"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sort of school that breeds he-men, for a fact," he agreed. "But you don't seem much enthused over having a couple of millions dropped into your lap." ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... night long a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... later introduction than the Song. Rothstein points out (p. 181, note d) that v. 1 (24) in Θ has relation to the Song, but not to the Prayer, and originally, as he imagines, took the place of the present v. 28 (91) of similar import. Corn. a Lap. notes of v. 1 (24) "est hysterologia." This view is also mentioned with favour in Charles' article on Apocrypha in the 1902 vols. of Encycl. Brit. (cf. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... whilst he performs the duties of hospitality, seems to be obeying an irksome necessity of his condition: he treats it as a duty imposed upon him by his situation, not as a pleasure. By the side of the hearth sits a woman with a baby on her lap: she nods to us without disturbing herself. Like the pioneer, this woman is in the prime of life; her appearance would seem superior to her condition, and her apparel even betrays a lingering taste for dress; but ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... words. The hand holding his pipe fell limp upon his lap, and he stared at the speaker. The latter, entirely unabashed, waved an airy ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... swear with his leg in a spring-steel trap And a tongue dry-cracked from thirst? Or down on his knees at his lady's lap With the lady's lips to his own, mayhap, And his head and his heart aburst? Nay! I have listened to vows enough And never the oath could bind Save that, that a free man chose to take For his own good reputation's sake! ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... became conscious, he was lying on the ground, with his head in Miss Eulie's lap, and Annie was bending over him with a small flask. She again gave him a teaspoonful of brandy, and after a moment he lifted himself up, and, passing his hand across his brow, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... on a rock with a tin plate in his lap, a tin cup at his side, and an eager little lady in front of him, anxious that he should taste all her dishes and deliver an ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... her, and Peter who, though a very mischievous little boy, was always honest, confessed that he had been the one to open the old cupboard and take out the box. He seemed to feel rather uncomfortable about it, and after the things had been put away, he climbed upon Aunt Jane's lap and hid his head upon her shoulder. "Never mind, Peter, dear," she said, holding him very tight, "I always meant to show you my old toys some day. I dare say you children think it strange that I have kept such ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... but his smile did not reach his eyes, and faded almost immediately. He glanced at the Little Doctor, sent his horse past the steps and the Kid, and close to the railing, so that he could lean and toss the mail into the Little Doctor's lap. There was a yellow envelope among the letters, and her fingers singled it out curiously. Andy folded his hands upon the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... team took the turn at a gallop. The young physician had a sense of humor, which is the next best thing to courage, although he had plenty of his kind of courage also. He brushed the earth from his lap. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... she began at once by striking those chords, somewhat more softly than usual; then she essayed various modulations and, as she made the last triad resound for a long time by means of the pedal—her hands were now lying in her lap—she felt a gentle joy in the melodies which were hovering, as it were, about her. Then Klingemann's ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... know there used to be children in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called 'The Triumph of Galatea'; and there is a burning mountain in the picture behind. It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it ever since I was a ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... speaker was shouting, "the time has come when we must revolt. We must battle to the death with the wearers of the purple. Why work out our lives down here so they can live in the lap of luxury over our heads? Why labor day after day at the oxygen generators to give them ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... All-Father, with his great, silvery, ringleted beard. His hands were combing through it and he was frowning majestically into the distance. Next to him was the imperious Hera, Mother of the Gods. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, as if she were waiting for the end of the world to be announced. There was Mars, tough and hairy-chested, scratching his side with one hand and scowling horribly. His fierce, bearded face looked somehow out of place without ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... shall thou lave Thy limbs in Tonse's sin-destroying wave, And on her isles, by prayer and worship, gain Sweet peace of mind, and rest from care and pain. Each hermit maiden with her sweet soft voice, Shall soothe thy woe, and bid thy heart rejoice: With fruit and early flowers thy lap shall fill, And offer grain that springs for us at will. And here, with labour light, thy task shall be To water carefully each tender tree, And learn how sweet a nursing mother's joy Ere on thy bosom rest thy ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... thought Bill. Reaching for his crutch, he slipped the end through the handle of the jug and drew it toward him. He raised it to his lap and the words of the succeeding line struck upon his brain like ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... father and mother in the living-room. There was a note of tenseness in the atmosphere. Polly felt it vaguely as she threw off hat and coat. She went over to her mother with a caress, and Mrs. Dudley drew her down into her lap. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... the stairs and out of the house, and placed her with care, but a bit unceremoniously, in the tonneau of a waiting motor-car. He jumped in beside her, and pulled the lap robe over her. The car started at once, and was well under way by the time Patty found voice enough to express ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... no crowding of men's bodies as there had been on the downward passage. Rawson was stretched on the floor-plates, whose touch was cool to his tortured body. Loah was seated that his head might rest in her lap on that absurd little fragment of skirt. She bent above him, whispering brokenly: "Dean-San—my dear—my own Dean-San! We live, Dean-San. I can scarcely believe it, but I know that we live, for ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... cunningly Lamenting piteously her little ones: So for her child Deidameia mourned. Now on her son's bed did she cast herself, Crying aloud, against his door-post now She leaned, and wept: now laid she in her lap Those childhood's toys yet treasured in her bower, Wherein his babe-heart joyed long years agone. She saw a dart there left behind of him, And kissed it o'er and o'er yea, whatso else Her weeping eyes beheld that was ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Pasha saw the dark-blue eyes fastened upon his face with a curious intentness, a strange questioning; and the blue of the turquoise on the hand folded over the other in the grey lap did not quite reassure him. He stopped talking, and spoke in a low voice to his kavass, who presently brought a bottle of champagne—a final proof that Shelek Pasha was not an ascetic or a Turk. As the bottle was being opened the Pasha took up his string of beads and began to finger them, for the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... outside, perceiving the Watchman approach—"It von't do," said he, and giving a whistle, drove his cart with an assumed air of carelessness away; while the poor Comedian, who had a new character to support, in which he did not conceive himself well up,{1} was holding the dead man on his lap with the legs projecting over the wall; it was a situation of the utmost delicacy and there was no time to recast the part, he was therefore, obliged to blunder through it as well as he could; the perspiration ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sent a trail of light to the still water, seeming to fasten the sky to the sea with long silver skewers; wonderful phosphorescence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... seraph hands unbar the gates of morning, and the last ray of golden light that paused at the flame-wrought portals of expiring day to look reluctant back. Another change came over the face of nature, and delicate-footed spring seemed to have come again with her lap full of leaves and blossoms. The trees cast aside their long-worn garniture of green, and flaunted proudly in gorgeous robes of gold and crimson. The blushing rose once more sought the thorny stem that had slept so ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the doorway. She drew back at the sight of the men, but she was so curious that soon she put her head around the corner again. Jesus saw the disciples smile and he turned. "Come here, little girl," he said gently and held out his hands, smiling. She came to him, and he lifted her to his lap. She leaned trustingly against his shoulder and looked ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... concaves, all in the perfection in which the ghost of Kent[2] would joy to see them. At twelve we made the tour of the farm in eight chaises and calashes, horsemen, and footmen, setting out like a picture of Wouverman's. My lot fell in the lap of Mrs. Anne Pitt, which I could have excused, as she was not at all in the style of the day, romantic, but political. We had a magnificent dinner, cloaked in the modesty of earthenware; French horns and hautboys on the lawn. We walked ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... know how lovely vacations are," was the way Esther expressed it as she sat one day on the side porch, hands folded lightly in her lap, and an air of delicious idleness about her entire person. It was her week of absolute leisure, which she had earned by a season of hard work. She is a public-school teacher, belonging to a section ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... picked up a most remarkable thing. Wonder if it's yours, madam?" glancing at Zuilika. "Just have a look at it, will you? Here, catch!" And not until he saw a piece of gold spin through the air and fall into Zuilika's lap did the major remember ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... learnt to take that view of life, you are no longer a human heart, to be appealed to by pacifists and humanitarians; you are a machine, grinding out destruction, you are a ripe apple, ready to fall into the lap of the god of war, you are an autumn leaf, ready to be seized by the gales of patriotism and blown ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... her into the house, trying to lessen his weight as if he were walking on thin ice; and the old house cracked its knuckles, but his foot-fall made not a sound. She placed a chair for him and sat down with her hands in her lap, and how expressive they were, small and thin, but shapely. She was pale and neat in a black gown. To him she had never looked so frail, and her eyes had never appeared so deeply blue, but her hands—he could ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... his head on her lap, bathed his forehead and chafed his hands, while Lord Ormersfield stood watching him with looks of misery, or paced about, anxiously looking for ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... roused Ben with a kiss. "His last remembrance of me shall be good and pleasant," she said. She took him on her lap, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... up very early on the first of May to behold this amazing change, and when he came near the statue, he saw a number of people, who all ran away from him in the utmost consternation, having never before seen a lion follow a man like a lap-dog. Being thus left alone, he fixed his eyes on the sun, then rising with resplendent majesty, and afterwards turned to the statue, but could see no change in the stone.—"Surely," says he to himself, "there is some mystical meaning in this! ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... people can shop provided they have plenty of money and no older person by to hamper them. Allison and Leslie were back within the time they had set, looking very meek and satisfied. Leslie carried a small package, which she laid in Julia Cloud's lap. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... is no trace. Her health was too frail to follow him—his stride was terrific—so she remained at home, and after every success he came back and told her of it, and rested his great, shaggy head in her lap. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... elapsed, with no more spoken words than those above. From time to time Ellinor's tears dropped down upon her lap; she could not restrain them, though she scarce knew why she cried ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and he gathered up his dice, and having well counted them all threw them into his mother's gleaming lap. And straightway with golden baldric he slung round him his quiver from where it leant against a tree-trunk, and took up his curved bow. And he fared forth through the fruitful orchard of the palace of Zeus. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... urns have been discovered of the slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the wool which was spun by the empress's maids, another for the care of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were of the same rank, and possibly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... left to God, according to Prov. 16:33, "Lots are cast into the lap, but they are disposed of by the Lord": sortilege of this kind is not wrong in itself, as Augustine declares [*Enarr. ii in Ps. xxx, serm. 2; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Mr. Evringham patted him, and in an instant he was freed; for his little mistress jumped up and, climbing into her grandfather's lap, rested her ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... the pail of water for Uncle Wesley to use in milking. I had to set down the pail to shut the gate so the chickens wouldn't get into the flower beds, and old Snap stuck his dirty nose into the water and began to lap it down. I knew Uncle Wesley wouldn't use that, so I had to go 'way back to the cistern for more, and it pumps awful hard. Made me mad, so I ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... into a low chair, which brought her within the radius of lamp-light at the tea-table, and was thus revealed as a lady of generous proportions, with a conspicuous absence of features, and no observable lap. In speaking, she displayed a marked partiality for undue emphasis. Sublimely unconscious of the depression induced by her advent, she continued to talk, as she pulled off her gloves, which were a size too small, and came away with reluctance, leaving imprints of the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... surrounding objects as the departing congregation was itself to the presence of the aged chief, Natty, also, continued on the log where he had first placed himself, with his head resting on one of his hands, while the other held the rifle, which was thrown carelessly across his lap. His countenance expressed uneasiness, and the occasional unquiet glances that he had thrown around him during the service plainly indicated some unusual causes for unhappiness. His continuing seated was, how ever, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Oh, what a love you are, Dolly; come and sit on my lap. Is it a box of bon-bons ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... she better come cross de river to de Sand Hills to see bout grandmammy cause she been took down wid de fever en was bad off. Pa Cudjo tell her de river been mighty high, but dat he would risk to take us. Say, Ma, she get in de boat wid Pa Cudjo en take me in her lap en dey start cross de river. De wind, it begin gettin higher en higher en de boat, it go dis way en den it go de other way. Cose I never recollect nothin bout dat day cause I won' nothin, so to speak, but a sucklin child den. But I hear Pa Cudjo speak bout de water wash rougher en ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... had a little brother With eyes that were dark and deep; In the lap of that old dim forest He lieth in peace asleep; Light as the down of the thistle, Free as the winds that blow, We roved there the beautiful summers, The summers of long ago; But his feet on the hills grew weary, And one of the autumn eves I made for my little brother A bed of the yellow leaves. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of the stormy entry she merely raised her head; but at sight of her visitor, she was on her feet in an instant, the heap of muslin flowing in a blue cascade from her lap to the floor. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... river, like a silvery snake, lays out His coil i' th' sunshine, lovingly; it breathes Of freshness in this lap of ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... their meals by way of punishment. No table is provided for them to eat from. They know nothing of the comfort and pleasure of gathering round the social board—each takes his plate or tin pan and iron spoon and holds it in the hand or on the lap. I never saw slaves seated round a table to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Skelding fiercely exclaimed, striking at the bees that were hovering round his head. "I'll treat 'em gently! Oh, yes! I'll pick them off very tenderly and put them in your lap, old lady! I don't think! Keep ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... is an irresponsible tyrant, who emerges from the mystery that habitually hides him and from time to time orders a strike in mere rancor of spirit and plenitude of power, and then leaves the working-men and their families to suffer the consequences, while he goes off somewhere and rolls in the lap of luxury, careless of the misery he has created. Between his debauches of vicious idleness and his accesses of baleful activity he is employed in poisoning the mind of the working-men against his real interests and real friends. This is perfectly easy, because the ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... shelves. There are small loophole windows in these apartments, where you can look up and down the glen, and enjoy a magnificent prospect. For my part, I thought if I were Bruce, sitting there with a book in my lap, listening to the gentle brawl of the Esk, looking up and down the glen, watching the shaking raindrops on the oaks, the birches and beeches, I should have thought that was better than fighting, and that my pleasant little cave was ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... the Apollo was pitching out on the Doggerbank in the moonlight, with a reef in her topsails. Elizabeth had not yet gone below, and was sitting with her child warmly wrapped up on her lap, while Salve paced the deck and looked at her from time to time. A little farther off, near the main-hatch, Nils Buvaagen (whom Salve had met again at Notteroe, and persuaded to take service with him) and a couple of the crew who were off duty ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... gracefully, and made inquiries about my journey, then sank back into his chair listlessly, and allowed Helen to pull the tiger-skin which formed his lap-robe over his knees. There was a peculiar feebleness about his whole attitude as he sat—something almost abased in the sinking of his chin upon his breast. It was hard for me to realize that he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... in the lap of her husband. Hortense sprang into her mother's arms, and encircled the neck of both father and mother in a loving embrace. Eugene caught the contagion, and by his tears and affecting caresses added to this domestic scene of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... legged, usually black, with coarse bristles—also two or three dogs, similar to those seen at Brierly Island. One young woman was seen carrying about in her arms and fondling a very young pig—an incident which afforded us as much amusement as a lady's lap-dog, with one end of a ribbon round its neck and the other attached to a wasp-waisted damsel, would have caused ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Margaret Elizabeth from beneath his bushy brows. Confound them, what were they doing to her? She had a way of joining him in the library, and sitting with a book in her lap, which she ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... west wind crinkling the surface of the sea, Mary and Constance, with Fan between them, were seated on a heap of shingle sheltered from the wind by a sloping bank. Constance, with hands folded over the closed book on her lap, sat idly gazing on the blue expanse of water, watching the white little wave-crests that formed only to vanish so quickly. The quiet restful life she had experienced since Merton's death had had ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... waiting, her hands twisted together in her lap—waiting for the cuckoo to come out, for the ...
— Beyond the Door • Philip K. Dick
... broke into sobs and began to shed tears with the facility peculiar to her. In a moment her face was all wet with the big drops which rolled down her cheeks faster and faster, and fell with audible splashes on to the table, on to her lap, on to the floor. To this tearful abundance, formerly a surprising spectacle, Willoughby was now acclimatized; but the remnant of chivalrous feeling not yet extinguished in his bosom forbade him to sit stolidly by while a woman wept, ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... he ended his cheering, flung the pantaloons, the vest, the jacket, the socks, the shirts, and the money into his lap. ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (jnai, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; jiais, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed), with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... journey to Dudley, between eight and nine o'clock, she looked cold and spiritless. Her eyelids dropped wearily as she sat in the corner of the carriage with some papers on her lap, which Hilliard had given her. Rain had ceased, and the weather seemed turning to frost. From Dudley station she had a walk of nearly half an hour, to ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... gold, sometimes with velvet, and at other times with damask. He sits on the ground, cross-legged, like a tailor, and so must all do who are admitted into his presence. He always wears four crisses, two before and two behind, richly ornamented with diamonds and rubies, and has a sword lying in his lap. He is attended by at least forty women; some with fans to cool him, some with cloths to wipe off sweat, others to serve him with aquavitae or water, and the rest to sing pleasant songs. He doth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... merciless cruelty. For only a little space of time did he stand and hold her eyes with his own, and then in low caressing voice he spoke, and his words were like the song of a bird to his mate, like the call of the earth to the sun in spring, like the lap of the waves when they tell the rocks of their eternal longing. Of love he spoke, of love that demanded love, and of the nymph's most perfect beauty. Yet as he spoke, the unknown thing came and smote with icy hands the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... brow, Where partial nature hath already bound A brighter circlet—radiant beauty's own— I had been proud to see thee proud of it, So for the donor thou hadst ta'en the gift, Not for the gift ta'en him. Could I have poured The wealth of richest Croesus in thy lap, I had been blest to see thee scatter it, So I ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... the little girl's sorrowful lecture, Frisk did not in the least know that he had done anything wrong, and poking his soft nose into Bunny's lap, he carried off the remaining piece of bread and ate it ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... a first-rate impression here. It would please you to see this stern ascetic, this despiser of Life and Humanity, with two toddlers on his lap, and Herbert at his knee, all listening open-mouthed to tales of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The boy thinks that one who lives in the woods must be a great hunter, and clamors for bears and wildcats: Jane, in her usual unfeeling way, insists that ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... would, perhaps, have spoken to me more than she did, had not a look of her husband silenced her. Madame Louis Bonaparte was still more condescending, and recalled to my memory what I had not forgotten how often she had been seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll. Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This change ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... with her hands clasped in her lap, and drew down the corners of her mouth, and rolled her eyes upward with a ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... Diedrick. Along in August of that year came a week of low water. Judson's ditch failed and he went out with his rifle to learn why. There on the headgate sat Diedrick's frau with a long-handled shovel across her lap and all the water turned into Diedrick's ditch; there she sat knitting through the long sun, and the children brought out her dinner. It was all up with Amos; he was too much of a gentleman to fight a lady—that was the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... took her work, and tried not to observe the countenance, which the other tried to hide between the large sheets; but she could not help becoming aware of tears stealing down the face and dropping on the lap. The first remark Miss Bronte made was to express her fear lest so severe a notice should check the sale of the book, and injuriously affect her publishers. Wounded as she was, her first thought was for others. Later on ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... finished her supper and was leaning against the high back of her chair, her long slender but oddly powerful looking hands folded lightly on the black velvet of her lap. Once more he was struck by ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... (and especially toward me, as I pet them) as our own home dogs. At this moment a large hound and a small half-breed bull-dog, both of whom were quite badly wounded this morning by a cougar, are shoving their noses into my lap to be petted, and humming defiance to one another. They are on excellent terms with the ranch cat and kittens. The three chief fighting dogs, who do not follow the trail, are the most affectionate of all, and, moreover, they ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... God the only alternative is a book of lies. Moreover, sitting down to write one's own life story has always loomed up before my imagination as an admission that one was passing the post which marks the last lap; and though it was a justly celebrated physician who told us that we might profitably crawl upon the shelf at half a century, that added no attraction for me to the effort, when I passed ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... had prevented her setting forth, so that she sat rocking gently in her sitting-room, enjoying blind man's holiday at about eight o'clock, and reflecting on the contents of a letter from Miss Derwent which she held in her lap, when she saw in the dusk an unmistakable figure ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... enjoying the communion of Saints, and advancing their own personal happiness! Think of a few poor, but pious happy women, sitting in the sun one beautiful summer's day, before one of their cottages, probably each one with her pillow on her lap, dexterously twisting the bobbins to make lace, the profits of which helped to maintain their children. While they are communing on the things of God, a traveling tinker draws near, and, over-hearing their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... share that Will Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental tumult. She was beginning to fear that she should not be able to suppress herself enough to the end of this meeting, and while her hand was still resting on Rosamond's lap, though the hand underneath it was withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising sobs. She tried to master herself with the thought that this might be a turning-point in three lives—not in her own; no, there the irrevocable ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... in his patient's lap, with the spoon ready to his hand, and drew back, watching the peculiar curl at the corners of the boy's lips as he slowly passed the spoon round and then raised ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... prisoners and broke bits of wood for a fire. People began pressing a little nearer to see what was to come, but when Morgan, with eye watchful to see even the shifting of a foot in the crowd, reached for his rifle and laid it across his lap, there was an immediate scramble to the sidewalk. This left twenty feet of dusty white road unoccupied, a margin on the page where this remarkable incident in Ascalon's record of tragedies was ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... to this. He reached up among the branches and began to pick the sweet, insipid fruit,—long ivory-colored berries, tipped with faint pink, like white coral, that fall to the ground unheeded all summer through. He dropped a handful into her lap. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... had her hands full now; for her mother was so ill she seldom left the wagon. All the cooking fell to Polly's share, and then she would ride along for hours with a little sister on her lap and fat brother "Bub" behind her on the saddle-blanket, so that her mother might rest ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... it ravenously, as if he devoured it, which was to all appearance his method of studying. 'He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.' He kept it wrapt up in the tablecloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something else which has ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... her fringe a twirl and a twist—it was luckily still moderately in curl from the previous Saturday—and putting on her black hat with all the feathers, she rushed along the street, and scrambling up the brake steps fell panting on Tom's lap. ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... Library, solace of my vacuous hours and temple, in its degree too, of deep initiations, mounted guard at the right. Here, frankly, discrimination drops—every particular in the impression once so quick and fresh sits interlinked with every other in the large lap of the whole. The motley, sunny, breezy, bustling Port, with its classic, its admirable fisher-folk of both sexes, models of type and tone and of what might be handsomest in the thoroughly weathered condition, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... return, Old Mok saluted him as the "Great Fisherman," the elf's elation became too great for any expression. His little chest heaved, his eyes flashed, and then he wriggled from Lightfoot's arms into the lap of Old Mok, snuggled down into the old man's furs and hid his face there; and the two understood ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Tessie) allowed the reins to lay loosely in her lap as she watched a girl scout in uniform approach. She was alone and tramped with a sure tread that might have marked her a True Tred had Tessie any knowledge of the troop's name. "Those girls are everywhere," she ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... replied, suiting the action to the word, and throwing a few halfpence into her lap; "go to Peggy Finigan's an' buy yourself a couple of ounces, an' smoke rings round you; and listen to me, go down before you come back to Bamy Keeran's an' see whether he has my shoes done or not, an' tell him from ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... things to me!" Mrs. Brookenham blandly broke in. She had sunk back into her chair; her hands, in her lap pressed themselves together and her wan smile brought a tear into each of her eyes by the very effort to be brighter. It might have been guessed of her that she hated to seem to care, but that she had other dislikes too. "If one were to take up, you know, some of the things you say—!" And she positively ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... for the visitor's seat was a peculiar one, as Ned had noted with considerable satisfaction. There were leather cuffs for the wrists and a broad leg band which prevented the guest leaving his seat. The cuffs held the hands close together in the lap, the idea being to prevent a timid person from grasping the arm of the driver ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... obloquies accompany him. When as poor Lazarus is Dei sacrarium, the temple of God, lives and dies in true devotion, hath no more attendants, but his own innocency, the heaven a tomb, desires to be dissolved, buried in his mother's lap, and hath a company of [3714]Angels ready to convey his soul into Abraham's bosom, he leaves an everlasting and a sweet memory behind him. Crassus and Sylla are indeed still recorded, but not so much for their wealth as for their victories: Croesus for his end, Solomon for his ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... he must feel; before he can distinguish good from evil, he must compare. Morals, is a science of facts: to found them, therefore, on an hypothesis inaccessible to his senses, of which he has no means of proving the reality, is to render them uncertain; it is to cast the log of discord into his lap, to cause him unceasingly to dispute upon that which he can never understand. To assert that the ideas of morals are innate, or the effect of instinct, is to pretend that man knows how to read before he has learned the letters of the alphabet; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... frightening the delegates from the back States almost out of their wits."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 162. "Or, as one man said in a speech, 'the regular delegates might occupy half a seat apiece, provided each of them would let a Hunker sit on his lap.'"—Ibid., p. 161.] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... other side of the range,—nor he with me. But I laughed, and every one else laughed, and in five minutes I was sitting on the grass under the walnut trees, offerings of flowers and mulberries on my lap, and while the whole population sat around on stone walls and house roofs, the village head man took off my shoes ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... fresh and charming face of Rigolette. She, according to her custom, wished to appear gay, to encourage and cheer his spirits; but she ill-concealed the sorrow and emotion that she had always felt since he had been imprisoned. Seated on a bench on the other side of the railing, she held on her lap ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... true. I could scarcely believe that dumb animals had rights; but while it lasted, and human beings were so kind to me, I wanted to be with them all the time. Miss Laura understood. She drew my head up to her lap, and put her face down to me: "You like to be with us, don't you, Joe? Stay in the house as much as you like. Jack doesn't mind, though he speaks so sharply. When you get tired of us go out in the garden and have a romp ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... is now pillowed in the lady's lap[1]. The Cat, the little Tyger of our island, whose natural home is the forest, is equally domesticated and caressed. The Cow, the Hog, the Sheep, and the Horse, are all, for a variety of purposes, brought under his ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... felt myself,' said poor Martha, 'on entering the room, all of a twitter. The old woman was seated in her chair of state, and, reaching down from the mantel-piece a pack of cards, began, after muttering a few words in a language I could not understand, to lay them very carefully in her lap; she then foretold that I should get married, but not to the person in our house, as I expected, but to another young man, whom, if I could afford a trifle, she would show me through her MATRIMONIAL MIRROR. To this I consented, and she desired me to shut my eyes and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... his wife's return. He resolved to be awake when she did return; he had news for her. Filled with this resolution, he read for three-quarters of an hour steadily, then at intervals between naps, and at last dropped into a sound sleep, the paper in his lap. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... And when the clock peals midnight, she will move Her work away, and let her fingers rove Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground; Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes Fixt, her slight hands clasp'd on her lap; then rise, And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told Her rosary-beads of ebony tipp'd with gold, Then to her soft sleep—and to-morrow 'll be ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... to disclose our wretched situation. "Your wife ill?" said Mrs. Mason, hastily stepping forward—"very ill, I fear, James, and wet and cold—run hastily, James," reaching herself a broken chair, "and call in Mrs. Wright, and place your wife on my lap." This I immediately did, and as I opened the door to go out, I heard Mrs. Mason ask Jane to get a light—and shame made me secretly rejoice, that I had escaped the humiliation, for the present, of confessing that we had not even a bit of ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... narration, Liza had been kneeling, with her arms in her friend's lap. Jumping up when Rotha had ceased, she cried, in reply to the last inquiry, "I know. I'll just slip away to Robbie. He shall be off and fetch ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... clasping her hands tightly together in her lap, while Brett remained standing on the hearthrug, looking down ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... father? The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae mair for warld's gear than a noble hound for the quest of a foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all out—ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till he heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he lap like a cock at a grossart! These are discrepancies betwixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott de secretis, and others. Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... presently Shams al-Nahar said to me, 'O my master, complete thy kindness by bringing us a lute or other instrument of mirth and music that the measure of our joy may be fully filled.' I replied, 'On my head and eyes!' and rising brought her a lute, which she took and tuned; then laying it in her lap she touched it with a masterly touch, at once exciting to sadness and changing sorrow to gladness; after which she sang these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... dressing-gown, "of red-brown (MORDORE) velvet; black breeches, and boots which came quite up over the knee. His hair was not dressed. Three little benchlets or stools, covered with green cloth, stood before him, on which he had his feet lying [terribly ill of gout]. In his lap he had a sort of muff, with one of his hands in it, which seemed to be giving him great pain. In the other hand he held our Sentence on the Arnold Case. He lay reclining (LAG) in an easy-chair; at his left stood a table, with various papers on it,—and two gold snuffboxes, richly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... darker the shadows crept down, deepening to a night soft and warm and very still, whose quietude was unbroken save for the drowsy lap and murmur of the river and the sound the war-horse Mars made as he cropped the grass near by. Full of a languorous content lay Beltane, despite the smarting of his wound, what time Sir Fidelis came and went about the fire; and there, within this great and silent wilderness, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of the Adoration of the Shepherds. The Virgin was habited in the court dress of the last century, as rich as silk and satin, gold lace, and paste diamonds could make it, with a flaxen wig, and high-heeled shoes. The infant Saviour lay in her lap, his head encircled with rays of gilt wire, at least two yards long. The shepherds were very well done, but the sheep and dogs best of all; I believe they were the real animals stuffed. There was a distant landscape, seen between the pasteboard trees, which was well painted, and from the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... would lighten the prison fare and the prison life. What was it? Pickles could stand it no longer; he must go and consult his mother. He ran downstairs. Mrs. Price had not yet gone to bed. Pickles sat down beside her by the fire, and laid his curly red head in her lap. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... is of course true that in a certain sense the individual is predestined to talk, but that is due entirely to the circumstance that he is born not merely in nature, but in the lap of a society that is certain, reasonably certain, to lead him to its traditions. Eliminate society and there is every reason to believe that he will learn to walk, if, indeed, he survives at all. But it is just as certain that ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... revelry My flagging wing has swept. A mateless bird's My pilgrimage has been; through sin, and doubt, And darkness, seeking love. Oh hear me, Nature! Receive me once again: but not alone; No more alone, Great Mother! I have brought One who has wandered, yet not sinned, like me. Upon thy lap, twin children, let us lie; And in the light of thine immortal eyes Let our souls mingle, till The Father calls To some eternal home ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... Karl Bitter The seated president, with a world of thought upon his face, has on his lap ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... of the party; a picnic was in her eyes one of those barbarous, not to say indecorous things which she classed with bathing in the open sea or trying on a hat in a shop. Why should one sit on the ground and eat indifferent food out of one's lap? Mrs. Ogilvie was too sorry, but it was impossible; she had friends coming, or letters to write, or something—at any rate she was quite sure she was engaged. Mrs. Ogilvie's manner always became doubly polite and charming when she ignored the customary ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... answer it in the practical manner described. I think he must have been very fond of Nina Algernon indeed, although he did not the least know she was at that moment looking out of window, with her hair down, listening to the night breeze in the poplars, the lap and wash of the ebb-tide against the river-banks, thinking how nice it was to have met him that morning, by the merest accident, how nice it would be to see him in the painting-room, by the merest accident again, of course, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... returned Barbara, looking in her turn at the child, whose attention was apparently concentrated on one of Marian's kittens, which she was stroking on her lap, while the mother cat walked uneasily round and round her chair. "I have alway a care to ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... he into slumber, profound as ever wooed his childhood; his head pillowed in Salome's lap, his funny ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken, Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing boys are broken; No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid, For thee no flowers of autumn the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to see Science confirming wot I always held. Blow me tight, If I don't rayther cotton to HUXLEY; he's racy, old pal, and he's right. The skim-milk of life's for the many, the lardy few lap up the cream, And all talk about trimming the balance is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... reply; but at the moment a small boy, followed by a smaller girl, coming around the corner of the house, created a diversion. The girl, a little dancing imp with a frazzle of flying red hair and red-brown eyes, catching sight of Judith ran to her and flung herself head foremost in the visitor's lap, where Judith cooed over her and cuddled her, rumpling the bright hair, rubbing her crimson cheek ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... beautiful moon. And all the sweet roses I gathered in June Are faded. It may be the cloud-sylphs of Even Have stolen the tints of those roses for Heaven. O bonnie bright blossom! in the years far away. So evanished thy bloom on an evening in May. The sunlight now sleeps in the lap of the west, And the star-beams are barring its chamber of rest. While Twilight is weaving her blue-tinted bowers To mellow the landscape where slumber the flowers. I would fain learn the music ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... court, farthest from the heavy gateway, was the box of the concierge, who was a brisk little shoemaker, forever bethwacking his lap-stone. If I remember right, the hammer of the little cordonnier made the only sound I used to hear in the court; for though the house was full of lodgers, I never saw two of them together, and never heard them talking across the court from the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... monkeys can't burn our paws for nothing, so tell away, Pussy," added Charlie, as he threw several hot nuts into her lap and shook his ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... the golden gloom inside the Pot. At last she actually saw the garden and her father in it tying up the roses, and the pretty little vine-covered house, and, finally, she could see right into the dear little room where her mother sat with the baby in her lap, and all the others ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... dusk towards the silent figure on the door-step. She sat there, her head fallen back against the closed door, her small hands lying half open in her lap. Under her closed eyes the dark circles of fatigue lay; a faint trace of rose paint still clung to her lips; and from the ragged skirt of her thorn-rent gown one small foot was thrust, showing a silken shoe ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... the book off to the other side of the light. And men will take off their hats in your presence. Your body, unharmed by early indulgences, will get weaker, only as the sleepy child gets more and more unable to hold up its head, and falls back into its mother's lap: so you shall lay yourself down into the arms of the Christian's tomb, and on the slab that marks the place will be chiselled: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... a most comfortable one it is. My belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do believe you quite recovered. You, in the mean time, are talking of my rheumatism-quite an old story. Not that it is gone, though the pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains, and I am writing on my lap: but the complaint is put upon the establishment; like old servants, that are of no use, fill up the place of those that could do something, and yet still ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and the topmasts lap, It was sic a deadly storm; And the waves cam o'er the broken ship, Till ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... Frankland went on with his talk; and the man sat there, still glancing from time to time mechanically towards his wife, who was there in the shadow with steady white face and hands in her lap, watching the two men. The magistrate's voice seemed to the bewildered man to roll on like a wheel over stones; interminable, grinding, stupefying. What was he saying? What was that about his wife? She had sent to him the day before, had she, and told ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... I was making the cap I am wearing and I was selecting from some white roses on my lap the ones I thought best. Suddenly ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... powers of calculation. However, then stept forward the fiadora Dona Tomaso, a sensible-looking village dame, grave and important as became her situation, and gave an account of the nurse and the baby, which being satisfactory, the copper was swept into the nurse's lap, and she and her baby went away contented. It was pleasant to see the kindness of the ladies to these poor women; how they praised the care that had been taken of the babies; admired the strong and healthy ones, which indeed nearly ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca |
