"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "All bear fruit." "All have pretty flowers." "All grow on bushes." "All are valuable" (or useful). "They grow close to a house." "All are ornamental." "All are shrubbery." ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... they found his saddle, a very ornamental and expensive piece of horse furniture, trimmed with silver and made ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... would be called for than ever, because I had noticed that the speed of the machine in making stitches had already led to putting treble and quadruple the usual number into some garments. Having achieved the useful, it was quickly applied to the ornamental. Clothing was not to be made up, in the future, as plainly as it had been in the past. Hence the prospect of more work being required involved the probability of a greater demand for female labor. But whether it was to be more remunerative,—whether the sewing-girl ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... its liberties, disposed of its finances, overruled the constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in public affairs, and finally reduced the nominal prince—the doge—to a mere puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... young man, with the markings of a captain on shoulder and collar, came in and went up to General von Heeringen and showed him something— something that looked like a very large and rather ornamental steel coal scuttle which had suffered from a serious personal misunderstanding with an ax. The elongated top of it, which had a fluted, rudder-like adornment, made you think of Siegfried's helmet in ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... craving for food, and immediately started a small fire outside and boiled coffee in a nice new aluminum pail that held two quarts and had an ornamental cover. The oil stove he dismissed from his mind with a snort of contempt. And because nearly everything he saw was catalogued in his mind as a luxury, he opened cans somewhat extravagantly and dined off strange, delectable foods to which his palate ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... closet, at the palace of Hampton Court, stood King William III. leaning against a gilt railing, placed round some ornamental objects, near one of the windows. The famous Lord Keeper Somers stood beside him, while, at a little distance behind appeared Keppel, Lord Albemarle, and before him, a tall, fine-looking man, somewhat past the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... decorations. Not even Shakespeare avoids it always. No writer of the time avoids it wholly. The dedication of the King James version shows that these scholars themselves did not avoid it. In that dedication, and their preface, they give us fine writing, striving for effect, ornamental phrases characteristic of the time. Men were feeling that this English language was rough and barbarous, insufficient, needing enlargement by the addition of other words constructed in a foreign form. The essays of Lord Bacon are ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... and where there were rabbits in abundance; while joining Brineweald to Hedlinge there was a small fast-running stream, called the Sprigg, which at certain points in its course, fell in picturesque cascades, surmounted by rockeries and ornamental foot-bridges. In the neighbourhood of these, on either bank, Sir Joseph had also built seats and bowers, and in the summer these resting-places were the coolest in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the least interesting and remarkable relics," continues the same author, "obtained from the mounds are the stone tubes. They are all carved from fine-grained materials, capable of receiving a polish, and being made ornamental as well as useful. The finest specimen yet discovered, and which can scarcely be surpassed in the delicacy of its workmanship, was found in a mound in the immediate vicinity of Chillicothe. It is composed of a compact ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... if the means is suited to the end; they all ask (with profound and penetrating scepticism) if the end is suited to the means. They do not ask whether the tail suits the dog. They all ask whether a dog is (by the highest artistic canons) the most ornamental appendage that can be put at the end of a tail. In short, instead of asking whether our modern arrangements, our streets, trades, bargains, laws, and concrete institutions are suited to the primal and permanent idea of a healthy human life, they never ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... of the church, which are highly ornamental, were fixed at the same time with those of ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... himself with a stick; but I must do the brutes the justice to say that they made no attempt at dentistry upon our legs. Some of them were large enough to consume ten pounds of beef at a sitting, and some too small for any but ornamental purposes. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... covered the ornamental waters with ice, and gave opportunity for the healthy and exhilarating exercises proper to the season. Those who ventured before the ice was well formed ran considerable risks, and many persons were immersed; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... masterful, and picturesquely flamboyant, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had obviously been cast—of a good-humoured, ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses—yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... grace! I took a few lessons of a wandering minstrel, out home, but I don't know the technique of it, as you and that ornamental captain do." ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... residence of the royal Governors of Massachusetts."[3] This writer repeatedly spells the name wrong. His name was Drowne, not Droune.[4] In "Drowne's Wooden Image," Hawthorne makes his Shem Drowne a wood-carver, plain and simple: "He became noted for carving ornamental pump heads, and wooden urns for gate posts, and decorations, more grotesque than fanciful, for mantle pieces." "He followed his business industriously for many years, acquired a competence, and in the latter ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... drove to see the various objects of interest in the neighbourhood. I first went to the Botanical Gardens, which are very striking. They contain a large collection of rare and valuable specimens of both arboriculture and horticulture. They are admirably kept, and are very ornamental. I next drove round the Mountain road. This is a beautiful drive of seven miles back into the town. The views of the surrounding country are superb. It is a priceless boon to the inhabitants of Grahamstown to possess such an attractive and health-giving spot, for their recreation ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... are finely and profusely illustrated from designs by Hoppin and other eminent artists. They are elegantly bound, and neatly packed in ornamental boxes. As gifts for holidays and birthdays, where a uniform value and appearance ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... table, or else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch. Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learned from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These ornamental acquirements are only proper to those who are at ease in mind and fortune. I know an individual who, if he had been born to an estate of five thousand a year, would have been the most accomplished gentleman of the age. He would have been the delight and envy of the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and especially at Copan, there are clusters of four-sided stone pillars or obelisks varying from twelve to over twenty feet high. These are elaborately sculptured, and show human figures, ornamental designs, and many inscriptions. One or two statues have been discovered, and a statuette twelve inches high is described; "it is made of baked clay, very hard, and the surface is smooth as if coated with enamel." At Palenque are ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... right angles to the back part. The woman wears no hat as a general rule, but in lieu thereof adorns her head with a bamboo comb, at times inlaid with mother-of-pearl, at others covered with a lamina of beaten silver, but nearly always ornamented with decorative incisions. A pair of ear plugs with ornamental metal laminae are placed in the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... place for reviewing the Rapids is from the drive leading to the Cemetery, which here, as in most large American towns, is one of the prettiest spots in the neighbourhood; but the Rapids are not only ornamental, they are eminently useful. They afford a water-power to several mills, one of which, the Gallego Flour-Mill, is a splendid establishment, six stories high, nearly one hundred feet square, and capable of sending out daily 1200 barrels of flour. The flour is of very superior quality, the brand ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a well-kept lawn, daintily adorned with the newest pines and ornamental shrubs, and with sheets of glass glaring in the sun from the gardens at the back, was the house that poor Mr. and Mrs. Ward had bought and beautified; 'because it was so much better for the children to be out of the town.' The tears sprang into Mary's eyes at the veiled windows, and the unfeeling ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... porter's lodge with a trim little garden in front of it. The owner of the villa to which it belonged,—a mansion with park, gardens, aviaries, hot-houses, and lawns—took a fancy to put the little dwelling more in keeping with the splendor of his own abode, and he reconstructed it on the model of an ornamental cottage. He divided this cottage from his own lawn, which was bordered and set with flower-beds and formed the terrace of his villa, by a low wall along which he planted a concealing hedge. Behind ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... be understood here as opposing the erection of good, substantial, and even ornamental buildings by the Government wherever such buildings are needed. In fact, I approve of the Government owning its own buildings in all sections of the country, and hope the day is not far distant when it will not only ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is just,' said Claude. 'Mr. Ruskin's style, like those very hills, and like, too, the Norman cathedrals of which he is so fond, is rather magnified than concealed by the innumerable multiplicity of its ornamental chasing and colouring.' ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... children trotted along at a brisk pace down the steep winding path that led through the pretty ornamental grounds with which the cliff, overhanging the Spa, was tastefully laid out. The trees were high and shady, so the little creatures were not visible from below as they ran quickly on their way. But soon they came to ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... it deserves much greater reputation than it has actually attained. One characteristic external fact should be added. Since Blake's poverty rendered him unable to pay for having his books printed, he himself performed the enormous labor of engraving them, page by page, often with an ornamental margin about the text. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... one of the best ascertained phenomena connected with the genus homo—it is better to take it as we find it; and if we cannot hope to cure man of the absurdity any time this side of the millennium, let us try if we cannot turn the failing to some account, and make it useful as well as ornamental. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... poplars, and birch, which were wreathed together by the flexile branches of the vine and bitter-sweet, which climbed to a height of fifteen feet [FN: Solatnum dulcamara,—Bitter-sweet or Woody nightshade. This plant, like the red-berried briony of England, is highly ornamental. It possesses powerful properties as a medicine, and is in high reputation among the Indians.] among the branches of the trees, which it covered as with a mantle. A pure spring of cold, delicious water welled ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... than silence We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin We must have headway on, or there will be no piloting her What a miserable thing it is to be poor Why did n't I warn him about love and all that nonsense? Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... of every post; I am sure I shall. If I were a woman, should support my fears with more dignity; for if one did lose a husband or a lover, there are those becoming comforts, weeds and cypresses, jointures and weeping cupids; but I have only a friend or two to lose, and there are no ornamental substitutes settled, to be one's proxy for that sort of grief. One has not the satisfaction of fixing a day for receiving visits of consolation from a thousand people whom one don't love, because one has lost the only person one did love. This is ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... pine-apples, and the 'four o'clock,' a kind of 'marvel of Peru,' supposed to open at that hour. The houses, crepi or parget below and bamboo above, are mere band-boxes raised from the ground; the smaller perfectly imitated poultry-crates. All appeared unusually neat and clean, with ornamental sheets of clam-shells trodden into the earth before the thresholds. 'Fetish' was abundant, and so was that worst of all ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... ornamental architecture, such as magnificent columns supporting a portico, or expensive pilasters supporting merely their own capitals, 'because it consumes labour disproportionate to its utility.' For the same reason he satyrised statuary. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... things any kind of a lady ought to have," he said— "all the things that would make any one feel comfortable and as if they'd got plenty? Useful things as well as ornamental ones?" ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stood troops and a throng of small officials, those who entered came into a court surrounded by porticos resting on pillars. That was an ornamental garden, in which were cultivated aloes, palms, pomegranates, and cedars in pots, all placed in rows and selected according to size. In the middle shot up a fountain; the paths were sprinkled with ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... light. The fronts, gable-shaped, have their enormous beams richly carved, and supported by brackets and statues of St. Yves or other favourite saints; some are overlaid with lozenge-shaped slates, and finished at the point with a leaden "epi," or ornamental terminal. All have a kind of hall, panelled and sculptured to the roof, the staircases richly sculptured and supported by a pillar carved from top to bottom with statues of saints or grotesque figures superposed one over the other. Among the statuettes in the house, No. 19, are the figures of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... various kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end of the establishment in calicoes and other stuffs,—to say nothing of miscellaneous objects of the most varied nature, from sticks of candy, which tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery,—in short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... one of those who love "working in the shade." Not that he was ashamed or afraid of working in the light, but he was content to pursue the less attractive and less ornamental paths of usefulness, which few comparatively cared to follow. And so he had set himself resolutely and prayerfully to the task of rearranging the character of one who, he was persuaded, was capable and desirous of doing good and great things, could ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... setting fashions, receiving strangers, and assisting in the defence of the settlements; they also hunt game, and supply the larger natives with plenty to do in working for and waiting on them. It appeared to me that the Pygmies were regarded somewhat as parasites (though highly ornamental ones, like orchids) whose departure would be more welcome—to the aborigines—than their vicinity. But a race which has survived so much and so many things is not easily to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... subject. To put it both candidly and vulgarly, I haven't any use for Doris Hayward at all. Ethel I admire tremendously, though I don't think she likes me; and Basil is a saint straight out of heaven, suffering martyrdom for no conceivable reason, but Doris is like a useless ornamental china shepherdess, which ought to be put on a hight shelf where it can't get itself nor any one else into trouble. I'm really dreadfully afraid if I had to spend a whole evening alone with her, I should drop her and break her ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... very ornamental, but it's of no earthly use, and we would rather you would not carry it when you ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... could be extended the whole nation would benefit in an economic way. Yet Burbank has been unable to teach the rest of us how to apply his shrewd "common-sense" and his keen intuition to the improvement of useful and ornamental plants. It was necessary for scientists to study what he had done in order to make available for the whole world those principles that make his practice really productive of desirable results. In the same way it is well for every parent and every ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., which found their way to his hall-table, was quite remarkable. The French cook sent in his account to my lady; the tradesmen who supplied her ladyship's table, and Messrs. Finer and Gimcrack, the mercers and ornamental dealers, and Madame Crinoline, the eminent milliner, also forwarded their little bills to her ladyship, in company with Miss Amory's private, and by no means ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Charterhouse, Dr. William Haig-Brown, saying that he wished to have his son "interred" at that school. The headmaster wrote back immediately saying he would be glad to "undertake" the boy. The same headmaster being shown over a model farm remarked of the ornamental piggery, built after the manner of a Chinese Pagoda, that if there was Pagoda outside there ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... deft as a sailor's, secured the prince. The single silken band did not suffice; other cords, diverted from the ornamental to a like practical purpose, were wound around and around his excellency's legs and arms, holding him so tightly to the chair he could scarcely move. Having completed this task, Mr. Heatherbloom ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... hanging gas-jet in the centre of the room was an ornamental iron grating, between the apertures of which there now appeared about an inch and a half of brass tube, like the end of a big peashooter. A moment later there was a prodigious puff, and four "throw-downs" exploded ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... them dancers, singers, players, painters, and actresses. She maintains that when a man of sense comes to marry, he wants a companion rather than a creature who can only dress and dance and play upon an instrument. Yet she does not discourage ornamental talent; she admits it is a good thing, but not the best thing that a woman has. She would not cut up time into an endless multiplicity of employments, She urges mothers to impress on their daughters' minds a discriminating estimate of personal beauty, so that they may not have their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... and expected to rival Genoa and Venice. Its walls, once crowded with merchants and seamen, are now only opened for the Carnival balls and other festivals sanctioned by religion. It is a square edifice, with light Gothic towers at the corners, displaying little ornamental sculpture, but nevertheless a taste and symmetry, in all its details, which are very rare in Spanish architecture. The interior is a single vast hall, with a groined roof, resting on six pillars of exquisite beauty. They are sixty feet high, and fluted spirally from top ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... stole softly through the conservatory, and as he opened the door which led into the garden, he saw at the open window of a little room which was apportioned to Alice, and jutted out from the building in the fanciful irregularity common to ornamental cottages, the form of his discarded pupil. She did not observe him, and it was not till he twice called her by name, that she started from her thoughtful and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... near, making a very fine Shade. I never saw any thing of that Nature outdo it, and if it be cut away close to the Ground, it will presently spring up again, it being impossible to destroy it, when once it has got Root. 'Tis an ornamental Plant, and worth the Transplanting. Its Seed ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Hardware Windows Wall and Fireplace Tile Roofing Materials Lime Plaster and Mortar Ornamental Plasterwork House Furnishings Furniture Lighting Devices Fireplace Accessories Cooking Utensils and Accessories Table Accessories Knives, Forks, and Spoons Pottery and Porcelain Lead-glazed Earthenware English Sgraffito-ware (a slipware) English Slip-decorated-ware ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... Abergeley is a large village on the sea-coast. Walking on the sea sands I was surprised to see a number of fine women bathing promiscuously with men and boys perfectly naked. Doubtless the citadels of their chastity are so impregnably strong, that they need not the ornamental bulwarks of modesty; but, seriously speaking, where sexual distinctions are least observed, men and women live together in the greatest purity. Concealment sets the imagination a-working, and as ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. A labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace-like webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs, and painted with every color known to the palette in pure transparent tones of marvellous delicacy. Never was picture more harmonious, never flower more exquisitely beautiful. It flashes instant communication ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... some November afternoon, we walk into Kensington Gardens, where they join the Park on the Bayswater side, and, crossing in front of the ornamental fountain, glance at the semicircular seat let into a dismal little Temple of the Sun, we shall see a half-moon of apathetic figures. There, enjoying a moment of lugubrious idleness, may be sitting an old countrywoman with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for a sheriff, or your notion of a cow-house to be erected in a nobleman's park. A pump is a very chaste practice. I have found that a lamp-post is calculated to refine the mind and give it a classical tendency. An ornamental turnpike has a remarkable effect upon the imagination. What do you say to beginning with an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... subject of terms was again brought forward. I stood firm to my first demand for a long time; when, however, the bookseller's wife complimented me on my production in the highest terms, and said that she discovered therein the germs of genius, which she made no doubt would some day prove ornamental to my native land, I consented to drop my demand to twenty pounds, stipulating, however, that I should not be troubled with the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and leggings were so soiled and torn that the ornamental work with which they had been originally decorated was almost invisible, and the moccasins she had worn hung in mere shreds upon ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... a handsome apartment. It was approached by a broad staircase, the balusters of which were impressive from their solidity and design. The office door had a species of ornamental pediment over it, and the room itself had panelled walls of a pale green, a chimneypiece of portentous size, and a highly ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... deteriorating strains present where one was supported by the other being in this way overcome. Hundreds of thousands of horse power of this design were built, giving great satisfaction. The boiler was known as the "C. I. F." (cast-iron front) style, an ornamental cast-iron front having been ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... followed by an apathetic indifference to the things of the outer world. Dooming himself to a sordid seclusion, the king solaced his gloomy leisure with pursuits that had perhaps become habitual during his early detachment from affairs. He passed his time in ornamental gardening, modelling in wax, casting in bronze and working in metal.[503] His last great object in life was to raise a stately tomb to his mother Stratonice. It was while he was engaged in this pious task that exposure to the sun engendered an illness which caused his death. When ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... verdict for many years has approved of the Alger series of books as among the most wholesome of all stories for boys. To meet the continued demand for these books in the most attractive style of the binder's art, we have made this special edition in ornamental designs in three colors, stamped on side and back. Clear, large type is used on superior super-finish paper. The elaborate designs are stamped upon binder's English linen cloth, with side and back titles in large letterings. Each book ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... that in order of time decoration precedes dress, the idea of ornament predominates over that of use. It is curious that the like relations hold with the mind. Among mental, as among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Alike in the Greek schools as in our own, this is the case. Men dress their children's minds as they do their bodies in the prevailing fashion; and in the treatment of both mind and body, the decorative ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... secured several nautical instruments, many silver spoons, a silver salver, which are all marked with the fleur-de-lis; a pair of gold buckles, some China ware, a Spanish dollar, a piece of the ornamental work of the stern of a ship (with the arms of France) much decayed; several brass sheaves belonging to a frigate's topmast, a composition pump, copper cooking utensils, a large quantity of iron knees; the silver handle of a sword-guard that was taken ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... "Not ornamental, but useful, John, in fact essential," said Mr. Grey, as John excused himself with the statement that he had to go to school. When he returned through the woods, about noon, to his relief he saw far down the avenue Mr. Grey and the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... body, which was often covered with palm woods, was placed generally on the side—though occasionally on the back—on a board of wood, or wrapped in a mat of reeds or palm fibers, and covered with a tub-shaped clay dish. On the dish there was frequently an ornamental design, but beyond this, there was no attempt at decoration. The body was frequently pressed together in order to be brought within the compass of the dish. Sometimes, the knees were pulled up or the body placed in a semi-sitting ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... blood, as many plebeians are; he gloried in it. He disliked show, with a calm and deep aversion. He was a plain man with a simple, unostentatious taste for money. The difference between Helen's name and her ornamental raiment gave him pleasure in the name. But he had not been examining her for more than half a minute when he began to find pleasure in her rich clothes (rich, that is, to him!). Quite suddenly he, at the age of sixty, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... ornamental figures and designs worked into the finest basketry are symbolical in character, and of so ancient an origin that Indians of the present day do not know what many of them are intended to represent. They have simply ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... supposed to manage the fowls, but her management was almost entirely ornamental, and it is to be feared that the poultry yard would have fared but poorly had it depended upon her alone. All the fowls were hers. She said so, and no one contradicted her. Still, whenever one was wanted for the table, it was ruthlessly slain. And it was black Billy who fed them night and morning, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the Imperial Palaces, along the edge of the vast, dark gardens, their fantastic pavilions and ornamental bridges looming uncertainly in the night, and soft water splashing from the fountains. At one place, where a ridiculous iron swan spat unceasingly from an artificial grotto, we were suddenly aware of observation, and looked up to encounter the sullen, suspicious gaze ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... a door at one corner, and showed me another fair-sized place, bare as the first, but beautifully white and clean, and with some of the boards looking quite ornamental from the fine grain. There was a row of sleeping-bunks and plenty of water ready, and plain and rough as everything was, it seemed princely to the style of sleeping accommodation we had been accustomed to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... manhood, as fine a specimen of the animal as the soil can show, animated by a spirit which represented well the dignity of toil and self-respect, stood bowed down with ungovernable grief and shame before a merely ornamental bit ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... singularly small, in comparison with the exterior. It has been much altered since it was first built, and has lost nearly all its arches, which have been replaced by Gothic canopies in the form of ornamental projections. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... real life, something that had happened, and the same may be said of what followed. For instance, there was what we call a review. Infantry marched, some of them armed with swords and spears, though these I took to be an ornamental bodyguard, and others with tubes like savage blowpipes of which I could not guess the use. There were no cannon, but carriages came by loaded with bags that had spouts to them. Probably these were charged with poisonous gases. There were some cavalry also, mounted on a different stamp of ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... modern commerce, and the other, and more characteristic, is military glory. The commercial houses are naturally much the same as in the rest of Europe, gloomily utilitarian. The military in stone, however, is neither ornamental nor useful. Strange that the Kaiser, who was reputed to have quick intelligence, should not have felt how excruciatingly unspiritual and truly uninspiring the glory-statuary and architecture was. The German army was one of the greatest military organizations ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... progress of historic and technical mineralogy that pieces of stone should be selected which are most commonly used in the construction of public monuments and houses; and the most authentic samples should be procured of all the mineral substances employed in the useful and ornamental arts; such as sharpening stones, stones for ovens, stones to polish with and stones for potteries; having care to indicate the kinds of earth and stones which enter into the composition of each kind of pottery; whether minerals ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... cliff; and presently they came on the open plateau on which stood Castle Dare, with its gaunt walls and its rambling courtyards, and its stretch of damp lawn with a few fuchsia-bushes and orange-lilies, that did not give a very ornamental look ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... however, would call them monks and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than "citizens." Formerly they delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings which they could devise for them, helping them in their constant toil by planting balmy thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around the hives. These were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy monograms and devices to add a blessing and security to the provident labors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... habitat is used in the more customary present acceptation to indicate the place where a plant naturally grows, as in swamps or upon dry hillsides. Under the head of "Horticultural Value," the requisite information is given for an intelligent choice of trees for ornamental purposes. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... one of the leading clubs of the city, and if my time had allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would have put me in the way of seeing any or all of the State institutions to the best advantage. The governorship of an American State, let me add, is no ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man in high position, but a very busy man. Is there any other country where a mere letter of introduction is so generously honoured? If so, it is to me ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... the brick block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches, which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most venerable and ornamental object is a chimneypiece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured China, representing scenes from Scripture; and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside this fire-place, and told her children the story of each blue tile. A bar in modern style, well replenished ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Mr. Ludwig Nisson is a handsome young blonde, with lovely flaxen side-whiskers and a rose-pink complexion. Mr. Nisson's chin and upper lip are shaven clean every morning. He wears the latest Fifth-avenue style of store clothes. An ornamental garden of jewelry adorns his vest. His studs are diamonds; his hay-colored hair exhibits the perfection of the barber's skill. Mr. Nisson's lips are red and pouting. He may be seven or eight and twenty. He is very good-looking, and he knows it. As in the case of Mr. Westfall, Ludwig made ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... glad I can be useful again, as well as ornamental," he grinned, presenting to her with a flourish a delightfully ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... ground with straw, &c. Sow also Savoys, leeks, and cabbages. Prune and nail fruit trees, and towards the end of the month plant stocks for next year's grafting; also cuttings of poplar, elder, willow trees, for ornamental shrubbery. Sow ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... grateful and bright remembrances of all which poetry can lend to wisdom, was, before the time of Cimon, a waste and uncultivated spot. It was his hand that intersected it with walks and alleys, and that poured through its green retreats the ornamental waters so refreshing in those climes, and not common in the dry Attic soil, which now meandered in living streams, and now sparkled into fountains. Besides these works to embellish, he formed others to fortify the city. He completed the citadel, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus. Virgil imitated the invention of Homer, but changed the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the subject, though (to confess the truth) they were both ornamental, or, at best, convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statius (who through his whole poem is noted for want of conduct and judgment), instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... the very quality which gives my work its exceptional value, as I consider; still there are customers, I am bound to say, who look for something else in a corselet—they must have them ornamental or inlaid ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Rendell desires to inform her friends and the public generally that she has just opened a Bottom Drawer, and that every description of household goods, useful and ornamental, will be gratefully accepted towards the furnishing of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... forthcoming. The public will not be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to Rochester or Dover because the ironwork of the bridge which carries them over the Thames is covered with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with ornamental cornices. All that work is simply put there by the builders that they may put the percentage upon it into their own pockets; and, the rest of the money being thrown into that floral form, there is an end of it, as far as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... interesting birds were continually brought in, either by my own boys or by the natives, and at the end of a week Ali arrived triumphant one afternoon with a fine specimen of the Great Bird of Paradise. The ornamental plumes had not yet attained their full growth, but the richness of their glossy orange colouring, and the exquisite delicacy of the loosely waving feathers, were unsurpassable. At the same time a great black cockatoo was brought in, as well as a fine fruit-pigeon ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... I asked Hartman why they did not haul off all this timber, and he said there was no place to haul it to, nor any way to haul it, nor anybody to do the hauling; that fuel was cheap, and the few inhabitants had plenty nearer home; and besides, that it was most ornamental and useful where it was—it afforded exercise to the bodily and spiritual muscles of any anglers from the city who might come that way like me. "You forget the characteristics of this region, which are its advantages in my view. You can get turnpike roads, and teams, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... and other suitable plants. The surrounding country, although somewhat flat, is well wooded, and the soil is a rich loam upon a substratum of gravel, and is consequently admirably suited to the development of the finer kinds of coniferous and other ornamental trees and shrubs, so that the park and grounds contain a fine and well selected assortment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... in the ornamental parts, for I had an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power, and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid the foundation ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the ornamental water of a park, elbowed here, run against there, crowded into a narrow limit, and abortively trying to cut figures upon a few square feet of dirty, trampled ice, full of holes, dotted with stones thrown on by mischievous urchins to try whether it will bear, and being ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... of a green path was there, or a grassy glade, more or less wide, leading through a beautiful growth of firs and larches. No roses, nor any other ornamental shrubs; only the soft, well-kept footway through the woodland. Fleda went gently on and on, admiring, where the trees sometimes swept back, leaving an opening, and at other places stretched their graceful branches over her ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... were only a draughtsman, now, I could do something much better for you. I intend to set up a shop for ornamental carving, and I want some one to draw patterns. If you had a knack at designing, if you ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and room-bells, the button often occupies the center of a rosette of wood or bronze or other ornamental piece. Sometimes, as shown in the cut, they are constructed for use on floors to be pressed by the foot. The general principle of their construction is shown, although the method of making ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... sleeves tight to the elbow, and thence, from a ribbon-bow, broadening to a wide, triangular climax that revealed quantities of lace at the wrists. The pointed ends of the sleeves were picked out with squares of velvet. A short and highly ornamental fringed and looped flounce waved grandly out behind from the waist to the level of the knees; and the stomacher recalled the ornamentation of the flounce; and both the stomacher and flounce gave contrasting ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... other, and at the head of one and all was a latticed window impending over the bloomy shrubs and fragrant herbs; the colonnettes of those casements were silvern whilst the shutters were of sandal-wood plated and studded with precious metals; and over the lintels thereof was an ornamental frieze of gold inscribed with lines of verse which shall be described in its due place. And they inlaid that frieze with rubies and jacinths until it made the cupola resemble the domes of Paradise. Moreover they trained the flowering shrubs and the perfumed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you—and wildly incredible!—and yet even now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... described are also many studios for artists. These attelliers are very ornamental in appearance, being placed in the centre of a large court. They are of various fanciful shapes, according to the design of the artist, generally open on the sides, with a dome supported by pillars, and resembling in form an ancient temple. Within, they ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... which I know not how otherwise to account for: their hair is black and shining, the women's very long, parted at the top, and combed back, tied behind, and often twisted with a thong of leather, which they think very ornamental: the dress of both sexes is a close jacket, reaching to their knees, with spatterdashes, all of coarse blue cloth, shoes of deer-skin, embroidered with porcupine quills, and sometimes with silver spangles; and a blanket ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.' CHAP. VIII. 1. Chi Tsze-ch'ang said, 'In a superior man it is only the substantial qualities which are wanted;— why should we seek for ornamental accomplishments?' ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... is not like anything to be seen in the east of Europe. It is half rich Bulgarian, half cheap Viennese. The counterpane and hangings of the bed, the window curtains, the little carpet, and all the ornamental textile fabrics in the room are oriental and gorgeous: the paper on the walls is occidental and paltry. Above the head of the bed, which stands against a little wall cutting off the right hand corner of the room diagonally, is a painted wooden shrine, blue and gold, with an ivory image ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... genial subject of soot. Without speculating on its origin and parentage, whether derived from the cooking of a Christmas-dinner, or the production of the beautiful colors and odors of exotic plants in a conservatory, it can briefly be shown to possess many qualities both useful and ornamental. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... of self are cast out the burdens of others more than take their place. It is a full life, overflowing with the interests, the fears, loves, hopes, and longings of other lives. It bears the cross, not of an ornamental, vanity-serving glory, but the cross of a world's ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... situated on a sort of peninsula, formed by the confluence of two great rivers—the Rhone and the Laone. All the bridges, with the exception of one of stone, are of wood; and although in general more useful than ornamental, they are justly admired for the boldness of their construction. They form numerous and convenient communications between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... city wall a broad concrete walk; along this walk seats, trees, and rude statues; and between the walk and the wall an ornamental garden. ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... and looked quietly round. Now he knew what he missed. It was the little ornamental clock, which was hers. It had gone from the mantelpiece. He went into the front room, his bedroom, the parlour, lighting the gas as he went. From the chiffonier had gone the knick-knacks of silver and plate. From the table-top, the lace coverings. He opened ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... &c.—A new book of advice for intending Travellers has recently been published, entitled, "Where to Stay." It is both ornamental and useful; but so much depends on ways and means, that, after careful consideration, Mr. Punch, when asked "Where to Stay," considers the safest answer ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... unceremonious way in which Lady Ogram exercised authority over her, Constance showed to more advantage here than on her recent visit to Alverholme; she was more naturally self-possessed, and seemed a freer, happier person. The house garb, though decorous rather than ornamental, became her better than her walking-costume. Her well-shaped head and thoughtful, sensitive, controlled features, had a new value against this background of handsome furniture and all the appointments of wealth. She moved as if breathing the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... during Mr. Lurton's time as chaplain that Charlton began to receive presents of little ornamental articles, intended to make his cell more cheerful. These things were sent to him by the hands of the chaplain, and the latter was forbidden to tell the name of the giver. Books and pictures, and even little pots with flowers in them, came to him in the early spring. He fancied they might come from ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... a solemn thing to think of, fellow-citizens, and I appeal to those who may read this, as a man who may not live to see a satisfactory political reform—I appeal to you to refrain from the dog. He is purely ornamental. We may love a good dog, but we ought to love our children more. It would be a very, very noble and expensive dog that I would agree to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... north-west coast, anchored in some of the bays and harbors north of Columbia River. They were visited by canoes from the shore, and traffic commenced. The natives exchanged their furs for articles useful or ornamental. The ship went from port to port until a cargo of furs was obtained, and then sailed for Canton, and disposed of them to the Chinese for silks and teas. After an absence of a couple of years the ship would return to the United States with a cargo worth a hundred thousand dollars. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... staid, self-centred, or rather science-centred, Dr. Schermerhorn was standing at midnight in a dark alley on the Barbary Coast in San Francisco talking to an individual whose facial outline at least was not ornamental. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... good deal of metal is used in making a shoe, not only the ornamental buckles on dress shoes and the heavy, useful buckles on storm boots, but various pieces that help to make the shoe strong and enduring. There are nails, shanks to strengthen the arch of the shoe, metal shanks to the buttons, and eyelets. Not many ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... musk-ducks, though such sluggish birds, "are fond of perching on the tops of barns, walls, etc., and, if allowed to spend the night in the hen-house, the female will generally go to roost by the side of the hens, but the drake is too heavy to mount thither with ease." (6/6. Rev. E.S. Dixon 'Ornamental Poultry' 1848 pages 63, 66.) We know that the dog, however well and regularly fed, often buries, like the fox, any superfluous food; and we see him turning round and round on a carpet, as if to trample down grass to form a bed; we see ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... the country's ordinary manufactures. In 1883, Mr. Cole was deputed by the Department of Science and Art to lecture at Cork and at Limerick on the subject of lace-making, and to give a history of its rise and development in other countries, as well as a review of the many kinds of ornamental patterns used from the sixteenth century to modern times. In order to make these lectures of practical value, Mr. Cole placed typical specimens of Irish laces beside Italian, Flemish, and French laces, which seem to be the prototypes ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of occupations; In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the developments, And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen! Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me, what would it amount to? Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to? Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its foundations ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before, just about the time he was emerging from knickerbockers, he had been madly in love with this golden-haired, hazel-eyed cousin of his, and the lady, who had the advantage of him in years, being unresponsive, he had haunted a very large and very deep ornamental pond in his grandmother's park for several weeks with considerable persistency. Had the disease attacked him in summer it is quite probable that this story would never have been written, for his nature was essentially a high-strung and tragic one; but ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... submit himself to the same process of examination? If the work of retraction were to begin he would have a lot to do." And then came the passage which has already passed into Parliamentary history. "If we are to stand in white sheets, my right hon. friend would have to wear that ornamental garment standing in ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... again upon the shattered wreckage of its Bank Holiday, a short, thick-set man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through the twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to Bramblehurst. He carried three books bound together by some sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue table-cloth. His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry. He was accompanied by a voice other than his own, and ever and again he ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... and every striking object has already been carried off. I had heard mentioned, among such samples, flint, agate, and obsidian arrow-heads, stone hatchets and hammers, and copper (not brass or iron) rings used for ornamental purposes,[113] but my luck it was not to find any. Therefore the harvest is perhaps slim in that respect. It is beyond all doubt that judicious digging among the lower stories of the structures will reveal treasures,—not money, as the tale current among the inhabitants has ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... trees, the history of but few of the many varieties with curious or ornamental foliage is known; but several probably have originated by bud-variation. Here is one case:—An old ash-tree (Fraxinus excelsior) in the grounds of Necton, as Mr. Mason states, "for many years has had one bough of a totally different character to the rest of the tree, or of any other ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... has caused it to spread rapidly throughout the country. The teachers and pupils of the schools were invited to unite in its observance, and instead of trees being planted merely as screens from the winds, they were also planted for ornamental purposes and as memorials of important historical events and of celebrated persons, authors, statesmen, and others. Thus the tree-planting has gained a literary aspect and an interest for all classes, for young as well as old. In preparation for it the pupils of the schools have been led ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... this handiwork of God as a mere adjunct (more ornamental than useful) to his terrestrial environment, conceitedly thinking that the Father's only consideration is centered ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... asked myself how Darwin's theory comported with it. "The struggle for life,"—are all the forms of organic existence due to that? But how did the struggle for life cut these grooves, paint these ornamental lines? "Beauty is its own excuse for being"; and that Nature respects beauty is, to my mind, nothing less than fatal to the Darwinian hypothesis. That his law exists as a modifying influence I freely admit, and accredit him with an important addition to our thought upon such matters; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... green peppers, and add a few red ones as they are ornamental and look well upon the table. With a sharp knife remove the top, take out the seed, soak over night in salt water, then fill with chopped cabbage and green tomatoes, seasoned with salt, mustard seed and ground cloves. Sew ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... is a passage in the sixth edition of the Origin which has I think been overlooked. On page 70 Darwin says, "The tuft of hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock cannot be of any use, and it is doubtful whether it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female bird." This tuft of hair is a most definite and unusual structure, and I am afraid that the remark that it "cannot be of any use" may have been made inadvertently; but it may have been intended, for in the first edition the usual qualification ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... to have the slightest intention of speaking. He only sidled away slowly across the lawn, and then down one of the winding paths among the shrubs and ornamental trees. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... now sat practising the "Cavatina" for about the two-hundredth time—was perhaps the most fascinating nook in the whole house, inasmuch as it contained a little bit of everything, arranged with that perfect attention to detail which makes each object, small and great, appear not only ornamental, but positively necessary. In one corner a quaint old jar overflowed with the brightness of fresh yellow daffodils; in another a long, tapering Venetian vase held feathery clusters of African grass and fern, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... collar formed of esses; but it is not clear whether it was meant to do so, or was merely a rich collar of twisted gold links. That was the age of ponderous gold collars, but which were arbitrary features of ornamental costume, not collars of livery. Such a collar, however, resembles a series of esses placed obliquely and interlaced, as thus: SSSS; not laid flat on their sides, as figured by C. Again, it is true an (endless) chain of linked esses was formed merely by attaching the letters ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... summer-tree and cross rafters, sometimes rough-hewn and still showing the marks of the woodman's axe. But little decoration was seen overhead, even in the form of chandeliers; sometimes a candle beam bore a score of candles, or in some fine houses, such as the Storer mansion in Boston, great ornamental globes of glass hung from ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle |
