"Mantel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I will send for them in good time," answered Miss Levison, glancing at the little golden clock upon the mantel-piece, and noticing that it was nearly half-past nine, the hour at which she expected Lord Arondelle. "But now, Kitty, my good girl, go and inquire if my father is up, and return and let me know. I would like to ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... mournful one. The recollection of their noble sires, when contrasted with their present unhappy associations, affords a sad subject for reflection and "this little boy can stop till morning in our room up-stairs," said she, looking up at an old Connecticut clock that adorned the mantel-piece. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... woman's inquiries. "'Tis two of 'em I found mesilf on the floor when I cleared up the mess from the fireplace this morning. 'Twas two bits of brass. See, I saved 'em," and she shook from a scooped-out gourd which served as an ornament on the mantel two ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... lordship waiting," said the doctor, quietly going on with his tying; and Aunt Hannah toddled back to look at the drawing-room mantel-clock. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Charlie, as he led the way back to the parlor, and took his favorite position, leaning against the mantel. "Only I'm afraid everybody'd ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... a breakfast that was! Never had the antique andirons on the hearth, the pewter plates and dishes upon the walls, the brass-bound blunderbuss above the mantel seemed so bright and polished before, and surely never had they gleamed upon a merrier company. To be sure, the Imp's remarks were somewhat few and far between, but that was simply on ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... industriously, much interested in her carving, cheerful and happy, but watching the clock on the mantel as the time drew near for Mr. Dinsmore's pupils to be dismissed from ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... Europe—to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have observed some little specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard, in a shop of which they constitute the specialty. There is always a crowd about the window. They form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn't make a prettier present to a person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but, between ourselves, isn't classic art sometimes rather a bore? Caricature, burlesque, ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... with the same exquisite taste that prevailed throughout the house. Lace curtains framed the deep-seated windows, an Empire clock and candelabra graced the carved mantel, and the furniture was ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Charley and he were very much the same breed of pup. At this point Mr. Tutt, having carefully committed his guest to an ethical standard as far removed as possible from one based upon self-interest, opened the window a few more inches, sauntered over to the mantel, lit a fresh stogy and spread his long legs in front of the sea-coal fire like an elongated Colossus of Rhodes. He commenced his dastardly countermining of his partner's advice by complimenting Payson on being a man whose words, manner and appearance proclaimed him to the world ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... window we could see nothing but space. I had placed a writing-table underneath it, with some books and a few flowers in a dainty crystal bowl. On the walls, several photographs of Italian masterpieces disguised the ugliness of the typical boarding-house paper. The chimney-mantel was bare ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... charming lattice windows, set in deep square bays. One window faced the fireplace, the other the door. The effect was slightly irregular, but for that very reason all the more charming. The walls of the room were painted light blue; there was a looking-glass over the mantel-piece set in a frame of the palest, most delicate blue. A picture-rail ran round the room about six feet from the ground, and the high frieze above had a scroll of wild roses painted on it in bold, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... delight. It is only the stupid, and those who still cling to Exeter Hall as to a Rock of Ages, who are afraid, or ashamed, to love themselves, and to express that love, if need be. Reggie Hastings, at least, was not ashamed. The mantel-piece in his sitting-room bore only photographs of himself, and he explained this fact to inquirers by saying that he worshipped beauty. Reggie was very frank. When he could not be witty, he often told the naked truth; and truth, without ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... abdicated one title of his majesty. God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing." A strange sound attracted the young man's attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in wax work, and if properly made cannot be detected from the most expensive, artistic bronze. It is used for table, mantel and bracket ornaments, and may be exposed to dust and air without sustaining the slightest injury. It can be dusted like any piece of furniture, and makes a very desirable, inexpensive ornament. The colors it is made in are Gold, Silver, Copper, Fire, and Green Bronze. Among the articles described ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... subject was never broached, and her former prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty. Of her own sorrows she, herself, made no mention. When she spoke from the depths of her bitterness of the war and the ruin it had left, her resentment was general rather than personal. Above the mantel in her room hung the sword of Julius Webb, sheathed under the tattered colours of the Confederate States. At her throat she wore a button that had been cut from a gray coat, and, once, after the close of the war, she had pointed to it before a Federal officer, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... not return to the parlor but to the music-room, a large room on the opposite side of the hall, which Mrs. Ivy, a firm believer in the psychological effect of color, had fitted out in blue to induce a contemplative mood in the occupants. On the mantel and tables were the same miscellaneous collection of bric-a-brac that characterized the parlor. Several pictures of Gerald adorned the walls, the most imposing of which presented him seated at the piano, with his mother standing beside him, a rapt expression ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... believing them to be unworthy of respect or regard, I came home wonderfully changed in all my newly acquired sentiments, resolved never more to wound their feelings, who were so careful of ours, by such unnecessary display. And I hung my flag on the parlor mantel, there to wave, if it will, in the shades of private life; but to make a show, make me conspicuous and ill at ease, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... washed my hands with soap, in our bathroom, came back and grabbed the towel off the rack by the range, and started in carefully wiping the dishes, not exactly wanting to, on account of the clock on our mantel-shelf said it was one o'clock, and the gang was supposed to meet on Bumblebee hill right that very minute, with our sleds, and we were going to have the time of our lives coasting, and rolling in the snow, and making huge balls and snow ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... in a foreign uniform, arose from the sofa at my entrance. The half-extinct lamp on the mantel could not ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... on the parlor mantel," advised Mrs. Pawket. "The twins is comin' up the road. I can hear them hollerin' at that echo down by the swamps. Leave it be; they'll ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... after him with the broom, whackin' at him every chance I got. We was upstairs, we was downstairs, we was in the wood shed an' out of the wood shed, we was under the kitchen table, we was over father's picture on the mantel—we was everywhere, me an' that bat. Then all of a sudden he disappeared completely an' I sit down in the rockin'-chair to puff an' rest. Elijah slept till most eight an' I was so tired I let him sleep although I ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... fastened; he applied the key, opened it, and entered. No one was there; everything appeared in precisely the same condition in which he had left it the evening before,—his pen lying upon the paper as he had dropped it on going out, the candles on the table and the mantel-piece evidently not having been lighted, the window-curtains drawn aside as he had left them; in fine, there was not a single trace of any person's having been in the room. "Had he been insane the night before? He must have been. He was growing old; something ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... come back," she said, to a copy of Andrea del Sarto's St. John that hung above the mantel. "This cruel war has taken my real father; it cannot take my godfather too." She gave herself a little shake, "It is that I am lonely that I think such sad thoughts, I will go out to the garden and pick flowers ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... Upon my mantel-piece they stand, While all its length between them lies; He throws a kiss with graceful hand, She glances ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... often looking at his watch and at the room door, until Mr Swiveller was roused from a short nap, by the setting-down on the landing-place outside, as from the shoulders of a porter, of some giant load, which seemed to shake the house, and made the little physic bottles on the mantel-shelf ring again. Directly this sound reached his ears, Mr Abel started up, and hobbled to the door, and opened it; and behold! there stood a strong man, with a mighty hamper, which, being hauled ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... not carry out. On the mantel in Dickie's room, propped against a tobacco jar, was a photograph of a girl with fluffy hair and pouting lips. Observing that Dickie wrapped the picture carefully in a sweater before tucking it away in his trunk, I asked: "Who ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... regneth al this toun; And wrye yow in that mantel ever-mo; 380 And god so wis be my savacioun, As I have seyd, your beste is to do so. But alwey, goode nece, to stinte his wo, So lat your daunger sucred ben a lyte, That of his deeth ye be nought for to ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort of ecstasy, with no one to respond. For a moment, so empty and bitter seemed her home and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... said Pickering in a gloomy way. "The girls are wild over it; you can't hear anything else talked about at home. But," he broke off abruptly, "got a cigar, Jasper?" and he began to hunt the mantel among the few home-things spread around to ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... cigarette, and turned over the little pile of letters, identifying the writers with a glance at the handwriting on each envelope. Only one was unknown to him: that he placed last, and carried them into the after-cabin to read, leaning his shoulder against the mantel of ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... reply. Dexter drew a cigar out from a vest pocket, as he stood leaning against a decaying mantel, and lighted it. This imitation of a man smoked in silence for a few moments, during which Prescott did not offer ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... I will tell you only one thing that he says, and then we will talk of other things. He says your wife is too good for you." The old poet's dim eyes lighted up instantly, and he started from his seat and flung himself against the mantel-piece, with his back to the fire, as he cried with loud enthusiasm: "And that's true! There he is right!" And his disgust and contempt for the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... about; but they only two sunny windows; a table with books on it, and a pair of gold fishes; a bed with snowy coverlet and very high pillows; a green and white carpet; a mahogany bureau and washing-stand; and then the bright fireplace, with a marble mantel, and a pair of gilt bellows ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... fireplaces, the marble mantelpieces over the same, and in the main dining room, where it was the custom for the men to remain after dinner, and after the ladies had retired, was a curious feature to be observed, that I have never seen but once or twice. Over the marble mantel, but quite within reach, runs a mahogany framework intended for the reception of the toddy glasses, after the various guests shall have finished the generous liquor ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... He considered her through the smoke of his pipe. He was sitting by the hearth now, and she, just through with clearing up, stood by the corner of the mantel shelf, arranging the logs. The firelight danced over her face, so ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... hall. Without speaking, Katherine climbed the stairs. Graham drew a chair between Paredes and the doctor. Bobby lounged against the mantel, trying to find in the Panamanian's face some clue as to his real feelings. But Paredes's eyes were closed. His hand drooped across the chair arm. His slender, pointed fingers held, as if from mere habit, a ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... sipped at his whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft to an appreciative palate. In some vague way the act was vastly insolent. Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then, going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel, dropped his head, and spoke in a ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... tide is pushing them inward, upward. And all the while the light is getting more and more golden, shimmery, radiant. Under this light, beneath this golden mantel of color, these creatures appear still more terrible. As they bend over, their faces tirelessly held downward on a level with their hands, they seem but gnomes; surely they are huge, undeveloped embryos of women, with neither head nor trunk. For this light ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... them home to my fine house," said Wee-Wun the gnome, "for they must be lonely lying here. They shall stand upon my mantel shelf, and every morning I shall say, 'Good-morning, little blue shoes,' and every night I shall say, 'Good-night,' and we shall all be ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... of clothes to be mended, laundry to be put away, a mop and a carpet sweeper greeted me as I went in. The floor was untidy with scraps of cloth pushed into a corner behind the sewing machine. The mantel was decorated with spools of thread, cards of hooks and eyes, and a pin-cushion with threaded needles stuck in it. The bed was uncomfortable. I crawled into it, and lay very still. My heart was filled with bitterness. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... a hot September morning, I was hurling myself upon my mother in all the joy of home-coming when I saw leaning against the clock on the mantel the unmistakable envelope, bearing the impious black scriggle that generally meant a summons. I opened it and read: "Cleaners in full possession here—look our for soap and pails, and report directly at box-office—don't ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... letter and stood aside, hat in hand, while she read it. There were candles in their sconces over the mantel and she moved nearer to have the better light. The soft glow of the candles fell upon her shining hair, and upon cheek and brow; and I could see her bosom rise and fall with the quick-coming breath, and the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... single window looked out on a small garden, he had fitted up as a library, with leather-upholstered furniture, a large desk and table, and scattered on the mantel and about its walls were the photographs of his personal friends and a few costly prints. This room he used as his executive office, and no person was allowed to enter it without first stating his business or presenting ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... danced cheerily before them, and the clock on the mantel ticked steadily as the two sat for some time in silence, gazing ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... around the small apartment, to see what modification the character of the man had had upon the customary furniture of the Hospital, and how much of individuality he had given to that general type. There was a shelf of books, and a row of them on the mantel-piece; works of political economy, they appeared to be, statistics and things of that sort; very dry reading, with which, however, Middleton's experience as a politician had made him acquainted. Besides ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on. "Of course, the mail from the Golden Crossing office might not have been ready for him to take. It's been pretty heavy of late, and is almost more than Aunt Matilda can handle. Though I suppose Jennie gives her a hand now and then," and as he said that Jack looked at the photograph on the mantel of an attractive girl, who seemed to smile at him. Jack looked cautiously around the room, and then raised a hand to his lips and threw a kiss from the tips of his fingers at ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... very ancient," says Algy, in all the insolence of twenty, leaning his flat back against the mantel-shelf, "as he ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... that of sweeping and dusting a parlor. No information was vouchsafed as to the manner of going about this work, but she had often swept out the cabin, and this part of her task was successfully accomplished. Then at once she took the dusting cloth, and wiped off tables, chairs and mantel-piece. The dust, as dust will do, when it has nowhere else to go, at once settled again, and chairs and tables were soon covered with a white coating, telling a terrible tale against Harriet, when her Mistress came in to see how the work progressed. Reproaches, and savage words, fell upon the ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... that was the name of Captain Enos's friends, gave Anne a warm welcome Their house seemed very large and grand to the little girl. There was a carpet on the sitting-room floor, the first Anne had ever seen, and pictures on the walls, and a high mantel with tall brass candlesticks. ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... department, from whom she received her work, was a man of middle-age, of rather stern and forbidding aspect; and as she approached his desk, he pointed to the clock on the mantel-piece. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... argued over pictures. Both tired out with a day of effort, they had come near tears in a verbal battle over the best place for the sole article remaining unplaced. Gloria wanted it in the hallway; Mrs. Gaynor pleaded for it over the mantel in the living-room. Finally it was Gloria who cried ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... The mantel clock reported the hour as nine; His Excellency scowled at the clock's face. "And you got word back, I suppose, that after he has come out of his mill at ten o'clock and has washed his ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the mantel-piece were encumbered, almost buried under a heterogeneous mass of things. Muslin petticoats, tossed down haphazard, pieces of lace, a cardboard helmet covered with gilt paper, open jewel-cases, bows of ribbon; curling-tongs, half ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... The furniture dark and cumbersome. Down stage R., a door. Up stage, R., C, capacious fireplace, with solid mantel-piece above it. At back R., and L., two substantial casement windows. The windows are in deep recesses, about two steps above the stage level. These recesses are sheltered by heavy draperies. Between the windows, up stage, ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... embarrassingly unrestrained. It would not be content to sleep anywhere else than in my room. If I put it out in the yard, it forthwith organized a search for me in which the entire neighborhood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. Its manner of doing it boomed the local trade in hair-brushes and mantel bric-a-brac, but brought on complications with the landlord in the morning that usually resulted in the departure of Bob and myself for other pastures. Part with him I could not; for Bob loved me. Once I tried, when it seemed that there was no choice. I had been put out for perhaps the tenth ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... one likes to be laughed at, and we won't be too hard on Jerry," said Mother Horton, as she helped Sunny Boy get ready for bed. "Shall I put your donkey prize up here on the mantel shelf ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... of saying the right thing, I shall never get that if I live to be a hundred;" and then he stood up, and putting a hand on the mantel-piece looked at the photographs of my people, but he did not say what ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... as he carefully selected a tie, at the strange request he had received at the telephone. He glanced at the French clock on the mantel. His father, he knew, had been at his desk ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... time to go! The mishaps of the household, instead of being a matter of anxiety and apprehension, are a matter of merriment—the loaf of bread turned into a geological specimen; the slushy custards; the jaundiced or measly biscuits. It is a very bright sunlight that falls on the cutlery and the mantel ornaments ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... depending upon him for support, and at other times enraging his more energetic and sanguine neighbour by his want of what the latter called spirit. It was very evident that Higgins was in a passion when Margaret entered. Boucher stood, with both hands on the rather high mantel-piece, swaying himself a little on the support which his arms, thus placed, gave him, and looking wildly into the fire, with a kind of despair that irritated Higgins, even while it went to his heart. Bessy was rocking herself violently backwards and forwards, as was her wont (Margaret ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and his black velvet coat was embroidered all over with yellow silk designs, flowers, and patterns. It was like the silly mantel-borders and things that Mrs. Pont, the housekeeper, did in her leisure time. ("Cruel-work" she called it, and the boy ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... nearly up to the ceiling, the bottom with drawers that had curious brass handles, rings spouting out of a dragon's mouth. There were glass doors above and books and strange ornaments and minerals on the shelves. On the high mantel, and very few houses could boast them, stood brass candlesticks and vases of colored glass that had come from Venice. There were some quaint portraits, family heirlooms ranged round the wall, and chairs with carved legs ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... living-room, their feet pressing without sound into the thick rugs. Everything here was fresh and new, but selected with excellent taste and careful attention to detail. Not a thing; was lacking, from the pretty upright piano to the enameled clock ticking upon the mantel. The dining-room was a picture, indeed, with stained-glass windows casting their soft lights through the draperies and the side-board shining with silver and glass. There was a cellarette in one corner, the Major noticed, and it ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... this mean?" he asked, rising suddenly from his seat as pale as ashes, and clinging to the mantel-shelf for support as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... pitch-pine doors of Gothic design in it; there were inlaid marble mantel-pieces and cut-steel fenders; there were stupendous wall-papers, and octagonal, medallioned Wedgwood what-nots, and black-and-gilt Austrian images holding candelabra, with every other refinement that Art had achieved or wealth had bought between 1851 and 1878. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... bedrooms where modern taste held sway. Nothing had been taken from or added to the Bucks' guest chamber since Grandmother Knight had reverently placed there her best highboy and her finest mahogany bed and candle stand. On the mantel was the model of a ship that tradition said the Norse sailor had carved, and on the walls steel engravings of Milton and Newton—Milton looking up at the stars seeking the proper rhymes, and Newton with eyes cast down searching out the power of ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... crossed the grinning skull of the gray wolf. They softened the eyes of the antelope's head, and made dark lines behind the long-tined antlers of the elk and of the deer. They brought forth to view in alternate eclipse and definition the great, grim bear's head which hung above the mantel. Every trophy gathered in years of the chase, once perhaps prized, now perhaps forgotten, was brought into evidence, nor could one escape noting each one, and giving to each, for this one night more, the story which belonged to it. I sat and looked upon them all, and so there passed a panorama ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... reckoning amidst our tears and kisses, and when my brain at last made known to me the existence of other souls than ours, I looked up and found that we were alone. A saucy little clock ticked rhythmically on a mantel. I felt an absurd desire to smash it, for the impudent thing had ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous shapes, composed the furniture of that famous room, where the most momentous and the most trivial questions were discussed with the same gravity of tone and manner. There was a beautiful portrait of the duchess on the wall; and on the mantel a bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which had received the honor of a medal of the first class ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in disturbing the harmony by any other tint. The walls were yellow, with a frieze of garlands of yellow roses; the ceiling was tinted yellow, the tiles on the shining little hearth were yellow, every ornament upon the mantel-shelf was yellow, down to a china shepherdess who wore a yellow china gown and carried a basket filled with yellow flowers, and bore a yellow crook. The bedstead was brass, and there was a counterpane ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Frostwinch there was a good deal of this flavor of defunct, but by no means departed, merit. Grim portraits stared coldly from the walls, Copleys that would have looked upon a Stuart as parvenu; the Frostwinch and Canton arms hung over the ends of the mantel; while the very furniture seemed to condescend to visitors. Ashe could not have told why the place affected him as overpowering, but he none the less was conscious of the feeling. The company was apparently nearly all assembled ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... think so," rejoined Esther, "prove it by showing me how to load these." As she spoke she took from the mantel one of the pistols that were lying there, and turned it over ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... did not choose to discuss with him, and dropped her lashes before the plainly spoken admiration in his eyes. So a silence fell between them, broken only by the ticking of the agate clock on the mantel and the music of sleigh-bells in a distant street. Presently the sleigh-bells died away, and it seemed to Cynthia that the sound of her own heartbeats must be louder than the ticking of the clock. Her tact had suddenly deserted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... room. May be you've been in the barroom of an old Flemish inn—faith, but a handsome chamber it was as you'd wish to see; with a brick floor, a great fire-place, with the whole Bible history in glazed tiles; and then the mantel-piece, pitching itself head foremost out of the wall, with a whole regiment of cracked tea-pots and earthen jugs paraded on it; not to mention half a dozen great Delft platters hung about the room by way of pictures; and the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to the Czaritza, who received me in the same style of simple friendliness, and then, pointing to a money-box which formed a conspicuous object on the mantel-shelf, he added: ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... of the parlor were startled by a sharp cry from Maud, and in another instant she flew into the room, rushed at a bound to the fireplace, snatched down her light rifle from its hooks over the mantel, and crying, "Quick, Ethel, your rifle!" was gone ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... after legends when he has tired of collecting antiquities. Was there a Princess born here? Perhaps. At any rate it is not a legend; history nor peasantry make mention of it. Will Herr be so kind as to carry the ladder to the mantel so ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... however, were soon built for the accommodation of the people. At Shelburne, or Port Roseway—anglicised from the French Razoir—a town of fourteen thousand people, with wide streets, fine houses, some of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York, arose in two or three years. The name of New Jerusalem had been given to the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the Loyalists when they found that the place they had chosen for their new ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... elapsed before Hilda appeared he glanced at himself in the mantel mirror, fidgeted with his necktie, and walked to the window and back again to his chair. She had actually called to see him! ... His agitation was extreme... But how like her it was to call thus boldly! ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Otis just right some months back," growled another—a man who sat back in the shadow of the high mantel and wore a cloak, the high collar of which half muffled his face. At the speech of this one Enoch, who had been dragging at the sleeve of his companion to get him away, ceased this and pushed forward himself. Something in the tone of the ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... with you," his companion returned, but flushing again, "and tell you that, in order to make this payment to you, I was obliged to borrow the money and gave, as security, a valuable mantel clock, which was one of my wife's wedding gifts. In other words, I pawned it. It goes against my pride to confess it; but the idea of debt is horrible to me: and, having been in very straitened circumstances of late, from sickness in my family and other causes, I had no ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... polysyllabic nouns ending in {-el}, {-em}, {-en}, {-er}, when their stem-syllable is long, as {mantel}, mantle, {[a]tem}, breath, {morgen}, morning, {acker}, field. Those in {-em}, {-en} generally retain the {e} in the dative plural. Polysyllabic nouns with short stem-syllables fluctuate between the retention or loss of the {e}, as gen. sing. {vogeles} or {vogels}, ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... into the fire. Stepping to the mantel, he took from it a small metal casket, builded to hold jewels. What should be those gems of price which the metal box protected? Richard did not strike one as the man to nurse a weakness for barbaric adornment. A bathrobe is not a costume calculated to teach one the wearer's fineness. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Colonel was nothing more nor less than a silly-looking little man, made of lead, that stood on the mantel-shelf holding a clock in his arms. The clock never went, but, for that matter, the Colonel never went either, for he had been standing stock-still for years, and it seemed perfectly ridiculous to ask him anything about going anywhere, so Davy felt quite safe in looking up at him and asking permission ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... the risk of nodding themselves into the kitchen fire. Mrs. Dudgeon sleeps with a shawl over her head, and her feet on a broad fender of iron laths, the step of the domestic altar of the fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and a seat conventionally ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... into the long living room, where a deep fireplace (happily the chimney had drawn well from the first, or the builder would have been sore perplexed) gave a look of hospitality to the otherwise severe furnishings. The fireplace and mantel-shelf were Gaston's pride and delight. Upon them he had worked his fanciful designs, and the result was most satisfactory. There was a low, broad couch near the hearth piled with pine cushions covered with odds and ends of material that had come into a man's possession from limited sources. A table, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... much exercised in the early part of the winter by a burglary, which robbed her of a beautiful French mantel clock given her on our silver wedding-day by a dear friend; and by the loss of my watch, stolen from me in the cars on my way home from the Seminary—a beautiful watch with a chain made of her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... women seated bolt upright and evidently boiling over with anger, was full of a grotesque humour which affected her hysterically. She managed to stifle the laugh, and looked at them patiently and calmly as she stood by the mantel-piece with one arm resting on the shelf. The unconscious ease and grace of her attitude increased Mrs. Heron's irritation; her thin lips trembled and her eyes ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... was still standing with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the mantel-piece, with his coat-tails over his arms. He said nothing further at once, but continued to fix his eyes on his nephew, who was now walking backwards and forwards from one end of the room to the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... at the clock on the mantel-piece—right, nearly eight o'clock. But all that was immaterial now. And, staring straight in front of him as though his eyes were fixed on some object, he placed himself ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... back her veil, as she continued, "And she hopes, she believes that this is her old home, for she recognizes everything around her. O yes, I know that carved mantel, that ebony writing-case, that screen, that bust, and that picture over the ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... leaning against the high mantel, saying a wood fire was delicious. He smiled down on me ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... I to tell you to leave my matches on the mantel-shelf?" snapped Lancelot. "You seem to delight to hide them away, as if I had time to play ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... the Bethlehem manger in the Dutch Reform Church at the foot of the high pulpit and dominie Bogardus told us the story of the Birthday of Our Lord in simple words which we could all understand. Early in the morning we ran down to the sitting room where our stockings were hanging from the mantel shelf filled by Santa Claus with Christmas gifts, with more piled on the table for our friends and for poor families. That was what an effusive writer once called the "halcyon and vociferous" beginning of ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... in conversation with his valet, he occasionally asks for something unheard-of, or fastidious to a degree. You must not walk him from one chamber to another, but manage it as follows:—"It was not until the beautiful airs of the French clock that decorated the mantel-piece had been thrice played, with all their variations, that the Honourable Augustus Bouverie entered his library, where he found his assiduous Coridon burning an aromatic pastile to disperse the compound of villanous ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... with which the "black lily" returned his amorous squeeze of her hand, he ventured to raise it to his lips, and imprint a kiss upon the short, thick fingers. At this critical and rapturous moment the door flew open, and the real Mary entered, bearing a lighted glass mantel-lamp in each hand. With a profound curtesy she placed her lamps upon the mantel-piece, and gravely asking pardon for her intrusion, flew into the room which she had just left, and which immediately echoed with her laughter, lively and joyous, but most unfashionably loud, hearty, and prolonged. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... that thrilling hour of peril and anxiety, his eye was enraptured by the beauty of the room. Not only was it furnished with the utmost luxuriance, but everything spoke of a quaint and cultured taste, from the curious marble clock and bronze on the mantel, even to the pattern of the Turkey carpet on which the glare of the fire, as it glinted through the shutters, played faintly. One of the most marked features, however, was an exquisite life-size statue ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... let him out after we got home he was frantic, and jumped on the mantel, tables, and chairs, scattering things right and left. Finally he started to run up a lace window curtain back of the sewing machine. On top of the machine was a plate of warm cookies that Charlie had ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... stage. If Hahn & Lohman prided themselves on one thing more than on another, it was the lavish generosity with which they invested a play, from costumes to carpets. A period play was a period play when they presented it. You never saw a French clock on a Dutch mantel in a Hahn & Lohman production. No hybrid hangings marred their back drop. No matter what the play, the firm provided its furnishings from the star's slippers to the chandeliers. Did a play last a year or a week, at the end of its run furniture, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... clear out o' this kitchen," snapped Eliza. "Out with ye! You too, Phin Striker. I'll call ye when the table's set. Now, you go an' set over there in the corner, away from the window, deary, where the lightnin' can't git at you, an'—You'll find a comb on the mantel-piece, Mr. Gwynne, an' Phineas will git you a boot-jack out o' the bedroom if that darkey is too weak to pull your boots off for you. Don't any of you go trampin' all over the room with your muddy boots. I've got work enough to do without scrubbin' ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... glanced anxiously at the clock on the mantel just under the portrait of Mrs. Tate's great-grandfather, and hurriedly folded her work. She never came to a meeting of the Needlework Guild if she thought it likely Miss Gibbie would be there. But Miss Gibbie was even less regular ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Anthony, and bring me a bottle of that old madeira of '37—stop, Anthony; make it '39. I think, judge, it is a little dryer.' Well, Anthony bowed, and left the room, and in a few moments he came back, set a lighted candle on the mantel, and, leanin' over my chair, said in a loud whisper: 'De cellar am locked, suh, and I'm 'feard Mis' Slocomb dun tuk ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The onyx marble mantel-piece contained but a single ornament—an orchestra. A coral vase contained a large and perfect tiger lily, made of gold. Each stamen supported a tiny figure carved out of ivory, holding a musical instrument. When they played, each figure appeared ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... went up to my room and sat down with my back against the door and my feet on the window-ledge, and I rested one elbow in the washpitcher and put one knee on the mantel and tried to read the newspapers. The first thing I struck was a Christmas poem, a sentimental Christmas poem, full of allusions to the family circle, and the old homestead, and the stockings hanging by the fireplace, and all that ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... establishment, the "three-million-dollar palace on a desert," as Mrs. Billy Alden had described it. Montague had read of the famous mantel in its entrance hall, made from Pompeiian marble, and costing seventy-five thousand dollars. And the Wallings were the railroad ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... everything was in the most perfect order, while the few ornaments and some pretty shells, that the fisherman and Ellen's betrothed had brought on their return from different voyages, were tastefully arranged on the mantel-piece and tables, with several books, which, from the pencilled passages he observed as he opened them, had evidently been well conned. In one, a small volume of miscellaneous poems, Ellen's name was inscribed on the fly-leaf, in a graceful Italian ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... fall," cried Polly, and throwing on her bath wrapper, she seized the light from the mantel and ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... left was an enormous stone fireplace with high mantel-shelf of stone and the chimney above. The fire-opening was wide enough for an old Yule log, and on either side of it were double glass doors opening into a long porch room, which also had a fireplace on the opposite side ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him, and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen eyes; but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes flashed out on him again; and when he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Passepartout reached the second story he recognised at once the room which he was to inhabit, and he was well satisfied with it. Electric bells and speaking-tubes afforded communication with the lower stories; while on the mantel stood an electric clock, precisely like that in Mr. Fogg's bedchamber, both beating the same second at the same instant. "That's good, that'll do," said Passepartout ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... they had stuck on top of the pile, half tipped over. It looked odd and I wanted to set it up straight. It was the clock we bought when we were married, and we'd had it about twenty years on the mantel in the livin'-room. It was a good ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... rattlesnake bands on their hats or stretched the skin over the edge of the cantle of their saddles. He always slept with a hair rope around his blankets when he spent a night in the open. He would not sit in a room where snake-rattles decorated the parlor mantel or the organ. A curiosity as to how they had learned his peculiarity crept through the paralyzing horror which numbed him, and as if in answer the scene in the dining-room of the ranch rose before him. "I hates snakes and mouse-traps ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... man stood near the tall mantel, facing the group. There was nothing servile in his attitude: on the contrary, his manner, when addressing the gentleman who had once been his master, suggested easy, not to say affectionate, familiarity. The firelight, shining on his face, revealed a countenance ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... far off," answered Gering sullenly. Iberville forbore to point a moral, but walked to the mantel, above which hung two swords of finest steel, with richly-chased handles. He had noted them as soon as he had entered the room. "By the governor's leave," he said, and took them down. "Since we ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... looked at a clock which stood upon the mantel-shelf, and saw that it was a little past nine. It was an hour or more before it would be time to give Malleville the drops. Hepzibah thought that if she went to bed, she should fall asleep, and not wake up again until morning, for she always slept very soundly. She determined, therefore, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... brass bedstead, a mantel with a blue and white lambrequin, a blue and white toilet set, pretty pictures on the wall, and a small bookshelf, made a very cozy looking nest for a little girl, and so Florence thought, who had no room of her own, but slept ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... with odds and ends of no value, and the most curiously bare apartment imaginable. A scarlet tinder-box glowed among a pile of books on the nightstand. A brace of pistols, a box of cigars, and a stray razor lay upon the mantel-shelf; a pair of foils, crossed under a wire mask, hung against a panel. Three chairs and a couple of armchairs, scarcely fit for the shabbiest lodging-house in the street, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... himself. The picture is better, perhaps, than the bricks were, yet it is not enlivening. The only other objects in the room worth mentioning are, a particularly small book-shelf in a corner; a cuckoo-clock on the mantel-shelf, an engraved portrait of Queen Victoria on the wall opposite in a gilt frame, and a portrait of Sir Robert Peel in a frame ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... of marble. This piece is pure white. This is colored. It is marked by many strange forms, as you see in your mantel-pieces and table-tops. In this piece, you see many colored spots—mottled it ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... helping old Anita with the dinner for the men, seeing about the number of new palings for the garden. She had swept every inch of the deep adobe house, had fixed over the arrangement of Indian baskets on the mantel, had filled all the lamps with coal-oil. She was very careful with the lamps, trimming the wicks to smokeless perfection, for oil was scarce and precious in Lost Valley, as were all outside products, since they must come in at long intervals and in small ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... before the white-and-gold mantel, staring steadfastly at the floor tiling, Isadore Kantor turned suddenly, a bit whiter and older at ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... who wrote articles about the Huns in newspapers, stood at the Cooney mantel. He did not move at all; the man's gaze upon her half-averted face did not wink once. His own face, this girl had thought, was one for strange expressions; but she might have thought the look it wore now stranger than any ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were fine. Her profile, indeed, with the narrow forehead and the sensitive upper lip, might fairly have suggested the mask of Clytie which Richard had bought of an itinerant image-dealer, and fixed on a bracket over the mantel-shelf. But her eyes were her specialty, if one may say that. They were fringed with such heavy lashes that the girl seemed always to be in half-mourning. Her smile was singularly sweet and bright, perhaps because it broke through so ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... but he would not be the first to speak; so he let her flutter about—brightening the fire, putting to right things that were right enough as they were, and making a pretense of being busied with household cares. At length, there was nothing more to do except to wind the clock, which stood on the mantel, over the hearth. Here was her opportunity. "The evening has seemed very long," she said, "but it is ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... I have left the key to his trunk on the mantel, behind the picture of the madonna. I stuffed papers into Arthur's trouser leg to deceive him if he came back before I had a chance to escape. But I hoped you would discover nothing until you read this letter, for I wanted to surprise you. Have ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... be unexperienc'd, to counsel and advise her to buy of the richest and newest mode, and what will be neatest, and where to be bought. Oh these are so skilfull in the art of ordring things, that you need not dispute with your Wife about the hanging of a Picture above the Chimney-mantel! for they'l presently say, there's nothing better in that place then large China dishes; and that Bed-stead must be taken down, and another set up in the place with curious Curtains and Vallians, and Daslles: ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... clock on the mantel, when at last she was quite dressed, and ready for her breakfast, she saw that it was more than an hour past the usual time for that meal; yet no one had been near her, and she was very hungry; but, even if her father had not forbidden ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... to his room, they were amazed to see the door swinging open and shut in the breeze; they noted that the lock was torn off. They hurried in, and found one of the windows broken, and books and chairs scattered about in confusion; the mantel and cloth and the photographs on it were all awry. It was evident that a fierce struggle had taken place in the room. The nine Lakerimmers stood aghast, staring at each other in stupefaction. Reddy was the first to find tongue, ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes |
