"Homespun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say that to me, Jack! As for respectability, that homespun word hardly applies; we do have lineage here, and in the European sense, even if without the European power. But that's no matter. It's the pressing down on me of this alien standard, whether expressed ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Curs'd Marian may go seek another man, For I intend to dwell no longer with her, Since that the bastinado drove me thence. These silken girls are all too fine for me: My master shall report of those in hell, Whilst I go range amongst the country-maids, To see, if homespun lasses milder be Than my curs'd dame and Lacy's wanton wife. Thus therefore will I live betwixt two shapes; When as I list, in this transform'd disguise, I'll fright the country-people as they pass; And sometimes turn me to some ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... watched her interrogatively the colour faded from her face. The relief of hearing that homespun plan had chilled her blood, and she was faint for an instant with the sickness of hearty youth that only knows it feels odd to itself and concludes the strangeness is of the soul. But she did not answer, for Anne was at the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... velvet and white satin, his queue in a black silk bag, stood beside his lady, who was as brave as himself in a gown of violet brocade over an immense hoop. Poor dame, she would far rather have been at Mount Vernon in homespun, for all this pomp and circumstance bored and isolated her. She hedged herself about with the etiquette which her exalted position demanded, and froze the social aspirant of insufficient pretensions, but her traditions and her propensities were ever at war; she was a woman above all ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... But the bishops and their clergy had demurred. They had little fancy for being left with no other protection than a half-disciplined rabble, who, ready as they might be to act against their troublesome countrymen, had no more respect for a lawn sleeve than for a homespun jerkin. A few troops of regular cavalry were therefore retained, and one regiment of Foot Guards. The former were commanded by Athole, the latter by Linlithgow. Towards the end of 1677 a fresh troop of cavalry was raised, and the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country—old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles; their brisk withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted shortgowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside; ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... not a good-looking boy— there's no denying it!—and yet I liked him; he looked very sensible and straightforward, and there was a vigorous ring in his voice. He had nothing to boast of in his attire; it consisted simply of a homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather uninteresting; it was a long face, with short-sighted eyes and a hook nose; it expressed a kind of dull, fretful uneasiness; ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... matter. Elnathan, then about fifteen, was, much like a wild colt, caught and trimmed by clipping his bushy locks; dressed in a suit of homespun, dyed in the butternut bark; furnished with a New Testament and a Websters Spelling Book, and sent to school. As the boy was by nature quite shrewd enough, and had previously, at odd times, laid the foundations of reading, writing, and arithmetic, he was soon conspicuous in the school for ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... there certainly was an immense water power here; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the noble stone works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horseshoe ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... in October, 1808, Franz in his homespun grey suit, spectacles shielding his bright, near-sighted eyes, his bushy black hair covered by an old fashioned hat, presented himself for examination by the Court Capellmeister and the singing master. The other boys jeered at his odd appearance, but he kept his good humor. When ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, and from the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sat down at the board end, as was the homespun fashion of the period; and so much were the two men amused with their own conversation, and Catharine occupied either in attending to them or with her own reflections, that the old woman was the first who observed the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... sleep by watches, knowing the sort of people we had to deal with. It was my watch, when voices were heard as of men landing and pulling up a canoe or boat. Presently three men came into the wigwam, railing-men, dressed in gray Canada homespun and heavy Scotch bonnets. The light of the fire outside flashed on their faces, as they stooped to enter the elm-bark tent, and in the foremost I recognized the hideous Rupe Falardeau, Junior. This man carried in his hand a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... old pasture field by the bridge a man was plowing. He was an elderly man, sturdy and stolid of figure, and clad in blue homespun. There was nothing clerical in his garb or manner, yet he was the vicar and school-master of the parish. His low-crowned hat was drawn deep over his slumberous gray eyes. The mobile mouth beneath completed the expression of gentleness ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... were laced up with green ribbons. Their moccasins were gorgeously embroidered with dyed porcupine quills. Their caps of beaver or martin were sometimes tied down over their ears with vivid handkerchiefs of silk. The habitants were rougher and more sombre in their dress. A black homespun coat, gray leggings, gray woollen cap, heavy moccasins of cowhide,—this grave costume was usually brightened by a belt or sash of the liveliest colours. The country-women had to content themselves with the same coarse homespuns, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... to their work and Zebbie and I were left to tell secrets. When he was sure we were alone he took from his trunk a long, flat box. Inside was the most wonderful shirt I have ever seen; it looked like a cross between a nightshirt and a shirt-waist. It was of homespun linen. The bosom was ruffled and tucked, all done by hand,—such tiny stitches, such patience and skill. Then he handed me an old daguerreotype. I unfastened the little golden hook and inside was a face good to see and to remember. It was dim, yet ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Blaisdell, a fat, shapeless girl with a freckled face, whose father owned more pine timber than any other man in the county, wore black silk, and was regarded with something like awe by the less fortunate ones in calico and homespun. Drusy was handsomer than ever, in a soft woollen gown of dull blue, with a red rose in the masses of her black hair and another at her throat. The schoolmistress, a pretty blonde, who was also a belle, wore ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. A much larger number of people than usual came to town that Saturday,—bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... from the water, leaning against the trunk of a stately maple, stood a young man. His head, from which he had raised a somewhat old and weather-beaten hat, was finely formed, and covered with chestnut curls; his clothes, also shabby and worn, were homespun and ill-fitting, but his erect military carriage, with an indescribable air of polish and fine breeding, seemed strangely incongruous in connection with his ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... with his beetles. His real life had always lain in the universe of thought, in that enchanted region which, to those who have lingered there, comes to have so much more colour and substance than the painted curtain hanging before it. The Professor's particular veil of Maia was a narrow strip of homespun woven in a monotonous pattern; but he had only to lift it ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... sorrowed also. No matter if they have gone down in social scale and you up; no matter if poverty and misfortune have come to them while prosperity came to you; are they any less true for that? Are not their hearts as warm and tender if they do beat beneath homespun instead of velvet? Yes, kind reader, they are as true, loving and tender; ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... standing before him, not a mendicant, but a landowner—and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the great cities or across the seas, for many peasant families, I was told, have a fortune of at least 40,000 francs. The lads go forth pricked with the spirit of adventure and the desire to rise in life, and leave their homespun elders grumbling and wondering over the event. Once, at a village called Laussonne, I met one of these disappointed parents: a drake who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. The wild swan in question was now an apothecary in Brazil. He had flown by way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swings from the branch of a tree. It can hardly be told whether it is a joy or a pain, after such a momentary vision, to gaze around in the broad daylight of reality and see stone fences, white houses, potato-fields, and men doggedly hoeing in their shirt-sleeves and homespun pantaloons. But this is nonsense. The Old Manse is better than ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in loud, excited tones. As they spoke a tallish lad drew near and listened eagerly. The boy, who was apparently about sixteen or seventeen years of age, was clad in the rough, yellow-gray homespun cloth of the Acadians. His name was Pierre Lecorbeau, and he had just come from the village of Beaubassin to carry eggs, milk, and cheeses to the camp on Beausejour. The words he now heard seemed to concern him deeply, for his dark face paled ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... could follow; he took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there was ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... their colors, and houses were illuminated all over the city. It was no sooner known in America, than the colonists rescinded their resolutions, and recommenced their mercantile intercourse with the mother-country. They presented their homespun clothes to the poor, and imported more largely than ever. The churches responded with thanksgivings, and public and private rejoicings knew no bounds. By letters, addresses, and other means, almost all the colonies showed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... wealthy now, as they possess many thousands of sheep and goats, and they are famed for their quaint and beautiful blankets and homespun, which they weave on their hand looms from the wool of their sheep. They owned large herds of horses, beautiful ponies, a crossed breed of mustangs and Mormon stock, which latter they had stolen in their raids on the Mormon settlements ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... a-settin' on de end of a rail, Pickin' his tooth wid de end of his tail. Mulberry leaves an' homespun sleeves! Better know dat ole Mosser's ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... chatted with me they knitted away at socks and stockings, in coarse, bright-coloured wool. Such articles are never bought, the home-made substitute being much more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... chest of drawers and took out an apron of homespun blue-and-white check, a straight, bag-like garment with plain armholes and a cord run in at the neck. A bit of tape was quite a luxury, as it had to be imported, while one could twist cords, fine ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... tends to the mellifluous and the saccharine he has in his better pages a dewy, luminous style, with words choicely picked out and cadences delicately manipulated. By comparison most of the local colorists of his period seem homespun and most of the romancers a little tawdry. His method is the mosaicist's, working self-consciously in fine materials. Movement with him never leaps nor flows; in fact, it seems to dawdle when, too often, he forgets to be vigilant in the interests of simplicity; it is languid with scrupulous ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... young lord was now to be transformed into the peasant boy—his long bright curls were cut off, his face and hands were stained with a brown liquid to make him look sunburnt, as if he was used to work in the fields, and his rich velvet apparel was changed for coarse homespun woollen cloth. But he cared not what they put him on—his only thought was that he was going away from his beloved mother, perhaps never to see her more. He clasped his arms round her neck and clung to her sobbing, as if his heart would break, and the ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... akin to the world-wide struggle of a century later, when sons of the old foemen of 1812—sons of the painted Indians and of the Kentucky pioneers in fringed buckskins, sons of the New Hampshire ploughboys clad in homespun, sons of the Canadian militia and the red-coated regulars of the British line, sons of the tarry seamen of the Constitution and the Guerriere—stood side by side as brothers in arms to save from brutal obliteration the same spirit ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... inclined to be sociable with them. Not only did they seem to have no shoes and stockings, but their entire clothing was usually limited to a battered straw hat, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a pair of rough homespun trousers; and the city boy was inclined to look upon the country lads with some contempt, until his Aunt Martha cured him effectually one day by a remark made in ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... clad in dark steel armor, and some displaying the white Maltese cross. From portrait to portrait the countenances grew more refined, but without losing the prominent forehead and the imperious family nose. The wide, soft collar of the homespun shirt became transformed into starched folds of plaited ruffs; the cuirasses softened into jackets of velvet or silk; the stiff broad beards in imperial style changed to sharp goatees and to pointed mustaches, which, with the soft locks falling over the temples, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... family adjourned to the parlor and were entertained with some good old-fashioned piano playing and homespun duets and solos. The veterans added their mite to the entertainment in the shape of a tolerably fair tenor and an intolerable bass. Singing in the open air, with a male chorus, is not the best preparation ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... foulness of the close-packed steerage seemed to cling about them. For a time the depot rang to the rhythmic tramp of feet, and when, at a sign from the interpreter, it stopped, two bewildered children, frowsy and unwashed, in greasy homespun, sat down and gazed at Miss Torrance with mild blue eyes. She signed to a boy who was passing with a basket slung before him, and made a little impatient gesture when the man slipped his ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... . . . . . The song grew momentarily more distinct: among the leaves there were fugitive glimpses of blue and white, and at last Clarsie appeared, walking lightly along the log, clad in her checked homespun dress, and with a ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... I long to explore the woods again In my own aboriginal way, As before I knew how culture could frown On a hoydenish gait and a homespun gown Or dreamed that the strata of proud "upper-ten" Would smile ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... about on chairs and sofas, or helping themselves to tea at the table. On the hearth, with his back to the fire, stood a great, burly man with a short, grizzled beard and tumbled gray hair, rather bald, dressed in a rough suit of light-brown homespun, with huge shooting boots, whom I saw at once to be my host. The talk stopped as I entered, and I was aware that I was being scrutinised with some curiosity. Father Payne did not move, but extended a hand, which I advanced ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The husband is an active, well-built man with light, almost golden hair, rather coarse in texture, and with a pointed beard of the same hue. He has fine, clean-cut, muscular hands, and he wears, as I see him, a rough, rather shabby suit of light, homespun cloth. The wife is of fair complexion, a beautiful woman, with brown hair, and dressed, I think, in a very simple and rather peculiar dress. They are people of high principle, wealthy, and with cultivated tastes. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was, what his name was, where the place from which he came was, Who had brought him from the battle, and had left him at our door, He could not speak to tell us; but 'twas one of our brave fellows, As the homespun plainly showed us which the dying ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... was hustled out of sight to make room for the pieces of old-fashioned furniture. The tapestry carpets were taken up and stowed away in the garrets, the lace curtains were pulled down. In their stead were the old sanded bare floors and curtains of homespun linen trimmed with hand-knitted lace. Emily's nice Marseilles counterpanes were laid aside for the old blue-and-white ones which our grandmothers spun and wove, and her fine oil paintings gave way to old engravings of Webster death-bed scenes ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the man well enough; who should know en better! The maid was a poor windling thing, and, though a playward piece o' flesh when he married her, 'a socked and sighed, and went out like a snoff! Yes, my lady. Well, when Pa'son St. Cleeve married this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o' such d—- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-west ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Lady Enid went on, with pleasant ease, and a sort of homespun self-possession that trumpeted, like a military band, her sensibleness, "Mr. Vivian consulted me as to what to do; whether to give the whole thing up, or to make an appeal to you at the risk of disturbing you and taking ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... him by his eyes settling on Saskia and noting her apparel. Gone were her thin foreign clothes, and in their place she wore a heavy tweed skirt cut very short, and thick homespun stockings, which had been made for some one with larger feet than hers. A pair of the coarse low-heeled shoes which country folk wear in the farmyard stood warming by the hearth. She still had her russet jumper, but round her neck hung a ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... that had aforetime walked in fine linen and purple, and precious stones, were clad in homespun and went to indigenous parties; When the Mississippi was blockaded by the Preble and Vincennes, and many more and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bosom of thy native land, Returnest back and seekest true repose. Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh When laying down your burden at the gate, And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace The cool and quiet of a homespun bed." "Alas," said Dalica, "though all commend This choice, and many meet with no control, Yet none pursue it! Age by Care oppressed Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave. The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth: Frenzied Ambition ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... people, an active, agile, unmuscular race, mostly preserve the old national dress. Some men still wear, and both sexes once wore, the ridiculous carapuca, or funnel-cap with a rat-tail for a tassel. The rest of the toilet consists of homespun cottons, shirts and knickerbockers, with buff shoes or boots broad-soled and heelless. The traveller who prefers walking should always use this chaussure, and the 'little girl in topboots' is still a standing joke. The women affect parti-coloured petticoats of home-made ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... o' standin' In my homespun pantaloons— On my face the bronze an' freckles O' the suns o' youthful Junes— Thinkin' that no mortal minstrel Ever chanted sich a lay As the ol' tunes we was singin' ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... shelter, and was just going in at the door, I was sorely started to feel a great warm hand on my shoulder, and a loud, cheery voice saith, 'Dolly Jennings, whither away so fast thou canst not see an old friend?' I looked up, and there was dear old Farmer Ingham, in his thick boots and country homespun; but I declare to you, child, that in my trouble his face was to me as that of an angel of God. I brake down, and sobbed aloud. 'Come, come, now!' saith he, comfortably; 'not so bad as that, is it? I've been seeking thee these four days, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... in March, 1905, there entered the writer's office in the Criminal Courts Building, New York City, a ruddy, stoutly-built man, dressed in homespun garments, accompanied by an attractive and vivacious little woman, who, while unable to speak a single word of English, had no difficulty in making it obvious that she had a story to tell of the most vital importance. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... an account of the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. While we were discussing these matters, the doorway was darkened by a tall, shambling fellow, who stood with his hands in his pockets taking a leisurely survey of the premises before he entered. He wore brown homespun pantaloons, much too short for his legs, and a pistol and bowie knife stuck in his belt. His head and one eye were enveloped in a huge bandage of white linen. Having completed his observations, he came slouching in and sat down ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... of grain; coarseness of grain, dry goods. silk, satin; muslin, burlap. [Science of textures] histology. Adj. structural, organic; anatomic, anatomical. textural, textile; fine grained, coarse grained; fine, delicate, subtile, gossamery, filmy, silky, satiny; coarse; homespun. rough, gritty; smooth. smooth as silk, smooth ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... no one in the road; but in the meadow before the castle half a dozen Saxon grooms, in loose hose and short homespun tunics, were exercising some of Curboil's great Normandy horses. The baron himself was not in sight, and the grooms told Gilbert that he was within. The drawbridge was down, and Gilbert halted just before entering the gate, calling ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the mother-bear. True to her New England instincts, she shook her homespun apron and ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... had ranged themselves in respectful silence upon the opposite side of the table, each stealing an admiring though modest glance at Maggie; for the masculine heart, whether it beats beneath a homespun frock or coat of finest cloth, is alike susceptible to glowing, youthful beauty like that of Maggie Miller. The head of the house was absent—"had gone to town with a load of wood," so his spouse informed ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... warm cloak for him, and the linen for her child that she had been purchasing. I tell you, sir, the babe must have no linen but the finest fabric of Cambrai—yes, and even carnation-coloured ribbons—though, for herself, I saw the homespun she was sewing. As she mused over what she could throw back, I asked if she had no other gauds to make up the price, and she said, almost within herself, "They are my child's, not mine." Then remembering that I had been buying the hair of the peasant maidens, she ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she must still be dreaming; for, standing a little way down the path, was a tall man leaning on a musket. He wore a flannel blouse, and his homespun trousers were tucked into ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... would now be called cream. Everybody knitted socks. Ladies, negro women, girls, and even little boys, learned to knit. Each tried to get ahead as to number and quality. Ladies' stockings were also knitted of all grades from stout and thick to gossamer or open-work, etc. Homespun dresses were proudly worn, and it became a matter of constant experiment and great pride to improve the quality and vary colors. Warp and woof were finely spun, and beautiful combinations of colors ventured upon, although older heads eschewed them, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... around the bare Common, with ample elbow-room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through the same windows from which they had watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome Virginia general who had come to wield our homespun Saxon chivalry. People still lived who regretted the unhappy separation from the mother island. . . The hooks were to be seen from which swung the hammocks of Burgoyne's captive redcoats. If memory does not deceive me, women still washed clothes in the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... Service. This would have agreeably prevented me in an attempt to which I find myself in all Respects but too unequal. Yet relying on your good Sense and Candour, I venture to lay at your Feet a few well-intended Sentiments, which tho' in a plain homespun Garb, I hope will not offend. I am convinced that at this present it is not only in your Inclination and Will, but also in your Power, to effect more in favour of your Country, than an Army of an Hundred Thousand Men; and indeed more than all the armed Men on this vast ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... been the easy custom to dump the sawdust into the stream, but the fish-wardens had lately interfered and put a stop to the practice. Now, a tall young fellow, in top boots, gray homespun trousers and blue shirt, was busy carting the sawdust to a swampy hollow near the lower end ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with rumors. A besieged city must perforce be a nest of gossip, a hive of cock-and-bull stories. The regulars looked smart in their regimental uniforms. The militia wore such toggery as they could get—grey homespun coat with red sash, cowskin boots, and the traditional tuque bleue. The trappers not being allowed into the town, furs were rare, and women of the lower classes were obliged to go without them altogether. The centres of attraction were the guard-rooms and sentry-boxes. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... woman was standing. She was knitting a long gray sock, holding her ball under her arm, knitting swiftly, even while her eyes followed lovingly the little figure skipping along the lavender road. The soft blue light touched her silver hair and her white apron and turned the gray homespun dress into a royal robe of purple worthy of the owner's wearing. The little figure danced out of sight behind a clump of cedars and the woman turned from the doorway with a tender smile that ended in a sigh. One evening her own little girl had passed down the lane and along Champlain's Road to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... hinder you no more with my chat," said his hostess, with kindly good humor, and slipped away upstairs. She lighted a great wood fire in the bedroom, and laid the bed and the blankets all round it, and opened the window, and took the homespun linen sheets out of a press, and made the room very tidy. Then she went down again, and the moment Henry saw her, he said "I feel your kindness, miss, but I don't know your name, nor where in the world I am." His hostess smiled. "That is no secret. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... ankle-deep in dry grass, stood beside it, holding Thankful. Thankful was about ten inches long, made of the finest linen, with little rosy cheeks, and a fine little wig of flax. She wore a blue wool frock and a red cloak. Sarah held her close. She even drew a fold of her own blue homespun blanket around her to shield her from the November wind. The sky was low and gray; the wind blew from the northeast, and had the breath of snow in it. Submit on the wall drew her quilted petticoats ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... The elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion, I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a fearful-fluttering of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... his head at the first question; he nodded it again now, a glance of strange eagerness stealing into his dark eyes. Although the two youths wore the dress of peasant boys — suits of undyed homespun only very slightly finer in make than was common in those parts — they spoke the English tongue, and spoke it with purity and ease. It needed no trained eye to see that it was something more than peasant blood that ran in their veins, albeit the peasant race of Gascony in those days was perhaps ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... mournful and misty Atlantic Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and sweet; Primly, trimly tripping down the queer old street; Homespun frock and apron, clumsy buckled shoe; Skirts that reach your ankles, just as Mother's do; Bonnet closely clinging over braid and curl; Modest ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... a coat of arms, Arba; I won the decoration when I retired from hard work at the age of fifty. That was about the time you were starting in life by selling fake mining stock around this State. My coat of arms is two patches on a homespun background, surrounded by looped galluses. And I can show you the mile of stone walls I built before you ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... must go up, and homespun must come down;" and the question is "How does the coat fit?"—not, "Who wears it?" The power that bears the tides of excited population up and down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Swinedale from the west." She asked how long he would be. Kjartan answered, "Most likely I shall be riding from the west next Thursday (the fifth day of the week)." "Would you do an errand for me?" said Thorhalla. "I have a kinsman west at Whitedale and Saurby; he has promised me half a mark's worth of homespun, and I would like you to claim it for me, and bring it with you from the west." Kjartan promised to do this. After this Thorarin came home, and betook himself to the journey with them. They rode westward over Saelingsdale heath, and came to Hol in the evening to the brothers ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... Dalgas was prophet, prince, and friend of the people. In the crowds that flocked about his bier homespun elbowed gold lace in the grief of a common loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce decked his coffin, the gift of the heath to the memory of ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... warmly with a homespun blanket, and, accompanied by Dan, made her way down the ladder. She found her husband putting fresh logs on the fire and stirring the coals to a blaze, while the Captain hung his coat on the corner of the mantel-shelf to dry. She went up to him and held out her hand. ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... lady herself. Down came the coach-and-four, and forth from it came Lady Belamour in a magnificent hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, though quite truly, to declare ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seating myself on one of the slab benches near a box stove, which had but one length of pipe, out of which the smoke was pouring towards an opening in the roof, glancing around on the women in their sun bonnets, the babies in their little calico caps and the men in homespun, then out of the open door into a ravine where the tops of the tall trees were beneath us, I said to myself, I've reached "that beyond." The undefined has taken shape and I have reached the place of which I could never formulate ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... coats and trousers for exaggerated Jonathans, and diamonded garments of motley for clowns. Around on the floor, on two sides of the apartment, lay heaps of garments of all incongruous descriptions, from the court dress of King Charles' time to the tow and homespun of the Southern darkey, as if just tumbled over for examination. A few stage swords and spears and two or three suits of armor of suspicious likeness to block-tin, occupied one of the back corners; while suspended from pegs and arranged upon shelves were false beards, wigs and eyebrows, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... though not to those gay flies Gilded i' the beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes, But to poor shepherds' homespun things; Whose wealth's their flock, whose wit to be Well ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... her up some steep stairs, leading from the kitchen to an unfinished room under the rafters. Here everything again was as neat as wax, but how desolate! An unpainted bedstead of pine wood, holding a round feather-bed covered with a blue-and-white homespun bed-quilt; a strip of rag carpet on a floor grown beautiful from the care bestowed upon it; a small table covered with a homespun linen towel, a Bible in exactly the middle of it; two old yellow chairs, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... many, many horses there were! As far as Pasha could see in either direction the line extended. Never before had he seen so many horses at one time. And men! The fields and woods were full of them; some in brown butternut, some in homespun gray, and many in clothes having no uniformity of color at all. "Mars" Clayton was dressed better than most, for on his butternut coat were shiny shoulder-straps, and it was closed with shiny buttons. Pasha took little pride in this. He knew his master for a cruel ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... tableau represents the scene so well known in the early history of our country, and contains twenty-five figures, thirteen of which should be dressed in crimson uniform, to personate the British soldiers, six in continental costume, three in coarse homespun suits, three in sailor's costume. The stage must be formed to represent a hill, which can be done by using boxes and boards, and covering them with green cloth. The hill should rise from the footlights ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... stubbly fringe of white beard around a ruddy face. He had come on a wood-sled for the greater convenience of bringing Sylvia's goods. There were a feather-bed, bolster, and pillows, tied up in an old homespun blanket, on the rear of the sled; there was also a red chest, and a great bundle of bedclothing. Sylvia sat in her best rocking-chair just behind Jonathan ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... looked as if it were cut out of marble, a red mouth, and intelligent blue eyes. She was also dressed with more care than when in the forest with the hunting party. Around her neck she had a necklace of red beads; she wore a fur jacket opened in front and covered with green cloth, a homespun skirt and new boots. Even old Macko noticed this beautiful attire, and having looked at her for a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... toil, while his rugged, yet well-formed hands conveyed the impression of the unceasing war he had waged against the gigantic trees of this Western land. He was habited in a hunting-frock of grey homespun, reaching about half way down to his knee, and trimmed with a full fringe of a somewhat darker hue. His trowsers were of the same material, and both were girt around his loins by a common belt of black leather, fastened ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... perusal of 'A Lover in Homespun,' we are impressed with the fact that the author cannot only 'photograph' pictures but 'paint them'; all the characters live, breathe, act, feel and speak naturally. Mr. Smith gives individuality and charm to the personages of his stories, without involving any sacrifice ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... good as I wanted," was the hesitating reply; "but 'peared to me they were men, all right. And they seemed to be dressed in gray homespun, too, like some of the farmers ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... who was not unaccustomed to ghostly sights, for they were his heritage, raised himself in bed, and knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief against the shadows was the figure of a hillman of the west, and one that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age, with hair hanging over his ears ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... sweet human fancy interweaves its threads of gold With the plain and homespun present, and a ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... lines a hand we love has penn'd Appears a meanin' hid from other eyes, So, in your simple, homespun art, old honest Yankee friend, A power o' tearful, sweet seggestion lies. We see it all—the pictur' that our mem'ries hold so dear— The homestead in New England far away, An' the vision is so nat'ral-like we almost ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... children had white homespun linen skirts, embroidered at the edges, and the men had trousers ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... domestic comfort. Lawyers, doctors, merchants, traders, Preachers, artisans, and idlers, From afar and near flocked hither; And the "continental coppers" Were in speedy circulation. Spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, Filled the women's dextrous fingers, And the homespun and the linsey Were the choice and boasted fabrics, Furnished strong and useful garments, In the day of early settlers. Social gatherings were frequent, 'Round log fires and tallow candles, And the quaint old invitations ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... in his homespun jacket was shaken smartly. "See here, my boy, either you tell me what you're screaming for, or I'll pick you up and ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... three simple homespun tales. I believe they are true to life as I see it. I only wish my readers might hear the ripple of the Maine river running through them; breathe the fragrance of New England for-ests, and though never for a moment getting, through ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... plenty of vultures, the island of Deemsters, and Keys, and Kirk Maughold, and Port y Vullin. Here at the Lague lived ADAM FATSISTER, the Deputy Governor, who had been selected for that post because he owned five hundred hungry acres, six hungrier sons, a face like an angel's in homespun, a flaccid figure, and a shrewd-faced wife, named RUTH. Hither came STIFFUN, to beg shelter. The footman opened the door to him, but would have closed it had not ADAM, with a lusty old oath, bidden him to let the man in. Hereupon STIFFUN's face softened, and the footman's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... or three bright and happy months I acted as George Dawson's amanuensis after a rather curious and unusual fashion. In his unclerical suit of Irish homespun and his beaded slippers, with a well-blacked clay between his lips, he would roam up and down the Turkey carpet of the editorial room and talk about some topic of the day, and in that fashion he would make his daily leader. "Now," he would say, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Poyser was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth herself—a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see—none of your bleached "shop-rag" that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... fine mansion-house of his, and with that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people thought, in spite of all the stories. The feelings expressed by the good folks who dated from the time when they "buried aour little Anny Mari'," and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all. And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin with it in the present ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... embarrassment, "I—I'm afraid I can't pay you that money. But you know that big flock of sheep down in the back pasture? Well, tell you what we'll do. Over at Beaverton I've got an uncle who's a tailor. I can give you a suit of full cloth of homespun and call it square," and though the boy wanted the money for fifty things he had to take ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... is the flight of the "burly, dozing bumblebee," beside this quick intelligence! Our knight of the ruby throat, with lance in rest, makes wild and rapid sallies on this "little mundane bird,"—this bumblebee,—this rolling sailor, never off his sea-legs, always spinning his long homespun yarns. This rich bed of golden and crimson flowers is a handsome field of tournament. What invisible circle sits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... clamour, and I found that "The Battle of the Books" had begun raging anew. Two figures entered in lively dispute. One was dressed in plain homespun and the other wore a scholar's gown over a suit of motley. I gathered from their conversation that they were Cotton Mather and William Shakspere. Mather insisted that the witches in "Macbeth" should be caught and hanged. Shakspere replied that the witches had already suffered ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... each casement. There was haste and hurry in Staneholme, from the Laird's mother down through her buxom merry daughters to the bareheaded servant-lasses, and the substitutes for groom and lacquey, in coarse homespun, and honest, broad blue bonnets. There was bustle in the little dining-room with its high windows, which the sea-foam sometimes dimmed, and its spindle-legged chairs and smoked pictures. There was blithe work in the cheerful hall, in whose broad chimney ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... wearing a peculiar homespun dress; with a native dialect strongly resembling many of the Yorkshire phrases. They are generally found located in the poorer parishes and districts, where their primitive-looking cabins are easily designated from that of the more enterprising agriculturist. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... town-bred child from sleeping, and up in those bare rooms there was cold enough to pinch you black and blue; but Elsie and Duncan had never thought much of that, for they had been accustomed to it from babyhood, and only threw on their thick homespun garments in greater haste. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... daughter graduated, after six or seven long years, their faces are radiant because of their realized hopes. When they see their white-robed daughter transformed from the girl they brought here clad in the homespun of the old days, and receiving her certificate, the tears come unchecked, and the moving lips no doubt form ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... smilingly. An acute observer might have imagined that the passionate plaint was directed at him. If so it passed harmlessly over his broad shoulders. In his immaculate evening dress he looked strangely out of place there. Enid had escaped the prevailing dilapidation, but her gown of grey homespun was severe as the garb of ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... does it amount to? How important is it? Does it matter whether we missionaries sleep on spring beds, or those made of boards (I prefer the latter myself!), whether we eat with chopsticks, or fingers, or forks; whether we wear silk or homespun; whether we sit on chairs or on the floor? Does it matter whether we are poor or rich? Does it matter whether we eat rice or potatoes? Does it matter whether we live in the way to which we are accustomed, or adopt the way of living of those ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... a girl as Margaret to be merged in so dreary, undistinguished a class was manifestly preposterous. It was a stupid misapplication of human material. A plainer face and a more homespun fibre would have ...
— Different Girls • Various
... who had seen many years, and whose manner might imply that all these chances of life and death came in the gross, and that existence was a medley at best. The other, a witness, was young. More than once the "valley man" cast a covert glance at her as, clad in a brown homespun dress, she leaned against the log wall, her face, which was very pale, half turned toward it, as if to hide the features already much obscured by the white sunbonnet drawn far over it. One arm was lifted, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock |
