"Homespun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... British scene: Here, as in life, she breathes her genuine flame, She asks, What bosom has not felt the same? Asks of the British youth—is silence there? She dares to ask it of the British fair. To-night our homespun author would be true, At once to nature, history, and you. 20 Well pleased to give our neighbours due applause, He owns their learning, but disdains their laws; Not to his patient touch, or happy flame, 'Tis to his British heart he trusts for fame. If France excel him in one ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... excitement was over. The Boy picked up the two big white cats, Melindy and Jim, and placed them in the arms of old Billy Smith, where they settled themselves, looking about with an air of sleepy wisdom. From smallest kittenhood the smell of a homespun shirt had stood to them for every kind of gentleness and shelter, so they saw no reason to find fault with the arms of Billy Smith. By this time old Butters, the woodchuck, disturbed at the scattering of the Family, had retired in a huff to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... young women, eager to earn the first money they could call their own, were leaving the farms, for a few months at least, to work in the mills. Cotton cloth was the new sensation and the demand for it was steadily growing. Brides were proud to display a few cotton sheets instead of commonplace homespun linen. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Hooray for the Southern Girl. Hooray for the homespun dress the Southern ladies wear. My homespun dress is plain I know, I glory in its name; Hooray for the homespun dress the Southern ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... not, but the door was opened wide, And the King's name a voice long silent cried, And Phoebus on the very threshold trod, And yet in nothing liker to a god Than when he ruled Admetus' herds, for he Still wore the homespun coat men used to see Among the heifers in the summer morn, And round about him hung the herdsman's horn, And in his hand he bore the herdsman's spear And cornel bow, the prowling dog-wolfs fear, Though empty of its shafts the quiver was. ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... may have rehearsed a scene in which she would be called upon to soothe a stricken woman and speak comfort to a breaking heart. She had supposed that love was the same the world over, whether it went in silk brocade or coarse homespun. She had apt phrases ready to meet the expected, plenty of well-prepared sympathy to bestow, but she had no answer for this quiet, deliberate manner, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... against the Lords of the Loom[33] idealized the old-time union of agriculture and manufacture. The men should work in the fields, while the women and children stayed at home at their spinning wheels, making homespun for the family garments. But the picture was a vanishing one even in his day. Domestic industry does not mean this. The rural distress revealed in the Hand-loom Weavers Commission is the distress of specialized hand-workers, male and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... his statements and his conciliatory address. It soon became evident that the Stamp Act could not be enforced. No one could be compelled to buy stamps or pay tariff taxes if he preferred to withdraw from all business transactions, wear homespun, do without British manufactures, and even refrain from eating lamb that flocks of sheep might be increased and the wool used for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... requested. He performed this service with a gravity that would move some people to the same sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of a trained chimpanzee. But Craig—the wild man, the arch foe of effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw—Craig accepted the service with heartfelt thanks in his ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... thrown off his jerkin and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt of coarse homespun fabric, in order to give his thick muscular arms unimpeded play in wielding the hammer and turning the mass of glowing metal on the anvil. He wore woollen breeches and hose, both of which had been fashioned by the fingers of his buxom mother, Herfrida. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... And what is it about Elinor? Do I want to become to her what Frederic is to Lucy? Do I want to make her "Mrs. Poor'us"? Do I want to drag her down and keep her plodding all her days, clad in a homespun gown, and she fit to be a lady in her silks and satins? What is it I would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... homespun a background the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. Major Amberson bought two hundred acres of land at the end of National Avenue; and through this tract he built broad streets and cross-streets; ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... The strangulation cravat at his throat was of the kind which every marquis wears in all the portraits which adorn eighteenth century literature; it is common alike to Saint-Preux and to Lovelace, to the elegant Montesquieu's heroes and to Diderot's homespun characters (see the first editions of those ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun. There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the wheel and the loom are still busy; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... called, is composed of rather homespun material, to say the least, of it. There may be some fifty individuals dubbed with the title of marquis, and as many more with that of count, most of whom have acquired their wealth and position by carrying ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Peter was obliged to lay aside his homespun coat, and the Prince his velvet tunic, and both were dressed in some little white robes with evergreen girdles like the Monks. Then the Prince was set to sowing Noah's ark seed, and Peter picture-book seed. Up and down they went scattering the seed. Peter sang a little psalm ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... is adry desire to drink in gold? Doth not a cloth suit become him as well, and keep him as warm, as all their silks, satins, damasks, taffeties and tissues? Is not homespun cloth as great a preservative against cold, as a coat of Tartar lamb's-wool, died in grain, or a gown of giant's beards? Nero, saith [3712]Sueton., never put on one garment twice, and thou hast scarce one to put on? what's the difference? one's sick, the other sound: such is the whole tenor of their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... no word to me, even when we were alone. One difference I noticed about her, however; that she was clothed in garments such as I had never seen her wear before. They were close fitting, save for a flowing cape, and made of some grey material, not unlike a coarse homespun or even asbestos cloth. Still they became her very well, and when I remarked upon them, all she answered was that part of our road would be rough. Even her feet were shod with high buskins of ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... morning the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. A much larger number of people than usual came to town that Saturday,—bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which gave them ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... comical that she likes it." . . . . . . . The song grew momentarily more distinct: among the leaves there were fugitive glimpses of blue and white, and at last Clarsie appeared, walking lightly along the log, clad in her checked homespun dress, and with a pail ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... trailing, clinging black skirt which her aunt had sent her a year ago and which she had never been permitted to wear. It transformed her into a woman. She had cast aside her waist of dark plum-coloured homespun and wrapped a silken shawl about herself until only her beautiful arms and shoulders were left bare. Her hair, glossy and brown, with burnished red lights where the rays of the dull autumn sun struck on it through the window, was heaped high on her head and held in place by a fillet of pearl beads. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... up to the residence of President Hayden, and inquired for Dr. Robinson, he was decidedly homespun in appearance. He probably was dressed in his best, but his best was shabby enough. His trousers were of coarse satinet, and might have fitted him a season or two before, but now were far outgrown, reaching only half-way down ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... minutes watching the girl. Her red hair was coiled up now in a neat roll at the back of her head. Her freckled face was clean, and had apparently escaped bruising in her conflict with the dragoon. She wore a short grey skirt of woollen homespun. The sleeves of her bodice were rolled up, and displayed a pair of muscular red arms. The girl was more than commonly tall, and anyone listening to her heavy footfall, and noting her thick figure and broad shoulders, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the scene so well known in the early history of our country, and contains twenty-five figures, thirteen of which should be dressed in crimson uniform, to personate the British soldiers, six in continental costume, three in coarse homespun suits, three in sailor's costume. The stage must be formed to represent a hill, which can be done by using boxes and boards, and covering them with green cloth. The hill should rise from the footlights ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... small gabled house, in a garden where the autumn flowers hung their heads under the heavy dew. There was a paddock behind the house where a cow was feeding, and a gate led through a yard to the back door, and thither the boy was turning when he noticed a little girl in homespun frock and sun-bonnet leaning over the garden gate, looking up rather wistfully at the shuttered windows of the house. She gave a great start as the boy came behind her and laid his hand ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... is he, that there can be no particular impropriety in our drawing a comparison between him and that peculiar type of per son commonly called a Virginian bean-pole. Nor, when he gets himself (as is not uncommon with him) "all over" native brown homespun, does his configuration materially change, there yet remaining, and boldly refusing to be disguised, that face so full of penetration, and those features so sharp. The waggishly inclined have identified them with the wizardry of dividing storm currents. Nevertheless, of this lean conformation, which ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... does it amount to? How important is it? Does it matter whether we missionaries sleep on spring beds, or those made of boards (I prefer the latter myself!), whether we eat with chopsticks, or fingers, or forks; whether we wear silk or homespun; whether we sit on chairs or on the floor? Does it matter whether we are poor or rich? Does it matter whether we eat rice or potatoes? Does it matter whether we live in the way to which we are accustomed, or adopt the way of living of ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... wretch, Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While those great caves of night, her eyes, faced mine, Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs: At last she spoke as one who must be heeded. Truly I am not clear Whether her meaning was conveyed in words ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... did command He saw no smoke and he saw no roof. That was well! and he stamped a hoof. His heart knew peace, for none came here To this lean feeding save once a year Someone to salt the half-wild steer, Or homespun children with clicking pails Who see no little they tell no tales. He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach A new-world song, far out of reach, For a sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech And the whimper of hawks ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... were the male peasants; old men in homespun coats and bast shoes, and young men in new cloth caftans, bright-colored belts and boots. To the left the women, with red silk 'kerchiefs on their heads, shag caftans with bright red sleeves, and blue, green, red, striped and dotted skirts and iron-heeled shoes. Behind them ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... long ridges, and their creek-bottom marshes and sloughs—in the day's journey from Corinth to the bluffs of the Tennessee. They saw them, not empty, nor fearlessly crossed by the quail, the wild turkey, the fox, or the unhunted deer, nor travelled alone by the homespun "citizen" or by scouts or foragers, but slowly overflowed by a great gray, silent, tangled, armed host—cavalry, infantry, ordnance trains, batteries, battery wagons and ambulances: Saw Hilary Kincaid and all his heroes and their guns, and all the "big generals" and their ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... but he has always insisted upon it. I would have been willing to slave here, day and night, and have been happy. But he said I must not seem to be ashamed of my past, when he is not. I would have worn common homespun clothes and calico frocks, and been glad of it, but he insists upon my wearing my best things, even my theatre things; and as he can't afford to buy more, I wear these things I had. I know they look beastly here, and that I'm ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... them through the thickening gloom, very slowly; leaning on a stick. As he drew nearer, they observed that he was pale and worn, and that his anxious eyes were deeply sunken in his head. His dress of homespun blue hung about him in rags; his feet and head were bare. He sat down on a stump half-way, and beckoned them to come to him. When they complied, he put his hand upon his side as if in pain, and while he fetched his breath stared ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Tiglath," Lady Enid went on, with pleasant ease, and a sort of homespun self-possession that trumpeted, like a military band, her sensibleness, "Mr. Vivian consulted me as to what to do; whether to give the whole thing up, or to make an appeal to you at the risk of disturbing ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the soldier diarist observes,—"Several sorts of Busnesses was Going on, Som a Exercising, Som a Hearing Preaching." The attention of Parson Moody's listeners was, in fact, distracted by shouts of command and the awkward drill of squads of homespun ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... man who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which would lay him open to smarts of evil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... forty winters had whitened over her brows, yet she had the manner and elasticity of a girl of eighteen, and a face so full of sweetness and gentleness that it seemed as if God had ordained it for man's love. Angeline's dress was usually of plain blue homespun, woven by her own hands, and with her cap and apron of snowy whiteness she presented a picture of neatness and comeliness not seen in ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... the white tops of wagons flashing in the sun at the far end of it. We caught up with them, the wagoners cracking their whips and swearing at the straining horses. And lo! in front of the wagons was an army,—at least my boyish mind magnified it to such. Men clad in homespun, perspiring and spattered with mud, were straggling along the road by fours, laughing and joking together. The officers rode, and many of these had blue coats and buff waistcoats,—some the worse for wear. My father was pushing the white mare into the ditch to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their sleds. The November forests listened in the frost to the speech of these foreign women, echoed it, without understanding it. Ahead of them, walked an old man to lead the way. They wore Icelandic homespun skirts, and had them tucked up at the waist. Around their heads, they had tied Icelandic woollen shawls. They say they are such good walkers. They intend to take lodging somewhere for the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... and climbed the Lowari Pass among the fir trees and the pines, and on the very summit he met three men clothed in brown homespun with their hair clubbed at the sides of their heads. Each man carried a rifle on his back and two of them carried swords besides, and they wore sandals of grass upon their feet. They were talking as they went, and they were talking ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... thirty-seven years of age, his hair is light, not a "sable silvered," but a yaller gilded; you can see some of it sticking out of the top of his hat; his costume is the national costume of Arkansas, coat, waistcoat, and pantaloons of homespun cloth, dyed a brownish yellow, with a decoction of the bitter barked butternut—a pleasing alliteration; his countenance presents a determined, combined with a sanctimonious expression, and in his brightly gleaming eye—a red eye ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... country homespun, he marched up along River Street, over the bridge, and up the hill to the villa quarter, where he had to ask the way. At last he arrived outside a white-painted wooden house standing back in a garden. Here was the place—the place where his fate was to be decided. After the ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... native-made cloth. The blue-jeans coat was ornamented with brass buttons and cost one dollar and twenty-five cents a yard, a high price for that locality and time. His wife wore a calico dress for company, while the neighbor wives wore homespun linsey-woolsey. The new house was referred to as the Crystal Palace. When John and Jane Clemens attended balls—there were continuous balls during the holidays—they were considered the most ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had been worked out for the various classes. They were adapted both to the purse and to the pursuit. They were fitting—that is, silk was not worn in huts or homespun in palaces; slippers were for carriages and sabots for streets. The garments of a class were founded on good sound principles on the whole—but they marked the class. Democracy sought to destroy outward distinctions. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... crowded city, and its mingling of the splendid and the squalid, its French and French-Canadians, its soldiers and priests and civilians and Indians, its great stone houses, and its wooden huts, its young officers in fine white uniforms and its swarthy habitants in brown homespun. Albany had its Dutch, and New York had its Dutch, too, and people from many parts of Europe, but Quebec was different, something altogether new, without a trace of English or Dutch about it, and, for that reason, it made a ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... between the mother and daughter, appeared to be as strong and their relations as complete, as if one were not clad in homespun and the other in Worth gowns. There was no shame, that was easily seen, on either side; each apparently was full of pride in the other; their living apart was entirely due to the old mere's preference for a life on the cliffs, alone in the midst of all her old ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... knitted away at socks and stockings, in coarse, bright-coloured wool. Such articles are never bought, the home-made substitute being much more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An old woman in the village still plied the loom, working up neighbours' ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... stalk of cotton was growed dar, but jus' de same our clothes was made out of cloth dat Mistess and my mammy wove out of thread us chillun spun, and Mistess tuk a heap of pains makin' up our dresses. Durin' de war evvybody had to wear homespun, but dere didn't nobody have no better or prettier dresses den ours, 'cause Mistess knowed more'n anybody 'bout dyein' cloth. When time come to make up a batch of clothes Mistess would say, 'Ca'line holp ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... no money with which to buy a "store hat," which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty. She accordingly got two pieces of "homespun" (jeans) and sewed them together, and I was soon the proud ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... wat yer got," said Aunt Edy; and they spread out on the table garments of worsted and silk and muslin and lace and tarlatan and calico and homespun, just whatever their little hands had been ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth herself—a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see—none of your bleached "shop-rag" that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last for two generations. The ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... heap, dressed in the picturesque utility garb of buckskin, homespun, and "hickory" which stamped the pioneer of his day, a big man lay at full length: a large man even here, where the law of the fittest reigned supreme. A stubbly growth of beard covered his face, giving it the heavy expression ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... families. To Godwin all was like a dream dreamt for the second time. He could not acknowledge any actual connection between these people and himself. But their characteristics no longer gravely offended him, and he willingly recognised the homespun worth which their lives displayed. It was clear to him that by no possible agency of circumstances could he have been held in normal relations with his kinsfolk. However smooth his career, it must have wafted him to an immeasurable ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... so called because unmarried daughters worked at spinning and weaving for the household, making 'homespun' cloth for them. ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... was a wizened, bent, and thin old man, draped from head to foot in coarse butternut-colored homespun, and called "Old Woollen" by the funny fellow, who walked from car to car bewailing his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... most of the meat. The wild animals furnished clothing as well as food; for the pioneers could not afford to pay from 15 to 25 cents a yard for calico, and from 25 to 75 cents for gingham.* Some persons indulged in homespun cloth for Sunday and festal occasions, but the common outside garments were made of dressed deerskins. Parley P. Pratt, in his autobiography, speaks of passing through a settlement where "some families were entirely dressed ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... grand Christmas supper, when all adjourn to the dining-room to partake of the annual feast for which the housewives have long been preparing. The table is usually tastefully and often elaborately trimmed with flowers and green leaves. The corners of the long snow-white homespun cloth are caught up into rosettes surrounded with long calla or other leaves; possibly the entire edge of the table is bedecked with leaves and flowers. The butter is moulded into a huge yellow rose resting on bright green leaves, and the napkins assume marvelous ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Broad-mead, and was, by the wagoner, introduced to the landlord, who soon showed, by the conduct of himself and his family, that he was taught to consider our hero as a curiosity. They treated him with exemplary kindness, however. The landlord, though a rough homespun man, bred up in low life, manifested, not only tenderness and humanity, but a degree of delicacy that could not have been expected. A grown up young man, a son of his, the very evening he arrived, took the liberty, upon the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... now. Curs'd Marian may go seek another man, For I intend to dwell no longer with her, Since that the bastinado drove me thence. These silken girls are all too fine for me: My master shall report of those in hell, Whilst I go range amongst the country-maids, To see, if homespun lasses milder be Than my curs'd dame and Lacy's wanton wife. Thus therefore will I live betwixt two shapes; When as I list, in this transform'd disguise, I'll fright the country-people as they pass; And sometimes turn me to some other form, And so delude them with fantastic shows. But woe betide ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Dressed in homespun clothes, and riding sorry steeds, Calhoun and Emory played their part to perfection. Their entrance into the little place caused no comment, and excited no suspicion. Sauntering into the depot, they gazed ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... man was clad in a thick grey overcoat of some shaggy kind of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Until the Premier, plain, homespun gentleman that he is, longed for Friday evening and the Crown Hill farm and the quiet little church in the village, because one week at his desk took more out of him than a month in overalls. And then to ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the noise is held to drive away witches. Some other arts are a little more advanced, as any visitor to Mr. Harper's pleasant Fayal shop in Boston may discover. They make homespun cloth upon a simple loom, and out of their smoky huts come beautiful embroideries and stockings whose fineness is almost unequalled. Their baskets are strong and graceful, and I have seen men sitting in village ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sorely started to feel a great warm hand on my shoulder, and a loud, cheery voice saith, 'Dolly Jennings, whither away so fast thou canst not see an old friend?' I looked up, and there was dear old Farmer Ingham, in his thick boots and country homespun; but I declare to you, child, that in my trouble his face was to me as that of an angel of God. I brake down, and sobbed aloud. 'Come, come, now!' saith he, comfortably; 'not so bad as that, is it? ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... sits at an organ, the mistress of the house, fair but faded, in a cap and a short gown and red quilted petticoat, giving some instruction, touching an intricate weave, to a negro woman, neatly arrayed in homespun, with a gayly turbaned head, evidently an expert herself, from the bland and smiling manner and many self-sufficient and capable nods with which she perceived and appropriated the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to American custom, was dressed in its clothes—a suit of light grey homespun, such as is to be bought everywhere from French-Canadian weavers. When they had lifted the body and put it in the box, they stopped involuntarily to look, before the girl laid a handkerchief upon the face. There lay a stalwart, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,—and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the English alphabet, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu. And there beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me. There was no mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... upon her face, the ranger was able to see it quite plainly. She had lost the cute little homemade cap in the flurry, and her luxuriant hair hung loosely about her shoulder. She was neatly clad in homespun, though the dress, the stockings, and the ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... packing-box, and surrounded, as all country dwellings at the South are, by a broad, open piazza. Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common 'corn-crackers' I had seen at the country meeting-house. The Colonel was an acquaintance, and greeting us with great cordiality, our host led the way directly to the sitting-room. There ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... a list of things he found most useful. Two rough homespun or serge suits: riding breeches, which are absolutely indispensable; riding boots laced up the centre, and large, as they are continually getting wet; flannel shirts; thick worsted stockings; a warm ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... were waiting, a white woman wearing a homespun dress and slat-bonnet, came down the road from the other side of the creek, and lifting her skirts slightly, waded with bare feet across the shallow stream. Reaching the clay-bank she stooped and gathered from ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postillion, but the most of them were only footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with being son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet, were the capital ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... sudden respect to the homespun citizen of an older day, and a great happiness came into his heart—it was like the unfolding of one of the roses. Not that he was to lunch with the President, though Dale's was the village estimate of human greatness. A vaster issue was before him, and this was a ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... rapture leaps Where stood that era-parting bridge, O'er which, with footfall still as dew, The Old Time passed into the New; Where, as your stealthy river creeps, He whispers to his listening weeds Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. 110 Here English law and English thought 'Gainst the self-will of England fought; And here were men (coequal with their fate), Who did great things, unconscious they were great. They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery. At the station they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Their moccasins were gorgeously embroidered with dyed porcupine quills. Their caps of beaver or martin were sometimes tied down over their ears with vivid handkerchiefs of silk. The habitants were rougher and more sombre in their dress. A black homespun coat, gray leggings, gray woollen cap, heavy moccasins of cowhide,—this grave costume was usually brightened by a belt or sash of the liveliest colours. The country-women had to content themselves with the same coarse homespuns, which they wore ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... come to him. Through the partition he could hear the clear, sonorous voice of Reine singing her father to sleep with one of the popular ballads of the country, and while turning and twisting in the homespun linen sheets, scented with orrisroot, he could not help thinking of this young girl, so original in her ways, whose grace, energy, and frankness fascinated and shocked him at the same time. At last he dozed off; and when the morning ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... naked went, or clad in ruder hide, Or homespun russet void of foreign pride. But thou can'st mask in garish gaudery, To suit a fool's far-fetched livery. A French head joined to neck Italian, Thy thighs from Germany and breast from Spain. An Englishman in none, a fool in all, Many in one, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... wild figure, in the midst of a strange, wild scene: his clothes, originally of some homespun cloth, now patched so freely with dressed deerskin as to leave little of the original material; moccasins on his feet, a beaver cap upon his head, his leather belt stuck round with hunting knives, and the pistol to be used at close quarters should ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles wit ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... at first not very much inclined to be sociable with them. Not only did they seem to have no shoes and stockings, but their entire clothing was usually limited to a battered straw hat, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a pair of rough homespun trousers; and the city boy was inclined to look upon the country lads with some contempt, until his Aunt Martha cured him effectually one day by a remark ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the educated classes, we would prefer vivid popular terms to the artificial creations of scientists. We shall often do better by inquiring, for instance, not what name the inventor gave to his new machine, but what it is called by the workmen who handle it; and in adopting their homespun terms and giving them literary currency, we shall help to preserve the living and ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 1 (Oct 1919) • Society for Pure English
... instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment—poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruous additions, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at nights in the snug farm-house kitchen, after the day's work was done, John Camm and his young wife together carved their initials on the 'brideswain,' a tall oak chest that held the goodly stock of homespun linen and flax brought by Mabel Camm to her new home. John Camm was something of an artist. His was the design of the interlaced initials. All his life he had been a skilful carver with his tools on the winter evenings, and now he took pleasure in showing his bride the right ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... colour or cut; but nearly all were dressed either in grey or brown coats and felt hats. I was told that even if a regiment was clothed in proper uniform by the Government, it would become parti-coloured again in a week, as the soldiers preferred wearing the coarse homespun jackets and trousers made by their mothers and sisters at home. The Generals very wisely allow them to please themselves in this respect, and insist only upon their arms and accoutrements being ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... water, and the glories of evening and morning. People who could buy them got such gorgeous clothes as were brought by the Company. But usually Jenieve felt happy enough when she put on her best red homespun bodice and petticoat for mass or to go to dances. She did wish for shoes. The ladies at the fort had shoes, with heels which clicked when they danced. Jenieve could dance better, but she always felt their eyes on her moccasins, and came ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... formed for their protection and benefit was determined to push every matter to their annihilation. He recommended that the state should levy a tax on the consumption of northern manufactured goods, boycott the live-stock of Kentucky, and wear homespun; and he closed by drawing a comparison between the wrongs suffered by the colonists when they revolted from Great Britain and that by which the south was now oppressed. [Footnote: Niles' Register, XXXIII., 339; ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... those of Western lands. Witness their Constitution, their Parliament, their 30,000 schools in active operation; witness their museums and hospitals; witness their colleges and universities. 'But,' you would also have said, 'give us a race whose women are homespun and refined, courteous and winsome, not tottering on tortured feet, nor immured in zenanas and harems, but who freely mingle in social life, and adorn all they touch;' and such, without controversy, are the women of Japan. Above all, 'give us a reverent and a religious ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... white-bearded and grey-haired, carrying his hat in his hand as he walked. His rough homespun clothing, his collarless shirt open at the throat, the plaid scarf around his neck, all these Poltavo saw through his powerful glasses and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... an attempt to which I find myself in all Respects but too unequal. Yet relying on your good Sense and Candour, I venture to lay at your Feet a few well-intended Sentiments, which tho' in a plain homespun Garb, I hope will not offend. I am convinced that at this present it is not only in your Inclination and Will, but also in your Power, to effect more in favour of your Country, than an Army of an Hundred ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... work, of course; and, early as it was, we found their quarters all alive with merriment and expectation. Some of the younger men, dressed in their best clothes—generally suits of plain, substantial homespun, white or check shirts, and felt hats—went from house to house, wishing the inmates the compliments of the season, blended with obstreperous, broad-mouthed laughter; in some instances carrying nosegays, received, in common with the givers, with immense ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... picturesque head and crumpled horns thrust over the sassafras bushes, or to hear the brindle's clanking bell. It was certainly less unexpected to Cynthia when a young mountaineer, clad in brown jean trousers and a checked homespun shirt, emerged upon the rocky slope. He still wore his blacksmith's leather apron, and his powerful corded hammer-arm was bare beneath his tightly-rolled sleeve. He was tall and heavily built; his sunburned face was square, with a strong lower jaw, and his features were ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Dalgas was prophet, prince, and friend of the people. In the crowds that flocked about his bier homespun elbowed gold lace in the grief of a common loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce decked his coffin, the gift of the heath to the memory of ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... be trimmed with "boughten buttons," to the lad's complete satisfaction, his mind being fixed upon those as marking the difference between town and country fashions. When the preparations were made, his fresh homespun costume, cut after the best usage of the Society of Friends, seemed to him all that heart could desire, and he started away bravely by the coach to pass a week in Boston. His mother had not forgotten to warn him of possible dangers and snares; it was then that he ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... from the great lady herself. Down came the coach-and-four, and forth from it came Lady Belamour in a magnificent hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, though quite truly, to declare ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day. Judah was hot, but I was hotter; and, before the cartridge box was empty, he pulled down his homespun blue and white frock sleeve over his wrist, and rested me upon it when he took aim. He was a gentle-hearted fellow, though as brave ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... progresses languidly. Its interest was reserved for the other girls, pig tailed and in limp-hanging rain-coats, who also sought the back door, but with that absence of ostentation and self-consciousness which invariably marks the truly great. The crowd singled out its "heroes in homespun," and one line or the other applauded, according to the color that was known to be sewed on the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... see as good as I wanted," was the hesitating reply; "but 'peared to me they were men, all right. And they seemed to be dressed in gray homespun, too, like some of the farmers around ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... and trim. The hussars wore sky-blue jackets braided with white, yellow breeches, high boots, and tall caps with a white plume at the side. They made a great impression on the country people, who had seen their own men, dressed in homespun clothes, mount their rough farmhorses and ride away, just as they were, to the war. The duke himself was friendly and pleasant and popular with his new neighbors. He lived in a house lent him by David Trumbull, ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... ways of life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,—but it lay there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the odd old family names, particularly those ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... a square, ruddy-faced man of sixty, with neatly trimmed, snow-white whiskers. He had on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a modishly cut gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an opal pin, wore tan gloves, and had slung over one shoulder by a narrow black strap ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... President, his graceful six feet in all the magnificence of black velvet and white satin, his queue in a black silk bag, stood beside his lady, who was as brave as himself in a gown of violet brocade over an immense hoop. Poor dame, she would far rather have been at Mount Vernon in homespun, for all this pomp and circumstance bored and isolated her. She hedged herself about with the etiquette which her exalted position demanded, and froze the social aspirant of insufficient pretensions, but her traditions and her propensities were ever at war; she was a woman ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... in his homespun jacket was shaken smartly. "See here, my boy, either you tell me what you're screaming for, or I'll pick you up ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... into the little homespun sitting-room, and laid aside her bonnet and shawl, then went to the window, and looked out in an absent way. The high, pure brow, and calm, thoughtful eyes, remind us of one we have met before, and the slender, nervous ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... a certain surreptitiousness in his attitude. A handkerchief was bound over his left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a peasant's homespun shirt, and he carried ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman |
