"Lap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kill myself with dreams! These dreams that softly lap me round Through trance-like hours in which meseems That I am swallowed up and drowned; Drowned in your love, which flows o'er me As o'er ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven: its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... greater number than Wilkes's 1143! This, he said, was flying in the face of all law and freedom: a robbery of the liberty of freeholders; and making the birthrights of Englishmen a mere farce. He then represented Colonel Luttrell as sitting in the lap of John Wilkes, and the majority of the house as being turned into a state engine. He added, in conclusion, "I am afraid this measure originated too near the throne. I am sorry for it; but I hope his majesty will soon open his eyes, and see it in all its deformity." Lord Mansfield ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... speaking. After the train had started Hyacinth looked at the girls. One of them, a pretty creature of perhaps eighteen years old, wept quietly in the corner of the carriage. Beside her lay her carpet bag and a brown shawl. On her lap was an orange, and she held a crumpled paper bag of biscuits in her hand. There was nothing unusual about her. She was just one instance of heartbreak, the heart-break of a whole nation which loves home as no other people have ever loved ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... fairly aboard, the train started. They were late enough, indeed! But the engineer dared not speed up much for that last mile of the lap to Cheslow. There might be something ahead ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... be putting my hands over her eyes, and she would be kenning me, and laughing, and greeting, for that I was back. Then I would be making her spread her brat over her knees, and be throwing the siller into her lap and listening to the cries o' her. But whiles among these thoughts I would be making pictures o' a limber long-legged lass that could work horse like a man, and would be on the hill after sheep when her neighbours would be stretching themselves in bed, and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. And I ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... was not ashamed of it either. She laughed at her own mistakes, and tried again; she never was idle or dull for a minute. She did a great deal in the house herself. Often she would sit chatting with me, having on her lap a coarse brown pan, shelling peas, slicing beans, picking gooseberries; her fingers—Miss March's fair fingers—looking fairer for the contrast with their unaccustomed work. Or else, in the summer evenings, she would be at the window sewing—always sewing—but ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... but he threw himself at her feet, and buried his face upon her lap. There were but few more words spoken then. When it comes to this, that a pair of lovers are content to sit and rub their feathers together like two birds, there is not much more need of talking. Before they ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... altitude-registering instrument which also marks, on a cross-lined chart, the time consumed on each lap of an aerial voyage. My card should have shown four neat outlines in ink, something ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... From all the ruck of Cheapside a vagrant dog will select the man who has most toleration for the canine species, and is most likely to give him shelter. A little child coming suddenly into a circle of strangers knows in which lap it may find a haven, on which bosom it may discover safety and comfort. If mistress and schoolfellows, servants and shoeblack, dogs and cats, were fond of Charlotte Halliday, their affection had been engendered by her own sweet smiles and loving ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... been taking a nap inside the cab, heard the sound of shooting, started up, threw back the lap-robe, and stepped to the sidewalk. He listened, trying to count the shots. Then came silence. Then another shot. He was aware that his best policy was to leave that neighborhood quickly. Yet curiosity held him, and finally drew him toward the dimly lighted ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... be sure to come," cried Irene loudly and eagerly, "and shall I bring Klea with me? She was called up in the middle of the night by the gatekeeper, whose child is very ill. My sister is very fond of it, and Philo will only take his medicine from her. The little one had gone to sleep in her lap, and his mother came and begged me to fetch the water for us both. Now give me the jars, for none but we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... one of the most famous child-pictures by that great master. The picture shows Little Penelope in a white dress and a dark belt, sitting on a stone sill, with trees in the background. Her mittened hands are folded in her lap, and her eyes are demurely cast down. She is wearing a high mob-cap, said to have belonged to Sir ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... his head in her lap, and she combed out a bushel of gold and silver; and when he stood up again, she saw Hookedy-Crookedy no more, but instead the beautiful prince that had been trying to win her in her father's drawing-room for the last three days; and then and there to her Jack told his ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... her feet. Painter's brush, harebell, speedwell, golden-brown gaillardias, silvery hawkweed, columbines yellow and blue, heaths, and lush grasses—Elizabeth sank down among them in speechless joy. Anderson gathered handfuls of columbine and vetch, of harebell and heath, and filled her lap with them, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of those thin orange-colored silk bands with which cigars are tied in bundles. She threw it aside with a quick movement of disdain, and opened the case of a miniature, slowly, and with deliberate care. A letter fell on to her lap as she bent over the portrait of a young man. The day, the time, the need to dispose of accumulated letters, had brought her to this which she meant to be a final settlement of one of life's grim accounts. ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... gradually the deadly, leaden color of his face was replaced by the hue of life, and his heart began to beat more loudly. Consciousness did not return to him; he lay motionless and senseless, with his head resting on her lap, and with Flick-Flack, in eager affection, licking his hands and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... it is in its mother's lap, the mother takes great delight to have that which will be for its comfort; so it is with God's children, they shall be kept on his knee (Isa 66:11): 'They shall suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations'; verse 13: ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Cynthia's hands and lay motionless on her lap. Her fair face raised itself rigidly and the clear eyes looked, not at the cheerful, home-room, but back through the years: the sombre, shabby years—until they caught and held a girl of twelve demanding something—something so tremendous!—from a poor, trembling boy but a little older than ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Choice of a Mistress, to whom you may say, In Thee alone my choice is fixed. Do not believe such a one will fall into your Lap. It will become you to look about sharp for her, and with all your Eyes, I do assure you. And here my first Instruction shall be, where she may most probably be found: For he is a bad Huntsman who would beat about the Royal Exchange for ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... cat, and called, "Pussy, pussy, pussy!" and then the queen ventured to touch her. She could only say, "Putty, putty, putty!" for she had not learned to talk English. The captain then put the cat down on the queen's lap, where she purred and purred ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... the forum, within sight of laws appointing a salary beside the scholar's payments; and thou lashest thy rocks and roarest, "Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence; most necessary to gain your ends, or maintain opinions." As if we should have never known such words as "golden shower," "lap," "beguile," "temples of the heavens," or others in that passage, unless Terence had brought a lewd youth upon the stage, setting up Jupiter as his example ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Sallins?" did he really mean: "How soon do you leave us?" Inclining to adopt this conclusion, Mr. Rayburn answered cautiously that his stay at the seaside would depend on circumstances. Mr. John Zant looked at his sister-in-law, sitting silent in a corner with Lucy on her lap. "Exert your attractions," he said; "make the circumstances agreeable to our good friend. Will you dine with us to-day, my dear sir, and bring ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... direction. He heard God in the rippling water, in the angry tempest, in the sighing wind, and in the troops of stars which God marshals upon the plains of heaven. In the study of nature he exulted. He sat in her velvet lap, sported by her limpid waters, acquainted himself perfectly with her seasons, and knew the coming ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... engaged when we walked into his feebly-lighted room, but, like all Orientals, he would let nothing interfere with the performance of his religious duties. With his gaze centered upon one spot, his fingers flew over the string of beads in his lap, and his tongue over the stereotyped prayers, with a rapidity that made our head swim. We stood unnoticed till the end, when we were at once invited to a cup of tea, and directed to our destination, five li beyond. Toward this we plodded through the growing darkness ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... had seemed to exclude her. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to take you to the Museum after dinner, and let you see Boucicault in the 'Colleen Bawn.'" He swept his paper off the table and unfolded his napkin in his lap, and, leaning back in his chair, began to tell her about the play. "We can walk: it's only just round the corner," he ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Of that long initial lap of our voyage, perhaps the less said the better. As always is the case when monotony begins to wear away the veneer of civilization, character quirks came to the surface, cliques formed among the passengers, and gossip and personalities became ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... listlessly in her lap were rough and red from much uncongenial toil. He looked at her for a moment, still absorbed in himself, then, as he noted the pathos in every line of her face and figure, the expression of his face subtly changed. His hand closed ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Teacher did not laugh. The recess-bell rang. And Dear Teacher, holding Emmy Lou's hand, sent them all out. Everyone must go. Desks and slates to be scrubbed, mattered not. Everyone must go. Then Dear Teacher lifted Emmy Lou to her lap. And when she was sure they were every one gone, Emmy Lou cried. And after a while Dear Teacher explained about A and do, so that Emmy Lou understood. And then Dear Teacher said, "You may come in." And the crack of the door widened, and in came Hattie. Emmy Lou was ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... had finished, the silence remained unbroken, then gave way only to an outburst of applause. And one did even better than applaud. Bending forward, his beautiful face quite radiant with his pleasure, the curly-headed page pulled a golden ring from his pouch and tossed it into the harper's lap. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... as she takes To her old lap their fallen bones, For down the throbbing ways there wakes The laughter of her ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... steps and out of the gate, and Marcy kept his eyes fastened upon him as long as he remained in sight. Then he faced about and looked at his mother, who had dropped her sewing into her lap and sat motionless in her chair, the picture of misery ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... amusing himself at a game of exceedingly dirty cards with an old acquaintance of mine; no other than Tim, who was called my 'valet' in the days of yore, and whom the reader may remember as clad in my father's old liveries. They used to hang about him in those times, and lap over his wrists and down to his heels; but Tim, though he protested he had nigh killed himself with grief when I went away, had managed to grow enormously fat in my absence, and would have fitted almost into Daniel Lambert's coat, or that of the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... assailants very deliberately proceeded to rifle the inanimate body, when one of them, perceiving the silver badge, exclaimed, with an oath, "One of the rampant Neviles! This cock at least shall crow no more." And laying the young man's head across his lap, while he stretched back the throat with one hand, with the other he drew forth a long sharp knife, like those used by huntsmen in despatching the hart. Suddenly, and in the very moment when the blade was about to inflict the fatal gash, his hand was forcibly arrested, and a man, who had silently ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... children if it had been their lot to die without leaving an heir to their estates. Certainly, nobody under the sun enjoyed complete happiness, but why did the plums always fall to the lot of those who were already sitting in the lap of luxury? And how was it that the prizes always fell to the organisers of the great lottery? The disinherited had to be content with the mass said at evening prayers; to their share fell morality and those virtues which the others despised and of which they had no need because the gates of ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... the laps of his coat, that he vainly endeavoured to extricate himself from her grasp. At this crisis, up came Juno, and took her usual side in such disputes. But to do this with effect, Juno found it necessary first of all to tear off the coat lap; for, the old woman keeping such firm hold of it, how else could Juno lay her down on her back—set her paws upon her breast—and then look up to her master, as if asking for a certificate of having acquitted herself ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... wait." Cynthia's hands were tightly clasped in her lap. "Are you sure that you want to? I've been thinking a lot since I got your telegram. Are you ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... (laying her sewing down on her lap): Karsten, can you imagine what his objective ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... don't have to dig. This positive, practical, pushing bourgeoisie is always about its business; it lives in the street, in the hotel, in the train; one is always in a crowd—there are seventy-five people in the tramway. They sit in your lap; they stand on your toes; when they wish to pass they simply push you. Everything in silence; they know that silence is golden, and they have the worship of gold. When the conductor wishes your fare he gives you a poke, very serious, without a word. As for the types— but there ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... of the path and began a new ascent. This movement always brought her face to face with him a moment—she on the grade above, and he below. Miss Ruth had grown accustomed to the novel situation, and no longer held on by the pommel of the saddle. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, pliantly lending herself to the awkward motion of the animal. Over her usual travelling-habit she had thrown the long waterproof which reached to her feet. As she sat there in a half-listless attitude, she was the very picture of the Queen of Sheba seated upon Deacon Twombly's mare. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... slowly and deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young and almost delicate, like a young man's. His blue eyes twinkled with some inscrutable source of pleasure, his skin was ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... position as to parties be what it may, is to extend a friendly and greeting hand to those who come with capital and confidence to become the pioneers of a new order of things, which cannot fail to pour riches into the lap of Canada, and to lay the foundation of a prosperity which can be at present but ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... ourselves and see people living together in perfect unconsciousness of our existence, as they will live when we are gone. If to-morrow the blow falls, and the worst of our ill fears is realised, the girl will none the less tell stories to the child on her lap in the cottage at Great Missenden, nor the good Belgians light their candle, and mix their salad, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a long while—she did not know how long—before she heard Celia saying, "That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now. You can go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room." "What I think, Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than that Dorothea was leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive, "is that Mr. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the Nurse if she wanted anything. I noticed that she had a vinaigrette in her lap. Doubtless she, too, had felt some of the influence which had so affected me. She said that she had all she required, but that if she should want anything she would at once let me know. I wished to keep her from noticing my respirator, so I went to the chair in the shadow ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... and again picked up a letter lying in her lap and looked at it unhappily. She had kept her word and written to Charlie Munro, and unfortunately Heriot had forgotten to warn him that his answer to any such communication must be exceedingly discreet. No wonder she ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... rocking-chair before the hearth sat the wife of the family man before referred to. She was a tall, angular creature, the mother of fifteen, comprising in their number three sets of twins. She held her snuff-stick between her teeth and the child on her lap, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... into us, and we towed the load with such gusto that we covered the second lap of the distance in fine style. When we reached the camp and were dismissed, the incident about the doctor's munificence flashed through to its four corners like lightning. It became the one topic of spirited conversation. We had ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... On Chastity's meek lap enshrined, With breathless Reverence waiting by, When we our ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... 'Poor child!' on receiving this distressing intelligence about Edith; and the minute lap-dog in Mrs. Shaw's arms began to bark, as if excited by the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... both the children," she said, without waiting for him to ask. "You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from Mrs. Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you." Then she hesitated, with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. "And there's one from Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of." She delayed again, and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a sort of impassioned ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... horse. I will be with you again in fifteen minutes; in the meantime here is something for you to look at," he said, drawing from his pocket an elegant little volume bound in purple and gold, and laying it in her lap. He then smiled, sprang into his saddle, bowed, and galloped away, leaving Marian to examine her book. It was a London copy of Spenser's Fairy Queen, superbly illustrated, one of the rarest books to be found in the whole country at that day. On the fly-leaf the name of Marian ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... would die rather than cause her one regret, she threw her arms about my neck, then stopped and repulsed me as if involuntarily. Finally, I entered her room holding in my hand a ticket on which our places were marked for the carriage to Besancon. I approached her and placed it in her lap; she stretched out her hand, screamed, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... subsided into silence for a while. There was no sound except the monotonous lap of the waves. The sea-gulls and cormorants had flown past at sunset and gone to roost. The absolute quiet, and the dark shadows, and the silver light of the moon gave such an eerie atmosphere to the scene that presently Fay could stand ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... mother, who nodded, and took out her pocket-book. In a moment, Corny, with some change in her hand, went quietly up to the yard and put the money in the queen's lap. Then we went away ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... rising to his face, and his hands in his lap were trembling. He tried to speak naturally—but his voice was odd ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... (Blair) round by his right rear, to get below Jonesboro, and to reach the railroad, so as to cut off retreat in that direction. I also dispatched orders after orders to hurry forward Stanley, so as to lap around Jonesboro on the east, hoping thus to capture the whole of Hardee's corps. I sent first Captain Audenried (aide-de-camp), then Colonel Poe, of the Engineers, and lastly General Thomas himself (and that is the only time during the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... used to cure like, at least in the following directions: "Take the right eye of a Frogg, lap it in a piece of russet cloth and hang it about the neck; it cureth the right eye if it bee enflamed or bleared. And if the left eye be greved, do the like by the left eye of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... he turned toward the cubs. They scurried back deeper into the cave. He poured a gill or two of water into a hollow of the rock and returned to the mother. Presently as he moistened her tongue again, one of the little ones crept forward and began to lap the puddle ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... these mornings in the garden; but I must not read too many stories, only Edna says I shall like 'Old Kensington,' and I must indulge myself with that. I assure you we make quite a picture. Mac lies at my feet, and Spot generally curls himself up on my lap. Tim prefers lying on the lawn and keeping an eye upon the kitten. She is such a droll little creature, and her ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... pettish, and slower in its movements, and is little pleased by its usual amusements. Or, at other times, its spirits are very variable; it will sometimes cease suddenly in the midst of its play, and run to hide its head in its mother's lap, putting its hands to its head, and complaining of headache, or saying merely that it is tired and sleepy, and wants to go to bed. Sometimes, too, it will turn dizzy, as you will know, not so much from its complaint of dizziness as from its suddenly standing still, gazing around for a moment as ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... of an African veld, just soaking into it like water into dry ground. She had a vision of the wide rolling plain, black from sky's rim to sky's rim, and the moonlight pouring a futile splendour into its lap. She moved with a quick and almost desperate run to the door, opened it, and leaned over the balustrade of the staircase. The hall was empty and no sound of voices came from the library. She stepped cautiously down the stairs; as she reached the last step the door of the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... sleek chrysom imp to her Dugs muzzled in,— 'Gee-up, my old Belzy! (she cried, 25 As she sung to her suckling cub) Trit-a-trot, trot! we'll go far and wide Trot, Ram-Devil! Trot! Belzebub!' Her petticoat fine was of scarlet Brocade, And soft in her lap her Baby she lay'd 30 With his pretty Nubs of Horns a- sprouting, And his pretty little Tail all curly-twirly— St. Dunstan! and this comes of spouting— Of Devils what a Hurly-Burly! 35 'Behold we are up! what ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... virgin mother whom she needed. Here it was an earthly mother, worshipping the earthly baby in her lap, as any and every mother does, from Eve's time downward. In another picture, there was a dim sense, shown in the mother's face, of some divine quality in the child. In a third, the artist seemed to have ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had put the two specimens of which she had providentially become possessed in her lap, and they looked very pretty against the navy-blue of her skirt. Diva was very ingenious: she used up all sorts of odds and ends in a way that did credit to her undoubtedly parsimonious qualities. She ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... placed a house as Riley Sinclair had ever seen. The mountain came down out of the sky in ragged, uneven steps. Here it dipped away into a lap of quite level ground. A stream of spring water flashed across that little tableland, dark in the shadow of the big trees, silver in the sunlight. At the back of the natural clearing was the cabin, built solidly of logs. Wood, water, and ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... woman put up her arms and drew the girl down to her lap. She had never touched her idol before, but sorrow levels ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... for dogs, and hardly a day passed without his buying several, big and little, greyhounds, spaniels, lap-dogs, and sheep-dogs—in fact, every kind of dog that you could think of, and very soon he had a troop of fifty or sixty trotting along behind him, one of which he thought would ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Hamlet's coming to Verona, Romeo was in a great despair of love in consequence of an unrequited passion for a certain lady of the city, between whose family and his own a deadly feud had existed for centuries. Somebody had stepped on somebody else's lap-dog in the far ages, and the two families had been slashing and hacking at each other ever since. It appeared that Romeo had scaled a garden wall, one night, and broken upon the meditations of his inamorata, who, as chance would have it, was sitting on her balcony enjoying ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cigar And scented handkerchief, I tiptoed near, But felt the exotic fragrance from afar; I thought of ARTHUR and Sir BEDIVERE: And it seemed best to leave it on the plate, So strode I back and told my curious spouse "I heard the high tide lap along the Eyot, And the wild water at the barge's bows." She said, "O treacherous! O heart of clay! Go back and throw the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... the colour has run into damp and green seediness, and the very design has struggled away into the component atoms of the plaster. Sometimes (but not often) I can make out a Virgin with a mildewed glory round her head; holding nothing, in an indiscernible lap, with invisible arms; and occasionally the leg or arms of a cherub, but it is very melancholy and dim. There are two old fresco-painted vases outside my own gate—one on either hand—which are so faint, that I never saw them till last night; and only then because I was looking over ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the rim. Dark clouds were mantling the desert like rolling smoke from a prairie-fire. He almost stumbled over Mescal, who sat with her back to a stone. Wolf lay with his head in her lap, and he growled. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... full hour later, when I returned, he was just starting. From some distance up the road I could see them. On the veranda Rosie's mother rocked and worked placidly away at something in her lap. Quite sedately they walked down the path until a big hydrangea bush, studded thickly with great clumps of blossoms, screened them from the house. Then something occurred which told me that the boating incident and the unanswered note had either been forgiven or forgotten. I dodged out of sight ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... French make fine-looking soldiers), and, with his luxuriant mustachios and the eager glance of his keen black eye, seemed the very beau ideal of a modern hero. Born at Mezieres, in the department of Ardennes, he was cradled in the very lap of war, and was yet a mere boy; when, in the summer of 1813, he joined the corps called the garde d'honneur. He made the campaign of Germany, and was present in the battles of Leipzig and of Hanau, in the last of which he received a ball in the right ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... leaders: National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL), Augustus Caine, chairman; Liberian Action Party (LAP), Emmanuel Koromah, chairman; Unity Party (UP), Carlos Smith, chairman; United People's Party ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... "if you refuse to give that child the necessary punishment which is to make her a Christian character, I shall simply wash my hands of her. Now, then, miss, get on my lap. William, do your duty." ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... six drew near. She raised Larry to her lap, and looked up touchingly into their faces. "Can't I ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... dropped heavily to her lap, just as the blood dropped away from her cheeks and the happy glow dulled in her eyes. It was not Weary. It was the Swede who worked for Jim Adams and who rode a sorrel horse which, at a distance, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... purchasing unworthy commodities. Undoubtedly, fraud, when it occurs, must be punished. If a merchant sell by sample, and intentionally give a different article—if a dog-dealer clothe a cur in the skin of a departed lap-dog, and sell him warranted an undoubted Blenheim spaniel—there should be some punishment for the fraud. It will not be found expedient, however, to go far, even in such clear cases. In too entirely superseding the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... to regain your kingdom.' These discourses of the sage made a strong impression upon me. I raised my eyes on high, and, full of a salutary confidence, I returned to my capital. Prosperity had blinded my enemy. He had forgotten in the lap of pleasure the wise maxims to which he was indebted for his victory. Everything seemed quiet in his dominions. He believed himself secure in the possession of them, and neglected the maintenance of an army. I arrived unawares at the beginning of the night. I hastened to ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... so Tippy was roused from her nap, and Dippy was captured in the act of catching a grasshopper, then the two were borne to the end of the garden to a sheltered spot where Marian always had her "thinks." She took the two in her lap. Tippy settled down at once, but Dippy had to have his head rubbed for some minutes before he ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... one loves fervently, one loves everything at the same time. Do not be alarmed if in the evening, when the fire is burning brightly and you are chatting gayly beside it, he should take off one of your shoes and stockings, put your foot on his lap, and in a moment of forgetfulness carry irreverence so far as to kiss it; if he likes to pass your large tortoise-shell comb through your hair, if he selects your perfumes, arranges your plaits, and suddenly exclaims, striking his forehead: "Sit down there, darling; I have an idea ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Chymaera, rescued Peleus From all the savage beasts in Peleon, And rais'd the chaste Athenian prince from hell: 185 All suffering with me, they for womens lusts, I for a mans, that the Egean stable Of his foule sinne would empty in my lap. How his guilt shunn'd me! Sacred innocence That, where thou fear'st, are dreadfull, and his face 190 Turn'd in flight from thee that had thee in chace! Come, bring me to him. I will tell the serpent Even to his ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... bound up her hair; washed her face—which needed it; and sat on the log doorstep, holding Dlorus's head in her lap, while Dlorus sobbed, "Pinky—dead! Him that was so lively! And he was so sweet a lover, oh, so sweet. He was a swell fellow; my, he could just make you laugh and cry, the way he talked; and he was so educated, and he played the vi'lin—he could do ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... are most deeply impressed with the nothingness of life. Thou, my sweet convert, art now the object, no longer of my compassion, but my envy; and earnestly do I feel convinced of the blessed repose thy spirit will enjoy in the lap of the Mother Church. Happy are they who die young! but thrice happy they who die in the spirit rather than the flesh: dead to sin, but not to virtue; to terror, not to hope; to man, but not ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you then at early noon carousing 5 Lap in luxury? they, my jolly comrades, Search the streets on a quest ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... could very well retort that he had known all this truth from the beginning, and had been willing to marry her while his financial position made it an advantage to himself, but was now recalcitrant only because fortune had otherwise poured gold into his lap. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Dawson back to the Hall, where we found the situation as I had left it. John's head was lying on Dorothy's lap, and she was trying to dress his wound with pieces of linen torn from her clothing. Sir George was pacing to and fro across the room, breaking forth at times in curses against Dorothy because of her ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... thought upon how very slight a circumstance often depends the fate of individuals and the destiny of nations. In the autumn of 1780, a farmer chanced to be making cider at a mill on the east bank of the Hudson, near that part of Haverstraw Bay called 'Mother's Lap.' Two young men, carrying muskets, as usual in those troubled times, stopped for a draught of sweet cider, and seated themselves on a log to wait for it. The farmer found them looking very intently on some distant object, and inquired what ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... swells of water and waiting with inexhaustible patience for the wind. At his feet the fifteen-year-old girl, Sister of Anne, disposed her saffron-colored body upon oars laid across the thwarts and slept. Ghost Girl, beside me, laid her glossy head in my lap to doze more comfortably. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... looked at the pocket-book with the stupid, sleepy look of one suddenly aroused. It fell off her lap and sprang open and gold and bank bills were scattered on the floor of the carriage. This roused her completely, and Jeanne gave vent to her mirth in a merry peal ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... above him was nothing but the dome of the covering heavens. The sunshine fell upon the dead man's face, and the breeze blew over it. A lover of Nature, he seemed to be gathered into her maternal arms, and to lie like a child upon a mother's lap. We felt, as we looked upon him, that death had never stricken down, at one blow, a greater sum of life. And whose heart did not swell when, from the honored and distinguished men there gathered together, six plain Marshfield farmers were called forth to carry ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... distinctly on the Sassanian sculptures are the harp, the horn, the drum, and the flute or pipe. The harp is triangular, and has seven strings; it is held in the lap, and played apparently by both hands. The drum is of small size. The horns and pipes are too rudely represented for their exact character to be apparent. Concerted pieces seem to have been sometimes played by harpers ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... bruised skin, and rubbed it with sweet-smelling unguents, and gave him food and drink. The great spotted beast sat by them all the time, purring like a cat, and at intervals he tried to entice Martin to leave the woman's lap and play with him. But she would not let him out of her arms: all day she nursed and fondled him as if he had been a helpless babe instead of the sturdy little run-away and adventurer he had proved himself to be. She also made him tell ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... Donnybrook Fare it was tougher than all the stories ever told of it. Poor old Donnybrook! He had recked not of the coming woe that blissful hour by the side of the rippling Yellowstone. His head was deep in my lap, his muzzle buried in oats; he took no thought for the morrow,—he would eat, drink, and be merry, and ask no questions as to what was to happen; and so absorbed were we in our occupation—he in his happiness, I in the contemplation thereof—that neither ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... and experienced, are marked by a mawkish sweetness which is all the more noticeable in contrast with the dull routine of saving and slaving which follows. She begins by being photographed sitting in her hero's lap, and ends by sitting on the less comfortable chair to darn his socks and to tend his babies. There are women enthroned, and who deserve to be, in Germany as in other countries; but taken in the mass, speaking in hundreds of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... too acute, as was evident even to the unsentimental mind of the merchant, to allow of any attempt at consolation. A greyhound appeared to think differently, for he had placed his fore-paws upon his young mistress's lap, and was attempting to thrust his lean muzzle between her arms and to lick her face in token of canine sympathy. The merchant paused irresolutely for a moment, and then ascending the broad staircase he pushed open the door of Harston's ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have thought such hell would come to White Slides!" exclaimed Lem, with strong emotion. "Miss Collie, I'm powerful sorry fer you. But mebbe it's best so.... They're both dead!... Wade just died with his head on Wils's lap. But Jack never knowed what hit him. He was shot plumb center—both his eyes shot out!... Wade was shot low down.... Montana an' me agreed thet Jack throwed his gun first an' Wade killed him ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... must and he did! And after luncheon in the garden, with the cat in his lap, Miss Greenaway perceptibly thawed out, and when the editor left late that afternoon he had the promise of the artist that she would do her first magazine work for him. That promise was kept monthly, and for nearly two years her articles appeared, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... uncle's lap. "I know what that means. Whenever she says 'Madam-ois-elle Doro-thea!' through her nose it's a German prayer. Good night." And this time ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... hand and flourishing a pewter pot in the other. It hardly need be added that he was more than half tipsy. Nevertheless, even in this state, he was well received; and after he had smothered her with kisses, dandled me on his knee, thrown into her lap all the pay he had left, and drank three more pots of porter, they went very ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the poor little Greek's big and dreary parlour. She was a proud creature was little Thecla, and would not chatter with her maid. She had given nobody her confidence; and now, having once confessed that she was unhappy, she broke out, with her pretty head on Lilian's lap, and had a grand, refreshing, honest cry. That over, she set forth her story. She told how Demetri was madly, foolishly jealous; how he had tried to murder the gentleman of whom he was jealous; and how at last, finding herself alone in the world, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... shopkeeper, 'I have had no complaints.' And even the ice, the very emblem of purity, has not escaped the touch of the dinner-table decorator. Only a few days ago I helped myself with my fingers to what looked like a lovely peach, and let it flop down into the lap of a bishop who was sitting next to me. This was the hostess's ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... expression which was so marked a characteristic of her youthful beauty a year before, still she has rounded somewhat, and both mentally and physically has developed. The slender white hand that rests upon the volume of Carlyle in her lap looks less fragile than it did that day at old Camp Sandy when, in Tanner's library searching for the children's books among the shelves, it showed itself to Truscott's eyes without a certain ring. Mrs. Jack does not fancy Carlyle. He is too crabbed by far, she thinks, and she ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... murmured a sympathetic female engaged in feeding two out of eleven kinds of cake to a child on her lap. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... was playing with a little pet dog. As I continued to talk to her, all at once she said looking into the dog's face, then into mine, "This is the only friend I have and if I feel blue and discouraged, he will climb into my lap ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Consul was respected, and the paper remained folded on the lap of the beautiful woman until the time came to redeem the forfeits. Then the queer penalty was imposed on the great captain of making him doorkeeper, while Madame F——, with Colonel Joseph, made the 'voyage a Cythere' in a neighboring room. The First Consul acquitted himself with ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... abundantly. Travel in the cool morning hours is a delight, and seven o'clock finds the party well on its way. The long cavalcade winds slowly over the mountain trail. Just ahead is a mother with two children, a little girl astride behind her and a two-year-old boy standing in her lap. The mourning dove sounds its melancholy note from the forest, and the children take up the call. The little boy is not very proficient in the imitation, and sister corrects him time after time. Truly, in Indian-land, nature study begins early ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... their supper of baked potatoes was over, and little Gretchen had cleared away the dishes and swept up the hearth, because Granny dear was so tired, she brought her own small wooden stool and placed it very near Granny's feet and sat down upon it, folding her hands on her lap. Granny knew that this meant she wanted to talk about something, so she smilingly laid away the large Bible which she had been reading, and took up her knitting, which was as much as to say: "Well, Gretchen, dear, Granny is ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... rippling like water through a bar of sunlight. With head thrown back and throat bared, she shook it from side to side, and, slowly coiling it, pierced it with the coarse comb. Then passing her hands across her forehead and temples, as women do, she folded them in her lap, and sat motionless. The boy, crouched near, held upon her the mesmeric look of a serpent. Old Gabe was peering covertly from under the brim of his hat, with a chuckle at his lips. Rome had fallen back to a corner of the mill, sobered, speechless, his rifle in a nerveless hand. The passion ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... flowers about it, but she had the tired look of one that had been long waiting. And there was sitting on the step below her chair four grey old women, and the one of them was holding a great cauldron in her lap; and another a great stone on her knees, and heavy as it was it seemed light to her; and another of them had a very long spear that was made of pointed wood; and the last of them had a sword that was without a scabbard. Red Hanrahan stood looking at them for a long Hanrahan-time, but ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... Above bight and bay and island tower the mountains. Their broad green flanks catch the earliest eastern and the latest western lights. Their bare summits are lifted boldly into the infinite blue that is reflected in the waters which lap their foundations. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... question whether the policeman is not demoralizing us; and that in proportion as he does his duty well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete "preservation of body and goods," may not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lap-dog condition in which not conscience, but comfort, doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers had, on the whole, to take care of themselves; we find it more convenient to hire people to take care of us. So much the better for us, in some respects: but, it may be, so much the worse in others. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... It is time for our story, and that would be a nice one, I guess," said Jack, who was as fond of stories as when he sat in his mother's lap and chuckled over the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... towards the window, could not fail to notice it, for it was tilted in such a prominent place that it at once attracted their attention. It represented a very pretty dark-eyed young lady, holding a baby on her lap, with a slight background of Greek columns. The decidedly foreign look about it was justified by the photographer's name in the corner: "Carlo Salviati, Palermo." Over the top was written in ink, in a man's handwriting: "My wife and Leslie, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of content. A lock of grey hair had escaped from her bonnet, across her wrinkled forehead, and gave her a half-careless rakish air. Her youth of long ago—a youth of mad spirits, and of an extraordinary ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the loveliest vase you ever saw," said Betty, busily sorting the tangled mass of grasses and flowers in her lap. "Heavy old colonial glass, you know, ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... you; come, then, and gorge yourselves, cannibals, bloodsuckers—carrion beasts that feed on the dead! See where the blood streams down from the altar, foaming and hot from my darling's heart—the blood that was shed for you! Wallow and lap it and smear yourselves red with it! Snatch and fight for the flesh and devour it—and trouble me no more! This is the body that was given for you—look at it, torn and bleeding, throbbing still with the tortured life, quivering from ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... attachment for the masseter muscles are very feebly developed. At the Museum of Natural History, among skulls of dogs there is one which, though unnamed, is shown by its small size and by its teeth, to have belonged to one variety or other of lap-dogs, and which has the same traits in an equal degree with the skull just described. Here, then, we have two if not three kinds of dogs which, similarly leading protected and pampered lives, show that in the course of generations ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... immediately filled to the brim, and overflowed upon the table! The two snakes that were twisted about Quicksilver's staff (but neither Baucis nor Philemon happened to observe this circumstance) stretched out their heads, and began to lap up the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... France would be onerous and relatively unprofitable, for she would be working largely for the benefit of British and German traders. Indeed, the new Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, admitted to the French ambassador, Jules Cambon, that thenceforth Morocco was a fruit destined to fall into the lap of France; only she must humour public opinion in Germany. Unfortunately, the "Consortium," for joint commercial enterprises of French and Germans in Morocco and the French Congo, broke down on points of detail; and this produced a very sore feeling in Germany ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... peeping over her Shoulder, whom I could not suspect for any but her Spouse, till upon her setting him down I heard her call him dear Pugg, and found him to be her Favourite Monkey. A fourth brought a huge Bale of Cards along with her; and the fifth a Bolonia Lap-Dog; for her Husband, it seems, being a very Burly Man, she thought it would be less trouble for her to bring away little Cupid. The next was the Wife of a rich Usurer, loaden with a Bag of Gold; she told us that her Spouse was very old, and by the course of Nature could not expect to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a side table, be mixed for himself, in an old battered silver cap, a generous draught of bombo; then, with the drink in his hand, walked heavily across the uncarpeted floor to his armchair, which creaked under his weight as he sank into its leathern lap. He put down the rum and water with so unsteady a hand that the liquor spilled, and when he refilled his pipe half the contents of his tobacco box showered down upon his frayed and ancient and unclean coat and breeches. From the pocket of the latter he now drew forth a silver ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... cats on Hallowe'en betoken good or bad luck. If a cat sits quietly beside any one, he will enjoy a peaceful, prosperous life; if one rubs against him, it brings good luck, doubly good if one jumps into his lap. If a cat yawns near you on Hallowe'en, be alert and do not let opportunity slip by you. If a cat runs from you, you have a secret which will be revealed in ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... away. Phyllis seized the ax. It was easy to cut through the half burnt log. She made a hole large enough to crawl through. The flame was only flickering about its outside edges when she crept inside the house with her lap full of sticks, and Madge's box of matches in ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... burning kiss of love expired in cold blooded constraint and reserve. We then sat down to the tea table, I on one side of Olivia Hector on the other, with his right leg on a vacant chair, his left thrown on Olivia's lap, and Andrews extended sprawling his whole length on a sopha. The two youths began a conversation in their own style, while I endeavoured to entertain Olivia with my remarks on London. I related my principal adventures, expectations, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... She died a few years ago. They were, all of them, kind to me. I did the best I could to be a good little boy there; but I recollect Mrs. Channing's face of sorrow and distress when, one day at dinner, I upset into my lap my plate, which she had just filled with Irish stew—one of my best-loved dishes. "Frank never does that," she murmured, as she wiped me up; "never-never!" Nobody looked cheerful, and I never ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... through all the embarrassment and strangeness the fascination of her personal presence. Then he dwelt lingeringly on the picture, which had never faded from his brain, of his next sight of her, as she sat on the old stone wall, with the gay maple-leaves and blackberry-vines in her lap. From that day to the present, he had seen her only a half dozen times, and only for a chance greeting as they had passed each other in the street; but it seemed to him that she had never been really absent from him, so conscious ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... rolled over me, but I made no proposal. Night and gaslight greatly increased my libido. On one occasion my aunt had gone to the village for ice-cream, and L. and I were left alone in the dining-room. I took her on my lap and had a powerful erection. I almost asked her to play sexually with me in the barn, but instead I spoke of an imaginary girl, the first letters of whose successive names spelled an indecent word for coitus—a word known to almost every Anglo-Saxon child, I fear. L. laughed, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... himself as a candidate to the electors, backed by the presence and aid of a very powerful member of the Cabinet. Lady Glencora and Alice were sitting up-stairs with the small, purple-born one in their presence, and the small, purple-born one was lying in Alice's lap. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Tau-Wau-Chee-Hezkaw remained in ignorance of it. Her reproaches and her beauty affected him so much, that he wished himself a man again, and he at once resumed his natural shape. They sat down together, and he began to caress her, and make love to her. He finally ventured to lay his head on her lap, and went to sleep. She pushed his head aside at first, for the purpose of trying if he was really asleep; and when she was satisfied he was, she took her axe and broke his back. She then assumed her natural shape, which was in the form of the sixth giant, and afterwards changed ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... with coal smuts; a French family at breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and black, swinging free, and across her lap a ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... pockets till I wore holes in them without locating anything in the shape money, but finally on about the 919th lap Bunch discovered dollar bill tucked away in a corner, whereupon we turned our faces to every point of the compass and called down maledictions on the head of Flash Harvey, wherever he might be, and ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... longest is most exposed to it. What you call dying is simply the last pain—there is really no such thing as dying. Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to escape. You lift the revolver that you are courteously concealing in your lap, and—" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... his special prerogative, that the angel of death was not allowed to take his soul till he had respectfully asked the permission of the prophet. The request was granted; and Mahomet immediately fell into the agony of his dissolution: his head was reclined on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of all his wives; he fainted with the violence of pain; recovering his spirits, he raised his eyes towards the roof of the house, and, with a steady look, though a faltering voice, uttered the last broken, though articulate, words: "O God!..... pardon my sins....... ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... this child began to cry, Till in his father's lap adown he lay, And saide: "Farewell, father, I must die!" And kissed his father, and died the same day. The woeful father saw that dead he lay, And his two arms for woe began to bite, And said: "Fortune, alas and well-away! For all my woe I blame thy ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... stranger's gaze. Sylvia, all tear-swollen, and looking askance and almost fiercely at the stranger who had made good her intrusion, was drawn, as it were, to her mother's side, and, kneeling down by her, put her arms round her waist, and almost lay across her lap, still gazing at Hester with cold, distrustful eyes, the expression of which repelled and daunted that poor, unwilling messenger, and made her silent for a minute or so after her entrance. Bell suddenly ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... an English prisoner who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from a distance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to the place and sent for a priest, and now she was holding the head of her dying enemy in her lap, and easing him to his death with comforting soft words, just as his sister might have done; and the womanly tears running down her face all ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... her course, with squared yards, both clews of her mainsail hauled up, and studding-sails set on both sides, her topsails occasionally collapsing and flapping to the masts for lack of wind to keep them "asleep." Miss Trevor was, as usual, on deck, seated in a deck-chair, with a book on her lap and the fingers of one hand playing abstractedly with an ear of the great dog that lay stretched contentedly upon the deck beside her. Leslie, also with a book in his hands, was seated right aft upon the taffrail, with his ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... thickets in profusion clothe the base of the hills, ascend up the ravines, and mingle with the precipices. It is in such favoured regions that the traveller finds what the poet Gray, or some one else, has termed beauty lying in the lap ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... overtook Monsieur le Duc de Mirepoix t'other day, who lives at Lord Dunkeron's house at Turnham-green. It was seven o'clock in the evening of one of the hottest and most dusty days of this summer. He was walking slowly in the beau milieu of Brentford town, without any company, but with a brown lap-dog with long ears, two pointers, two pages, three footmen, and a vis-a-vis following him. By the best accounts I can get, he must have been to survey the ground of the battle of Brentford, which I hear he has ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... alive, anyway, for now he did stir drowsily, and mumbled as if objecting. Charley noticed that his hands were clenched tightly over the side-pockets of his old jacket, where the corners were drawn into his lap. ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... are managed expeditiously by the authorities. Scarcely an hour after the Nautilas has dropped her pick the tugboat comes out again and flings us our mail. Bosun and donkeyman trudge aft and take the letters for the foc'sle, the mess-room steward deposits a letter in my lap, and I think of my friend. At this moment he is engaged in repartee with the housekeeper as she lays the table for tea. The heavy twilight is settling down over the river outside; lovers are pacing the walk as they return from their Sunday tramp. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... worth reading of the little Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that called the "Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... And with a beard. Why, it seems only yesterday that I held you in my lap. And now you are a man, a grown-up man. Well, well! How the years pass! This is my ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Morgiana carried home her fortune in her own reticule, and, smiling, placed the money in her husband's lap; and hence the reader may imagine, who knows Mr. Walker to be an extremely selfish fellow, that a great scene of anger must have taken place, and many coarse oaths and epithets of abuse must have come from him, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... light was swung from a bronze tripod in the bow, and the fourteen charges of the young sculptor, wearied with the long day's excitement, were disposed in graceful abandon under its glow. Senci sat with Ta-meri's head in her lap, and three or four drowsy little girls were tumbled about her feet. Only Io was wide awake, and even her sweet face wore a pensive air. Kenkenes had retired to the stern, where, under the high up-standing end, stood a long wooden ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The old year—say what the chronologists will—lingers upon the very lap of spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb, and the bluebirds have chanted ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... forgetting poor Airole asleep on my lap, but Aunt Kathryn scrambled out of her low chair also, and snatched my dress. "No, I'm not going to have you insult him," she exclaimed. "You shan't talk to him without me. He's my friend, not yours, and if I choose to consider ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... understand, as I do, that you are talking theory.' Stephen's habit of thought stood to her here. She saw that her aunt was distressed, and as she did not wish to pain her unduly, was willing to divert the immediate channel of her fear. She took the hand which lay in her lap and held it firmly whilst she smiled in the loving ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... fond mammas stepped back to enjoy the spectacle, which, I assure you, was an impressive one. Belinda sat with great dignity at the head, her hands genteelly holding a pink cambric pocket-handkerchief in her lap. Josephus, her cousin, took the foot, elegantly arrayed in a new suit of purple and green gingham, with his speaking countenance much obscured by a straw hat several sizes too large for him; while on either side sat guests of every ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... wreath of white roses round the frame and tied it with a black bow, and there were two candles lit in front of it, and Hilda had put on a black dress, and was just sitting there gazing at it with her hands in her lap. I begged her pardon, and was going away again quickly, but she ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... servant he had replaced. The frivolity, the indecency of it made Stransom's eyes fill; and he had that evening a sturdy sense that he alone, in a world without delicacy, had a right to hold up his head. While he smoked, after dinner, he had a book in his lap, but he had no eyes for his page: his eyes, in the swarming void of things, seemed to have caught Kate Creston's, and it was into their sad silences he looked. It was to him her sentient spirit had turned, knowing it to ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... wished he could ask Rosie's forgiveness, for it was in a fit of anger that Rosie had snatched the ruby ring off her hand and the cameo from her throat, and had thrown them into Leo's lap saying, "Take them, Leo, you will easily find another girl to share your family name and your poverty as an artist while I have need of wealth." Leo had turned from Rosie's home without the power to reply, he was so taken ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound. But he did not die of it—then. Mother nursed him carefully and had he been spared further persecution, he might have survived. ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... mystery. She was small and of an extreme tenuity, which became more bewildering as she advanced through her meal, especially at supper, which she made of a long cucumber pickle, a Frankfort sausage of twice the pickle's length, and a towering goblet of beer; in her lap she held a shivering little hound; she was in the decorous keeping of an elderly maid, and had every effect of being a gracious Fraulein. A curious contrast to her Teutonic voracity was the temperance of a young ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... indeed, he closely resembles. His life is unadventurous; some might call it monotonous. He takes his position on a smooth rock, protected from cold by the beautiful padded surtout which clothes him from neb to base, and from heat by the cool, limpid wave, softly lap-lapping against the impenetrable feathers. He feels like a stove in the winter, and like a water-bag in the summer. When, from a sort of drowsy, felicitous wantonness—for he never requires to act either on reason or impulse— he desires to visit an adjacent ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the raging Piscataquis, where winter lingers in the lap of spring till it occasions a good deal of talk, there began a career which has been the wonder and admiration of every vigilance committee west ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye |
