionate outbursts contradictory of the main direction of a life which sometimes come; but the habitual, though they be far smaller, evils which are honey-combing the moral nature. White ants will pick a carcase clean sooner than a lion. And many a man who calls himself a Christian, and thinks himself one, is in far more danger, from little pieces of chronic meanness in his daily life, or sharp practice in his business, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his life's work until he was sixty years of age. I first remember him as a bank examiner. I remember his going away for trips to examine banks, of his packing his valise and putting on a white or "boiled" shirt, the gold cuff buttons, his combing his beard, the wonder and mystery of it all. Then he became a "mugwump" and the new party gave his bank-examining to someone else; and, as he expressed it, "I had to stir my stumps," and he took up the raising of ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... the telephone while he was away. All of his other riders were already out combing the hills under supervision of Curly. Luck had waited with Sam only to get some definite information before starting. Now he had his lead. Fendrick was either telling the truth or he was lying with some sinister purpose in view. The cattleman meant ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... appeared to him in the shape of a bird. David threw a dart at him. Instead of striking Satan, it glanced off and broke a wicker screen which hid Bath-sheba combing her hair. The sight of her aroused passion in the king. (94) David realized his transgression, and for twenty-two years he was a penitent. Daily he wept a whole hour and ate his "bread with ashes." (95) But ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... year for the troops in Scotland. The trades of tanners, skinners and glove-makers existed at the time of the Conquest, and the export trade in wool in the 13th and 14th centuries was considerable. The first bed of rock-salt was discovered in 1670. Weaving and wool-combing were introduced in 1674. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... confine ourselves for the present to a brief account of an inventor of comparatively recent date, by way of illustration of the difficulties and privations which it is so frequently the lot of mechanical genius to surmount. We allude to Joshua Heilmann, the inventor of the Combing Machine. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Their behaviour made me neverthelesse cheerfull, or att least of a smiling countenance, and constraine my aversion and feare to an assurance, which proved not ill to my thinking; ffor the young men tooke delight in combing my head, greasing and powdering out a kinde of redd powder, then tying my haire with a redd string of leather like to a coard, which caused my haire to grow ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... be used on her face and hands while they are still warm and moist from the bathing. After the bath they remove the things and disappear, and two other women take their places, with a tray on which are combs, brushes, hair-pomades, and the framework and accessories needed for combing her hair. Then begins a long and tedious operation that may continue for two hours. Finally the hair is ready for the ornaments, jewels and flowers which are brought by another servant on a large tray. The mistress selects ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... in her arm-chair. In her hand she held a piece of knitting. She was making a quilt for Beatrice's bed. This quilt was composed of little squares of an elaborate pattern, with much honey-combing, and many other fancy and delicate stitches ornamenting it. Mrs. Meadowsweet liked to feel her fingers ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... room. I asked for accommodation for the night, hoping that I should find a room where I could sit quietly. A dirty chambermaid took me to a room or dormitory containing four beds. In one part of it three women were affectionately and assiduously nursing a sick child; in another, two were combing tangled black hair; upon which I declared that I must ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... silent, but the snipers were busy on both sides. A German searchlight was combing out the heavens above: a constant succession of star-shells ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... again shaving the right side of his face; the left, on which now appeared a very fair crop of whiskers, we impressed upon him he must on no account touch. As for ourselves, we were contented with a good wash and combing our hair. Sir Henry's yellow locks were now almost upon his shoulders, and he looked more like an ancient Dane than ever, while my grizzled scrub was fully an inch long, instead of half an inch, which in a general way I considered my ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... and the King's Daughter" are examples. Here we have ballads like those that Coleridge and Keats conceived on occasion, full of the beauty that lends itself so kindly to painted-glass decoration; clustered spear-shafts, crested helms and curling banners, and everywhere lily hands combing yellow hair or broidering silken standards. But the names strike a strange note in these songs of Morris, and the accompaniments are very different from the ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... wind, so strong that it blew off Curdken's hat; and away it flew over the hills: and he was forced to turn and run after it; till, by the time he came back, she had done combing and curling her hair, and had put it up again safe. Then he was very angry and sulky, and would not speak to her at all; but they watched the geese until it grew dark in the evening, and then drove ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... get no credit for herself. She has a matter of 40l. standing out; she owes 21l.; she has sold her cow and calf to keep up her credit at Clifden, and she is doing no business. When I looked in on her she was engaged in combing the hair of one of her fair-skinned children, an operation not common in these parts, where the back hair of even grown women in such centres of commercial activity as Clifden has a curious knack of coming down. It is part of the tumble-downishness of the neglected West. At some remote ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... it on with some difficulty from want of practice, and, after combing out and brushing his hair, he presented such a changed appearance that none of his late companions could have recognised him. His father, after fastening up his coat with every button in its wrong hole, and causing as much ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... upper bulge of the jaw-bones with a disfiguring growth of reddish whiskers and inclosed at the temples by shaggy, unkempt strands of red hair which protruded from beneath the black hat. Evidently the man had not been shaved for weeks; certainly his hair needed trimming and combing. But what at the moment impressed Waggoner more even than the general unkemptness of the stranger's aspect was the look out of his eyes. They were widespread eyes and bloodshot as though from lack of sleep, and they glared into Waggoner's with a peculiar, strained, hearkening expression. ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... when they came up close to the rocks they saw sitting on a flat and polished stone a mermaid combing her golden hair, and singing a strange sweet song that brought the tears to their eyes, and by the mermaid's side was a ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... contending that Brentano's RheinmAerchen,[41] which, though written before 1823, were not published until 1846, must have given Heine the hair-combing motif, Thorn says: "Also kann nur Brentano das Vorbild geliefert haben." This cannot be correct. What is, on the contrary, at least possible is that Heine influenced Brentano.[42] The RheinmAerchen were finished, in first form, in 1816. And Guido GOerres, to whom Brentano willed them, and who ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... on the hearth-rug with his comb in his hand. 'It's just the last rags of that beastly influenza,' he said, and began vigorously combing his hair. And yet, simple and frank though the action was, it moved Sheila, perhaps, more than any other of the congested occurrences of the last few days. Her forehead grew suddenly cold, the palms of her hands began to ache, she had to ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... lip and deeply cleft masculine chin, flushed and eager, his yellow hair disordered, the one tuft on the crown standing stiffly forth like the feather in an Indian's scalp lock; Broderson, vaguely combing at his long beard with a persistent maniacal gesture, distressed, troubled and uneasy; Osterman, with his comedy face, the face of a music-hall singer, his head bald and set off by his great red ears, leaning back ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... together, have L2000 worth of goods in hand left unsold, and has trusted out to drapers, and mercers, and merchants, to the value of L4000 more; and look into his workhouse at home, namely, his wool-lofts, his combing-shop, his yarn-chamber, and the like, and there you will find it—in wool unspun, and in yarn spun, and in wool at the spinners', and in yarn at and in the looms at the weavers'; in rape-oil, gallipoli oil, and perhaps soap, &c, in his warehouses, and in cloths ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... rather than handsome cast of countenance. He was of dark complexion, with dark harmonizing eyes, and he wore a closely trimmed black beard of more advanced growth than is usual at his age; this, with his great mass of black curly hair, was some trouble to him in combing and washing out the stone-dust that settled on it in the pursuit of his trade. His capabilities in the latter, having been acquired in the country, were of an all-round sort, including monumental stone-cutting, gothic free-stone work for the restoration of churches, and carving of a general kind. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... didn't, again: but I'm combing out your brains for you, if you'll only stand quiet and not interrupt. Keep your mind fixed on Whitmore. Whitmore's your man. If ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reason to be. I took that note to the police, and they are on the case. They are combing the city right now for Hobart, and if they get him, this bubble of yours is likely ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... woke I was almost completely covered with a blanket of debris, but I could move my arms, and managed to prop myself up in a sitting posture. It was there that my father and his searching party found me; he had been combing that district all night. They carried me back, terribly bruised, but without even a bone broken. It was a miracle that I escaped, and the miracle must have been worked by your ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... the mainland, and in its receding flow it had swirled him into a round cavity in the rocks, where as a boy he had often played and bathed and fished; he knew it well, and saw in a moment that he was saved! Clasping Valmai firmly, he ran up the beach, another combing, foaming wave coming dangerously near his hurrying footsteps; but in spite of the buffeting wind, he gained the shelter of the cliffs, and at last laid his burden tenderly down on the rocks. And now the fight for life was replaced by the terrible ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... (Nicholas Harpsfield) for his inaccuracy, Foxe replied: "I hear what you will say: I should have taken more leisure and done it better. I grant and confess my fault, such is my vice, I cannot sit all the day (Moister Cope) fining and mincing my letters, and combing my head, and smoothing myself all the day at the glass of Cicero. Yet, notwithstanding, doing what I can, and doing my good will, methinks I should not be reprehended, at least not so much be railed of at ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My first visit was to the house where Shakespeare was born, and where, according to tradition, he was brought up to his father's craft of wool-combing. It is a small, mean-looking edifice of wood and plaster, a true nestling-place of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its offspring in by-corners. The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and inscriptions in every language, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... same purpose, cousin. You have never failed in your duty toward me. You are worth a dozen brothers and sisters when it comes to 'combing one down.'" They laughed at the sally and might have carried it further had not Miss Alden led the way to ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... thanks to good care, good food, and a contented mind, I was getting better every day. One day I heard her say that I was improving and must have once been a handsome cat. I wanted to tell her of my wonderful voice, but did not do so, and compromised by squaring my shoulders and combing out my whiskers with my claws, for I had saved them and felt that they were still a credit to me. (I think she ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... tongue-love souls, not heart and souls- love; for he kept not his trust nor was he faithful to his troth.' Said I, 'O my lady, and what was the cause of your separation?', and she replied, 'I was sitting one day whilst my handmaid here combed my hair. When she had made an end of combing it, she plaited my tresses, and my beauty and loveliness charmed her; so she bent over me and kissed my cheek.[FN334] At that moment he came in unawares, and, seeing the girl kiss my cheek, straightways turned away in anger, vowing eternal-separation ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... there!—Rosa, I'm proud of you. This odious Yankee needs combing down; he ran over us so long at college that he is conceited in his own impudence," and Vincent ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... their faces and hands and combing their hair, and did not know anything about the coming of the Tories until they entered the room where their mother was, and then Mr. Dare had been out in the yard perhaps five minutes. During ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... of the ancients contained frequent allusions to mermaids, who were strange creatures with heads of beautiful, long-haired maidens, but with scaly bodies and the tails of fish. In pictures they are usually represented as sitting upon reefs holding a mirror in one hand and combing their long locks with the other. Holmes, in The Chambered Nautilus, speaks of the "cold sea-maids" who "rise to sun their streaming hair." Mermen were not so often spoken of, but there are some allusions to them. In later times the mermaids were considered more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... in which I think your daughter may fail is in properly washing, combing, and examining the dogs, and cutting her ladyship's corns; but surely she can practise a little of both, as she will not be wanted for a month. There can be no difficulty about the first; and as for the latter, as all people in your rank of life have corns, she may practise upon yours or her ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... piece of soda in some hot water, allowing a piece the size of a walnut to a quart of water. Put the water into a basin, and, after combing out the hair from the brushes, dip them, bristles downward, into the water and out again, keeping the backs and handles as free from the water as possible. Repeat this until the bristles look clean; then rinse ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... represents David, with hands uplifted in admiration, as he gazes at Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. I was the David, and Bathsheba was a woman, looking really magnificent in her eastern robes, who was sitting on the terrace facing me. Only she was not combing out her hair like the woman in the Bible picture: she was hunting ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... an ivory comb injures the hair. Thorough combing, washing in suds, or N.E. rum, and thorough brushing, will keep it in order; and the washing does not injure the hair, as is generally supposed. Keep children's hair cut close until ten or twelve ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... fields and meadows are looking well—oh, the year will turn out well, never fear! Little happenings and big, all in their turn: food, sleep, and work; Sundays, with washing of faces and combing of hair, and Isak sitting about in a new red shirt of Inger's weaving and sewing. Then an event, a happening of note in the ordinary round: a sheep, roaming with her lamb, gets caught in a cleft among the rocks. The others come home in the evening. Inger at once sees there are ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... shadow of vert or venison did I see. Ever in our front—westerly—rolled the land-waves, now rising, now subsiding, parallel one with the other, like a ploughed field many times magnified. Each ridge had its knot of jungle or its thin combing of heavily foliaged trees, until we arrived close to Rosako, our next halting place, when the monotonous wavure of the land underwent a change, breaking into independent hummocks clad with dense jungle. On one of these, veiled by ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... mud and mist, day after day through long months. Feeding hungry horses their breakfast at five o'clock in the morning; brushing, currying, combing till they shone satin-smooth. Harnessing, unharnessing; washing mud from rigs that would be splashed and plastered again before night. Driving to houses that were known by the number over the door, giving the reins ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... me. In those Fall days there was nothing too hard to try, no queer hours too exhausting, no deep corner too remote, in the search for my material. I saw the place from an old fisherman's boat and from a revenue launch at night, with its searchlight combing the waters far and wide for smugglers. I saw it from big pilot boats that put far out to sea to meet the incoming liners. I ate many good suppers and slept long nights on a stout jolly tug called The Happy, where from my ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... hear the echo of his own feet, was startled by the voice of a girl singing. For a moment I thought of the Lorelei; but it was soon evident where the notes were coming from. A maiden of ten or twelve was sitting in front of a cottage that faced the lake, combing her long, black hair that glistened in the morning rays, and pouring forth such exquisite trills as might have made Orpheus envious. The whole beauty of ben, loch, and sky seemed to be gathered up ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... home of burglary insurance. I don't think Blake liked it very much because Kennedy insisted on playing the lone hand, but he said nothing, for it was part of the agreement. Maloney seemed rather glad than otherwise. He had been combing out some tangled clues of his own about Mrs. Branford. Still, Kennedy smoothed things over by complimenting the detective on his activity, and indeed he had shown remarkable ability in the first place in locating ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Monty knew that that roar came from a mother bear, and that back of the bear was a small cub, with a round, funny little stomach, industriously combing the bushes for berries, and regarding life as one round of pleasure. There was no need for them to know that. Whitey had had experiences with bears, as you may remember. If wireless had been invented, he might possibly have been willing to use it as a means ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... out by stuffing the cracks with cotton, and closely curtaining the windows and bed. Even then, the ice in the wash-basin, and the electricity which made our hair literally stand on end in the process of combing, and the gradual transformation of fingers into thumbs, showed but too plainly that the wintry air had penetrated our defences. When we crowded joyfully round a crackling, sparkling wood-fire, even while our faces glowed with the intense heat, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... 1, 1885, Lorenzo and Seth Wright were killed by Indians who had been combing the valley for horses. The Wrights had started, with members of a posse, from Layton, and were joined at Solomonville by Sheriff Stevens and two other men, after there had been recovered a number of the stolen horses, for the pursuers ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... she in Lizzie's room was combing out her long curls, and trying the effect of wearing them entirely behind her ears. Suddenly there was the sound of sleigh bells, which came nearer, until they stopped before the door. Lucy flew to the window, and in tones of intense anger ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... drink already, were telling stories of scandal and duelling, to which Tom could not but listen with ill-concealed interest. Others were discussing the last new play, or the last new toast. A few fine dandies sat combing their periwigs as they talked of the latest fashions, taking snuff freely, and sprinkling themselves with perfume from a small pocket flask, if they were ever too nearly approached by some ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to take you back to the boys that are combing these hills for you. They'll do all ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... of Brown Howe and standing by a boulder there be seen of a summer's eve a maiden there seated a-combing out her jet black tresses so as to hide her bare breast and shoulders, she looking to be much shamed to there do ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... endearment, to a young country-girl, who seemed perfectly ignorant of its use, assuring her customer that it was an instrument for unravelling the hair, and making it beautiful and shining, and enforcing her argument by combing through some ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... amidships to stempost, were alike. She possessed that essential characteristic of seaworthiness, abundant sheer. The deck was pierced for a cockpit in the centre, which was six feet long and surrounded by a high combing to keep out water. The builder had done his best to make the Mayeta serve for rowing and sailing — a most difficult combination, and one ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... and the first boatswain's-mate advanced, combing out the nine tails of his "cat" with his fingers, and then, sweeping them round his neck, brought them with the whole force of his body upon the mark. Again, and again, and again; at every blow, higher ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... she spoke, locking the door again, and Mollie got up with a heavy sigh. She had taken off only her outer garments before lying down; and after washing, and combing out her bright silken hair, she resumed the glittering, bride-like finery of the evening before. Poor Mollie looked at the silver-shining silk, the cobweb lace, the gleaming, milky pearls, with a very ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the lady has done anything amiss,—any more than combing her husband's hair, and the like of ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... like new, by following these simple directions: Wet the fur with a hair-brush, brushing up the wrong way of the fur. Leave it to dry in the air for about half an hour, and then give it a good beating on the right side with a rattan. After beating it, comb it with a coarse comb, combing up the right ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... beside the hearth, by the side of which was an armful of furze. The evening meal was slowly cooking in a marmite suspended from a hook. Between her knees she held the child, combing his hair. She stopped when she saw the visitors enter, and the child ran towards the Count who ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... sat in her bower-wind w, Combing her yellow hair; There she spyed sweet William and his bride, As they ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... fountain's brim, are hers and mine; And when the days are mild and fair, And grass is springing, buds are blowing, Sweet it is, 'mid waters flowing, Here to sit and know no care, 'Mid the waters flowing, flowing, flowing, Combing my ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... beautiful legends grow up which express the aspects of various localities. From the distant sand-banks in the lakes, glittering in the sun, come stories of enchantresses combing, on the shore, the long golden hair of a beautiful daughter. The Lorelei of the Rhine, with her syren song, and the sad events that follow, is found on the lonely rocks ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the south the great roll of the high veld. I longed miserably for the places where white men were thronged together in dorps and cities. As we gazed a curious sound struck our ears. It seemed to begin far up in the north—a low roll like the combing of breakers on the sand. Then it grew louder and travelled nearer—a roll, with sudden spasms of harsher sound in it; reminding me of the churning in one of the pot-holes of Kirkcaple cliffs. Presently it grew softer again as the sound passed south, but new notes were always emerging. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... than ermines are, Ye Pisan counts, knights, damozels, and squires, Who think by combing out your hair like wires To drive the men of Florence from their car. Ye make the Ghibellines free near and far, Here, there, in cities, castles, huts, and byres, Seeing how gallant in your brave attires, How bold you look, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Bring in all the necessities for washing the hands and face and brushing the teeth and combing the hair, and help where needed. Change the nightgown (it is better to have a gown for the day and one for the night), brush the crumbs from the bed, make the sheet smooth, shake up the pillows and straighten out the bedclothes, having extra covers handy in case of need. Fill the hot water ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... course have altered, Surely the port she'll win, Never my faith in my ship has faltered, I know she is coming in. For through the restless ways of her roaming, Through the mad rush of the wild waves foaming, Through the white crest of the billows combing, My ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... I don't know. Grandma was reddish and lighter still than ma. They said she was part Cherokee Indian. Her hair was smooth and pretty. She combed her hair with the fine comb to bring the oil out on it and make it slick. I recollect her combing her hair. It was long about ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... red head in need of combing; its owner rested his arms on the gleaming mahogany deck and turned a sullen, unshaven ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... his thoughts continued their search, groping in the darkness; he felt sure he ought to be sharing his adventures with these other little persons, whoever they were; they ought to have been sitting beside him at that very moment, eating mushrooms, combing their wings, comparing the length of their feathers, and snuggling with him into ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... consequence. We soaped down and scrubbed one another with towels and pieces of canvas, stripping to it; and then, getting into the head, threw buckets of water upon each other. After this came shaving, and combing, and brushing; and when, having spent the first part of the day in this way, we sat down on the forecastle, in the afternoon, with clean duck trousers and shirts on, washed, shaved, and combed, and looking a dozen shades lighter for it, reading, sewing, and talking at our ease, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... young widows occupied the cells on the north side, and the work rooms on the east, while the youths, under the sharp eye of a lay brother, were opposite. All lived a life of unwilling industry: cleaning and combing wool, spinning, weaving, manufacturing chocolate, grinding corn between stones, making shoes, fashioning the simple garments worn by priest and Indian. Between the main group of buildings and the natural rampart of the "San Bruno Mountains" ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... smile or try to smile at every face he happens to see and would talk sociably; while the former would not smile at any face, but would stare at it with the large glaring eyes that penetrated to the innermost soul. The latter would keep himself scrupulously clean, shaving, combing, brushing, polishing, oiling, perfuming, while the former would be entirely indifferent to his apparel, being always clad in a faded yellow robe. The latter would compose his sermon with a great care, making use of rhetorical art, and speak with force and elegance; while the former would ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... heads of this plant are used for combing kerseymeres and finer broad cloths. The heads are generally fit to cut about the latter end of August, and are then separated and made up into bundles, and sold to the clothiers. The large heads are called Kings; the next size Middlings; ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... Each day the papers were full of our mysterious disappearance ... reporters were combing the country to find us. Reports of our being in various places were sent ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Combing my few remaining locks. No harm in comb, I suppose, as maker assured me it was "only made of celluloid." Comb suddenly driven a couple of inches into my head, with loud report! In bed for three weeks. Write to maker, who says, "Didn't I know ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... there are a few harpies," he answered; "and now and then I have seen a mermaid on the rocks combing her hair with a golden comb ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... fibres or threads: formerly this was always performed by the hand, by means of an instrument, called a comb, with several rows of pointed teeth; this, though not much used now, is still occasionally employed, except in large factories. This combing is repeated two or three times, till it is sufficiently smooth and even for spinning. Spinning or converting wool, or cotton, silk, &c. into thread, was anciently performed by the distaff and spindle: these ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... had gone out to attend upon the king, Olaf quitted the house and went by secret ways to the stables, where he found his foster brother at work combing out the mane of Sigurd's fighting steed. A very tall and powerful animal it was, with a glossy brown coat and a long tail that reached nearly to the ground. It was well trained, and many a well won fight had it fought. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... dangerous. As far as possible go with the head uncovered, and brush the hair frequently. Brushing stimulates the grease glands, and causes the hair to become glossy. Probably the reason men lose their hair so much more than women is that the brushing and combing the latter must give it stimulates the hair roots. Massaging the skin of the scalp with the fingers night and morning will greatly promote growth of the ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... water in a marvellous way. On one occasion our own vessel in the North Sea was run into by another. The latter's cutwater went through her side and deck almost to the combing of the hatch, and the water began to pour in. By immediately putting the vessel on the other tack, the rent was largely lifted out of water. A heavy topsail was hastily thrown over her side, and eventually ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... was unbound and combed, but all the remainder of the time it continued in a solid mass quite a foot in length, being as hard and about as thick as a rope an inch in diameter. Now, the queue had undergone its hebdomadal combing just an hour before Raoul announced his intention to proceed to Naples in the yawl, and it would have been innovating on the only thing that Ithuel treated with reverence to undo the work until another week had completed its round. The ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... at his heels rushed up-stairs, he found his sister before the mirror combing her hair. There was nothing hysterical about her, but her white calmness in itself ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and dreadful Fright in the main Ocean ...... but to his great Amazement he espy'd a beautiful young Lady combing her Head and toss'd on the Billows, cloathed all in green (but by chance he got the first Word from her). Then She with a Smile came on Board and asked how he did. The young Man, being Something Smart and a Scholar reply'd—Madam, I am the better to see ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... necktie, the other for a pocket handkerchief. I had twenty-four cents, or pennies which I divided equally with fifty large brass buttons in my right and left pockets. Now, thought I to myself, when I get on the floor and begin to dance—oh! how the niggers will stare to hear the money jingle. I was combing my hair to get the knots out of it: I then went and looked in an old piece of broken looking-glass, and I thought, without joking, that I was the best looking negro that I had ever seen in my life. About ten o'clock ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... hour. He was in the agonies of high fever. His mother and father watched over him, combing his hair and giving him gulps of tea. The old man was tormented by a special anguish. He wished his son to take the sacrament, though, knowing his attitude towards religion, he dared not ask him. At last he could ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and they crawled out of their blankets, and got their pieces of bark, and opened their knives, and without washing their faces or combing their hair they fished into the dishes, for bacon and ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... on the deck outside the combing of the cockpit. Nirvana had no attraction for him. He resented forced inactivity as an unendurable wrong. Instead of smoking with half-closed eyes, he peered eagerly forward under the sail. He noted everything—the floating gulls and puffins, the stiff, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... but badly, for the loading of the ship continued by torchlight, until within an hour of the time of their departure. After tossing about for some hours in their narrow beds, they were glad to go on deck, and to plunge their heads into a pail of water, and were then, after combing their long hair, able to take an interest in what was ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... hand-mirror to his cousin as unconcernedly as he might have pointed to a dog. His cousin, on her side, took no more notice than a dog would have taken of the contemptuous phrase by which he had designated her. She went on combing and oiling his beard as ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... of mind; her nights were less disturbed; she no longer made her mother hold her hand while she fell asleep and no longer found herself suffocating in nightmares. A fortnight went by in this fashion. Then, one morning, while sitting at her dressing-table, combing her hairs she bent her head toward the glass, as the weather was overcast, and she saw in it, not her own face, but the face of the dead man. A thread of blood was trickling from one corner of his mouth; he was ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... of the condition and dealings of those who govern here. M. de Villeroy has found himself depicted often, and now under pretext of a public negotiation he has found an opportunity of revenging himself. . . . Besides this cause which Villeroy has found for combing my head, Russy has given notice here that I have kept my masters in the hopes of being honourably exempted from the claims of this government. The long letter which I wrote to M. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the head of the Secret Service, put a dozen of his best men on her trail, but they found nothing. She had disappeared as thoroughly as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. At last, as the combing of the Aberdeen marshes yielded no results, Dr. Bird acceded to Carnes' request, and the detective left for Washington to take personal charge of the search. Dr. Bird sat alone in his quarters at the Officers' Club, futilely ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... was it an idiosyncrasy, as I have known those who by combing their hair can elicit sparks with a crackling as from a cat's back rubbed. It is very possible that the sleeve might be silk, tightened either on a very hairy arm, or else on woollen, and by shaking it might be meant stripping the silk suddenly off, which would ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... occasionally called into her room, to cut her nails or dress her hair; and we would often collect the clippings, and distribute them to each other, or preserve them with the utmost care. I once picked up all the stray hairs I could find, after combing her head, bound them together, and kept them for some time, until she told me I was not worthy to possess things so sacred. Jane McCoy and I were once sent to alter a dress for the Superior. I gathered up all the bits of thread, made a little bag, and put them into it for ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... have been highly unbecoming and improper, to say the best of it. I will venture to say that, if Jesus Christ was now to pass through the most pious countries in Christendom, with a train of women such as used to follow him, fondling about him, combing his hair, anointing him with precious ointments, washing his feet with tears and wiping them with the hair of their heads, and unmarried, or even married, he would be mobbed, tarred and feathered, and rode, not on an ass, but on a rail . . . . Did he multiply, and did he see his seed? ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the act of combing his beard, which he had allowed to grow, as well as his hair, in order to reproach Mazarin with his wretched appearance and condition. But having some days previously seen from the top of the donjon Madame ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... our passage home. It was in the season of the year when severe gales are met with on the Atlantic, but the brig Joseph proved a good sea boat, tight as a drum, and could lie to or scud without danger of being overwhelmed by the combing waves. On this passage a little incident occurred off the Orkney Islands, that will convey some idea of the dangers to which those are subjected whose home is on ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... horses and destriers by the bridle, setting saddles on hackneys and taking them off, buckling the harness and making the metal work shining and bright. Grooms went about their business. Never was such a cleansing of stables, such taking of horses to the meadows, such a currying and combing, shoeing and loosing of girths, washing and watering, such a bearing of straw and of grass for the litter, and oats for the manger. Nor these alone, but in the courtyards and chambers of the hostels you might see the ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... Little Wun-lee, combing her hair, Saw a blue butterfly float through the air— Saw a blue butterfly flicker and settle On an azalea's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... then, that fear for the safety of their wives and children made the faces of these men gray as they rode the sage, combing the hollows and hills for the sight of old Mark Thorn. One by one they began to drop out of the posse, until of the fourteen besides Macdonald who had ridden in the hunt on the second day, only five remained on the ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... some difficulty in the tumbleweed. While one was searching, the rest would get ahead of him. The line became disorganized, broke into groups, finally disintegrated entirely. Each man hunted for himself, circling the tumbleweed patches, combing carefully their edges for the quail that sometimes burst into the air fairly at his feet. When he had killed one, he walked directly to the spot. On the way he would flush two or three more. They were tempting; ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... of the millionaire went into the tin basin with a will. Big Shanty Brook, that morning, was as cold as ice. He rubbed his face and neck into a glow, combing his hair as best he could with his hands. He was as hungry as a wolf. Thayor was now beginning to understand their unwillingness to accept ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... her lips, she straightway quitted the room, and during this while, Pao-y having finished combing her hair, asked She Yeh to quietly wait upon him, while he went to sleep, as he would not like to disturb ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to pay his respects; said they wouldn't be back at the chateau until about five; perhaps the ladies would come to the stable-yard and see the pansage. It was quite interesting; all the horses ranged in a semi-circle, men scrubbing and combing hard, the sous-officiers superintending, the officers standing about smoking and seeing that everything was being packed and ready for an early start the next morning. I was astonished to see how small the horses were. My English horse, also a chestnut, was not particularly big, but he looked ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... care that her cook shall make her toilet in her room, not in the kitchen. Particularly should she be made to arrange her hair upstairs, as some cooks have an exceedingly nasty habit of combing their hair in the kitchen. It will repay a house-keeper to make several visits to the kitchen at ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... finishing processes of fulling and dyeing were made a business of elsewhere, then with the introduction of machinery the hand-loom disappeared from our cottages to special centres; next the spinning disappeared; then the combing, and last of all the wool-sorting went too, leaving nothing but sheep shearing of what was a complete local industry, with as many centres as there were formerly houses to work in ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... the Egyptian is improved upon, but it is the same implement. Pliny gives an account of the mode of preparing flax: plucking it up by the roots, tying it in bundles, drying, watering, beating, and hackling it, or, as he says, "combing it with iron hooks." Until the Christian era linen was almost the only kind of clothing used in Egypt, and the teeming banks of the Nile furnished flax in abundance. The quality of the linen can be seen in the bands preserved ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... "zum Wohl!" And as he talks, and his excitement becomes more and more intense, he edges closer and closer to you, and leans forward, talking hard, until his dark beaming phiz quite interposes between your food and its destination. So that to avoid combing his baldish pate with your fork you must pass the items of your meal in quite a sideways trajectory. And if, as happened to our companion (the present Cornell don), you have no special taste for a plump landlord breathing passionately and genially ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... gnats (who did not care the least for the death of their poor brothers) danced a foot over his head quite happily, and a large black fly settled within an inch of his nose, and began washing his own face and combing his hair with his paws; but the dragon fly never stirred, and kept on chatting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... screams had brought her father, and he had driven the Fuzzies away. Police had brought both the girl and her father, Oscar Lurkin, to headquarters, where they had told their story. City police, Company police and constabulary troopers and parties of armed citizens were combing the eastern side of the city; Resident General Emmert had acted at once to offer a reward of five ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper |
