"Varnish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accomplishment would have been sufficiently wonderful. For Sikhs to attempt what they carried through, even under such splendid leadership as Ranjoor Singh's, was to defy the very nth degree of odds. To have tried to tell the tale otherwise than in Hira Singh's own words would have been to varnish gold. Amid the echoes of the roar of the guns in Flanders, the world is inclined to overlook India's share in it all and the stout proud loyalty of Indian hearts. May this tribute to the gallant Indian gentlemen who came to fight our ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... "I should prefer having it of its natural color. The bark of the beech has beautiful colors, if they are only brought out by a coat of varnish." ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... still seemed to retain a due regard for outward appearance, then reminded him how long a time had passed, since it had been provided with a new cushion. It likewise expressed the opinion, that the oaken figures on its back would show to much better advantage, by the aid of a little varnish. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the canvases of the old masters—which survives mould and age, the opacity of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... when he was at last coaxed into approaching the house. It was late in September, and a day of perfect calm. As we looked from the broad piazza, there was a glassy smoothness over all the bay, and the hills were coated with a film, or rather a mere varnish, inconceivably thin, of haze more delicate than any other climate in America can show. Over the water there were white gulls flying, lazy and low; schools of young mackerel displayed their white sides above the surface; and it seemed as if even a butterfly might be ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... superintendents were required to oversee the work. Most conspicuous was the Kinkaku-ji, or golden pavilion shrine, so called because its interior was gilt, the gold foil being thickly superposed on lacquer varnish. On this edifice, on the adjacent palace, and on a park where deer roamed and noble pine trees hung over their own shadows in a picturesque lake, immense sums were expended. Works of art were collected ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... thickness of trunk; but it is oftener only fifty or eighty feet high. Its leaves are oval, and, when young, of a rich yellowish colour, which changes to a bright green. The buds are very large, yellow, and covered with a varnish, which exhales a delightful fragrance, and gives to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of his energy to a change in copal gathering. This substance, which is found at the roots of trees in swampy and therefore unhealthy country, is employed in the manufacture of varnish. To harvest it the natives stand all day in water up to their hips and they catch the inevitable colds from which pneumonia develops. Copal gathering is a considerable source of income for many tribes and usually the entire community treks to the marshes. In this way the lives ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous boa was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that none of that class has either depth, ardor, or sincerity; that, their intellectual culture being slight and their erudition a simple varnish, they must remain, in short, manikins who produce the effect and make the gesture of the enlightened beings that they are not. He proved that, the frail roots of their instincts having been nourished ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... which precede and follow them, in virtue of a certain archaic freshness and of a greater freedom from traces of late interpolation and editorial trimming. Jephthah, Gideon and Samson are men of old heroic stamp, who would look as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are; and if the varnish-brush of later respectability has passed over these memoirs of the mighty men of a wild age, here and there, it has not succeeded in effacing, or even in seriously obscuring, the essential characteristics of the theology traditionally ascribed to ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... eternal activities, and indeed of other people's! They were divided into three classes,—those contracted in the society of Joanna when she took him out-of-doors: such as sand, water, mud, grass stains, paint, lime, putty, or varnish; those derived from visits to his sisters at their occupations: such as ink, paints, lead pencils, paste, glue, and mucilage; those amassed in his stays with Ellen in the kitchen: sugar, molasses, spice, pudding sauce, black currants, raisins, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... colony of dusty boots in one corner of the room, and there was a great bottle of black, treacly looking varnish on the mantelpiece. Bunty conceived the brilliant idea of cleaning the whole lot and standing them in a neat row to meet his father's delighted eyes. He found a handkerchief on the floor, of superfine cambric, though dirty, poured upon it a liberal allowance of varnish, ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... the idea of engaging him to show off his violins. Ole Bull accordingly played on one of them at a soiree given by the Duke of Riario, Italian charge d'affaires in Paris. He was almost overcome by the smell of assafoetida which emanated from the varnish, and which was caused by the heat. Nevertheless, he played finely, and as a result was invited to breakfast the next morning by the Duke of Montebello, Marshal Ney's son. This brought him into contact with Chopin, and shortly afterwards he gave his first concert under the duke's patronage, and ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... varnish, one shilling and threepence a gallon, six-and-threepence," said Tweedie, raising his voice a little; "have ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... out to buy our annual corncob, and were agreeably surprised to learn that the price is still six cents; but our friend the tobacconist said that it may go up again soon. We took the treasure, gleaming yellow with fresh varnish, back to our kennel, and we are smoking it as we set down these words. A corncob is sadly hot and raw until it is well sooted, but the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... believed that if she could familiarize his mind with the real gold and clear diamond flash of pure home pleasures, and those which are enjoyed in good society, he would eventually become disgusted with gilt, varnish, and paste. If Laura had been a very plain girl, she might have seconded Mrs. Arnot's efforts to the utmost without any unpleasant results, even if no good ones had followed; and it may well be doubted ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... as the most befitting that could be used. That object is nothing less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds which have marked the proceedings of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts. Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of the Territory had been led into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... incrustation, superimposition, superposition, obduction|; scale &c. (layer) 204. [specific coverings: list] veneer, facing; overlay; plate, silver plate, gold plate, copper plate; engobe[obs3]; ormolu; Sheffield plate; pavement; coating, paint; varnish &c. (resin) 356a; plating, barrel plating, anointing &c. v.; enamel; epitaxial deposition[Engin], vapor deposition; ground, whitewash, plaster, spackel, stucco, compo; cerement; ointment &c. (grease) 356. V. cover; superpose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... walls—no enervating sweet odors in the atmosphere—no contrivances of ventilation to cleanse away the stench of bad tobacco-smoke and brandy-flavored human breath with which the room reeked all night long. Here, in short, was vice wholly undisguised; recklessly showing itself to every eye, without the varnish of beauty, without the tinsel of wit, without even so much as the flavor of cleanliness to recommend it. Were all beholders instinctively overcome by horror at the sight? Far from it. The Snuggery was crammed to its last benches every night; and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... prisoner, despoiled of her man's dress, had much to fear. Brutality, furious hatred, vengeance, might severally incite the cowards to degrade her before she perished, to sully what they were about to burn. Besides, they might be tempted to varnish their infamy by a "reason of state," according to the notions of the day—by depriving her of her virginity they would undoubtedly destroy that secret power of which the English entertained such great dread, who perhaps might recover their courage when they knew that, after all, she was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... shattered frame! The "Phaeton" of whom Saint-Saens sings is not the arrogant son of Phoebus. Whatever the composer may protest, it is the low, open-wheeled carriage that he is describing. He shows it to us coursing through the Bois de Boulogne on a bright spring morning. The new varnish of the charming vehicle gleams smartly, the light, rubber-tired wheels revolve swiftly, the silver-shod harnesses glisten in the sunny air. But, alas, the ponies are frightened by something, doubtlessly ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... next examined the fireplace. It was full of ashes from the logs which had been lighted on the fatal night. He noted attentively the distance of Lewis Langley's chair from the fireplace, and remarked that the varnish on the chair was not ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... prevented from consecrating to immortal fame, by not knowing what it is—the author, I say, has not branched his poem into excrescences of episode, or prolixities of digression; it is neither variegated with diversity of unmeaning similitudes, nor glaring with the varnish of unnatural metaphor. The whole is plain and uniform; so much so, indeed, that I should hardly be surprised if some morose readers were to conjecture that the poet had been thus simple rather from necessity than choice; that he had been restrained, not so much by chastity ...
— English Satires • Various
... morning she took the clipping from the paper down to the paint store, bought a can of enamel, a bottle of varnish and a paint brush, and after dinner went after that bath tub. First she scrubbed it thoroughly; then she dried it; and then she put on the white enamel; a good job too. But as she stood back and looked at it, it did not quite fill the bill; it was rather thin; the tin showed through ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... before him. Not that she wished to speak ill of her sister, only that she would be true and give this lover a chance to escape some of the pain if possible, by seeing the real Kate as she was at home without varnish or furbelows. Yet she reflected that those who knew Kate's shallowness well, still loved her in spite of it, and always bowed to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... turns up an edge all round, and reduces it to the exact size of the button. The lower disk is punched for the shank to come through, stamped with the maker's name, or the name of the tailor for whom the buttons are made, and coated with varnish, either ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the trout season is, legislatively, "open." Jonathan is "busy." I am "busy." We know that, if April passes, there is still May and June, and so, if at the end of April, or early May, we do at last pick up our rods,—all new-bedight with red silk windings, and shiny with fresh varnish,—it is not alone the call of the trout that decides us, but another call which is to me at least more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, there is no May and June in which to heed it. It is the call ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... which good manners seem, even to this day, almost beyond the reach of the white man. Those among whom she had been brought up, whether soldiers or clerks, were probably no nobler or purer at heart—she would gladly have believed them far less so—than Hereward; but the merest varnish of Roman civilization had given a charm to their manners, a wideness of range to their ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... few days before the tournament the Scouts were working on their equipment. Indeed, the very last coat of varnish was put onto "Old Nanc" the Saturday afternoon preceding the tournament day, which fell on Wednesday. All that remained to be done was to deck the machine with flags and bunting and she would be ready ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... that celebrated blue-stocking called the "Romantic Marquise." She is handsome, so the painters say; and, perhaps, they are not far from right, for she is handsome after the style of an old picture. Although young, she seems to be covered with yellow varnish, and to walk surrounded by a frame, with a background ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... the relics on my knee. The metal of each was tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry trumpet, and the threads of its party-colored sling, though fretted and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-drum, beneath its cracked brown varnish. I could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms and a legend running, "Per Mare Per Terrain"—the motto of the marines. Its parchment, though black and scented with wood-smoke, was limp and mildewed; and I began ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... pleasure of gazing at them as they are in improving their own minds. They are visitors, pure and simple, and they are characterized by such an air of newness that even the flies avoid them for fear of sticking to the varnish. ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... to the very existence of intellectual good faith. Destroy credit, and you ruin commerce; destroy all faith in religious honesty and you ruin something of infinitely more importance than commerce; ideas should surely be preserved as carefully as cotton from the poisonous influence of a varnish intended to fit them for public consumption. "The time is come," says Mr. Mill in his autobiography, "in which it is the duty of all qualified persons to speak their minds about popular religious beliefs." The reason which ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... that unpainted wood is not only "natural" but strictly genuine and more interesting than paint, Jack replied that "natural" things are not always beautiful; that paint, which makes no pretense of being anything but paint, is as genuine as shellac or varnish, and that if the object is to be interesting, the bark, the knots, the worm-holes, and, if possible, the worms themselves should be displayed. "Besides," said he, "if we decide on hard wood, who shall choose the kinds? There's beech, birch and maple; ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... all the external varnish of modernity, learning, and spirituality which the members of the Church begin nowadays to assume in their works, their articles, their theological journals, and their sermons, the practical work of the Russian Church consists of nothing more than keeping the people in their ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... mixter uv the more desprit variety he hed picked up in Washinton and Baltimore, I felt that it wuz indeed well with us. He wuz talkin ez a Dimokrat to Dimokrats; and it wuz appreciated. Strippin off all uv the disguise he hed bin a wearin for four years,—washin off, in rage and whisky, the varnish and putty with wich he hed shined up his dullness, and filled up the cracks and cavities wich hed alluz troubled him,—he stood forth ez we knowd him—Androo Johnson! How he did froth and foam! How he did lash his late associates! ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... save money on your easel, don't save on the construction and strength of it, but on the finish. Let the polish and varnish go, but get a well-made easel with solid wood. The heavier it is, the less easily it packs away, to be sure, but the more steadily it will hold ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... joys; yielding to theirs Its own desires, each latent wish that bears The selfish stamp, O! let me shun the art Taught by smooth Flattery in her courtly mart, Where Simulation's studied smile ensnares! Scorn that exterior varnish for the Mind, Which, while it polishes the manners, veils In showy clouds the soul.—E'en thus we find Glass, o'er whose surface clear the pencil steals, Grown less transparent, tho' with colours gay, Sheds but the darken'd ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... examining began upon the brass-work on the right-hand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had scratched the varnish ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... extracted and used for food and light; it is known in India as kekuna, and the tree as the "candle-nut.'' In the Sandwich Islands the nuts are strung upon strips of wood and used as torches. The oil is exported to Europe for candle-making. A. cordata flourishes in China, where it is known as the varnish- tree, on account of the lac ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... up to 20 lb. Small screw-driver. Small gimlet. Small bottle clockmaker's oil. Bottle varnish. Carriage-lamp, and candles to fit, for travelling. Two packs playing-cards. Good-sized flask. Flat glass or horn drinking-cup. Pocket-scissors. The kind that shut up will be found very useful. Corkscrew. Hank of medium gut for ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... shabby, and the walls were faded and dingy; what though the great beams in the dining-room were dirty and the carpets in the halls bedraggled, and the onyx gapping in great cracks upon the warped walls of the office; what though the paint had faded and the varnish cracked all over the house! To Margaret Mueller and also to the eldest Miss Morton, who only managed to breathe below her locket when they were under the stars, it was a dream of marble halls, and the frowsy Freddie Kollander ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... and sons sallied out for a day's sport, George with a fowling-piece, Fred with a sketch-book, and Mr Sudberry with a fishing-rod, the varnish and brass-work on which, being perfectly new, glistened ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... the first of April. The night was dark; there was not a star to be seen; and a drizzling rain, falling at intervals, made me very uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was concerning the balloon, which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended, began to grow rather heavy with the moisture. I therefore set my assistants to working, and in about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently inflated. I attached the car and put all my implements in it—a telescope, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... cruel to him, jeerin' and fleerin', he never felt it, because he was too proud to show ye? He'd a big saft heart, had David, beneath the varnish. Mony's the time when mither was alive, I've seen him throw himsel' into her arms, sobbin', and cry, 'Eh, if I had but mither! 'Twas different when mither was alive; he was kinder to me then. An' noo I've no one; I'm alone.' An' he'd sob and sob ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... separated too much those two closely allied things, religion and ethics. Let's try to bring them together right here in Roma. We can't reform the city in a year,—but we can begin. No religion is alive until—unless it works. We want no varnish religion,' as somebody called it; we want no ethics that won't strike in and uplift humanity as high as is humanly possible. God is still busy in Roma. It is our business, as private citizens, as well as public officials, to take right hold and help. Let us all set ourselves ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... my forefinger day after day, for—how many years? Twenty, at least; I remember buying it at a shop in Tottenham Court Road. By the same token I bought that day a paper-weight, which cost me a whole shilling—an extravagance which made me tremble. The penholder shone with its new varnish, now it is plain brown wood from end to end. On my forefinger it ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... one "Symonne de Byrtonne," and, in still others, the whole of the short-verse pieces, "Songe to Aella" and "The Accounte of W. Canynge's Feast." These scraps of vellum are described as about six inches square, smeared with glue or brown varnish, or stained with ochre, to give them an appearance of age. Thomas Warton had seen one of them, and pronounced it a clumsy forgery; the script not of the fifteenth century, but unmistakably modern. Southey describes another as written, for the most part, in an attorney's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... objects mentioned are represented; while a medallion picture in the atrium, with heads of Mars and Venus, gave rise to the second appellation. The colors of this picture are still quite fresh, a result which Signor Fiorelli attributes to his having caused a varnish of wax to be laid over the painting at the time of its discovery. Without some such protection the colors of these pictures soon decay; the cinnabar, or vermilion, especially, turns black after a few days' exposure to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... England. The process of lacquer-making, too, is very interesting. We had, however, to go from house to house to witness it, as only one portion of the process is carried on at each—from the gradual coating of the roughest wood with three coatings of varnish, until it is finally ornamented with delicate designs, and polished ready for sale. In appearance, price, and length of wear there is ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... filled, it is turned over (care being taken to avoid the inclusion of an air-bubble), and held in a central position in contact with the bottom of the jar. When cold and firmly coagulated, the jelly is coated over with white varnish. A few days later, when the surface of the varnish is firm, this again is thinly coated with a film of jelly, and thereby preserved from the ultimate danger of cracking. The jar is fixed with glue into a suitable wooden stand. The gelatine which yields the strongest and most colourless ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... OCCIDENTALE.—The cashew nut tree, cultivated in the West Indies and other tropical countries. The stem furnishes a milky juice, which becomes hard and black when dry, and is used as a varnish. It also secretes a gum, like gum arabic. The nut or fruit contains a black, acrid, caustic oil, injurious to the lips and tongue of those who attempt to crack the nut with their teeth; it becomes innocuous and wholesome when roasted, but this process must ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... sewed together; an art which we did not find to the southward, but is strongly, though not very neatly, performed here. There is also a particular sort that is thin, much resembling oil-cloth; and which is actually either oiled or soaked in some kind of varnish, and seems to resist the action of water ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... new. The fittings glistened with varnish, mirrors and brass rods reflected the light at every angle, and the building was packed from roof to floor with boots. The shelves were loaded with white cardboard boxes containing the better sort of boot. But there was not room enough on the shelves, and boots and shoes ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... show of the night was the Russian Ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, and in whose demeanour the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French politeness. As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he was the favoured lover ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... distrust with which we of the back country were bred to regard the metropolitan varnish which was thus undermining the ancient Berkshire habits and speech along our one great artery, it was always, I am bound to admit, a high day for the dweller in uncorrupted Berkshire when business or pleasure drew him from his home in the downs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... piano. Be prepared to answer any reasonable question that may come up, which your knowledge of the instrument should enable you to do. In regard to temperature, moisture, etc., an extreme either way is the thing to avoid. A very dry or hot atmosphere will crack the varnish, warp the wooden parts, crack the sound-board, cause parts to come unglued, etc. On the other hand, too much moisture will rust the steel parts, strings, etc.; so the "happy medium" is the condition to be desired. As to keeping pianos closed, a question you will ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... landing on which they stood, at the miserable, uncarpeted floor, the ill-painted doors on which the long-forgotten varnish stood out in blisters, the jumble of dilapidated hot-water cans, a mop, and a medley of brooms and rags all thrown down together ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... good of it, there's carpet that can be made into rugs with some fringe on the ends. I always did like the smell of fresh paint, anyhow. There's nothin' you can put into a house that'll make it smell as fresh and clean as paint. Varnish is good, too, but it's more expensive. I'll go down now, and get the hot water and the ladder. I reckon she's through with ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... art, Can sap the principles, or taint the heart; With more address a lover's note convey, Or bribe a virgin's innocence away. Well may they rise, while I, whose rustick tongue Ne'er knew to puzzle right, or varnish wrong, Spurn'd as a beggar, dreaded as a spy, Live unregarded, unlamented die. [k]For what but social guilt the friend endears? Who shares Orgilio's crimes, his fortune shares. [l]But thou, should tempting villany present All Marlb'rough ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... merry childish laughter, and then gulp it down with a sort of hiccough. It were impossible to tell how she spent the time. All Colette's efforts to equip her with the brilliant artificiality which is so easily imposed on the mind of a young girl, like a kind of lacquered varnish, had been wasted: the varnish would not hold. She learned nothing: she would take months to read a book, and would like it immensely, though in a week she would forget both its title and its subject: without the least embarrassment she would ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... to a single quarter of the city. A borer, of similar habits, is not uncommon in Italy, and you may see in that country handsome chairs and other furniture which have been reduced by this insect to a framework of powder of post, covered, and apparently held together, by nothing but the varnish. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... which we have above alluded, and which is sold in our bird marts under that name, is a viscid, sticky preparation, closely resembling a very thick and gummy varnish. It is astonishingly "sticky," and the slightest quantity between the fingers will hold them together with remarkable tenacity. What its effect must be on the feathers of a bird can ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... completion of annual overhaul, from Coventry via London, to Southampton Docks to await my arrival; and very pretty she looked, under the steamer's side among the railway lines, at six in the morning. Next to her new paint and varnish I was most impressed by her ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting for hire by the bridge; the waterman cleaning them with a parti-coloured mop spies me eyeing his vessels, and before I know exactly what is going on, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Clive, in the House of Lords, was nursing a still younger bantling, now an empire twice as populous as Europe was at that period. Under the equally rugged hand of the young princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Russia was having her Mongolian epidermis indued with the varnish Napoleon so signally failed to scrape off, and was for the first time taking a place among the great powers of the West. The curtain, in short, was in the act of rising on the Europe of to-day. Anson had lately brought the Pacific to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... 326); and just before you take it up, put it nearer the fire to brown it. If you wish to froth it, baste it, and dredge it with flour carefully: you cannot do this delicately nice without a very good light. The common fault seems to be using too much flour. The meat should have a fine light varnish of froth, not the appearance of being covered with a paste. Those who are particular about the froth use butter instead of drippings; (see receipt to ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and waves of tinsels which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... world talking horse to them—I can see that from their sordid looks. I shall disappear. You can say I have gone out on a trial run, which won't be a lie, only an understatement. And you can just hand them out the little books and let them paw the varnish. Silence will be better than anything I could say. Probably it is better than what any conscientious man could say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick and its frame, of an elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide. It glittered and twinkled in the morning light, and looked, to Newman's eyes, wonderfully splendid and precious. It seemed to him a very happy purchase, and he felt rich ...
— The American • Henry James
... the result of the action of the water envelopes the zinc in a kind of protecting coat. We have learned in consequence, that if we put into our vessel only the zinc and water, they by themselves do not give rise to much action, and we get no result. But suppose I proceed to dissolve off this varnish—this encumbering substance—which I can do by a little acid; the moment I do this, I find the zinc acting upon the water exactly as the iron did, but at the common temperature. The acid in no way is altered, except ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... with some air-tight substance like a coating of varnish, its functions are completely arrested. The bodily heat falls very rapidly. Symptoms of blood-poisoning arise, and death soon ensues. The reason is not clearly known, unless it be from the sudden retention ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... front yard. He had curried her and had combed her mane and tail and had had her newly shod, and altogether she may have felt too comfortable to keep awake. He himself seemed to have received a coating of the same varnish as his buggy. Had you pinned a young beetle in the back of his coat or on either leg of his trousers, as a mere study in shades of blackness, it must have been lost to view at the distance of a few yards through sheer harmony with its background. ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... painter's assault on the lily. It would appear that a high percentage of white and grey horses had been shot in the several sorties; hence the necessity of varnishing the survivors. The white animals were more discernible to the eye behind a Mauser. Condy's Fluid was the "varnish" utilised; and curious to relate, one noble steed was, not khaki, but green after treatment. Perhaps he wanted to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... They had bought it and its furniture as a mere adjunct to a farm which they had chosen with more care, and when they inspected it for the first time their hearts sank somewhat within them. Captain Rexford, with impressive sadness, remarked to his wife that there was a greater lack of varnish and upholstery and of traces of the turning lathe than he could have supposed possible in—"furniture." But his wife had bustled away before he had quite finished his speech. Whatever she might feel, she at least expressed no discouragement. Torture does not draw ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... time he became an excellent workman. He cherished, however, much higher ambitions. Having once seen, at a coachbuilder's at Plassans, a fine new carriage, shining with varnish, he vowed that he would one day build carriages himself. He remembered this carriage as a rare and unique work of art, an ideal towards which his aspirations should tend. The tilted carts at which he worked in Vian's shop, those carts which he had lovingly cherished, now ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Death to Bugs:—Varnish is death to the most persistent bug. It is cheap—ten cents' worth will do for one bedstead—is easily used, is safe, and improves the looks of the furniture to which it is applied. The application, must, however, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... duties. And what reward have they? Scanty pay, for food the diet I have just described, and for their sleeping-place the smallest and most inconvenient part of the ship, a dark place frequently infested with vermin, and smelling offensively from being likewise used as a receptacle for oil-colours, varnish, tar, salt-fish, ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... for its acknowledged chief—a school pre-occupied above all things by the form; obsolete words set in a new setting, modern words introduced into old cadences to freshen them with a bright and delightful varnish, in a word, a language under visible sign of decay ... yet how full of dim idea and evanescent music—a sort of Indian summer, a season of dependency that looked back on the splendours ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... marshal," was all he said to Villeroi, on his arrival at Versailles. "He was nothing more than an old wrinkled balloon, out of which all the gas that inflated it has gone," says St. Simon: "he went off to Paris and to Villeroi, having lost all the varnish that made him glitter, and having nothing more to show ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake was commonly called,—tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top with a varnish of egg,—jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber clearness,—whitest and purest honey in the comb,—in short, everything that could go to the getting-up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the house. The unsullied snow of the door-step reproduced itself in the unsullied snow of his shirt-front; the brilliancy of the brass-plate was reflected in the glittering brightness of his gold-studs; the varnish on the door was equalled by the lustrous surface of his black-satin waistcoat; the careful pointing of the brickwork was in a manner imitated by the perfect order of his polished finger-nails and the irreproachable neatness of his hair and whiskers. No dentist or medical practitioner ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... covenant against folks in general:" with whom he had proposed to connect some Perfectly New people. "Everything new about them. If they presented a father and mother, it seemed as if THEY must be bran new, like the furniture and the carriages—shining with varnish, and just home from the manufacturers." These groups took shape in the Lammles and the Veneerings. "I must use somehow," is the remark of another letter, "the uneducated father in fustian and the educated boy in spectacles whom Leech and I saw at Chatham;" of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... success is alright when there are there rooms and no vacancies, a success is alright when there is a package, success is alright anyway and any curtain is wholesale. A curtain diminishes and an ample space shows varnish. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... or body of paint or varnish with a flexible roller to pails, tubs, or other articles of hollow ware, substantially in the manner herein ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... beautifully finished ornamental wood and a splendid exhibit of the famous Kauri gum. This gum, which is used principally in the manufacture of varnish, takes an important place among New Zealand products, no less than five million dollars worth being exported last year. Of special interest to ornithologists were the native wingless ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... you're on your wrong side, young fellow, and if you've done me the slightest damage, even scratched my varnish, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Angus. 'In that case don't let him have it. If the shark offers that it'll be worth more. I'll go into the mining business myself as soon as I've done this door and the wainscoting and give them their varnish.' ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... fruit of Pallas, maid "Of unsoil'd purity; autumnal fruits, "Cornels, in liquid lees of wine preserv'd; "Endive, and radish, and the milky curd; "With eggs turn'd lightly o'er a gentle heat: "All serv'd in earthen dishes. After these "A clay-carv'd jug was set, and beechen cups, "Varnish'd all bright with yellow wax within. "Short the delay, when from the ready fire "The steaming dish is brought; and wine not long "Press'd from the grape, again went round, again "Gave place to see the third ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... her colours (and more) flying, and was making great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady's collar. A benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife- box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... is to be taught not to commend such things as these, no, nor to show the nimbleness of his wit or subtlety in maintaining argument by finding out plausible colors and pretences to varnish over a bad matter. But we should teach him rather to judge that poetry is an imitation of the manners and lives of such men as are not perfectly pure and unblameable, but such as are tinctured with passions, misled by false opinions, and muffled with ignorance; though oftentimes ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... understand her meaning Craven realized that she would not have much pity for Lady Sellingworth in misfortune. But Lady Sellingworth was cruel, too, had been cruel to him. And he saw humanity without tenderness, teeth and claws at work, barbarity coming to its own through the varnish. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... carriage of the kind-hearted monarch of Great Britain approached. First came the body of Life Guards, their belts well whitened with pipeclay, and their heads plastered with pomatum and powder; and then followed the royal carriage, as fine as gold and paint and varnish ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... atmosphere. This first mischievous effect is often gradually weakened by the continued cultivation, and may end by disappearing. At other times, on the contrary, it persists obstinately, and one is often forced in desperation to the resolve to level the ground again and to varnish it, so to speak, with a thick sowing of grass, if he wishes to suspend ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... he wondered if there might not be valuable clay about, what labour cost, and what the nearest stations were for haulage; and, seeing the hop-poles, he caught himself speculating what wood they were made of, and what varnish would best prevent their buried points from going rotten in this particular soil. There was a surge of practical considerations, but quickly fading. The last one was stirred by the dust of a leisurely butcher's cart. He had visions of a paste for motor-roads, or something ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... varnish," cried Ed Tyler, "the picture is so dull we'll shine it up a little and see what that will do." Suddenly a childish howl was heard, to everybody's surprise; for little three-year-old Isabel ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... their passengers. Tugboats passed up and down similarly crowded and displaying the flags of various journals and news organisations—the News, the Press, the Times, and the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful and gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic, solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from her turrets, a great, white battleship rode motionless to ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... blade, and trunk is coated with frozen rain, so that you can touch nothing truly. The spikes of the pines are sunk into pear-shaped crystals, and each fence-post is miraculously hilted with diamonds. If you bend a twig, the icing cracks like varnish, and a half-inch branch snaps off at the lightest tap. If wind and sun open the day together, the eye cannot look steadily at the splendour of this jewelry. The woods are full of the clatter of arms; the ringing of bucks' horns in flight; the stampede of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... there was a whirling circle of ornamental lions, giraffes, camels, ponies, goats, glittering with varnish and metal that caught swift reflections from windows high above them. With stiff wooden legs, they swept on in a never-ending race, while a great orchestrion clamored in wild speed. The summer sunlight ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... shepherdess of bronze complexion and great symmetry of limb, was the only sound that disturbed the Christmas-like peace of the apartment,—a peace which held the odors of evergreens, new toys, cedar boxes, glue, and varnish in a harmonious combination that passed ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... manufactured into doors, frames, windows, and shutters, without paint or varnish, and wooden houses, unmounted, without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... unlimited power over all the district. He, too, prided himself on having lived at Paris, and seized every occasion ostentatiously to show he was not ignorant of its pleasures and refinements; concealing beneath this film of varnish his inborn rusticity, he assumed as well as he was able the polish of one accustomed to good society. His tall, portly form was always tightly buttoned in a close-fitting uniform, and he lied outrageously about his ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sent up a man to varnish the parlor floor, and we have to get the chairs and things out of his way," said ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... painting; but how to procure it is another trouble to overcome, as all our American raw linseed oil has been heated by the manufacturers, to qualify it for quick drying and an early market, thereby impairing its quality. After linseed oil has been boiled, it becomes a poor varnish; it remains soft and pliable when used in paint, giving way to air pressure from the wood in hot weather, forming blisters. Turpentine causes no blistering; it evaporates upon being exposed, and leaves the paint in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... as the Chinese; and not only did they make similar sorts of porcelain, but they subsequently invented styles of decoration of their own. They did much medallion-painting, a form of design unknown in China. They also gave to the world their wonderful Japanese lacquer, a varnish of gums that could be applied not only to wood but in some cases to porcelain. They also were the race to invent Cloisonne ware, a very difficult type of thing when made as they made it. To the surface of the porcelain they fastened ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... things, Frank," Ned answered. "I know that's not a Snyders over the mantelpiece—bet you three to one it's a copy. We'll restore it, my boy. A lick of varnish, and it will come out wonderfully, sir. That old fellow in the red gown, I ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unaccustomed surroundings impressing everyone into unaccustomed silence. For the place had been all scrubbed and white-washed, and there were wonderful new desks and seats that folded up all of their own accord when you stood up, as if they worked by magic. There was a strange smell of varnish, too, that added much to the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the purpose at house-furnishing stores, called a glazing brush, are best; but you may manage with any other or even a stiff feather. When the glaze softens, as glue would do, brush over your meat with it, it will give the lacking brown; or, if you have a ham or tongue you wish to decorate you may "varnish" it, as it were, with the melted glaze; then when cold beat some fresh butter to a white cream, and with a kitchen syringe, if you have one, a stiff paper funnel if you have not, trace any design you please on the glazed surface; this makes a very handsome dish, and if your ham has been properly ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... away, my boy. I was a model of discretion. I give you my word that it is all right. And she's a dear little soul, Frankie. You're not worthy to varnish those pretty patent leathers of hers. You know you're not. And by Jove, Frankie, if you had stayed with me yesterday I should never have forgiven you—no, never! I'll resign in her favour. I will. But in no one else's, and if ever I hear of your going wrong, my ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... serves a more utilitarian purpose in supplying commerce with a rich orange-yellow dye-wood known as young fustic. All this tribe of shrubs and trees contain resinous, milky juice, drying dark like varnish, which in a Japanese species is transformed by the clever native artisans into their famous lacquer. With a commercial instinct worthy of the Hebrew, they guard this process ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... for Apparatus.—Dissolve gum shellac in alcohol, or procure shellac varnish at the druggists', stir in lampblack, and apply with a sponge or bit of rag. This will adhere to metal, as well as wood, and is used for the inside ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... entertained by many of the rationalist divines for the freethinkers who were a little more outspoken than himself. The deist whose creed was varnished with Christian phrases, was often bitter against the deist who rejected the varnish; and Pope put Toland and Tindal into the Dunciad as scandalous assailants of all religion. From his point of view it was as wicked to attack any creed as to regard any creed as exclusively true; and ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... thing that took place and happened, I will proceed and relate the plain and unvarnished history of it. And what I set down in this epistol, you can depend upon. It is the plain truth, entirely unvarnished: not a mite of varnish will ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... father's house. And in it every piece of wood, and every board had been made ready by his own hands, and set in the sun and dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal, but wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all polished, and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you spoke in this nest your voice sounded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trial was now made; little tubes of very thin glass, closed at their upper ends and coated with black varnish, were slipped over the cotyledons of Phalaris (which had germinated in darkness) and just fitted them. Narrow stripes of the varnish had been previously scraped off one side, through which alone light could ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... number of beautiful Sumbawan ponies, together with a score or more gilt carriages of state, are as immaculately kept as those of Buckingham Palace. In the palace garage I was shown a row of powerful Fiats, gleaming with fresh varnish and polished brass, and beside them, as among equals, a member of the well-known Ford family of Detroit, proudly bearing on its panels the ornate arms of the Susuhunan. I felt as though I had encountered an old friend who had married ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... is the chief one in parts of the South where the Long-leaved Pine thrives. The United States produces more turpentine and rosin than any other country in the world. The turpentine is used in paints and in various arts. The rosin is used in varnish, laundry soap, etc. These two products come from the sap or "gum" of the pine tree. The sap is secured by tapping or "boxing" the tree, and then keeping the cut ducts of the sap-wood open by "chipping" or "pulling," ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... into the dining-room, and looked cursorily at about a dozen large dingy pictures of the Italian school, which a man who knew anything about art would have condemned at a glance. Fine examples of brown varnish, all of them. Thence to the library, lined with its carved-oak dwarf bookcases, containing books which nobody had opened for a generation—Livy, Gibbon, Hume, Burke, Smollett, Plutarch, Thomson. These sages, clad in shiny brown leather and gilding, made as good ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... shuddered at some hideous recollection. His eyes were dark and eager; there was a warm moisture like varnish on ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... demanding, incessantly, charity for the love of God, charity for the love of the Blessed Virgin, charity for the love of all the Saints. A group of miserable children, almost naked, screaming forth the same petition, discover that they can see themselves reflected in the varnish of the carriage, and begin to dance and make grimaces, that they may have the pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of them who drowns his clamorous demand ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... preserved, according to their kind; birds, fishes, reptiles, arms, articles of dress, shells, seaweeds, grasses, or memorials of coral reef; each was displayed in its especial place, and each could have been displayed in no better place. Paint and varnish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch. On this bright summer ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... cells, and the boat is therefore unserviceable. The general character of the materials of which inflated boats are constructed precludes any effectual repairs, as the intense heat of the sun decomposes the varnish with which the canvas is covered; it first becomes soft and adhesive, and then changes to a substance like tar, which does not consolidate with a lower temperature. Adjusted the ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... dull.—On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it was a question of life or death, he enters the tribune with a set speech, written and re-written, polished and re-polished,[3192] overloaded with studied ornaments and bits for effect,[3193] coated by dint of time and labor, with the academic varnish, the glitter of symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods, exclamations, omissions, apostrophes and other tricks of the pen.[3194]—In the most famous and important of his reports,[3195] I have counted eighty-four instances of personifications[3196] imitated from Rousseau and the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... remarked of a picture of "The Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen," in the Shakespeare Gallery, that the varnish was chilled and the figures rather sunk, the proprietors directed one of their assistants to give it a fresh coat of varnish. "Must I use copal or mastic?" said the young man. "Neither one nor the other," said a gentleman present; "if you wish to bring the figures ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... would perhaps be the most blessed antidote which could be bestowed upon us. The heroes themselves were the men of the people —the Joneses, the Smiths, the Davises, the Drakes; and no courtly pen, with the one exception of Raleigh, lent its polish or its varnish to set them off. In most cases the captain himself, or his clerk or servant, or some unknown gentleman volunteer, sat down and chronicled the voyage which he had shared, and thus inorganically arose a collection of writings which, with all their simplicity, are for nothing more striking ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude |
