"Nape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... handsome young fellow had caught her just as she was beginning to descend the steps, and he planted a very substantial kiss on the nape of her neck before he let her go; which was no great harm after all, since they were to be married in a fortnight or so, before ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... herself immediately behind Miss Schley, who moved with impressive deliberation and the extreme composure of a well-brought-up child thoroughly accustomed to being shown off to visitors. Her straw-coloured hair was done low in the nape of her snowy neck, and, as she took her little steps, her white skirt trailed over the carpet behind her with a sort of virginal slyness. As she passed Leo Ulford it brushed gently against him, and he drummed the large fingers of his left hand with sudden violence on the tablecloth, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... smooth, broad forehead on which the curling, but not woolly, hair grew low. This hair, by the way, was not dressed up in any of the eccentric native fashions, but simply parted in the middle and tied in a big knot over the nape of the neck, the little ears peeping out through its tresses. The hands, like the feet, were very small and delicate, and the curves of the bust soft and full without being coarse, or even showing the promise ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... climate. They wear suits of white linen or pongee with soft shirts, and the solar topi, or pith helmet, which is a necessity in summer and a great comfort at other seasons. The helmet keeps the head cool and shelters the nape of the neck, which cannot be exposed safely to the sun's rays. Instead of giving health as the California sun does, this Hongkong sunshine brings heat apoplexy and fever. All the Orient is represented by interesting types. Here are rich Chinese merchants ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... their grasp. There is something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by, and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some one else. Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow. She looked such a fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... the heads, falling to the shoulders but slightly waved against the nape of the neck. They are looking down, each at a spray of winter-rose. The tunics fall to the knees in ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... a single sheet of cotton cloth printed in blue or black with the most astonishing borders and spotty designs. This is drawn tight just above the breasts, leaving the shoulders and arms bare. Their hair is divided into perhaps a dozen parts running lengthwise of the head from the forehead to the nape of the neck, after the manner of the stripes on a watermelon. Each part then ends in a tiny twisted pigtail not over an inch long. The lobes of their ears have been stretched until they hold thick round disks about three ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... bonnet? Truly, we can conjecture no other source, than these very words designating her rank, for the bonnet was imperial—none but such a lady would have dared to originate it; and it was also high—high indeed! The crown rose eighteen inches in perpendicular altitude from the nape of the neck, while the front poke retained the modest dimensions of the original gipsy hat. We recollect the duchess in Hyde Park with this monstrous headgear, and the women all in ecstacy at the delightful novelty. The success of this bonnet was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... afterwards, Captain Cy blushed until the ends of the red lapped over at the nape of his neck. However, he bent and kissed the rosy lips and then quickly brushed his ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gather up his skins, a proceeding that Stackpole, against whom the laugh was turned by this sally of Nathan's, resisted by catching him by the nape of the neck, twirling him round, and making as if he really ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... a rude and teasing hand, but folded around her head behind her little ears; when they saw the small curls breaking over and through the brown braids that were flecked with gilt, and the stray locks, like feathers of spun silk, clustering in the nape of her neck; when David and Blair saw these things—it was about the time their voices were showing amazing and ludicrous register—something below the artless brutalities of the boys' sense of humor was touched. They took abruptly their first perilous step out of boyhood. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... dragged the box from where it lay by Pierre's feet, and dropping on his knees began to fumble with the lock. At last he contrived to unlock it, and raised the lid. The duke sprang forward and, catching him by the nape of the neck, crammed his head down into the box, bidding him, "Look—look—look!" And while he said it he laughed, and took advantage of Lafleur's posture to give him four or five ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... any lime has got entangled in the eyelashes, carefully clear it away with a bit of soft linen soaked in vinegar-and-water. Violent inflammation is sure to follow; a smart purge must be therefore administered, and in all probability a blister must be applied on the temple, behind the ear, or nape of the neck. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of McTee landed on Masters's mouth and hurled him in a heap into the corner of the cabin. The captain seized him by the nape of the neck and jerked him back to his feet, ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even for that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing—a dark thing—a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... something to bring your ac—ac—action for, rascal," cried Nicholas. And, seizing the attorney by the nape of the neck with one hand, and the hind wings of his doublet with the other, he cast him to a considerable distance into the river, where he fell ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of which he hazarded himself so far, that, besides his other adventures, he had but lately been wounded in the leg by an arrow, which had so shattered the shank-bone that splinters were taken out. And on another occasion he received a violent blow with a stone upon the nape of the neck, which dimmed his sight for a good while afterwards. And yet all this could not hinder him from exposing himself freely to any dangers, insomuch that he passed the river Orexartes, which he took to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... splashes of mud—hardly legible. They were handed over to a man who stood in the immediate circle of light projected by the lamp. He seized them and examined them carefully. This man was short and slight, was dressed in well-made cloth clothes; his hair was held in at the nape of the next in a modish manner with a black taffeta bow. His hands were clean, slender, and claw-like, and he wore the tricolour scarf of office round his waist which proclaimed him to be a member of one of the numerous Committees ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the hands of the executioner, wore the same costume their mothers and sisters had worn for that last lugubrious ceremony; that is to say, a white gown and red shawl, with their hair cut short at the nape of the neck. Some added to this costume, already so characteristic, a detail that was even more significant; they knotted around their necks a thread of scarlet silk, fine as the blade of a razor, which, as in Faust's Marguerite, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... whatever is in fashion, provided it so fits the head as not to require continual adjustment, often needed when the hands would be better employed with the reins and whip. It should shade from the sun, and if used in hunting protect the nape of the neck from rain. The recent fashions of wearing the plumes or feathers of the ostrich, the cock, the capercailzie, the pheasant, the peacock, and the kingfisher, in the riding-hats of young ladies, in my humble opinion, are highly to ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... to struggle against Ross's hold, and Ross, gripping him by the nape of the neck, moved through a screen of brush to a hollow. Luckily there was no water cupped there, for McNeil lay in the bottom of that dip, his arms tied tightly behind him and his ankles lashed together with no thought for the pain ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... dedicate a glance! At last she began to retrace her steps in the direction of the cottage; whereupon, becoming quite desperate, I broke off a piece of plaster, took a happy aim, and hit her with it in the nape of the neck. She clapped her hand to the place, turned about, looked on all sides for an explanation, and spying me (as indeed I was parting the branches to make it the more easy), half uttered and half swallowed down again a ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shoulder. Muriel was resting her brilliant cheek against the lapel of Maury Noble's dinner coat and her powdered left arm was apparently twisted around his head. One was impelled to wonder why she failed to seize the nape of his neck with her hand. Her eyes, turned ceiling-ward, rolled largely back and forth; her hips swayed, and as she danced she kept up a constant low singing. This at first seemed to be a translation of the song ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Eastern blood put ruddy flame for the red colour; tawny olive edged from the red; rare vivid yellow, all but amber. The light that first looks down upon the fallen sun was her complexion above the brows, and round the cheeks, the neck's nape, the throat, and the firm bosom prompt to lift and sink with her vigour of speech, as her eyes were to flash and darken. Meeting her you swore she was the personification of wandering Asia. There was no question of beauty and grace, for these have laws. The curve ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interest. Katie!—they had known her as a toddling child; and later as a little girl scampering off to school, all legs and pinafore and streaming golden hair. And now she was sixteen years old. Her hair, tied back at the nape of her neck, would very soon be "up." Her big blue eyes were as they had always been; but she had long passed out of pinafores into aprons, had taken on a sedateness befitting her years and her duties, and was anxious to be regarded rather as an aunt than as ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... though, and still fresh-coloured, with the rosy cheeks some old people have. Her coiffe was drawn low upon the forehead and upon the top of the head, was composed of two or three large rolls of muslin that seemed to telescope out of one another, and fell on to the nape. Her venerable face, framed in the pure white pleats, had almost a man's look, while her soft, tender eyes wore a kindly expression. She had not the vestige of a tooth left, and when she laughed she showed her round gums, which had ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... unknown and yet near place in advance there came a dry, shrill whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbs of the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this sound seemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of the spine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listening horror, surprise, rage. The dog, too—the same icy hand was laid upon him, and he stood crouched and quivering, his ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... grass-snake. He lay with all his four-foot length displayed in graceful sinuous curves, and was listened to in silence. Nothing loves a snake, however harmless. "With me, as with the caterpillars, it is mostly bluff. I can swing back my head, and flatten the nape of my neck, as well as any deadly adder. I can also strike, but there is no poison behind the blow. My only weapon of offence is smell, a sickening musty smell, that makes the enemy loose his hold. Once ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... door flew open, and into the room bundled first Louis without his cap; and then on his heels and gripping him by the nape, Claude Mercier. Nor did the latter seem in the least degree abashed by the presence in which he found himself. On the contrary, he looked at the Syndic, his head high; as if he, and not the magistrate, had the right to ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... I've as much right here as you or any one else, and I'm going to stay till I'm ready to go home and you can't——" but, before he had completed his defiant sentence, the slightly built teacher was at his side and had grasped the nape of his coat. It seemed to the lad, that an iron vise had caught his garment and a span of horses were pulling at him. He clutched desperately at everything within reach and spread his legs apart and curled up his toes in the effort to hook ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... heads, and the lovely green and crimson touracoos, which, while their violet and crimson relatives wore, as it were, a feather casque, displayed on their part a vivid green ornamentation that passed from beak to nape, which when they were excited looked more ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the other on his poll; hence it was presumed that the faithful beast had first seized his master by the shoulder, and swam with him in this manner for some time, but that his sagacity had prompted him to quit this hold, and to shift it to the nape of the neck, by which he had been enabled to support the head out of water; and in this way he had conveyed him nearly a quarter of a mile before he had brought him to the creek, where the banks were ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... man in Wyoming, when he felt the cold muzzle of Wade's Colt boring into the nape of his neck and heard the ranchman's stern warning to keep quiet or take the consequences. Sheriff Thomas had earned his right to his "star" by more than one exhibition of nerve, but he was too familiar with gun ethics to argue with the business ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... almost wailing, and utterly distracted leaned against Kuzma Vassilyevitch's sleeve.... He was overcome with confusion in his turn and stood rooted to the spot, only repeating from time to time, "There, there!" while he gazed at the delicate nape of the dishevelled damsel's neck, as it shook ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... presently kneeled down by the bed, murmuring with pity as it seemed, and Master Richard felt himself raised a little, and then laid down again, and there was something soft at the nape of his neck over the wooden pillow and against his torn shoulders. There was something, too, laid across his body and legs, as if to keep him ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the head, as was the fashion of the time, and both were guiltless of powder, but Pamela's rebellious waves were trained to lie as close as she could make them, while Betty's would crop out into little dainty saucy curls over her forehead and down the nape of her slender neck in a most bewildering fashion. Their complexions, like Miss Moppet's, were exquisitely satin-like in texture, but there was no break in Pamela's smooth cheeks, whereas Betty's dimples lurked ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... to ourselves, and saw him sitting in the porch looking at us. When he had considered us well, he advanced toward us, and laying his hand upon me, took me up by the nape of my neck, and turned me round, as a butcher would do a sheep's head. After having examined me, and perceiving me to be so lean that I had nothing but skin and bone, he let me go. He took up all the rest one by one, and viewed ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... must keep the thing moving or it sticks!" But it was too late; the wax had hardened in the hairs of his nape—Father Lasse used to call them his "luck curls," and prophesied a great future for him on their account—and there he stood, and could not remove the waxed-end, however hard he tried. He made droll grimaces, the pain was so bad, and the saliva ran out ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Aphrodite the girl wore a long pink tunic, with a peplum of the same colour heavily embroidered. Her hair was piled high on her head, leaving the lovely nape of her neck half covered by her draperies, her exquisitely delicate arms emerging from a sleeveless tunic. To represent the shepherd Paris, the Duke was wearing a short tunic embroidered with agate beads to hold the stuff down, ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... the little stray curl on the nape of the graceful neck and wished—all the foolish things that lovers have wished since the world began. But he had a great longing to see her eyes. If he were to say sharply, "Look at me!" would she look up? Absurd idea! And anyway he couldn't say it, or anything ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... that she had perished from other means than appeared, I made a most rigid examination of her body, when I discovered under the hair in the nape of the neck, a minute spot, which, upon probing, I found to be the end of a small, thin point of steel. It had been thrust by a careful hand into the most vulnerable part of the body, and death ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I! ... Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40 And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ... Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, 45 That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... a certain ditch. The moon shone on the nape of my neck. The good landlord passed me by on the road, he and his good wife, chattering and happy as a pair of lovers. I groped for the gun. The queerest feeling came over me. I did not even raise it. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... She flung off her cambric morning dress and ran to hunt in her wardrobe for something pretty. With girlish hurry she pulled her hair down, braided it afresh, and fastened the burnished plats around her head like a wreath; then she brushed the soft locks in the nape of her neck about her finger, and let them fall into loose curls. She dressed with breathless haste, and when she finished, stood for a minute, her lip between her teeth, staring at herself in the glass. And as she stared her face fell; for as the color and sparkle faded a little, care suddenly ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... one matter. And there was Forister's bright sword. That was another matter. But to my descendants I declare that my hesitation did not endure an instant. Forister might have an arm so supple and a sword so long that he might be able to touch the nape of his neck with his own point, but I was firm on English soil. I would meet him even if he were a chevaux de frise. Little it mattered to me. He might swing the ten arms of an Indian god; he might yell like a gale at sea; he might ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... against the door. Punch rasped at it with his front feet in strenuous silence. If he had been able to give voice it would have been a relief to both of them. His mute anxiety added to the weirdness of the proceedings, and Graeme experienced a novel creeping about the nape of the neck. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... carried, behind the bicycles, to a small room, with the font. Holy water was poured into a bowl. The old priest, muttering, put his thumb into the water, and then behind each ear of the baby, and at the nape of the neck. At the touch on the neck "Pervyse" howled. The priest's hand shook, so that he jabbed the wrong place, and repeated the stroke. Then the thumb was dipped again, and crossed on the forehead, then touched on the nose and ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... large heads in proportion to their bodies. Their heads also are inclined to be very much larger above the ears and in the neighborhood of the forehead and temples than at the jaw and at the nape of the neck. This gives their heads a rather top-heavy effect—like a pear with the small end down—and their faces a triangular shape. Their jaws are usually fine and slender, and their chins not particularly broad ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... drawn loosely back from a brow of dazzling whiteness into a cluster of soft curls on top of the head, where it seemed to be caught by a jeweled aigret, which yet permitted tiny ringlets to escape about the temples and the nape of the snowy neck. She had thrown herself with such abandon on the dog, and was holding him with such exertion of strength, that the narrow skirt of her satin gown, flowered in palest pink and silver, revealed every line of a most exquisite figure down to the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... finger, etc.) ungo. naive : naiva. naked : nuda. nape : nuko. nation : nacio. native : enlanda, indigxena; (—"land") patrujo. nature : naturo. nausea : nauxzo. nave : (church) navo; (of wheel) aksingo. navigable : sxipirebla. near : proksima; apud. neat : pura, bonorda. necktie ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... heels over head, and totally dispersed the remainder, that he saw fit to return to head-quarters. The excitement once over, he of course began to consider the consequences, and I must say he looked as mean as it was possible for an intelligent dog to look. Zoega took him by the nape of the neck with a relentless hand, and heaving a profound sigh, addressed a pathetic remonstrance to him in the Icelandic language, giving it weight and emphasis by a sharp cut of his whip after every sentence. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... killed him on the spot. The glorious dog, the very instant he felt he had a dead antagonist in his fangs, let go his hold, and making a jump with all his remaining strength, for he was bleeding much, and terribly torn, I caught him by the nape of the neck, and, in my attempt to lift him over and place him on the outside, down I went, dog and all, amongst the pigs, upon the bloody carcass; out of which mess I was gathered by the Cura and the standers by in a very beautiful condition; for, what between the filth of the sty ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the annoyance of his neighbors. He used to stalk half-way down the garden path, with his head high in the air, his chest stuck out, and flourishing his military cane. Suddenly he would stop, stamp with one foot, knock up the hinder brim of his hat, begin to scratch the nape of his neck, wait a moment, then wheel round, look at the first-floor window, and roar out, "Matilda!" (the name of his wife) "don't do so-and-so;" or "Matilda! do so-and-so." Then he would bellow to the servants to buy this, or not to let the children eat that, and so on.—Wilkie Collins, Pray ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... first. With a snarl, he grabbed the girl by the nape of the neck and shook her roughly. Glimpsing Phillips' cold sneer, he reached back and seized a heavy metal bar ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... lays me on the bed, burns some drugs, gathers the smoke in a sheet which she wraps around me, pronounces incantations, takes the sheet off me, and gives me five sugar-plums of a very agreeable taste. Then she immediately rubs my temples and the nape of my neck with an ointment exhaling a delightful perfume, and puts my clothes on me again. She told me that my haemorrhage would little by little leave me, provided I should never disclose to any one what she had done to cure me, and she threatened me, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... And the little machine began severely tweaking the hairs on the nape of his neck. He sat up again ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the narrow partition. Nor could it be compared to the way in which he stripped off his black bombazine office-coat with its baggy pockets—quite a disreputable-looking coat I must say—taking it by the nape of the neck, as if it were some loathsome object to be got rid of, and hanging it upon a hook behind him; nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt sleeves and plunged his white, long-fingered, delicately modeled hands ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... way of eyebrows, appeared twice its natural dimensions. The throat was bare to the collar-bones. A huge wig covered the head, falling over the shoulders; while the whole was encircled by a great wreath of pink calico roses, the back of which, just under the nape of the neck, was fastened by a glittering pinchbeck tassel. The arms were nude, their natural growth of dark hair being plastered over with white chalk, which had a singularly ghastly effect; a short-skirted, low-necked gold frock, cut like a little girl's, partly ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... and a woman stood in the evening glow, looking out over the tranquil sea that crept up and licked the foot of the cliff. At their back rose the thick, tropical forest; at its edge and on the nape of the cliff stood a bungalow, fresh from the hands of a hundred willing toilsmen. Below, on their right, lay the gaudy village, lolling in the heat of the summer's day. Far off to the north, across the lowlands and beyond the sweep ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... over the pillow. Have the patient turn head on one side so that the back of the head is exposed. Part the hair in the middle from the forehead to the nape of the neck. Comb only a small strand at a time. If there are tangles, comb from ends toward the scalp. Avoid pulling by twisting the strand around the finger and holding loosely between the comb and the scalp. When the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... without heels; the women's ornaments were more numerous than those of the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and ear rings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on the forehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil on the nape of the neck. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... me by my trousers and the nape of my neck, he tossed me over the side into the sea. The fellows in the boats at the end of the pier backed their oars on seeing this; but observing that I could swim, they allowed me to make the best of my way to the pierhead. So you see, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... cried Aramis, "we must have a prisoner, quick! quick!" Porthos bent over the stair of the mole, and seized by the nape of the neck one of the officers of the royal army who was waiting to embark till all his people should be in the boat. The arm of the giant lifted up his prey, which served him as a buckler, and he recovered himself without a shot being fired ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... applies himself to the debate. His humble trade as a botcher does not allow a fixed tariff, and he is all alone as he vindicates the value of his work. With his fists he hammers the gray-striped mealy cloth on his knees, and the hair, which grows thickly round his big neck, gives him the nape of a ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Mrs. Tiralla, as she began once more to comb out her tangled hair, and she tore at it so savagely that at last her silky, black tresses clung to her white temples in big, smooth waves. Then she twisted the plaits in a huge coil at the nape of her neck; that was the way she had worn her hair in her girlhood, and that suited ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... and teased Numa, the lion. Why, then, should Tarzan feel the rise of the short hairs at the nape of his neck merely because ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Sabbath, a motherly old cat, belonging to one of our citizens, left her little family in quiet repose, while she went forth in pursuit of something to eat. On returning, she found them quarreling. She then very deliberately took the one most eagerly engaged in the combat by the nape of the neck, and not seeing any convenient place near by to administer what she considered a salutary reproof, went to a tub of water, upon the edge of which she raised her feet, and dropped the kitten into the water. She resisted all attempts at escape, and after repeatedly sousing ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... startling sensation for a man to be caught suddenly by the nape of the neck, so to speak, and pitched out of heaven down to—the ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the chignon is just now a teeming subject. Every day or so somebody writes to a paper, saying that be has discovered a new kind of parasite, hatched by the genial warmth of woman's nape from some deleterious padding or other used in the manufacture of her chignon. Sometimes it is vegetable stuff, sometimes animal, but it always teems with pedicular creatures akin to that low and vulgar kind not usually recognized in polite society. All these horrors come ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... hands palm to palm between her knees, glancing at Dominic Iglesias now and again sideways as she spoke. The bodice of her dress, cut slightly en coeur, showed the nape of her neck, and the whole of her throat, which was smooth and rounded though rather long. Her make altogether was that not uncommon to London girls of the lower middle- class: small-boned and possibly anaemic, but prettily moulded, and with an attraction of over-civilisation ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... highnesses were apparently content with the most ridiculous and out-moded fashions. Absurd hats, with veils flying behind; absurd bonnets, fitting close to the head, and spotted; absurd coiffures that nearly lay on the nape; absurd, clumsy sleeves; absurd waists, almost above the elbow's level; absurd scolloped jackets! And the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the upper half of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... than the rest of his tribe, had a similar formation of head. The Bari and those Tollogo and Ellyria have generally bullet-shaped heads, low foreheads, skulls heavy behind the ears and above the nape of the neck: altogether their appearance is excessively brutal, and they are armed with bows six feet long and ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... as he got hold of Pussy's thick skin at the nape of her neck, and shook away at it as hard as ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... attractive, and a delightful cleft in his chin; his hair, which had hitherto always struck me as being so unkempt and disordered, now that it was brushed smoothly back from his brow and curled into the nape of his neck gave him a distinguished appearance. I directed one long look at him and then instinctively ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... burying her face in her hands. Her dress, cut low, showed the nape of her neck as it rose gracefully from her shoulders. Two little curls had rebelled against being drawn up with the rest of her hair. The back of a dainty ear, set close to the head, was provoking in its pink loveliness. Her attitude, that of a youthful Niobe, all tears, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... said that her hair was auburn, and curled like grape tendrils, from the nape of the neck to the forehead? The color was singular. In the shade it was that of a perfectly groomed bay horse. When the sun struck it, it got all alive, as if there were light under it, as well as over it, and was, unmistakably, red. She made more fun ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... was young and rather good-looking, and all wore the striking headdress of North Mongolia. Like that of the south, it was of silver, set with bright stones, but it was even more elaborate in design, and the arrangement of the hair was most extraordinary. Parted from brow to nape of the neck, the two portions were arranged in large plastered structures like ears on either side of the head; these extended out almost to the width of the shoulder, and were kept in place by bars of wood or silver, the two ends of hair being ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... form a striking contrast with the energetic, active, restless, persevering Anglo-Saxon, with a tendency to phlogosis and phthisis pulmonalis, from the surplus quantity of oxygen consumed by his lungs. Blistering the nape of the neck, so irritating in nearly all of the diseases of the Saxon race, is almost a sovereign remedy or specific for a large proportion of the complaints that negroes are subject to; because most of them arise from defective respiratory action. Hence whipping the lungs ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... between his knees, and was gazing at the back of his head. "Well," he replied, "since you ask me seriously, I should say this little curl on The Seraph's nape." ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... was cupped on the nape of the neck by Mr. Osmond, and, on the glasses drawing, showed signs of consciousness, and the breathing was relieved. These favourable symptoms were neither diminished nor increased by the subsequent application of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and patient Bess! She was so slight, yet round and supple—strong, too, with the strength of perfect health! The thick fluffed black hair was rolled away from her face and gathered into a low knot in the nape of her neck. Her dress cut low at the throat enhanced the white purity of her face and the slim round grace of her neck which showed to advantage against the ebony flank of the mother of many milky ways. Her lips were red and full; the nose was a saucy stub; the eyes he could not see; they were ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... perceive me. In this manner I came within easy gunshot distance. Now I took my last rest, and with my knife dug a hole in the ground and replanted my cactus shield firmly. Then I placed my rifle in position to fire and drew a fine bead on the nape ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... cushion under the nape of her neck, looked again at Johnny sprawled in her dad's pet chair and smoking a cigarette after a very ample meal that had been served him half-way between dinner and supper, and stifled a sigh. Johnny was alive and well and full of enthusiasm as ever. He had just finished telling her all ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully launched a canoe in pursuit. When he overtook White Fang, he reached down and by the nape of the neck lifted him clear of the water. He did not deposit him at once in the bottom of the canoe. Holding him suspended with one hand, with the other hand he proceeded to give him a beating. And it was a beating. His hand was heavy. Every blow was shrewd to ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... was caught by the nape of the neck, and lifted bodily off the turf ditch, which was his forum. When he looked around, and saw who was his captor, he shrieked for mercy; and Father Letheby, dropping him, as one would drop a rat, he scurried off as fast ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... he had looked at her attentively for the first time. Her hair was rather pretty, though too mousy, yet just in the nape of the neck, where it met the lawn of the collar it was very attractive. She walked well for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "and unborn generations will bless you. We Virginians will keep on in one groove until the crack of doom unless we are jerked out of it by the nape of the neck. Your heart ought to yearn over the child—mine does. It's a wicked sin to call a pretty baby by such ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... said the farmer, "I make it a condition that I shall tear a strip of your skin from your nape to your waist; that will make a pretty ribbon to tie around the ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... usual). Well, I didnt ask to—(Mitchener seizes him by the nape; rushes him out; ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... cursed in blind terror and tried to check his horse and to free his face and sword-arm. A moment, and he had succeeded, but he succeeded too late. The Roman was at his back, and Marcia saw the long dagger rise and fall in a swift thrust. She could not see how the point took its victim just at the nape; but she saw him pitch forward like an ox ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... species. This bird is the lazuli bunting. He wears a great deal of blue, but it is azure, and not indigo, covering the head, neck, most of the upper parts, and the lining of the wings; and, as if to give variety to the bird's attire, the nape and back are prettily shaded with brown, and the wings and tail with black. But his plumage is still more variegated, for he bears a conspicuous white spot on the greater wing-coverts, and his breast is daintily tinted with chestnut-brown, abruptly ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... suspended in the air by the nape of the neck, that he bawled and squalled and choked and coughed till the black, disgusted, flung him down roughly in the canoe's bottom. He scrambled to his feet and made two leaps: one upon the gunwale of the canoe; the next, despairing and hopeless, without consideration ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... for gala Occasions, not forgetting a couple of good serviceable Rapiers, as well as a Walking-sword, a Dress-foil, and a Hanger, with a pair of Holster Pistols, and two smaller ones of Steel in case of Emergencies. Also, by his advice, within the lining of my Coat, by the nape of my Neck, just where the bag of my Wig hung, I secreted a neat little Poniard or Dagger. In a small Emerald Ring, of which he made me a Present, was compactly stowed a quantity of very subtle ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of tetanus by merely applying to the nape of the neck and along the spine large pieces of flannel dipped in hot water, of a temperature just bearable to the hand (50-55 C.).—Allg. med. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... insulting words were scarcely uttered than Sakr-el-Bahr's great hand had taken the wazeer by the nape of his fat neck, a growl of anger running through the assembly to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... itself after a fashion set by all the Venuses and Cupids and little Loves since the world began. It curled, whether she would or no, so the only method was to part the curls and give them a twist into a coil, from which vagrant spirals fell to the white nape of her neck. Or, if she felt gay and coquettish as she did tonight, the curls were pinned high to the crown of her head and the runaways rioted here and there, touching her cheek, her ear, her neck, never ugly, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lizard-like in shape, but humpbacked; it had four very thick, lizard-like legs and feet, each terminating in four long toes armed with formidable claws. Its tail was nearly as long as its body, thick, deep, and blunt; and a sort of serrated fin ran the whole length of its body from the nape of its neck to the extremity of its tail. Its total length, from snout to tail, as it lay stretched out on the grass, was just ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to hear. Finally he seized Ziito by one foot, plucking at it with all his might. The foot came away with the leg and thigh; and Ziito screamed out, apparently in great agony. He seized Michael by the nape of the neck, and dragged him before a judge. Here the two set up their separate complaints, Michael for the fraud that had been committed on him, and Ziito for the irreparable injury he had suffered in his person. From this adventure came the proverb, frequent ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces of the supper room. Ripples of the evening air, entering through the windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the nape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing along her round arms under the ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... encountered many snarls, and Alene was glad when Kizzie came back to relieve her. A vigorous brushing and curling soon brought the refractory hair to the required state, and the glossy brown curls were finally tied at the nape of her neck with a ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... the smallest of the Terns, being but 9 inches in length. They have a yellow bill with a black tip, a black crown and nape, and white forehead. Although small, these little Terns lose none of the grace and beauty of action of their larger relatives. They nest in colonies on the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, placing their eggs upon the bare sand, where they are sometimes very difficult ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the men cut their hair so that it falls in bangs along the center line of the forehead and behind reaches to the nape of the neck, but the majority of them, and all the women, allow the back hair to grow long and tie it in a knot at the back of the head. Ordinarily the men dispense with head covering, or at most twist a bit of cloth into a turban, but for special occasions ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... nothing else in the world. You are standing on the stage apparently quite well and in your right mind, when suddenly you feel as if your tongue had been dislocated and was lying powerless in your mouth. Cold shivers begin to creep downwards from the nape of your neck and all up you at the same time, until they seem to meet in the small of your back. About this time you feel as if a centipede, all of whose feet have been carefully iced, has begun to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... handkerchief on the floor, took my fat little Virgil in my left hand, and crept out to him. When near on top of him, I gripped him round the nape of the neck, digging my fingers in his flabby throat, and he went slimy with fright like a great, fat lob-worm. I swooped down on him with my full weight, and pinned him to the floor. His big mouth opened as he fought for breath, and I clapped the Virgil hard and far into it, tying ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden, presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... light blue; lower part of the cheeks, chin, and throat rose-pink; head, nape, mantle, back, and scapularies olive-green; lower part of the back and rump blue, of a somewhat deeper tint than that of the crown; shoulders and wing-coverts pale yellowish green; spurious wing bluish green; external webs of the principal primaries dull blue, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... was gone and his close-cropped head bent low over the handle-bars. The skin-tight stockings had split from thigh to heel, mud flew from the tires, beplastering the luckless figure from nape to waist, and still, without pause, he pushed onward, ever onward, for London Bridge, for Southwark, and for safety. The way was tortuous, dark and unfamiliar, but it was for life or death, ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... His arm, strong for all his age, struck incessantly. His heavy axe resounded on the iron armors like a hammer on the anvil. His stallion Tom-Bras bit furiously all the Romans within reach. One of them he almost lifted off the ground in his rearing. He held the man by the nape of the neck, and the blood was spurting. When the tide of the combat again carried Mikael and myself near our father, he was wounded. I overcame one of the brenn's assailants by trampling him under my horse's feet; then we were again separated from my father. Mikael and myself knew nothing ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... same right to "bother" me, as you call it, that you have, for I love nobody so well; besides, as for Emily, she is a deuced deal quicker in her processes than you are, and snaps up one's affairs by the nape of the neck, as a terrier does a rat, and unless one is tolerably alert one's self, she is off with one in her zeal in no ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... head aside, and said no word, and Miss Bruce stood looking down at her in silence also. The curly hair was fastened back by a ribbon tied in the nape of the neck, and the profile was still visible leaning against the pillows. It was motionless, except for one tell-tale pulse above the ear which beat furiously up and down, up and down, beneath the drawn skin. The Principal looked on that ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wide, uninterrupted space of day. They went up toward the roots of the mountain between the green dikes of the chaparral, and he was so occupied with watching the pomegranate color of her cheeks and the nape of her neck where the sun touched it, that he failed to observe that it was she who turned the horses into the trail that led off the main road toward the shack of the Pot Hunter. The same change that had come ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... the hair, also, may greatly change the whole appearance. Worn at the nape of the neck it is domestic; lower, romantic; on a level with the head, classic; on ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... dark passage. At the end was a room in partial darkness, and a man who watched a spot of light which darted hither and back, and between whiles wrote upon paper. To him White went up, and clapped a cold revolver muzzle against the nape of his neck. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... candlestick, I made out a woman of about thirty, perhaps, sickly and emaciated, wearing an old dress of dark cotton material, with her long neck uncovered, her scanty dark hair twisted into a knot on the nape of her neck, no larger than the fist of a two-year-old child. She looked at us rather cheerfully. Besides the candlestick, she had on the table in front of her a little peasant looking-glass, an old pack of cards, a tattered book of songs, and a white ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... little bag of black silk on which old women insist on covering their skulls, and it was now revealed beneath the night-cap which had been pushed aside in sleep. This rumpled condition gave a menacing expression to the head, such as painters bestow on witches. The temples, ears, and nape of the neck, were disclosed in all their withered horror,—the wrinkles being marked in scarlet lines that contrasted with the would-be white of the bed-gown which was tied round her neck by a narrow tape. The gaping of this garment revealed a breast to be likened only to that of an ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and you may as well understand it now. I've told you a hundred times that money isn't everything, and it is as cheap as dirt when you put it alongside of tradition, honour, pride and loyalty. Those Graustarkians would take you by the nape of the neck and march you out of their castle so quick that your head would swim. You may be able to buy their prince for Maudie to exhibit around the country, but you can't buy the intelligence of the people. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... hand-stone from the ground which was the full of his grasp. He hurled it from him [3]from his sling[3] the length of a stone-shot at the yoke of Conall's chariot, so that he broke the chariot-collar[a] in two and thereby Conall fell to the ground, so that the nape of his neck went out from his shoulder. "What have we here, boy?" asked Conall; [4]"why threwest thou the stone?"[4] "It is I threw it to see if my cast be straight, or how I cast at all, or if I have the stuff of a warrior in me." "A bane on thy cast and a bane on thyself ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... pencilled eyebrow showed through the twist of gauze fastened by a jewelled clasp above the real eye-brows. Over the forehead-jewel rose the complicated structure of the headdress. Ropes of black wool were plaited through the hair, forming, at the back, a double loop that stood out above the nape like the twin handles of a vase, the upper veiled in airy shot gauzes and fastened with jewelled bands and ornaments. On each side of the red cheeks other braids were looped over the ears hung with broad earrings ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... flashes, with thunderbolts falling all round, enough to make your hair stand on end; and Jasper would remain stock still on the verandah, adoring the back view of her supple, swaying figure, the miraculous sheen of her fair head, the rapid hands on the keys, the white nape of her neck—while the brig, down at the point there, surged at her cables within a hundred yards of nasty, shiny, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... out" in clothes befitting my new line of life. He went in first, so he did not see the qualm that seized me on the doorstep. A revulsion so violent that it nearly made me sick then and there; and if some one had seized me by the nape of my neck, and landed me straightway at my desk in Uncle Henry's office, would, I believe, have left me tamed for life. For if this unutterable vileness of sights and sounds and smells which hung around the dark entry of the slop shop were indeed the world, I felt a sudden and most vehement ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... scratch from its claw as the frightened cat tried to secure a lodging on his head, but by a little cautious work Dick finally managed to catch the little terror by the nape of the neck, and finding lodgment against a sunken boulder for his feet he waited until the boat containing the little miss floated down to him, when he tossed poor Benjy over the gunwale, a ridiculous looking object to be sure, but at least ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Mightinesses was lowered, and the Yankee standard elevated in its stead, being a dried codfish, by way of a spread eagle. A strong garrison was appointed of long-sided, hard-fisted Yankees, with Weathersfield onions for cockades and feathers. As to Jacobus Van Curlet and his men, they were seized by the nape of the neck, conducted to the gate, and one by one dismissed with a kick in the crupper, as Charles XII dismissed the heavy-bottomed Russians at the battle of Narva; Jacobus Van Curlet receiving two kicks in consideration of his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... cast a contemptuous glance at him, and then kneeling down, applied his knife to the nape of Larry's neck. Warm blood immediately spouted forth. "I told you so," he exclaimed; "blood doesn't flow like this from a corpse. Bring hot water and cloths." These he applied to Larry's neck, and continued to pour the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Brazil, diminutives of the elephant, already nearly undiscoverable on the banks of the Upper Amazon and its tributaries, pachyderms so dear to the hunters for their rarity, so appreciated by the gourmands for their meat, superior far to beef, and above all for the protuberance on the nape of the neck, which is a morsel ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne |
