"Whalebone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and grammar to learn. Josefina retired to a corner and made desperate efforts to commit them to memory. A little before the dinner hour Concha, who was deputed for the task, took a chair, drew out the famous whalebone, and with that in one hand, and the book in the other, she commenced her pedagogic functions. Every time the child hesitated or forgot a word, it cost her a blow from the whalebone on her face, hand, or neck; and as her memory was not very ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans, and annually produced articles in this country alone ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... approach and dart a harpoon into or lance him. The reason for this immunity of primary attack by boats is that the finback is in the first place of little value when compared to either the humpback or "right" whale, for the coating of blubber is thin, and the plates of baleen (or whalebone) he possesses are very short; and in the second place he is, although so timid a creature, too dangerous to be struck with a harpoon, for he would take the entire whale-line out of three or four boats and then get away with it after all, for it is the ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... be found only in the southern island, and with regard to which the New Zealanders have many superstitious notions. Some of them are made of a darker-coloured stone, susceptible of a high polish; some of whalebone; and Nicholas mentions one, which he saw in the possession of Tippoui, brother of the celebrated George of Wangarooa, and himself one of the leaders of the attack on the 'Boyd,' which, like that of Shungie, which Rutherford speaks of, was of iron, and also highly ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... thrust his fist into his mouth, as Mynheer put him down upon the floor. Soon he sat erect, and looked with a sweet scowl at the company. With his lace and embroideries, and his crown of blue ribbon and whalebone (for he was not quite past the tumbling age), he looked like the king ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... pursued her and more than once fought for her favors. During her stay in Vienna, the French ambassador, who had fallen a victim to her charms, became so madly jealous of the Portuguese minister, that he drew his sword on Catarina upon one occasion, and had it not been for her whalebone bodice she would have lost her life. As it was, she received a slight scratch, which calmed the enraged diplomat and brought him to his knees. She would pardon him only on condition that he would present her with his sword, on ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... there are many in the hands of London silversmiths. Figs. 23 and 24 represent two cocoanut cups with feet of silver, one engraved with the owner's initials, the foot being decorated with bead ornament. Fig. 25 is a cocoanut mounted as a flagon with handle of whalebone and rim and foot of silver. The use of such cups seems to have been very generally distributed all over the world, for there are many South American examples, as well as the English varieties. The gourd, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... my life against a poacher's on even terms! Of course, if they suffice, I shall only treat him to my knuckles; but if not—if he be a giant, or there be more than one of them—then here is a better ally than mere bone and sinew." Yorke took out of a drawer a life-preserver, made of lead and whalebone, struck with it once, to test its weight and elasticity, then slipped it into his shooting-jacket pocket. "That will enlarge their organs of locality," said he, grimly; "they will not forget the Decoy Pond in a hurry whose ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... of three strips of lime-tree, two of which are stained black. Whalebone purfling has been frequently used, particularly by the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... pathless sea, framed his boat on the bones of the whale. There were two kinds of boats—the long ones, for from twelve to twenty men, the little skiffs which Eskimos of the Atlantic call kyacks—with two or three, seldom more, manholes. Over the whalebone frame was stretched the wet elastic hide of walrus or sea-lion. The big boat was open on top like a Newfoundland fisherman's dory or Frenchman's bateau, the little boat covered over the top except for the manholes round which ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... great distance, that they looked as if they had fallen there by chance. This, flying open, discovered a fine yellow petticoat, beautifully edged round the bottom with a narrow piece of half gold lace which was now almost become fringe: beneath this appeared another petticoat stiffened with whalebone, vulgarly called a hoop, which hung six inches at least below the other; and under this again appeared an under-garment of that colour which ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... few things he didn't: the South Pole isn't at the water's edge but far inland; sharks don't flip over before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm whales don't prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding, Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths before the arrival of Jacques ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... little drawer inside, supposing it to be intended for that purpose. But he soon finds, after having doubled himself up, like people passing on a coach top under a low gateway, that it would be utterly impossible to remain long in that position, unless the human back were as pliable as a piece of whalebone. After all, perhaps, the bearers are compelled to rest the palanquin on the ground, and the abashed stranger, creeping hastily in, is glad to escape from the ill suppressed smiles of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller returns; and Tom went on to the ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... is termed "an exciting finish," one's general conception of the manliness of racing may be modified. From afar off the movement of the jockeys' whip-hands is no more suggestive than the movement of a windmill's sails; but, when one hears the "flack, flack" of the whalebone and sees the wales rise on the dainty skin of the immature horse, one does not feel quite joyous or manly. I have seen a long lean creature reach back with his right leg and keep on jobbing with the spur for nearly four hundred yards ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... his intention. The site of the fire was now merely a circle of ashes flecked with red embers and sparks, the furze having burnt completely away. Once within the circle he whirled her round and round in a dance. She was a woman noisily constructed; in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather and in dry, to preserve her boots from wear; and when Fairway began to jump about with her, the clicking of the pattens, the creaking of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... wore, in the first place, very stiff stays; and those who thought much of being smart, had them laced as tight as they could well bear. Added to these stays, they wore hoops or petticoats well stiffened with whalebone. Some of these hoops were of the form of a bell with the mouth downwards—these were the least ugly; others were made to stand out on each side from the waist, I am afraid to say how far; but those made for grand occasions ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... acts by slight variations.—These must be useful at once.—Difficulties as to the giraffe; as to mimicry; as to the heads of flat-fishes; as to the origin and constancy of the vertebrate, limbs; as to whalebone; as to the young kangaroo; as to sea-urchins; as to certain processes of {viii} metamorphosis; as to the mammary gland; as to certain ape characters; as to the rattlesnake and cobra; as to the process of formation of the eye and ear; as to the fully developed ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... weather taffrail, and where she sat down. The schooner was at the time under the two gaff-top-sails, the main boom and sheets eased off a little, those long masts, with the sticks above them running clear away up the sky, almost out of sight, bending like whalebone, and reeling over the long swell when the breeze freshened; and not a sound to be heard save now and then a light creak from the main boom as the broad white sail strained flat and taut over to leeward, or the rush of the water as it came hissing along from ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of whips was the most important business in Amherst. It gave employment to several persons and furnished the means of support to ten or twelve families. The purchases of ivory, whalebone, and other raw material, were usually made from first hands and in such quantities as often gave the firm control of the market; while in the style and workmanship of their handmade whips, they had ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... pomatumed chignon (bourse), ringlets, and curls"; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin is half way down to her feet"; sometimes they put rouge on her ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sofas, and balanced themselves in chairs, all the way from Philadelphia, with all the conscious fascinations of stiff stays and neck-cloths, which, while doing to death the rash beauties who ventured to gaze, seemed but a whalebone panoply to guard the wearer, these pretty youths so guarded from without, so sweetly at peace within, now crushed beneath their armour, looked more like victims on the wheel, than dandies armed for ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... he had been recently united. In his attire, even when habited for the chase or a merry-making, like the present, the Knight of Whalley affected a sombre colour, and ordinarily wore a quilted doublet of black silk, immense trunk hose of the same material, stiffened with whalebone, puffed out well-wadded sleeves, falling bands, for he eschewed the ruff as savouring of vanity, boots of black flexible leather, ascending to the hose, and armed with spurs with gigantic rowels, a round-crowned small-brimmed black hat, with an ostrich feather placed in the side ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to buy whalebone, and other trifles which I must have for my business here. So I just go and come back, and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... shepherd boy. Once, seeing the inside of a watch, he was filled with wonder. "Why should I not make a watch?" thought he. 10. But how was he to get the materials out of which to make the wheels and the mainspring? He soon found how to get them: he made the mainspring out of a piece of whalebone. He then made a wooden clock which kept good time. 11. He began, also, to copy pictures with a pen, and portraits with oil colors. In a few years, while still a small boy, he earned money enough to support his father. 12. When he became a man, he went to London to live. Some of the wisest men in ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... a whalebone whale, Hank?" asked the boy, turning to a lithe Yankee sea-dog with a scraggy gray beard who had been busily working over the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... that came up was the huge lip, fastened to a large iron hook, called the blubber hook. It was lowered into the blubber-room between decks, where a couple of men were stationed to stow the blubber away. Then came the fins, and after them the upper-jaw, with the whalebone attached to it. The "right" whale has no teeth like the sperm whale. In place of teeth it has the well-known substance called whalebone, which grows from the roof of its mouth in a number of broad thin plates, extending ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... thought it, was heard along the shore; but when two of these animals were killed they were seen to be dogs like mastiffs with sharp ears and bushy tails. A little farther on sleds were found, one made of wood and sawn boards, the other of whalebone. Presently the coast-line was broken into a network of barren islands with great sounds between. When Davis sailed southward he reached and passed the strait that had been the scene of Frobisher's adventures and, like Frobisher himself, also passed by the opening of ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... speak lest his voice should be recognised afterwards, but he struggled all he knew. The man soon overpowered him; but Marriner came to the rescue. Throwing down the sack of pheasants, he had taken from his pocket an implement of whalebone with a heavy knob of lead at the end, and coming behind the man, both whose hands were holding on to Saurin, he struck him with it on the head as hard as he could. The keeper's grasp relaxed, he fell heavily to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... much in the same costume as Marie Antoinette and her female favourites are described to have worn in the gardens of Trianon, or in the bowers of St. Cloud,—to the horror of all old dames d'atours, and all the partisans of the ancient regime of whalebone and buckram! The chemise of transparent muslin, or robe a la Poliynae, chapeau de paille a la bergere, tied down ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... which sold for $89,000, and the William Hamilton of New Bedford set another high mark by stowing 4181 barrels of a value of $109,269. The Pioneer of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, was away only a year and stocked a cargo of oil and whalebone which sold for $150,060. Most of the profits of prosperous voyages were taken as the owners' share, and the incomes of the captain and crew were so niggardly as to make one wonder why they persisted in a calling so perilous, arduous, and poorly paid. During the best years of whaling, ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... snatched her largest doll from the chair where she was reposing, and belabored her soundly with a piece of whalebone that lay near at hand. Then, after shaking her heartily, she tossed her on to the bed, where she lay with her black eyes shut, as if overcome by her feelings. She was a very handsome wax doll, with chestnut hair done up like a lady's in puffs and curls. She had a somewhat ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Kittridge, "I've met 'em bigger than all the colleges up to Brunswick,—great white bears on 'em,—hungry as Time in the Primer. Once we came kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying Betsey hadn't been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry, that they stood there with the water jist runnin' out of their chops in ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, struggling affrightedly in his suffocating cage of whalebone and alpaca. "What's this here old lady's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... opened. His legs were made of whalebone. But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His features had a habit of smiling. An old habit of narrowing one of his ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... good as could be given,) for their admixture, in the composition of brass." "A lady's parasol, and a gentleman's watch were described in the same manner. The ivory knob, the brass crampet, the bamboo, the whalebone, the silk, were no sooner adverted to, than they were scientifically described. When their attention was called to the seals of the gentleman's watch, they immediately said, 'These are of pure, and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... good-sized affair of lace and silk and whalebone. (None of your "sunshades.") Little examined ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mother! The upper part was filled with sliding trays, each having a raised edge to keep the contents from falling out. These trays were heaped pell-mell with her mother's personal belongings—small garments, odd indeterminate trifles, a muff, a bundle of whalebone, veils, bags, and especially cardboard boxes. Quantities of various cardboard boxes! Her mother kept everything, could not bear that anything which had once been useful should be abandoned or destroyed; whereas Hilda's propensity was to throw away with an impatient gesture whatever threatened ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... my JULIA wears a sack, That hides the outline of her back, I cry, in sore distress, "Alack!" She showed a dainty waist when dressed In jacket; true, the size confessed That whalebone had its shape compressed. Still was her form sweet as her face, But now what change has taken place! This "sack coat" hides all maiden grace. Although men's clothes are always vile, The coat, the trousers and the "tile"! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... of aquariums, which is not a whale at all, but a true porpoise (Delphinopterus Catodon, as he is now called by naturalists), having teeth in the jaws, and being destitute of the fringed bone of the whalebone whales. This interesting creature is very abundant in the Arctic Ocean on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and has its southern limits in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, although one is occasionally seen in the Bay of Fundy, and it is reported to have been observed about ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... (pronounced merry), a Maori war-club; a casse-te^te, or a war-axe, from a foot to eighteen inches in length, and made of any suitable hard material—stone, hard wood, whalebone. To many people out of New Zealand the word is only known as the name of a little trinket of greenstone (q.v.) made in imitation of the New Zealand weapon in miniature, mounted in gold or silver, and used as a brooch, locket, ear-ring, or other ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was given it, according to Mr. Bonflon, that it might offer the least possible resistance to the element in which it was intended to move. In structure it was composed of a strong flexible frame of whalebone and steel, covered with silk, strengthened and rendered air-tight and water-proof by a coating of India-rubber. Its size, of course, would depend on the proposed tonnage of a particular ship. That of the working-model, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... fish-whip, made from the whipray, a fish quite new to us, but indigenous to these waters. With a body shaped like a flounder, it has a tail often ten feet long, tapering from about one inch in thickness at the butt to an eighth of an inch at the small end. When dried this resembles whalebone, and makes a good coach-whip. There is a great variety of fish in and about the Bahamas. We saw, just landed at Nassau, a jew-fish, which takes the same place here that the halibut fills at the North, being cut into steaks and fried in a similar manner. They are among the largest of edible fish, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all the sea water from his mouth. But the small animals remain inside! For the water is forced through a wonderful sieve, made of fringed plates, which hangs from his upper jaw. Instead of having teeth in his mouth, as many Whales have, the Greenland Whale has this sieve of "whalebone." Of course it is a large sieve, to fill so large a mouth. Yet it is never in the way, being neatly packed away at the top of the mouth, one plate over the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... cases this lower jaw—being easily unhinged by a practised artist—is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... materials): basting, stitching, pressing, binding, boning (whalebone, featherbone); hooks and ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... in bed for three weeks; flat on her back as much as possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose, dear—about your looks, I mean—is that lovely boyish line of yours. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... coarse as to resemble dry grass or bristles. On each shoulder was a wide strip of black, bordered with whitish bands; and the tail, which was full three feet long, was clothed with a thick growth of coarse hair, several inches in length, that looked like strips of whalebone. This was carried aloft, and curving over the back. But the most curious feature of the animal ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... seem inclined to break it. Hamish had caught up a bit of whalebone, which happened to be lying on the drawers, and was twisting it about in his fingers, glancing at Arthur from time to time. Arthur leaned against the chimneypiece, his hands in his pockets, and, in like manner, glanced at him. Not the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on the coasts, it should be divided between the King and Queen; the head only becoming the King's property, and the tail the Queen's. The reason of this whimsical distinction, as assigned by our ancient records, was to furnish the Queen's wardrobe with whalebone. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... the whalebone stung, A madness it did seem! And soon it rose on every tongue That Jack Macpherson rode among The ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... obtained, and are sent to table in an old-fashioned china family bowl, few dishes present a more elegant appearance, especially if you happen to possess an old-fashioned punch ladle, an old silver bowl with a black whalebone handle. Care should be taken to keep the fruit from being broken. The following fruits will mix very well, although, of course, it is impossible always to obtain every variety. We can have strawberries, raspberries, red, white, and black currants, and cherries, ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... nine feet long. He looked all head. And his head looked all mouth. And his mouth—but you could not see into that for it was very busy nursing. His mother, however, lay with her mouth half open, a vast cavern of a mouth, nearly a third the length of her body—and it looked all whalebone. For, you must know, she was of the ancient and honorable family of the Right Whales, who scorn to grow any teeth, and therefore must live on soup ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... together the shattered fragments of memory. So he forbore to follow that train of thought. And, again, he strove to banish mentality and to sink back into the merciful senselessness from which youth and an iron-and-whalebone constitution were fighting ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Account of our Diversion on ordinary Club-Nights; but must acquaint you farther, that once a Month we demolish a Prude, that is, we get some queer formal Creature in among us, and unrig her in an Instant. Our last Months Prude was so armed and fortified in Whalebone and Buckram that we had much ado to come at her; but you would have died with laughing to have seen how the sober awkward Thing looked when she was forced out of her Intrenchments. In short, Sir, 'tis ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... hour—now in the huge market across the way, now in the grocer's store with its fragrant aroma of coffee and spices, and now before the counters of the haberdasher's, intent on a bit of shopping, turning over ends of veiling, strips of elastic, or slivers of whalebone. On the street she rubbed elbows with the great ladies of the avenue in their beautiful dresses, or at intervals she met an acquaintance or two—Miss Baker, or Heise's lame wife, or Mrs. Ryer. At times she passed the flat and looked ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... species of whalebone whale, the Megaptera longimana, which attains to 45 or 50 feet in length, and is distinguished by its low rounded ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... more than twenty horned cattle, twenty sheep and twenty swine, and the little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. But their wealth consists mostly in the rent paid them by the Fins. That rent is in skins of animals and birds' feathers, and whalebone, and in ship-ropes made of whales'[26] hides, and of seals'. Every one pays according to his birth; the best-born, it is said, pay the skins of fifteen martens, and five rein-deers, and one bear's skin, ten ambers of feathers, a bear's or otter's skin kyrtle, and two ship-ropes, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... relative the leviathan, of fifty or sixty feet in length, which boasts of a mouth big enough to hold a jollyboat and crew, who would doubtless find their quarters exceedingly uncomfortable on account of the forest of whalebone hanging down from the roof, the white whale cannot keep under water long without coming up to breathe; but the one Johannes had so cleverly struck nearly carried out the whole of the line, which Steve ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... minutes passed, and he made no attempt to take the reins. Victoria had drawn the whalebone whip from its socket, and was urging on the horse as fast as humanity would permit; and the while she was aware that Hilary's look was fixed upon her—in fact, never left her. Once or twice, in spite of her anxiety to get him home, Victoria blushed faintly, as she wondered what he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... places, and occasioning some inflammation. Where so large a portion of the surface of the body is to be covered, it must become a painful as well as tedious process, especially as, for want of needles, they often use a strip of whalebone as a substitute. For those parts where a needle cannot conveniently be passed under the skin they use the method by puncture, which is common in other countries, and by which our seamen frequently mark their hands and arms. Several of the men ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... with their informants, and certainly believed the story. Dr. Hildebrand, also, a competent German naturalist, believed in it. But Sir John Kirk himself says that "what the priests had to show was most undoubtedly the whalebone of a comparatively ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... men all around us who have been swallowed by monstrous misfortunes. Some of them sit down on a piece of whalebone and give up. They say: "No use! I will never get back my money, or restore my good name, or recover my health." They float out to sea and are never again heard of. Others, the moment they go down the throat of some great ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... thrusts pins through the heads of rabbits, he makes fowls eat madder, and punches the spinal marrow out of dogs with whalebone." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of their copes and stoles, their splendid silvered embroideries, sparkled in the light of a thousand tapers. The beadle strutted in all the glory of his brilliant uniform and flashing epaulets; on the opposite side walked in high glee the sacristan, carrying his whalebone staff with a magisterial air; the voice of the choristers, now clad in fresh, white surplices, rolled out in bursts of thunder; the trumpets' blare shook the windows; and upon the countenances of all those who were to have a share in the spoils of this ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... got any teeth,—our branch of the family; and we live on creatures so small, that you could only see them with a microscope. Yes, you may stare; but it's true, my dear. The roofs of our mouths are made of whalebone, in broad pieces from six to eight feet long, arranged one against the other; so they make an immense sieve. The tongue, which makes about five barrels of oil, lies below, like a cushion of white satin. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... "Melchior," "Balthassar," and all the odd names she knew; but at each the little Man exclaimed, "That is not my name." The second day the Queen inquired of all her people for uncommon and curious names, and called the Dwarf "Ribs-of-Beef," "Sheep-shank," "Whalebone," but at each he said, "This is not my name." The third day the messenger came back and said, "I have not found a single name; but as I came to a high mountain near the edge of a forest, where foxes and hares say good night to each other, I saw there a little house, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... a party of picked men to the scene of action as early in the spring as the ice would permit, and there build a fort as he best could, with the best materials he could find; live on whatever the country afforded in the shape of food; establish a trade in oil, whalebone, arctic foxes, etcetera, etcetera, if they were to be got; and bring about a reconciliation between the Esquimaux and the Indians of the interior, if that were possible. With the careful minuteness ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... had retained a guide overnight, Henri Renaud by name, and he appeared punctually at eight o'clock in the morning, got up in the short-tail coat of the country, and a large green umbrella with mighty ribs of whalebone. The weather was extremely unpleasant, a cold pitiless rain rendering all attempts at protection unavailing; but, fortunately, the glaciere is only an hour and a quarter from the village. The path is tolerably steep, leading across the petit Pre ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... a towline; he took with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100 yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as whalebone. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... he was stimulated by theological fervour); yet I do not think he has been quite fair...The part which, I think, will have most influence is where he gives the whole series of cases like that of the whalebone, in which we cannot explain the gradational steps; but such cases have no weight on my mind—if a few fish were extinct, who on earth would have ventured even to conjecture that lungs had originated in a swim- bladder? In such a case as the Thylacine, I think he was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... like that! Most any of them will make a complete roll inside of six seconds. Ours was a 5-1/4-second one. When she got to rolling right, she would snap a careless sailor overboard as quickly as you could snap a bug off the end of a whalebone cane. There is one over there which rolled 73 ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... should strike at once, as they will reap an immediate harvest; they may sell their manufactures for any price they please to ask, they will get in payment tobacco, rice, indigo, deerskins, furs, wheat, flour, iron, beeswax, lumber, fish, oil, whalebone, pot and pearl ashes, and various other articles, and, if they please, here is an ample field to employ their shipping, and raise ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... Switzerland." Of course I was William Tell, in spite of Fred Langdon, who wanted to act that character himself. I wouldn't let him, so he withdrew from the company, taking the only bow and arrow we had. I made a cross-bow out of a piece of whalebone, and did very well without him. We had reached that exciting scene where Gessler, the Austrian tyrant, commands Tell to shoot the apple from his son's head. Pepper Whitcomb, who played all the juvenile and ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... because it is limited by the general characters of the type to which the organism exhibiting the variation belongs. A whale does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of developing whalebone. In popular language there is no harm in saying that the waves which break upon the sea-shore are indefinite, fortuitous, and break in all directions. In scientific language, on the contrary, such a statement would be a gross error, inasmuch as every particle of foam is the result of perfectly ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... bridal costumes and merrymakings,—so little do men understand of these matters; but he was hooted down, overruled, ignored, and made to feel his proper insignificance. Martha almost disappeared from his sight during the interval. She was sitting upstairs in a confusion of lutestring, whalebone, silk, and cambric; and when she came down to him for a moment, the kiss had scarcely left her lips before she began to speak of the make of his new coat, and the fashion of the articles he was still ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... in the end she retired for a time to her own chamber, and returned shortly after, dressed for going out, with a short black cloak, richly trimmed, cast over her shoulders, and a silk hood, stiffened with whalebone and deeply fringed with lace, covering her head and the greatest part ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... gravity and circumstance of a priest before an altar. Appeared a little red-satin Spanish girdle, whale-boned like a tiny corset, pointed, the pioneer finery of a frontier woman who had crossed the plains. It was hand-made after the California-Spanish model of forgotten days. The very whalebone had been home-shaped of the raw material from the whaleships traded for in hides and tallow. The black lace trimming her mother had made. The triple edging of black velvet strips—her mother's hands had sewn ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Exhibition Prize Goat's-head Crochet Cotton. No. 4 Penelope Hook; 1 long strip of Whalebone; 1 yard of Satin Ribbon 1 inch in width. 2 yards ditto, 2 ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... habits of ceremony, with all the grand cordons of his orders blazing about his imperial person—thus dazzling, magnificent, triumphant, the great Galgenstein descended towards Mrs. Catherine. Her cheeks glowed red-hot under her coy velvet mask, her heart thumped against the whalebone prison of her stays. What a delicious storm of vanity was raging in her bosom! What a rush of long-pent recollections burst forth at the sound ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exist without their produce. Also, in course of trade, spermaceti oil and salt-fish may be supplied to Prussia and Germany as cheap, or cheaper from the Colonies, than from Holland and Germany. The United Colonies exported to Europe chiefly, indeed, to Great Britain, fish-oil, whalebone, spermaceti, furs, and peltry of every kind, masts, spars, and timber, pot and pearl ashes, flax-seed, beef, pork, butter and cheese, horses and oxen; to the West Indies chiefly, wheat-flour, bread, rye, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... of the cloth depend a great deal upon the mechanic who handles the cloth. Some mechanics like a stiff cloth, but the writer has always used a flexible cloth. The sizes, shape, and methods of folding and breaking in as shown in Fig. 21 below have proved successful. Cloths made of whalebone ticking are inexpensive and make the ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... recovered confidence and jeered new ribaldry, until some one suddenly shot out from behind Cunningham, and before he had recovered from his surprise he saw the fakir sprawling on his back, howling for mercy, while Mahommed Gunga beat the blood out of him with a whalebone riding-whip. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... turning down some nameless street that leads to Tottenham Court-road, I chanced to come behind a staid-looking gentleman, accoutred in a dark brown coat, with an umbrella—the cotton of which had shrunk half-way up the whalebone—held obliquely over his head. Hastily stepping up to him, "Pray, sir," said I, "could you be kind enough to direct me ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... of a ferocious gorilla carrying off a respectable young lady, whose flaxen curls lay lovingly over the dreadful shoulders of the beast, which, with ludicrous failure, endeavored to caress the pallid face of the young lady with his hairy jaws, stiff with padding and whalebone, and ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... not, and its long limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned waistcoat in a very uncouth and unpicturesque fashion. A pair of old, worn, beaver gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella, with plenty of whalebone sticking through the bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him; and, being disposed in a very tidy and careful manner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, whoever he was, had no intention of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Spoon-bill. So called from the construction of the bill, which is flat the whole length, but widens towards the end in the form of a spoon or spatula; and is equally remarkable in its substance, not being hard like bone, but flexible like whalebone. They feed on snakes, worms, frogs, and fish, even on shell-fish, which they first ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... an angel, Daisy," Theresa repeated, "with wonderful wings made of gauze on a light frame of whalebone." ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... followed the stream between three and four miles, where it turned to the southwest, without discovering any indications of a wooded country; but a sufficient explanation respecting the birch-bark was perhaps furnished by his finding, at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the sea, a piece of whalebone two feet ten inches in length and two inches in breadth, having a number of circular holes very neatly and regularly perforated along one of its edges, which had undoubtedly formed part of an Esquimaux sledge. This circumstance affording ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... are still the models of art, although nature is so disfigured that they are no longer to be found among us. The Gothic trammels, the innumerable bands which confine our limbs as in a press, were quite unknown. The Greek women were wholly unacquainted with those frames of whalebone in which our women distort rather than display their figures. It seems to me that this abuse, which is carried to an incredible degree of folly in England, must sooner or later lead to the production of a degenerate race. Moreover, I maintain that the charm which these ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... report contains a very full account of the state of manufactures in all the provinces. New York, for example, had no manufactures "that deserved mentioning;" the trade there "consisted chiefly in furs, whalebone, oil, pitch, tar, and provisions." In Massachusetts "the inhabitants worked up their wool and flax, and made an ordinary coarse cloth for their own use, but did not export any." In Pennsylvania the "chief trade lay in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... or print which is called the half onuella. The upper part, the onuella, of the same material, is drawn into neat gathers for the length of a foot about the center of one of the outer seams. In the seam of one of the remaining divisions is inclosed a piece of whalebone, which is drawn over the head, and forms a perfect arch, leaving the head and ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... should either lay the newspaper aside or quit the room. I very promptly declined to do either, when he snatched the paper from my hands, and instantly drew his sword. I was unarmed, with the exception of a good sized whalebone cane, but my anger was so great that I at once sprung at the scamp, who at the instant made a pass at me. I warded the thrust as well as I could, but did not avoid getting nicely pricked in the left shoulder; but, before my antagonist could recover ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a pleasant savour of food. It resounds with the dull rumble of cruising drays, which bear the names of well-known brands of groceries; it is faintly salted by an aroma of the docks. One sees great signs announcing cocoanut and whalebone or such unusual wares; there is a fine tang of coffee in the air round about the corner of Beach Street. Here is that vast, massy brick edifice, the New York Central freight station, built 1868, which gives an impression of being about to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... could better describe the macrocephalous cachalot, which is sometimes more than seventy-five feet long. Its enormous head occupies one-third of its entire body. Better armed than the whale, whose upper jaw is furnished only with whalebone, it is supplied with twenty-five large tusks, about eight inches long, cylindrical and conical at the top, each weighing two pounds. It is in the upper part of this enormous head, in great cavities divided by cartilages, that is to be found from six to eight hundred pounds ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... unknown to mortals. But that such are the facts, incontestibly true, none will deny, for the evidence is before us. Now fix your attention on that needle. There is an active and acting principle in that as well as in the magnetized blade; for the blade will not attract a splinter of wood, of whalebone, or piece of glass, tho equal in size and weight. It will have no operation on them. Then it is by a sort of mutual affinity, a reciprocity of attachment, between the blade and needle, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... in its upper jaw; so that here is another instance of organs well-developed and very useful, in one animal, represented by rudimentary organs, for which we can discover no purpose whatsoever, in another closely allied animal. The whalebone whale, again, has horny "whalebone" plates in its mouth, and no teeth; but the young foetal whale, before it is born, has teeth in its jaws; they, however, are never used, and they never come to anything. But other members of the group to which the whale belongs have ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... large thin sheet of copper suspended by a chain; the distant firing of signals of distress from the doomed vessel he counterfeited by suddenly striking a large tambourine with a sponge affixed to a whalebone spring, the reverberations of the sponge producing a peculiar echo as from cloud to cloud dying away in the distance. The rushing washing sound of the waves was simulated by turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted with shelves, and containing ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... air. The children's mother told them that the whale is the largest of all animals, and that it lives on little jellyfish. It swims with its great mouth wide open and catches all the tiny sea creatures in its path. A fringe of whalebone hangs down from the roof of the whale's mouth, and he strains the water out through this and swallows the fish. As the boat went on, the children said, "There she blows," as the sailors do when they see whales spouting in ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... end the sail, it shook the ship to her center. The boom buckled up and bent like a whipstick, and we looked every moment to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce, it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it. The carpenter said it was the best stick he had ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... turned out for that. The huge creature had drifted ashore on the farther side of the island, and Ted was much interested in seeing him gradually disposed of. Great masses of blubber were stripped from the sides to be used later both for food and fuel, the whalebone was carefully secured to be sold to the traders, and it seemed to Ted that there was not one thing in that vast carcass for which the Indians did ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... but she curbed to and fro with her strong forearms rising like springs ingathered, waiting and quivering grievously, and beginning to sweat about it. Then her master gave a shrill, clear whistle, when her ears were bent towards him, and I felt her form beneath me gathering up like whalebone, and her hind legs coming under her, and I knew that ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Basques during the Middle Ages fairly drove the animals from the Bay of Biscay, which had long swarmed with them. Not a prolific breeder, the whales soon showed the effect of Europe's eagerness for oil, whalebone and ambergris, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century the industry was on the verge of extinction. Then began that search for a sea passage to India north of the continents of Europe and America, which ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a few, that are well cared for; for the care bestowed on animals has, as a rule, much more influence on the body itself than on their covering.(799) In fisheries, caviar, sturgeon-bladders, oil and whalebone;(800) and in forest-culture, pitch, tar, potash and, to some extent, building material etc., play the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... membrane which covers the palate sends out rows of broad, thin, horny plates, which are from eight to ten feet long (they have sometimes been seen twenty-five feet) in the centre of each side, but which decrease gradually towards the extremities. These are plates of whalebone (sometimes called whale's whiskers), and the industry of man has turned them to a thousand different uses; and you will open your eyes in astonishment when I tell you that 800 or 900 of them have been sometimes counted on each side of one mouth. Think of the number of stays that ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... appeared some rings of great size and seeming value; but, what was most remarkable, she wore also a satin hood of a peculiar shape. It was glossy like the gown, but seemed to be stiffened either by whalebone or some other material. Her age seemed considerable, and the face, though not unpleasant, was somewhat hard and severe and indented with minute wrinkles. I confess that so entirely was my attention engrossed by what was passing ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... which passed over the top, and were made fast to stakes of bone firmly fixed in the ground on each side. When I entered, I found to my surprise that there was plenty of light, which was supplied from windows, composed of small panes of whalebone ground down very thin, and at the further end the head and skull of the animal formed a kitchen, the smoke from the fire escaping through the spiracles or ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... about fifteen feet in length, the handle eighteen inches; continual practice enables the Esquimaux to wield this instrument of torture with great dexterity. The sledges are about five feet in length and two in breadth; the runners generally shod with whalebone or ivory, and coated over with a plaster of earth and water, which becomes very smooth, and is renewed as often ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man. The enormous stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone, straight as oak-tree; the ribs radiating branches; the flesh taut tarpaulin; the red hollows; the suck and regurgitation of the heart; while from above meat falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be churned to blood again—and so we reach the eyes. Behind the ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... of it on the farms of the neighborhood and young Kennedy literally took to the woods and drove the rivers in Muskoka and Michigan as a lumberjack till he was a chunk of whalebone in a red flannel shirt and corked boots and could pull the whiskers out of a wild-cat! With varying success he fought the battle of life and learned that many things glitter besides gold and that the four-leafed clover in this life after all is a ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... there the komatiks are wider and shorter with runners of not much more than half the thickness, and as you go south the komatiks continue to grow wider and shorter. In the south, too, hoop iron or whalebone is used for ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... shoulders must be massive with projecting muscular development; the back very slightly arched, and not sloping too suddenly towards the tail, which should be set up tolerably high. This ought to be thick and long, the end well furnished with a double fringe of very long thick hairs or whalebone-looking bristles. The legs should be short in proportion to the height of the animal, but immensely thick, and the upper- portion above the knee ought to exhibit enormous muscle. The knees should be well rounded, and the feet be ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... called, of your bar-magnet successively up to the ends of the needle. Both the poles, you find, attract both ends of the needle. Replace the needle by a bit of annealed iron wire; the same effects ensue. Suspend successively little rods of lead, copper, silver, brass, wood, glass, ivory, or whalebone; the magnet produces no sensible effect upon any of the substances. You thence infer a special property in the case of steel and iron. Multiply your experiments, However, and you will find that some other substances, besides iron and steel, are acted upon by your magnet. A rod of the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... southern Greenland did not meet with barbarous natives, but only with vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in 1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... waistcoat, scarlet and black, the buttons of which were spaded half-guineas; his breeches were of a stuff half velveteen, half corduroy, the cords exceedingly broad. He had leggings of buff cloth, furred at the bottom; and upon his feet were highlows. Under his left arm was a long black whalebone riding-whip, with a red lash, and an immense silver knob. Upon his head was a hat with a high peak, somewhat of the kind which the Spaniards call calane, so much in favour with the bravos of Seville and Madrid. Now, when I have added that Mr. Petulengro had on a very fine white holland ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... chosen; the breeches apparently buttoned closely at the knee, but in reality they were loose enough to enable a finger and thumb to be passed between them and the stocking, and in the lining of the breeches was a pocket in which the cards had been placed, being held there by two pieces of whalebone, that closed the pocket. The searchers, among whom were Dick and Boldero, did not have it all their own way; four or five men rushed upon them, and endeavored to pull them off Emerson. The din of voices was prodigious, but ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... and perilous voyage, made harbor there; the old shipmasters built solid homes on the island shores; its merchants grew rich on the whaling vessels, that went forth to hunt for these monsters of the great deep, and came back laden with oil and blubber and whalebone and ambergris. But all this was changed now. Steam had come to supplant the white wings that had borne the old ships on their wide ocean ways. As Captain Jeb said, "the airth had taken to spouting up ile," and made the long whale hunts needless and unprofitable. But, though it had died ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... of success in many a speaker who has both a good voice and good matter may be found in the fact that his voice, instead of being as flexible as a piece of whalebone, is as unbending as a bar of iron; or, worse still, perhaps he adopts the dreary monotony of the sing-song tone: the two unvarying notes so suggestive of the up and down movements of a pump-handle. This "cuckoo" tone would ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... dogs. There were twenty dogs like mastiffs, with pricked ears and long bushed tails; we found a bone in the pizels of their dogs. Then we went farther and found two sleds made like ours in England. The one was made of fir, spruce, and oaken boards, sawn like inch boards; the other was made all of whalebone, and there hung on the tops of the sleds three heads of beasts which they had killed. We saw here ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... I wear his father's likeness somewhere betwixt buckram and Flanders lace," answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from amidst the splendours of her corsage. "I call it next my heart; but there is a stout fortification of whalebone between heart and picture. You have gloated enough on the daughter's impertinent visage. Look now at the father, whom she resembles in little, as a kitten ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... when his daughter was about eight years old, my father came in, and found sundry preparations going on, the chief materials for which were buckram, whalebone, and other stiff articles, while the young lady was under measurement by the hands of a ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... seemed more like strangers than those he had passed in the street. He stood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the women and the resigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible that these were his friends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among such puppets that he had sold his soul? What had any of these people done that was noble, exceptional, distinguished? Who knew them by name even, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Downing Street: Are hills, and dales, and valleys half so gay As bright St. James's on a levee day? What fierce ecstatic transports fire my soul, To hear the drivers swear, the coaches roll; The Courtier's compliment, the Ladies' clack, The satins rustle, and the whalebone crack!" ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... The whalebone Divinity in the Home Town passed out of his Life. He told himself that he would be true to Miss Russell and all the other ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... It need not. For during the process of drying it must be your pastime constantly to pull and stretch at every square inch of that boundless skin in order to loosen all the fibres. Otherwise it would dry as stiff as whalebone. Now there is nothing on earth that seems to dry slower than buckskin. You wear your fingers down to the first joints, and, wishing to preserve the remainder for future use, you carry the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... simulated thunder by shaking one of the lower corners of a large thin sheet of copper suspended by a chain; the distant firing of signals of distress he imitated by striking, suddenly, a large tambourine with a sponge affixed to a whalebone spring—- the reverberations of the sponge producing a curious echo, as from cloud to cloud, dying away in the distance. The rushing sound of the waves was effected by turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Cone had said this he would slap his face. After some correspondence the two men met in Atlanta, September 4, 1848. The trouble was renewed; Judge Cone denounced Mr. Stephens, who rapped him over the shoulders with a whalebone cane. Mr. Stephens was a fragile man, and Judge Cone, with strong physique, closed in and forced him to the floor. During the scuffle Mr. Stephens was cut in six places. His life for a while was despaired of. Upon his recovery ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... darkness of the Pacific ocean night, there were forty-one vessels, of a total tonnage of 9,257 tons, registered in New South Wales, employed in the fishery. In the same year twenty-two vessels arrived in Sydney from the various grounds, their cargoes of whalebone, sealskins, and sperm and black oil valuing altogether about L150,000. Now the whaling trade in Southern Seas is represented by two or three small and poorly equipped ships from Hobart, though the whales—sperm, ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... lace with its tag which secured the end of the busk, a piece of wood or whalebone worn by women in front of the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... at full speed, bellies low to the plain that streamed past, the manes whipping the hands of their riders, springing on sinews of whalebone through soapweed and mesquite, spurning the soil with drumming hoofs, night-seeing, danger-dodging, jumping the little gullies, reveling in the rush. Sandy and Sam sat slightly forward, loose-seated, thigh-muscles ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... to a large iron hook, called the blubber hook. It was lowered into the blubber-room between decks, where a couple of men were stationed to stow the blubber away. Then came the fins, and after them the upper jaw, with the whalebone attached to it. The "right" whale has no teeth like the sperm whale. In place of teeth it has the well-known substance called whalebone, which grows from the roof of its mouth in a number of broad thin plates, extending from the back of the head to the snout. The lower ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... out," she taunted, "try it, try it. I'd slip through your fingers like oil. It's no good to flash your over-sized man-muscles on me; I'm made of whip-cord and whalebone. Do you get that?" ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... There I was told that we were at home. We entered, and I gave a curious and somewhat fearful glance round the place. The shop was set out partly with umbrellas and partly with shoes, but everything seemed dirty and in confusion. Shoe-lasts, umbrella-sticks, and a large quantity of whalebone, were lying in heaps about the floor, while in one corner stood a large pan of dirty water in which they soaked the leather, and which, not being often changed, sent forth a most unpleasant smell; the floor did not appear as if it ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... have been divided into the Denticete, or Toothed Whales, and the Mysticete, or Whalebone Whales. The former contains the river dolphins, the ziphoid whales, the gigantic sperm whale, the sea dolphins, and the narwhal or sea unicorn. The ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... kinds, whale fins, whalebone, oil, and blubber, not caught by and cured on board British vessels, when imported into Great Britain, are subject to double aliens duty. The Dutch, as they are still the principal, were then the only fishers in Europe that attempted to supply foreign nations ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... everyone in authority was that he would be obeyed, but because it would not do to let little people see the mischief that was going on abroad. So, while boys had their hair powdered, and wore long coats and waistcoats, and little knee-breeches, and girls were laced tight in stays all stiff with whalebone, they were trained to manners more formal than ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... it fast, the Catamaran lay moored alongside the cachalot, like some diminutive tender attached to a huge ship of war! There were several reasons why Ben Brace should mount up to the summit of that mountain of whalebone and blubber; and, as soon as the raft had been safely secured, he essayed ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... purchase, for the museum, specimens of the arms and native productions of the savages. Amongst them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne |
