"Horsehair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on looking up out of this reverie, I saw a great brown wretch extended before me, only half dressed, standing on pattens, and exaggerated by them and the steam until he looked like an ogre, grinning in the most horrible way, and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair glove. He spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed through the arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a bristling top-knot, which gave it ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy—a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit—German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... rubbed down his dripping horse with handfuls of the withered grasses that grew within the ruins. Next, the man hunted through Garlock until he found an old rusty kerosene can with a wire handle fitted through it, and to this he fastened a long horsehair hitching rope and drew water from one of the filthy wells. The horse drank greedily and nickered reproachfully when the man informed him that he must cool off before being ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... eyes—oh? Well, seem' he's been to some expense fittin' up an entrance from the other street, we'll let him slide. But as to that d——d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his stuck-up airs and high-falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation." ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... blue eggs; but not to touch, for, though Fred wanted to take it, Harry and Phil said "No;" for Papa did not approve of the birds being disturbed. Then there was a beautifully-formed mossy little cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tree, just inside the coppice, smooth, round, and soft-edged, with the horsehair and wool lining all plaited together, and made as even as possible. It was so low down that, by bending the branch, the boys could look at it, which they did, while the poor chaffinches, in the horse-chestnut tree close by, cried "pink-pink-pink" in a state of the greatest alarm lest their work ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... passage of the bell-rope. They therefore slipped out of the church, and up into the belfry, where they hid. In a few moments a man appeared who began to work at something. They sprang on him and seized his wrists, and found in one of his hands a thin line of horsehair, to one end of which a hook was attached. The holder being frightened, dropped the line and fled, and although M. de Laubardemont, the exorcists, and the spectators waited, expecting every moment ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... heard that one about my smoking big, black cigars! Well, the story is that the boys in the office used to steal my cigars, and so I got a cigarmaker to make me up a box that looked just like my favorite brand, only I had 'em filled with hemp, horsehair and a touch of asafetida. Then I just left the box where the boys would be sure to dip into it; but it seems the cigarman put them on, and so they just put that box into my own private stock and I smoked the fumigators ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... and followed his wife into the street. They walked side by side in silence, until they reached their lodgings. Then she threw off her hat and jacket, and sat down on the horsehair ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... on the slippery horsehair, and talked softly and quickly. Ticket—train—telegrams—the little money that was necessary—he advised her about them all. He called her "Nancy" to-day, for the first time. He remembered afterward that she had called him nothing. She went to get Mrs. Venable, after a while, and later Sis' ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... conversation in which they ran over, as far as their memories would stretch (near sixty years), the various fashions and absurd modes of dress which have prevailed during that period. Toupees, fetes, toques, bouffantes, hoops, bell hoops, sacques, polonaises, levites, and all the paraphernalia of horsehair, powder, pomatum, and pins, in the days when court beauties had their heads dressed over-night for the next day's drawing-room, and sat up in their chairs for fear of destroying the edifice by lying down. No wonder they were obliged to rouge themselves—the days when once in a fortnight ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... I REMEMBER the stiff little parlour where I used to wait for Lena: the hard horsehair furniture, bought at some auction sale, the long mirror, the fashion-plates on the wall. If I sat down even for a moment, I was sure to find threads and bits of coloured silk clinging to my clothes after I went away. Lena's success puzzled ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... a stately mansion, refurnished, with the exception of old colonial pieces, after the grand tour in Europe. This room, although clean and sufficiently equipped, was sordid and commonplace, and the bed was as hard as the horsehair furniture. Her body as well as her aesthetic sense had rebelled more ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... the right by a wood and on the left by the Ulai, while the flower of the Elamite nobility was ranged around him. The equipment of his soldiers was simpler than that of the enemy: consisting of a low helmet, devoid of any crest, but furnished with a large pendant tress of horsehair to shade the neck; a shield of moderate dimensions; a small bow, which, however, was quite as deadly a weapon as that of the Assyrians, when wielded by skilful hands; a lance, a mace, and a dagger. He had only a small body of cavalry, but the chariotry formed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Trojan load endure." He said; and straight th' officious courser kneels, To take his wonted weight. His hands he fills With pointed jav'lins; on his head he lac'd His glitt'ring helm, which terribly was grac'd With waving horsehair, nodding from afar; Then spurr'd his thund'ring steed amidst the war. Love, anguish, wrath, and grief, to madness wrought, Despair, and secret shame, and conscious thought Of inborn worth, his lab'ring soul oppress'd, Roll'd in his eyes, and rag'd within his breast. Then loud he call'd Aeneas ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... "Horsehair coats have made their appearance," says The Outfitter. Surely this is nothing very new. We have often seen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... in the cushioned basket-chair, the only comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard, horsehair things having antimacassars tied to their backs by means of lemon-coloured bows. It was different from those dear old talks at Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the window, which was open (the night was so ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... wish tha wor nicely aght o' mi hands. What to do wi thi nah aw connot tell, unless aw cut off t'other ear to match, an' tee a bunch o' horsehair to thi tail an' see if aw connot mak a galloway aght on thi; an' if aw doo that, aw expect tha willn't be able to keep thi maath shut, an' that voice o' thine 'll let ivvery body know. But hahivver aw mun try an' bandage ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... great oriel window stood a round mahogany table, bearing a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade. Cases of stuffed birds ornamented every available recess; mahogany and horsehair chairs were set stiffly round the walls at even distances. A heap of folded moth-eaten rugs and wraps disfigured a side-table, and beneath it stood a row of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... policeman. Mrs. Parkinson still believes in spiritualism, but refuses to have anything to do with Brown as she discovers that the deceased Alderman's 'materialised beard' was made only of 'horrid, coarse horsehair.' Jack and Violet are married at last and Jack is horrid enough to send to 'La-ki-wa' another photograph. The end of Dr. Brown is chronicled above. Had we not known what was in store for him we should hardly have got through the book. There is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... then the voice of a gendarme saying: "You are commanded to present yourself before the Governor-General!" Turning round, Chichikov stared in horror at the spectacle presented; for in the doorway there was standing an apparition wearing a huge moustache, a helmet surmounted with a horsehair plume, a pair of crossed shoulder-belts, and a gigantic sword! A whole army might have been combined into a single individual! And when Chichikov opened his mouth to speak the apparition repeated, "You are commanded to present yourself ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... our three lives, and was the only way in which we felt hospitality to be a tax upon our time. For, although we had as many chairs as the room would accommodate, they were always full of books, fruit, cigars or hats and coats. There was one arm-chair, originally covered with horsehair, which Harry called the "funeral coach:" it might have been called anything, for it was so dingy, so battered, so broken, that its raison d'etre had come to be a matter of speculation. Into this seat I now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... is placed across a hole about the size of a crown piece, and consists of a strong noose made of horsehair, which is fixed to a peg, and so arranged that the slightest touch causes it to rebound and catch them ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table—the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... reason seems to me twofold: First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?—Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... thought that he "fancied" they would not like it. It was early in that spring that she took a deaf aunt to live with them, the wife of her mother's brother, no blood-relation, but the poor woman had nowhere else to go; so David was put to sleep on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room because she "couldn't refuse the poor thing." And then, of an April afternoon, while she was washing the household sheets, her neighbour, Mrs. Clirehugh, a little spare woman all eyes, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... a very hard horsehair chair in a barely furnished room, and waited. The table was covered with magazines, but she did not touch them. She sat nervously twisting and untwisting her fingers. Then the sudden sound of voices outside attracted her attention. The door of the room in which ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the mantle that he'll wear, Embroidered by his bride! Admire his burnished helmet's glare, O'ershadowed by the dark horsehair That waves ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... became so enraptured, so entranced with her own music, that she dropped it, and that is how we got it—and any man that says that it can be improved by putting a back and front to it, and four strings and a bridge on it, and getting some horsehair and resin, is no better than one of the weak ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... no better, I believe) that it was ever my misfortune to lodge at. It was ancient, dark, dirty, and dismal. My sitting- room (I had a cupboard besides to sleep in) had but one window, looking into a gloomy courtyard. The furniture consisted of two wooden chairs and a spavined horsehair sofa. The ceiling was low and lamp-blacked; the stained paper fell in strips from the sweating walls; fortunately there was no carpet; but if anything could have added to the occupier's depression it was the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... tasteless Old-Prussian Uniform; on each of his temples three stiff rolls as if done with gypsum; the tiny three-cocked hat scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horsehair stock; the felt put under the white spatterdashes, smirched by traces of shoe-blacking, giving to the legs a bigger diameter than the thighs, squeezed into their tight-fitting breeches, could boast of. Hardly, or ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... something specially wicked about men doing an act of cruelty in khaki or in vermilion, but not if it is done in dark blue with pewter buttons. The tyrant who wears a busby or a forage cap is abominable; the tyrant who wears a horsehair wig is excusable. To be judged by soldiers is hell; but to be judged ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... Sauerteig used to say to me, in his peculiar way: "A Chancery Lawsuit; justice, nay justice in mere money, denied a man, for all his pleading, till twenty, till forty years of his Life are gone seeking it: and a Cockney Funeral, Death reverenced by hatchments, horsehair, brass-lacquer, and unconcerned bipeds carrying long poles and bags of black silk:—are not these two reverences, this reverence for Death and that reverence for Life, a notable pair of reverences ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... plunging steed. As on the AEgean when the North-winds rave, And the fierce gale rolls shoreward wave on wave, And drives the cloud-rack through the sky; so these Shrank back from Turnus, as his path he clave, Urged by his impulse, and each turns and flees; Loose streams his horsehair crest, blown ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... are specially constructed for indoor play, being much larger and more elastic than those for outdoor play. This ball is generally composed of a core of packed leather strips, around which is placed curled horsehair tied on with string. The cover is of leather, preferably horsehide, somewhat softer in quality than that used on the outdoor baseball. The dimensions of the ball vary from 15 to 17 inches in circumference, or about 5 inches in diameter. The weight ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... of his back, and the fools who train him actually brought him out to run in the All-aged Selling Plate at Ballymacwhacket. He won the race easily enough of course, but only an impostor, whose head was stuffed with horsehair, would attach the least importance to that. Since then he has eaten two pairs of spurs, a halter, and half of a jockey, which scarcely looks like winning races. I have now relieved my conscience on the matter, so if the puddle-brains wish to back him, their loss must lie ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... expression,— the other, a mere frame of wood with four strings deftly knotted across it, in which cunningly contrived little bit of mechanism was imprisoned the intangible, yet living Spirit of Sound. A miracle in its way!—that out of such common and even vile materials as wood, catgut, and horsehair, the divinest music can be drawn forth by the hand of the master who knows how to use these rough implements! Suggestive, too, is it not, my friends?— for if man can by his own poor skill and limited intelligence so ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... her apron and mounted the stairs. She didn't stop with the second floor and her own little room, but kept right on to the attic. There was a door at the head of the attic stairs. Elliott pushed it open. On a broken-backed horsehair sofa Gertrude lay, face down, her nose buried in a faded pillow. In a wabbly rocker, at imminent risk of a breakdown, Priscilla jerked back and forth. Gertrude's hair was tousled and Priscilla's ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... burned limbs or entire body in salt solution (same strength as above), which is kept at a temperature of from 94 deg. to 104 deg. F., according to the feelings of the patient. The patient lies in a bath tub on horsehair, or better, rubber mattress and rubber pillows; completely covered with water except the head. The urine and bowel discharges must be passed in the water, which is then changed, and the temperature is kept at an even mark by allowing warm water to continually run into the tub to ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... which include frozen and chilled beef and mutton, hides, sheepskins, wool, and such things as horsehair, tallow, jerked beef, etc., represented a value ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... Horsehair," interrupted Sam, mentioning the janitor of Oak Hall and the driver for the institution. "Don't forget them ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... Natural History—Will a horsehair become a snake? The Hedge hog—What it is, how it lives, and where it is found. Illustrated. The Sponge—Its origin, growth, and uses. Educational Matters-Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Michigan. Cathedral of Rheims-The Coronation place of the old ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... serving customers when he came in; he gave him a friendly nod, and went on with his business whilst Dudley crept into the little back parlor, and sitting down in an old horsehair chair tried to recover his breath. It was not long before old Principle ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... herself about her ordinary household work. Then she sat down alone in the dingy old dining-room, to think what had better be done in her present circumstances. The carpet of the room was worn out, as were also the covers of the old chairs and the horsehair sofa which was never moved from its accustomed place along the wall. It was not a comfortable Squire's residence, this old house at Vavasor. In the last twenty years no money had been spent on furniture or embellishments, and for the last ten years there had been no painting, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... I found Miss Somers as she had been the day before, crouched listlessly in her long chair fondling her idol. I drew up a horsehair ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... exclaimed, in a private conference with the nurse; "never did I see such a friend as Mr. Fenting, sacrificing of himself as he do, day and night, to look after that poor creature in there, and taking no better rest than he can get on that old horsehair sofy, which brickbats or knife boards isn't harder, and never ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and words gave the girl upon the floor courage to rise and go into the next room. There she sat down in Susan's old rocker and waited until Janet made a light. Then they faced each other, Janet taking her place upon the horsehair sofa. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... out he lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring them again. The lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of the lumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlour on which he used to sit, smiling or serious, asking himself why he had come, displeased with her and with himself, confounded by the print of the Sacred Heart above the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... rooms. Walls all decorated with horsehair bridles—scores of them—hundreds of them. They're no use to me, and they cost like Sam Scratch. But there's a lot of convicts making them, and I go on buying. Why, I've spent more money in a single night on whiskey ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... magical feat is accomplished by means of a halter of horsehair, which is passed round under the neck of the horse, and both ends braided into the mane, on the withers, thus forming a loop which hangs under the neck and against the breast. This being caught ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... of these great insect destroyers; if more than one pair, there will be continual warfare as often as one encroaches on the domains of the other. Their nests are made of strips of vegetable fibre, weeds, etc., and lined with horsehair or catkins. They are sometimes quite bulky and generally very substantially made. The three to five eggs are laid the latter part of May, and are of a creamy ground color splashed with reddish brown and lilac. Size ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the proprietor of the shop, a gray little man with round spectacles and bushy eyebrows, his wife, and a pretty girl of twenty or twenty-one. The girl apparently was a visitor, for she wore her hat, and her jacket lay across the arm of an old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall in the lamp's half shadow; and yet the gray little bookseller and his little Dresden-china wife very evidently made no stranger of her. They talked, all three, as members of a family talk, when contented and affectionate; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... walnut folding-doors which cut off the room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of salon parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the first to relax its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her. Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, she ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... George, stooping down and picking up a handful of guineas from the mass of dust and dirt and horsehair that was strewn on the floor of the yard. 'They're guineas right enough; they came pouring out like water when I got to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... unknown recesses of the house, and sat gingerly on greasy horsehair-seated chairs, in the parlour, while the bubbling cry of the rasher and eggs arose to heaven from the frying-pan, and the reek filled the house as with a grey fog. Potent as it was, it but faintly foreshadowed the flavour of the massive ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... entered the front door and penetrated to the dark parlor, where, as no one would ever enter it except for a funeral or a wedding, he felt safe from intrusion. There he sank down upon the slippery horsehair lounge, and, staring helplessly at the severe portrait of Mrs. Peaslee, done by a lugubrious artist in crayon, wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to collect his ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... neat as though an old maid lived in it. The furniture looks as good as new, but is subdued to a tone of sober maturity, and chimes in so well with the general effect that one scarcely notices it. The polished table is mounted in dark morocco; behind the horsehair-covered arm-chair is a gray marble mantel-piece, overshadowing an open grate with polished bars and fire-utensils in the English style. During the winter months a lump of cannel-coal is always burning there; but the flame, even on the coldest days, is too much on its good ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... inscribed on the iron window-blinds, and a venerable date carved over the door. Inside, those blinds came high, and let in but little light over the tall desks, at which were placed the black-horsehair perches of the clerks, old Mr. Goldsmith himself occupying a lower throne, more accessible to the clients. One of the high stools stood empty, and Albinia making inquiry, Mr. Goldsmith answered, with a dry, dissatisfied cough, that More, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This is the kind of hat they wear when they are in mourning, after the death of a father or mother. Some wear hats made of straw. These hats look like large flowerpots turned upside down. Some have hats made of horsehair. ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... a job we care for, and I am keeping up the delusion, but all the time I run my seams straight, pull the horsehair out to the last fine shred, turn in my corners as the corners of a leather book are turned, so that I may be kept at it, although out of cunning I appear to grumble and long ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... to put up with? Take the Venus of Milo; let her be done in terra-cotta, and have run, not much, but still something, in the baking; paint her pink, two oils, all over, and then varnish her—it will help to preserve the paint; glue a lot of horsehair on to her pate, half of which shall have come off, leaving the glue still showing; scrape her, not too thoroughly, get the village drawing-master to paint her again, and the drawing-master in the next provincial town to put a forest background behind her with the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger) You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1886 ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the round fellow, with his fat sides wagging about through his merriment. "You must excuse me, but I do think you would look so comical with all your feathers gummed down to your skinny sides, that wisp of a tail like a streak of horsehair, and those stilty legs sticking into your scraggy body—ho-ho-ho-ho—my fat sides! How I wish I had ribs, for then I could stop laughing easier; but you are such a droll ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... a heavy stock saddle, with German silver mountings and saddle bags covered with black bear fur. A small red and black Navajo blanket served as a saddle pad and he found a fine Navajo bridle, too, woven of black horsehair, with a big hand-hammered silver ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... against her windows, and as birds were not in the habit of doing so generally, she thought something serious was portended by it. My mother comforted her as well as she could, and I undertook to rid her of the annoyance, which I did by setting a horsehair- noose on one of the window-ledges which it frequented. I soon caught it, and by plucking out the under-tail coverts, with which I wanted to dress yellow duns, I effectually cured it of the propensity—whether, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... along with a fashion of stepping quickly around corners, peering and craning his neck as if perpetually on the alert for something or somebody. "You act like some feller that's 'done time'—or orter. I'll bet a hundred to one you know how to make horsehair bridles," Woods, the carpenter, had once told him pointedly, and the criticism had voiced Bruce's ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... fustian, holding enormous flagons of Rhenish wine and dancing in a drunken measure with their arms round more drunken doxies dressed like German women. In the centre stood grave and reverend men wearing horsehair beards and the long gowns of English bishops and priests. Before these there knelt an angel in flame-coloured robes with wings like the rainbow. The angel supported a great volume on the back of which might be read in letters of ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... old Fritz—blown to hell an' not a splinter left to tell the story," one of them was saying. "I was there three minutes after the explosion and there wasn't even a ravelling or a horsehair left. This dynamite's a dam' funny thing. I wouldn't be a rock-hog for ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... an inspection of the room. And a very curious room it was; bare, dirty, neglected and, apparently, unused. A faded carpet had been flung untidily on the floor. A small, shabby table stood in the middle of the room; and beyond this, three horsehair-covered chairs and a chest of drawers formed the entire set of furniture. No pictures hung on the mouldy walls, no curtains covered the shuttered windows, and the dark drapery of cobwebs that hung from the ceiling to commemorate a long and illustrious dynasty of spiders hinted at ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... carpet save a square in front of the fireplace; no curtains except a piece of something like drugget nailed flat across all the lower half of the window to make the light fall from upwards; two or three horsehair chairs, nearly worn out; a table in a corner, littered with books and papers; a horrible lay-figure, at the present moment dressed apparently for a scarecrow; a large easel, on which stood a half-finished oil-painting—these constituted almost the whole furniture of the room. With his pocket-handkerchief ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in 'boards' of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they were all First Editions of the most desirable ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... mere machine but a remarkable woman, a womanly woman, too. He liked the old house with its atrocious horsehair sofa and chair tidies and the Rogers group in the front bay window. The fire had been so elemental and soothing, so were the pots of flowers, the shabby piano, and even more shabby books. One could rest there, distributing ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Spanish fashion of Miss Montenero's dress, especially her long veils—veils were not then in fashion, and Lady Anne of course pronounced them to be hideous. It was at this time, in England, the reign of high heads: a sort of triangular cushion or edifice of horsehair, suppose nine inches diagonal, three inches thick, by seven in height, called I believe a toque or a system, was fastened on the female head, I do not well know how, with black pins a quarter of a yard long; and upon and over this system, the hair was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... when "roped" of a frosty morning would skate him all across and about the plains if it were not for these heels. The buckskin gloves tied in one of the saddle strings are used when roping, and to keep the half-inch manila lariat—or mayhap it's horsehair or rawhide pleated—from burning his hands. The red silken sash one was wont aforetime to see knotted about his waist, was used to hogtie and hold down the big cattle when roped and thrown. The sash—strong, soft and close—could be tied more tightly, quickly, ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the way. It was no easy matter to descend the crazy ladder, and in the cabin itself the light was so dim that he struck a match. Its flare revealed a broken table, a horsehair couch, and a row of cupboards along the walls. On the port side these had mostly fallen open, and the doors in some cases hung by a single hinge. There was a terrible smell in the place. Mrs. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the old horsehair sofa, while Esther, whose fears had all flown to the winds now that something practical was to be done, dashed some brandy into a tumbler and brought it to him. The stimulant had a marvellous effect upon him, for the colour began to come back into his pale cheeks and the light ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now denied, sank to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head; but then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry;— No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... of his son on one side and the amazing beauty of Cunningham's on the other. But in the morning light, in repose, Cunningham's face was tinged with age and sadness. There was, however, no grain of pity in Cleigh's heart. Cunningham had made his bed of horsehair; let him ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... sufficiently audible,—a sort of whisper that Macready would have envied, and the galleries have applauded with a couple of rounds. "Resigned it! Good heavens!" And the dignitary of the church sank back horrified into a horsehair arm-chair. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Mr. Strong's invitation with gratitude, indeed his kindness touched me. Leading me to his principal shop, we passed through it and down a passage to a sitting-room heavily furnished with solid horsehair-seated chairs and a sofa. In the exact centre of this sofa, reading by the light of a lamp with a pink shade which was placed on a table behind her, sat a prim grey-haired woman dressed in a black ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... brilliant colors, over which they wore gold chains, necklaces, and bracelets, with strings of coral, pearl, and amber; while their hair was in little curls, adorned with jewels and flowers. But all this was concealed by the thick, muffling, outer veil; they also had horsehair visards through which they could ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Maisie were left a good deal to each other's society, for Dennis was now entirely occupied with the building of the jackdaws' house under Tuvvy's advice and direction. One afternoon the two little girls were sitting together in the play-room, threading beads on horsehair to make a collar ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... grandfather and grandmother Westcott in ill-fitting clothes and heavy gilt frames, the white marble clock on the mantelpiece, a clock that would tick solemnly for twenty minutes and then give a little run and a jump for no reason at all, the straight horsehair sofa so black and uncomfortable with its hard wooden back, the big dining-room table with its green cloth (faded a little in the middle where a pot with a fern in it always stood) and his aunt with her frizzy yellow hair, her black mittens and her long bony fingers playing ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the most beautiful in the whole range of sculpture; the other is not so good, but has suffered in re-painting, the eyelid being made too red; if this were remedied, as it easily might be, the figure would gain greatly. Cav. Prof. Antonini has very successfully substituted plaster hair for the horsehair, which had in great measure fallen off. The motive of this incidental group is repeated, but with less success, in Giovanni ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... being parted from the forehead to the back of the head in two equal masses, and of being plaited or waved over the ears. Nets were again adopted, and head-dresses which, whilst permitting a display of masses of false hair, hid the horsehair or padded puffs. And, lastly, the escoffion appeared—a heavy roll, which, being placed on a cap also padded, produced the most clumsy, outrageons, and ungraceful ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie—men and flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... very opposite of saints. They eat and drink like their neighbours. They never think of wearing dirty horsehair when they can get clean linen. And when they are tempted to misconduct themselves, they find a better way out of it than knotting a cord and thrashing their own backs. Saints! They all ran out together to bid us welcome like a lot of school-children; the first thing they did was to ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... of the ceremony. 'Do you not know how delicate is your mistress?—you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband—that's right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; saw you ever anything ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... inside. The furniture of the other three rooms—an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look of it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the grate a charred stick or two of ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... lightest pith helmet that can be secured, one large enough to shade the face and back of neck. There should be a ventilating space all around the head-band; the wider the space the better. These helmets can be secured in Rio and Buenos Aires. Head-nets with face plates of horsehair are the best protection against small insect pests. They are generally made too small and the purchaser should be careful to get one large enough to go over his helmet and come down to the breast. Several pairs of loose gloves rather long in the wrist will be needed as protection ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... From a round leather box Ananias now extracted a new gold-wire fouragere, which he softly wiped with a silk handkerchief, dandled lovingly an instant the glistening tassels, coiled it carefully upon the sash, then producing from the same box a long scarlet horsehair plume he first brushed it into shimmering freedom from the faintest knot or kink, then set it firmly through its socket into the front of a gold-braided shako whose black front was decked with the embroidered cross cannon of the regiment, surmounted ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Lupexes as have had his money. I know it. He don't talk of paying, and going away. I shall be just left with him and the Lupexes on my hands; and then the bailiffs may come and sell every stick about the place. I won't say nay to them." Then she threw herself into the old horsehair armchair, and gave way to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... dyers; but it brought him reverence and awe. The two had long ago manufactured and fitted up a serpent's head of linen; they had given it a more or less human expression, and painted it very like the real article; by a contrivance of horsehair, the mouth could be opened and shut, and a forked black serpent tongue protruded, working on the same system. The serpent from Pella was also kept ready in the house, to be produced at the right moment and take its part in the drama—the leading ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... changes had taken place in the old white-pillared house since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new piano glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames hung on the low walls, and a Brussels carpet as shiny as a bed of tulips, and as stiff as the stubble of ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... waited until Esther had closed the front door. Then they went into the parlour and sat down side by side on the little horsehair sofa placed against the wall facing the window. The anxiety in their hearts betrayed itself ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... ecole was to be followed by an exhibition of "transportation throughout the ages," headed by a Gaulish chariot driven by a trooper with a long horsehair moustache and mistletoe wreath, and ending in a motor of which the engine had been taken out and replaced by a large placid white horse. Unluckily a heavy rain began while this instructive "number" awaited its turn, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... became familiar with a number of dining-rooms furnished in mahogany and horsehair and hung with opulent studies of still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith. The meal was usually served by the whiskered coachman, who wore, for the occasion, a waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, and there ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... handing Bridge the shotgun. Then he turned his attention to the woman. With the carving knife that was to have ended her life he cut her bonds. Removing the gag from her mouth he lifted her in his strong arms and carried her to the little horsehair sofa that stood in one corner of the parlor, laying ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... handiwork in earthenware, horsehair, bridle reins, ropes, and domestic utensils, is remarkably ingenious. They formerly cultivated cotton and manufactured cotton cloth of a very strong quality. The men understood spinning and weaving, and passed the ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... me, and flinging her arms round me sobbed louder than I. It would have been wicked to offer further resistance. She brought down pillows, covered them with a red shawl, and propped me up till the horsehair sofa became an easy couch, and with mixed tears and smiles I contrived to swallow a few mouthfuls, a feat which she exalted to an act of ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he hovered near the parlour with its horsehair furniture, and about four-thirty the young girl came downstairs. He greeted her effusively and she endeavored to pass him and go to the kitchen. The most lively sensation of which she was conscious now was ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... standing on their heads. He was a dreadful tease. It was in this play-room that the germ of his Wild West took life. He formed us into a regular little company—Turk and the baby, too—and would start us in marching order for the woods. He made us stick horses and wooden tomahawks, spears, and horsehair strings, so that we could be cowboys, Indians, bullwhackers, and cavalrymen. All the scenes of his first freighting trip were acted out in the woods of Salt Creek Valley. We had stages, robbers, "hold-ups," and most ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Kubbah, of brick; Sutrah, of sun-dried mud; Hazirah, of wood; Tirf, a tent of leather; Khaba, of wool; Kash'a, of skins; Nakhd, of camel's or goat's hair; Khaymah, of cotton cloth; Wabar, of soft hair as the camel's undercoat and Fustt (the well-known P.N.) a tent of horsehair or any ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if they were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... more units) at from 50-200 deniers on the silk counts. It is a thread of high lustre, and more nearly approaches the normal cellulose in chemical properties than any of the other artificial silks. It can also be spun in threads of very much larger diameter, which can be used as a substitute for horsehair, for carbonising for incandescent electric ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... from above, or on one side as the case might require, and were covered above by a large horizontal sheet of glass, and with another vertical sheet on one side. A glass filament, not thicker than a horsehair, and from a quarter to three-quarters of an inch in length, was affixed to the part to be observed by means of shellac dissolved in alcohol. The solution was allowed to evaporate, until it became so thick that it set hard in two or three ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... covered with a large flag, was carried on a caisson, and his horse, led by an orderly, was covered with a large blanket of black cloth. Over this was the saddle, and on top of the saddle rested his helmet—the yellow horsehair plume and gold trimmings looking soiled by long service. His sabre was there, too, and strapped to the saddle on each side were his uniform boots, toes in stirrups—all reversed! This riderless horse, with its pall of black, yellow helmet, and footless ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... to the floor from the level (possibly) of a bed. I have never seen consternation painted in more lively colours than on the faces of my hosts. It was proposed to smuggle me forth into the garden, or to conceal my form under a horsehair sofa which stood against the wall. For the first expedient, as was now plain by the approaching footsteps, there was no longer time; from the second I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
