"Quill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could take offence While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, 'A painted mistress, or a purling stream.' 150 Yet then did Gildon[101] draw his venal quill; I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answer'd—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no war with Bedlam ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... whiskey-flavored soft drink. It had about as much kick as when you pour a drink of water into a highball glass that still holds a dreg of melted ice and diluted liquor. But it burned like fury once it hit my stomach and my mind began to wobble. He'd given me a slug of the pure quill, one hundred proof. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... seriously in those days. The Lotos Club at first was younger in that hearty enthusiastic reception to Stanley fourteen years ago in that gay little clubhouse next to the Academy of Music; we were thinking far more of a hearty greeting to the comrade of the quill who had been having a hard time but had scored 'a big beat' [laughter] than of adequate recognition to the man already well launched on a career that ranks him among the foremost explorers of the century. [Loud cheers.] It is the character in which you must welcome him ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... up. She saved up every groschen that was given her to buy sweets, and bribed her brother Solomon, who was proud of his scholarship, to give her lessons in secret. The two strove earnestly with book and quill, in their hiding-place under the rafters, till my mother could read and write Russian, and translate a simple passage ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill; I have got promissory notes in his hand to the amount of—if you like round numbers, say, thirty thousand pounds, safely deposited in my portable strong-box, alias double-clasped pocket-book. I leave this ruinous old rat-hole early on to-morrow, for two reasons—first, I do not want to ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... symmetrically formed, Of wool, white or grey, or the refuse flax smoothed to a silky lustre, It greeteth the fingers of the spinner. In this Hygeian concert Leader of the Orchestra, was the Great Wheel's tireless tenor, Drowning the counter of the snapping reel, and the quill-wheels fitful symphony, Whose whirring strings, yielded to children's hands, prepare spools for the shuttle. At intervals, like a muffled drum, sounded the stroke of the loam, Cumbrous, and filling a large space, with its quantity of timber, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... swan quill and a sheet of the finest parchment, and write down carefully what I shall dictate: the story of Zachur with ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... narrer escape for the old man, you bet. I wasent long in gettin washed up; and if ever a lone traveller was tickled to set foot onto a rale rode car homeward bound, it was your hily intelectual and venerable quill jerkist. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... Barnabas, and taking out his penknife he began to mend the spluttering quill. But, in the midst of this operation, chancing to glance out of the window, he espied a long-legged gentleman with a remarkably fierce pair of whiskers; he wore a coat of ultra-fashionable cut, and stood with his booted legs wide apart, staring up at the inn from under a curly-brimmed hat. But ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... mouth for her to be silent, but pointed with the feather of his quill to a line of a little book that lay upon the pulpit near his elbow. She came ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... by paper and amalgamated at both extremities, was introduced so as to be in metallic contact at the bottom of the hole, by a little mercury, with the middle of the magnet; insulated at the sides by the paper; and projecting about a quarter of an inch above the end of the steel. A quill was put over the copper rod, which reached to the paper, and formed a cup to receive mercury for the completion of the circuit. A high paper edge was also raised round that end of the magnet and mercury put within it, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the first energetic pull leaves in your hand a piece about four inches long, and a quantity of dangling ends and rough knots convince you that you have nothing to hope in that quarter. A second plunge brings up a handful of odds and ends, strong pieces clumsy and rough, coarse red quill-cord, delicate two-colored bits far too short, cotton twine breaking at a touch, fine long pieces hopelessly tangled together, so that not even an end is visible. The more you twitch at the loops, the more desperate is ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... neighbours of the grove in conjugal and parental affection, for it builds its nest, hatches its own eggs, and rears its own young, Wilson assures us. It is about a foot in length, clothed in a dark drab suit with a silken greenish gloss. A ruddy cinnamon tints the quill-feathers of the wings; and the tail consists partly of black feathers tipped with white, the two outer ones being of the same tint as the back. The under surface is a pure white. It has a long curved bill of a greyish-black above, and yellow beneath. The female ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... replied Cuchullin. "If thou dost remember well, Let us to them resort," Ferdiah said. Their missive weapons then on either side They both resorted to. Upon their arms They braced two emblematic missive shields, And their eight well-turned-handled lances took, Their eight quill-javelins also, and their eight White ivory-hilted swords, and their eight spears, Sharp, ivory-hafted, with hard points of steel. Betwixt the twain the darts went to and fro, Like bees upon the wing on a fine day; No cast was made that was not sure to hit. From morn ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... hush; that's the way the ladies dress theirselves, that is," said the father, adding, however, in an undertone to Mr. Macey, "It does make her look funny, though—partly like a short-necked bottle wi' a long quill in it. Hey, by jingo, there's the young Squire leading off now, wi' Miss Nancy for partners! There's a lass for you!—like a pink-and-white posy—there's nobody 'ud think as anybody could be so pritty. I shouldn't wonder if she's Madam Cass some day, arter all—and nobody ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... find him occupying himself with inventions connected with the manufacture of pens and paper. His little pen-making machine for readily making quill pens long continued in use, until driven out by the invention of the steel pen; but his patent for making paper by machinery, though ingenious, like everything he did, does not seem to have been adopted, the inventions of Fourdrinier and Donkin in this direction having shortly superseded ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... his office, and Jadwin was admitted at once. He sat down in a chair by the broker's desk, and for the moment the two talked of trivialities. Gretry was a large, placid, smooth-faced man, stolid as an ox; inevitably dressed in blue serge, a quill tooth-pick behind his ear, a Grand Army button in his lapel. He and Jadwin were intimates. The two had come to Chicago almost simultaneously, and had risen together to become the wealthy men they were at the moment. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... been preparing with their help during the long evenings of the preceding winter, in the course of which he has made as many as from 5000 to 10,000 horsehair springes and prepared as many pieces of flexible wood, rather thicker than a swan-quill, in and on which to hang the birds. He hires what he calls his 'tenderie,' being from four to five acres of underwood about three to five years old, pays some thirty shillings for permission to place his ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... ladies and gentlemen," or "Miss M——, ladies and gentlemen," with such a refreshing paraphrase as, "brother-in-law of the celebrated Lord Marmaduke Pulsifer," or, "confidential companion, to the wife of the late distinguished Christopher Quill the American Poet"—why should not a like privilege be extended the labour-worn author, when he ushers the crude and unattractive offspring of his own undaunted energy into ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white—a sheet of spotless paper—when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out what a woman ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... collect himself. Sachs sits with quill poised over paper. Then Walther relates his dream, meeting Sachs's request for a master-song by casting it as he goes, with the light ease of genius, into verse and melody,—his second astonishing improvisation, joyous as the first, but not agitated—reflective, as if he filled ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... pushed forward, foot by foot; how the bank was attacked in its one and only vital spot, precisely as a porcupine curled defensively up in the snow is seized by the fisher-marten, not through open attack, but by artfully tunneling up under the quill-less belly. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... nice old man,' said Mrs. Cohn, as she recalled the photograph of the white-haired cherub writing with a quill ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... pounding away hour after hour in the chamber of an outbuilding where she was weaving a carpet, or cloth. I used to help do some of the quilling—running the yarn or linen thread upon spools to be used in the shuttles. The distaff, the quill-wheel, the spinning-wheel, the reel, were very familiar to me as a boy; so was the crackle, the swingle, the hetchel, for Father grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our shirts and summer trousers, and for ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... roses: as soon as we could get hold of it we inhaled, with delight, the perfume which issued from it, and which communicated to our senses the most soothing impressions. Some of us reserved our portion of wine in little tin cups, and sucked up the wine with a quill; this manner of taking it was very beneficial to us, and quenched our thirst much more than if we had drunk it off at once. Even the smell of this liquor was extremely agreeable to us. Mr. Savigny observed that many of us, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... pleasure in dressing her dark hair, and suffering Catharine to braid it and polish it till it looked glossy and soft. Indiana in her turn would adorn Catharine with the wings of the blue-bird or red-bird, the crest of the wood-duck, or quill feathers of the golden-winged flicker, which is called in the Indian tongue the shot-bird, in allusion to the round spots on its cream-coloured breast. [Footnote: The golden-winged flicker belongs ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... him, by the bye) as Brooke's guest and a relation of Casaubon's, thinking he was only on a flying visit. And now I find he's in everybody's mouth in Middlemarch as the editor of the 'Pioneer.' There are stories going about him as a quill-driving alien, a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is about four inches long. Near the uterus its cavity will just admit an ordinary bristle; but near its free end, at the ovary, it is as large as a goose-quill. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... scrupulously perfect handwriting. It was quite vertical, and rounded, with a slope neither to the right nor left, and at the time I knew him first, he was fond of using a soft pencil on printing paper, though commonly he wrote with a quill. Each letter was distinct in shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an inch. I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, but whether they were the first drafts or not I cannot say; very likely not. Towards the last he ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... exception to this miserable reality; it must not hesitate to discern whether the motive has been merely to arouse emotional tendencies, by clothing life's dangerous forms in unreal fascinations, or (where the author's hand, guided by his unsullied heart, has taken up the quill as a mighty weapon) to preserve or defend the morals of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... o'clock. Suppose you arrive with ten minutes to spare. You go into the outer office (there's only one entrance—the big one in Threadneedle Street) and find on the right-hand side of the circular counter a ledger. The ledger is open: there is blotting-paper and a quill pen beside it. Everyone's name is written in alphabetical order on the one side of the ledger and on the other side there is a blank page ruled down the middle with a red line. Having made your appearance at ten to ten, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... deports himself like an officer, never thinks himself, or is thought by others, deficient in anything that constitutes the gentleman, because he happens not to be at the same time a clerk. He has from his childhood been taught to consider the quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... had expected, a chart. The drawing was crudely done in ink, applied it seemed with a stick, or possibly with a very badly fashioned quill-pen. There was very little writing upon it, and this of the raggedest sort. To their intense disappointment it bore no name to tell where in the seven seas it might be. That the chart was of some coast was certain. A deep, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... waved to seats by a great window with Mr. Pollock, made no protest. There they sat in silence for a few minutes, while the Governor General dictated to a secretary who sat at a little table by his side and who wrote with a goose-quill. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... carriage, comb bright red and upright, eye full and bright, beak strong and in good socket, breast full, body broad at shoulder and tapering to tail, thigh short, round, and hard as a nail, leg stout, flat-footed, and spur low—a bird with bright, hard feathers, strong in a quill, warm and firm to the hand—and I care not what breed he be, spangle or black-red, I'll lay my last farthing with you, Mr. Renault, if it shall ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... heard and did not understand, such as precedent, principle, and the like. The great and real pacifier of the world was the lawyer. His parchment took the place of the battle-field. The flow of his ink checked the flow of blood. His quill usurped the place of the sword. His legalism dethroned barbarism. His victories were victories of peace. He impressed on individuals and on communities that which he is now endeavoring to impress on nations, that there are many controversies that it were better to lose by arbitration than to ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... to write on reeds and palm-leaves, using as a pen an iron point; now they write their own letters, as well as ours, with a sharpened quill, and, as we do, on paper. They have learned our language and its pronunciation, and write it even better than we do, for they are so clever that they learn anything with the greatest ease. I have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... front but the woodwork of the desk, so that no one is annoyed by the presence of his neighbor. The seats and the tables are covered with leather, and are very clean; there are two pens to each desk, the one being steel, the other a quill pen; there is also a small stand at the side, upon which a second volume, or the volume from which the extracts are being copied may be placed. To procure a book, the title is written on a form, which is handed to the central ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... answer your kind letter. My sister should more properly have done it, but she having failed, I consider myself answerable for her debts. I am now trying to do it in the midst of Commercial noises, and with a quill which seems more ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of Goods, Cassia, Cardemoms, Aloes, Ginger, Tea, than into kindly responses and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... to write nearly as well with one which is not absolutely perfect. So certain is this, though often overlooked, that a person would perhaps learn faster with chalk, upon a black board, than with the best goose-quill ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... the table, drew a sheet of paper toward him, and picked up a quill pen, which he examined critically before dipping it into the ink. Again he turned to ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... long before conquered by the Romans, while the Kardian led the Macedonians, when fresh from the conquest of the world. Yet Sertorius was always looked up to as a wise man and a consummate captain, whereas Eumenes was despised as a mere quill-driver before he fought his way to the rank of general; so that Eumenes not only started with less advantages, but met with much greater difficulties, before he attained to distinction. Moreover, Eumenes throughout his whole career was constantly opposed by open enemies, and constantly ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... at my gates from Rydal, with a washing tub of ink on castors, which he pushes about with him wherever he goes, and in which, as in a Claude-Lorraine mirror, he contemplates everything that he can both on earth and above. He is constantly employed in fishing in it with a quill for ideas; and as often as he catches one, even if it is half drowned, my door-keeper opens ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rather a slow and laborious task for the boy, clever as he was at most things, though none too able in the use of a quill pen. But he got his letter finished at last, the big post-paper carefully folded and sealed, and then went off to the post-bag at the little village shop, before hurrying back home to partake of his tea, which ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... consummate Pitch of ill-nature, that they'll by no means permit any Person the favour to Blunder but their mighty selves, and are in all respects, except the Office of a Critick, in some measure ill Writers; I have known an unnatural Brother of the Quill causless condemn Language in the Writings of other Persons, when his own has really been the meanest; to Accuse others of Inconsistency with the utmost Vehemence, when his own Works have not been without their AEra's, and ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... 'and in doo course, as the quill-drivers say; Likeways also the newspaper cuttins enclosed. You're on Rummikey's lay. Awful good on yer, CHARLIE, old chummy, to take so much trouble for me; But do keep on yer 'air, dear old pal; I am still right end ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... Leaves.] The leaves of it are somewhat like those of a Coker-Nut Tree, they are five or six foot long, and have other lesser leaves growing out of the sides of them, like the feathers on each side of a quill. The Chingulays call the large leaves the boughs, and the leaves on the sides, the leaves. They fall off every Year, and the skin upon which they grow, with them. [The Skins, and their use.] These skins grow upon the body of the Tree, and the leaves ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... we with ink the ocean fill, Were the whole sky of parchment made, Were every blade of grass a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain that ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain the whole Though stretched ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... seeing what I write of is but the child of sorrow, bred by discontentments, and nourisht vp with misfortunes, to whosc help melancholly Saturne gaue his iudgement, the night-bird her inuention, and the ominous rauen brought a quill taken from his owne wing, dipt in the inke of misery, as chiefe ayders in ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... N. writing &c. v.; chirography, stelography[obs3], cerography[obs3]; penmanship, craftmanship[obs3]; quill driving; typewriting. writing, manuscript, MS., literae scriptae[Lat]; these presents. stroke of the pen, dash of the pen; coupe de plume; line; headline; pen and ink. letter &c. 561; uncial writing, cuneiform character, arrowhead, Ogham, Runes, hieroglyphic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... gave woman all her will: Field, bright and loud with laughing flower and bird And keen alternate notes of laud and gird: Barnes, darkening once with Borgia's deeds the quill Which tuned the passion of Parthenophil: Blithe burly Porter, broad and bold of word: Wilkins, a voice with strenuous pity stirred: Turk Mason: Brewer, whose tongue drops honey still: Rough Rowley, handling song with Esau's hand: Light Nabbes: lean Sharpham, rank and raw by turns, But ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dropped his head so low that his eyes could not be seen; tilted the desk over on its front legs, so that you expected every moment to see it pitching forward into the lecture-room, with the lecturer after it; and, seizing a quill, always provided for the purpose, began at once to speak, and to twist and twirl and tear in pieces the quill. Sometimes, in the heat of his discourse, he would suddenly jerk up his head, whirl entirely round with his face to the wall and his back to the audience, and then as suddenly whirl ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... turkey who never expected, when he entered into life, to appear at breakfast on the table of our governor's quill-drivers!" ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... illegibly scrawled on foreign paper, with a quill pen. Larry, swallowed up in the absorbing, isolating life of a Paris studio, would put the letters half-read, in his pocket, and would immediately forget all about them. After all, he couldn't interfere with Barty; he was the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... on the subject to the prince regent, in doing which he remarked:—"There are but few persons who know what is the dreadful manner in which this torture is inflicted. The instrument, formed of pieces of whipcord, each as thick as a quill, and knotted, is applied by the main strength of fresh men, relieving each other, until human nature can bear no more; and then, if pains are taken to recover the unhappy sufferer, it is only that he may undergo fresh agony. The most disgusting part of the whole transaction ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... among readers even of his kind the book may do some good, and more among the weaker, truer people, whom it will shake like mattresses,—making the dust fly, and perhaps with it some of the sticks and quill-ends, which often make that kind of person an objectionable mattress. I write too lightly of the book,— far too lightly,—but your letter made me gay, and I have been lighter-hearted ever since; only I kept this after beginning it, because I was ashamed to send it without ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... dipped the quill in the ink, and, with her head on one side, and her lips set very firmly together, carefully ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... even more simple: a "quill tube," filled with fine powder, fitted into the vent. A fulminate cap was glued to the top of the tube. A pull of the lanyard caused the hammer of the cannon to strike the cap (just like a little boy's cap pistol) and start ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... pity you." Mr. Dockwrath as he thus expressed his commiseration was sitting with his high chair tilted back, with his knees against the edge of his desk, with his hat almost down upon his nose as he looked at his visitors from under it, and he amused himself by cutting up a quill pen into small pieces with his penknife. It was not pleasant to be pitied by such a man as that, and so Peregrine ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... cucurbitaceae, which bears a small, scarlet-colored, eatable cucumber. Another plant, named Leroshua, is a blessing to the inhabitants of the Desert. We see a small plant with linear leaves, and a stalk not thicker than a crow's quill; on digging down a foot or eighteen inches beneath, we come to a tuber, often as large as the head of a young child; when the rind is removed, we find it to be a mass of cellular tissue, filled with fluid much like that in a young turnip. Owing to the depth beneath the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... articles, and worked up with water into a paste, to which, by a peculiar process, a tubular or pipe form is given, in order that it may cook more readily in hot water. That of smaller diameter than macaroni (which is about the thickness of a goose-quill) is called vermicelli; and when smaller still, fidelini. The finest is made from the flour of the hard-grained Black-Sea wheat. Macaroni is the principal article of food in many parts of Italy, particularly Naples, where the best is manufactured, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... pointed to where Ted's cactus was ambling indignantly away with every quill rattling and set straight out in anger at having his morning nap disturbed. Kalitan wrapped Ted's hand in soft mud, which took the pain out, but he couldn't use it much for the next few days, and did not feel ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... first to an instrument called a clavier and later to the organ. The first stringed instrument to which this new device was applied was the clavicytherium, or keyed cithara. It had a box with a cover and strings of cat-gut, arranged in the form of a half triangle. It was made to sound by means of a quill plectrum attached in a rude way to the end of the keys. This was the progress the piano of today had made in the ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... good deal of free masonry and companionable relations existing between these old handlers of musical instruments, and as we hear them in imagination, rattling away round the old spirited fugues which had been carefully "picked out" with quill pen and ink into their old cheque-book shaped "tune books"; or, as we see the picturesque group, now with countenances beaming with delight over some well turned corner which brought up the rear, now mopping their {129} brows with a bright red handkerchief, or touching ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... not the courage to resist her, and write to Overberg in the sense you advised him. And as everything was vague and uncertain because of your answering nobody's letters, the lawyers lost patience; and Overberg, egged on, I believe, by that quill-driver in Utrecht, wrote to Freule Mordaunt to know for certain whether or not she was engaged to you. You will guess her answer, short and dry, but without a word of reproach as far as you were concerned, I can assure you. I know she reproaches herself bitterly, and has done so since ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... by means of reeds which were either beaten out at the end into fine brushes so that the characters were painted rather than written, or sharpened and split at the end like a modern pen. Later the quill of the goose or some other large bird, cut to a point and split, largely took the place of the reed and continued to be the writer's tool for centuries. In later years they have been displaced by the modern pen of steel or gold. It is interesting to note that bronze pens imitating ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... floor, a slight tap drew me to the door. On opening it I perceived the old squaw, who immediately slipped into my hand a set of beautifully-embroidered bark trays, fitting one within the other, and exhibiting the very best sample of the porcupine quill-work. While I stood wondering what this might mean, the good old creature fell upon my neck, and kissing me, exclaimed, "You remember old squaw—make her comfortable! Old squaw no forget you. Keep them for her sake," and before I could detain her she ran down the hill with a swiftness which seemed ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... who has writ against this divine weed. * * * After dinner you may appear again, having translated yourself out of you English cloth into a light Turkey grogram, if you have that happiness of shifting; and then be seen for a turn or two to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gums with a wrought handkerchief; it skills not whether you dined or no; that is best known to your stomach; or in what place you dined; though it were with cheese of your own mother's making, in your chamber or study. * * * If, by ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... was his theme, my name—my name [namme de plume] was nor far off.' King James forgot how many weapons this man carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that that pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath another. He did not know what strategical operations the scholar, who was 'an old soldier' and a politician also, was capable of conducting under such conditions. Those were narrow quarters for 'the Shepherd of the Ocean,' for the hero of the two hemispheres, to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... as she went down the street, the golden quill on her green hat bidding jaunty defiance to the wind. As she had said, she felt the call at times, and had to yield to its imperative summons, but to-day it was her soul that craved the solace of the open spaces and the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... remorse. At the moment probably, he would have been glad to see something emotional in me. I could not show it. In another minute, however, I should have betrayed confusion, had I not bethought myself to take some quill-pens from my desk, and begin ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Major, in his sarcastic way, "to have a fellow-soldier to talk to instead of a quill-driver, who as yet is not even a penny-a-liner. Eh, Derrick? Don't you feel inclined to regret your fool's choice now? You might have been starting off for the war with Lawrence next week, if you hadn't ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... thereby to get me some relief, I heard, methought, his voice say, "Cease to mourn: I live; and though the veil of flesh once worn Be now stript off, dissolved, and laid aside, My spirit's with thee, and shall so abide." This satisfied me; down I shrew my quill, Willing to be resigned to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... business," replied Mogente quietly. As he spoke the door opened and an old man came in. He had papers and a quill pen ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... and Modern Writers have set me, and by which they have pleas'd the World so well: If I must not, because of my Sex, have this Freedom, but that you will usurp all to your selves; I lay down my Quill, and you shall hear no more of me, no not so much as to make Comparisons, because I will be kinder to my Brothers of the Pen, than they have been to a defenceless Woman; for I am not content to write for a Third day only. I value Fame as ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... countries, and some of the Southern States. The plant is an annual, sending up stems to the height of ten or fifteen feet, while drooping from the top are enormous leaves three or four feet in length, and looking, as one writer has aptly said, like "great, green quill pens." It is planted in fields like corn, which in its young growth it much resembles. Each plant produces a single cluster of from eighty to one hundred or more bananas, often weighing in the aggregate as high as seventy pounds. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... upon his hands and knees and then stood up. He started away, wholly cowed, whining like a quill-pig, bewailing his luck. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Long Way to Tipperary." Outside, another whistled softly to himself while he arranged his fishing tackle. From his book he had selected three flies and was attaching them to the leader. Nearest the rod he put a royal coachman, next to it a blue quill, and at the end a ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Duchesse de Polignac is a droll imitation of a line in the "Mercure Galant." In the quarrel scene one of the lawyers says to his brother quill: 'Ton pere etait aveugle et jouait ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that are stowed away in it, for your trouble; but don't forget to secure the casks till we can stow them away below. We can't break bulk now; but the sooner they are down the better; or we shall have some quill-driving rascal on board, with his flotsam and jetsam, for the Lord knows who;" and Thompson, to use his own expression, went down again "to lay ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the last of the pens, brushing away with it the quill-chips from her desk first, and she looked at me with a kind, wondering face. I brushed them away, clicked the penknife into my pocket, made her a bow, and walked off—for the bell was ringing ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 429), "sincere and faithful, a warm friend and an implacable foe, at once replied to the duke, 'Most high and puissant prince, I suppose your letters to have been dictated by your council and highest clerics, who are folks better at letter-making than I am, for I have not lived by quill-driving. . . . If I write you matter that displeases you, and you have a desire to revenge yourself upon me, you shall find me so near to your army that you will know how little fear I have of you. . . . Be assured that if it be your will to go on long making ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... whose ears are a couple of pens, And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens, Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Then there is the emu-wren, all sad-coloured, but quaint, with the tail-feathers sticking up on end, and exactly like those of an emu; on the very smallest scale, even to the peculiarity of two feathers growing out of the same little quill. I was much amused by the varieties of cockatoos, parrots, and lories of every kind and colour, shrieking and jabbering in the part of the market devoted to them; but I am told that I have seen very few of the varieties of birds, as it is early in the spring, and the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... like a half-man made of tailor's patches, flanked by piles of docketed letters and Records closed, bastioned by deed-boxes blazoned with the indication of their offices—MacGibbon's Mortification, Dunderave Estate, Coil's Trust, and so on; he sat with a shrieking quill among these things, and MacTaggart entering to him felt like thanking God that he had never been compelled to a life like this in a stinking mortuary, with the sun outside on the windows and the clean sea and the singing wood calling in vain. Perhaps some sense of contrast seized the writer, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... at each other in an ironical silence. Basil, who was sitting by his desk, swung the chair round idly on its screw and picked up a quill-pen. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... watched him from the corners of her eyes. He was evidently very much distracted. He walked up and down the room. Every now and then he glanced at Jeanne. Jeanne was very pale, but she wore a hat with a small green quill which he had once admired. Certainly she had an air, she was distinguished. There was something vaguely provocative about her, a charm which he could not help but feel. He stopped short in the middle of his perambulations. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... corn, Brownie the cow, and her own faithful subject, Dowie. Still, it was a great mortification to her to be put into the spelling-book, which excluded her from the Bible-class. She was also condemned to follow with an uncut quill, over and over again, a single straight stroke, set her by the master. Dreadfully dreary she found it, and over it she fell fast asleep. Her head dropped on her outstretched arm, and the quill dropped from her sleeping fingers—for when Annie slept ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... about the thickness of a large quill, and five or six inches long, half protrudes its flat head from one of those enormous, perfumed calyces, in which it ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... achievements recorded and their fame sounded throughout the lands as were the doughty men of war who of old were deemed the only fitting heroes of chronicle and epic. Few of them, however, can hope to have their deeds commemorated by a "veray parfit, gentle knight"—of the quill, not of the sword, albeit the letters which he writes after his name would once have indicated the possession of military rank and distinction. Sir Arthur Helps is not a man of few words or of a very stern or passionate temperament. It is the graces of chivalry, not its fiery ardor, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... characteristic forms and standard variations of the Round Gothic. In lieu of any detailed analysis of these letter shapes, it may perhaps be sufficient to say that they were wholly and exactly determined by the position of the quill, which was held rigidly upright, after the fashion [132] already described in speaking of Roman lettering; and that the letters were always formed with a round swinging motion of hand and arm, as their forms and accented lines clearly ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... hunger. He could have eaten that stuff that was wealth itself. He could have devoured those tusks. He was Gargantua as far as his appetite was concerned, and for the rest he was only Van Laer driving a quill in the office of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... vowels; made with iron style and erased with the same, or else made with a bird's quill; whatever the instrument, three fingers are the agents; and we can convey answer without delay even in situations where it would be ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... How does the Shamrock sail? Watch, and you will see. When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play, dipping first at one side and then at the other, and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... over, he smoked his pipe before the cabin fire of blazing logs, while she cleared the wooden dishes. He watched her get the paper, goose-quill pen and ink as a prisoner sees the scaffold building for ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the rear of the procession; and at evening consorted only with old Lightfoot. As soon as opportunity offered, he built himself a marvellous iridescent ball of marabout feathers. Each of these he split along the quill, so that they curled and writhed in the wind. This picturesque charm he suspended from a short pole in front of his tent. Also, he belonged to the Kikuyu tribe; he ate no game meat, but confined his diet to cornmeal ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... centre of the room, facing the audience. The book of gold can be imitated by placing sheets of gold paper on the cover and in the inside of a large book. Let it rest on the left arm, and be held at the top by the left hand. The right hand holds a long quill pen, the point of which rests on the pages of the book. Let the body and head incline forward slightly; the eyes directed to the book; the expression of the face tranquil. Ben Adhem's position in ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... Mr. Benny assented, looking up and biting the end of his quill. He did not understand the drift of the question. "Now and then, sir," he repeated; "when ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
