"Patchwork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may, the transepts are altogether a curious patchwork, yet when entered from the south end they seem almost entirely satisfactory, since the eye is so engrossed by the magnificence of the five great lancets of the north front, and the great height ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... grove, which father had once occupied. Dan shared it with us, sleeping in a bed of his own in the opposite corner. The sheets and pillow-slips were fragrant with lavender, and one of Grandmother King's noted patchwork quilts was over us. The window was open and we heard the frogs singing down in the swamp of the brook meadow. We had heard frogs sing in Ontario, of course; but certainly Prince Edward Island frogs were more tuneful and mellow. Or was it simply the glamour of old family traditions ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... comfort which did her heart good. There were books lying on the table and flowers in the window, a handsome cat purred in front of the fireplace, and on a bracket in one corner an asthmatic clock ticked off the hours with wheezy vigor. In an adjoining room Evadne could see a bed with its gay patchwork quilt of Dyce's making, and in the little kitchen beyond she heard her singing as she trod to and fro. A couple of dainty muslin dresses were draped over chairs, for Dyce was the finest clear starcher in Marlborough, and her kitchen was all too small to hold the products ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... illiterate patchwork of lifeless and uninteresting scribbling appeared under my byline day after day in the Intelligencer. Not a word, not a thought of my own was left. I was not restrained from protest by the absurd threats of Le ffacase, but prudence dictated not throwing away dirty water before I got clean, and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Shelley in his hand, and a case of thick Egyptian cigarettes by his side. In his ears was the whispering of the faint breeze amongst the pines, and the soft murmuring of the sea, hundreds of feet below, seen like a brilliant piece of patchwork through the fluttering leaves and dark tree-trunks which surrounded him. There was nothing to disturb the sweet silence of the drowsy afternoon. It was a charming spot which he had chosen, and he was quite alone. People, amongst whom for the last few weeks ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in which the infant limbs of Mamie and Abner had been tucked up; old looking-glasses, that had reflected their shining, soapy faces, and Mamie's best chip Sunday hat; an old sewing-machine, that had been worn out in active service; old patchwork quilts; an old accordion, to whose long drawn inspirations Mamie had sung hymns; old pictures, books, and old toys. There were one or two old chromos, and, stuck in an old frame, a colored print from the "Illustrated London ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... "All roight, ould Patchwork," he called out, with a laugh. "Thare's a shellin' fur ye, which is more, bedad, than yer howl sthock-in-thrade is worth! Changee fur changee, black dog fur whoite moonkey, sure, as my ould fayther used fur ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... snip-snip-snippin' it up into little scraps an' sewin' 'em together again. If a woman'll do that, it's proof what sort o' brains she's got." Then, with sudden energy, he advised: "Don't you never let her set you a sewin' patchwork, Kitty Keehoty. It's all on a piece with knittin' mittens for the Hottentots—a waste of time. A waste o' sinful time, I mean a sinful waste ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... wastes, black in the south, where the loam lies, light in the north where salt is found; with rivers without banks fraying into pools and ponds and marshes; with soppy fields in formal stripes like the patches of a patchwork quilt; with villages of log-houses, each having its cemetery a little apart, and its wooden crucifix like a gibbet at a space beyond—such is a great part of Galicia, the ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... shadows, and the wheel was then heavy and slower. Sometimes, the threads grew so tangled, that I sighed with impatience and worry, the weft bears the marks in the weaving—they are plain, in unwinding the pirns—and still, 'twas a labor of love, this patchwork of sunlight and shadow, this discord of sorrow ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... of the bedroom, and thought how pleasant it looked, with its pink-and-white patchwork quilt and the brown unpainted paneling ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and found a hundred echoes amongst the surrounding hills. For the rest, it was a broken surface, bearing every feature of a summer thaw frozen down again by the icy breath of winter, and adorned with a patchwork of drift snow. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... prose works of Coleridge are his Biographia Literaria (a brilliant patchwork of poetry and metaphysics), Aids to Reflection, Letters and Table Talk (the most readable of his works), and Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare. These all contain fine gold, but the treasure is for those doughty ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... The patchwork sunshine nets the lea, The flitting shadows halt and pass Forlorn, the mossy humble-bee Lounges along ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... including a coloured lithograph of a cottage and a brook, a fearful and wonderful portrayal of an otter, and a very fancy stag of unlimited points dazzled the eye. The ceiling was decorated with an elaborate and most effective design in wood—a fashion very common in Srinagar, consisting of a sort of patchwork panelling of small pieces of wood, cut to length and shape, and tacked on to a backing in geometrical designs. At a little distance the effect is rich and excellent, but close inspection shows up ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... accepted it as a war measure, full of inequalities that would never be tolerated in times of peace. It threw upon the Senate the onus of repairing the defects of the bill. It passed it largely as it stood, a hasty piece of patchwork, in order to get some kind of legislation before Congress to meet the Treasury's requirements. The measure was discussed in a cloud of confusion, and so perplexed the members that, in disposing of it, they relied upon the Senate to return it ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... find means and ways to stop this waste. What is done to-day in this direction is mere patchwork, and utterly inadequate. As an illustration of what could be done to-day, may be cited the canalization and the laying out of vast fields in the capital of the Empire, on whose value, however, experts are of divided opinion. Socialist society will solve the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... against the wall, and framed with oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching, that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The sight of the patchwork uniforms, worn by armed men, seemed to be a magnet for the panic-stricken inhabitants of the village. So far the people had been far too busy with their fears and their eagerness to save themselves to pay any attention to the two scouts, and so Paul and Arthur were able to attach themselves ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... had an odd cheer in it. Much scrubbing had removed from it the objections manifest in Glad's room above. There was a small red fire in the grate, a strip of old, but gay carpet before it, two chairs and a table were covered with a harlequin patchwork made of bright odds and ends of all sizes and shapes. The fog in all its murky volume could not quite obscure the brightness of the often rubbed window and its harlequin curtain ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tell him he was discovered. But the lights flared and burned out, leaped afresh and died out again, and there was no sign that he had been seen. For the moment he felt reasonably secure. The earth on the crater's rim was broken and irregular, the surface an eye-deceiving patchwork of broken light and black heavy shadow under the glare of the flying lights. The mackintosh he wore was caked and plastered with mud, and blended well with the background on which he lay. He took care to keep his arms in, to sink his head well into his rounded shoulders, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... looked quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters of old ships' canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin. About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one thing solid in his ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sigh, to abide her time, and followed her aunt into the morning-room, where the good lady produced some fancywork, and asked Nora if she would like to help her to arrange little squares for a large patchwork quilt which was to be raffled for at a bazar shortly to be ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... several instances that the thread by which the marvellous patchwork of unrelated and varying local myths is joined together, is an indecent ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... said she. Aunt Hannah was making a crazy patchwork quilt, and she frowned hard at a triangular piece of red silk and circular piece of pink, wondering how to fit them ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... bed very early, there being absolutely nothing to sit up for; and the bed was as hard as the nether millstone. As she put her tired head on a cast-iron pillow covered by a cotton pillow-slip, and lay crushed under three pairs of hard blankets, topped by a patchwork quilt worked by Bella's mother and containing samples of the clothes of all the family—from the late Mrs. Bathgate's wedding-gown of puce-coloured cashmere to her youngest son's first pair of "breeks," the whole smelling strongly of naphtha from the kist where it had lain—regretful thoughts ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... miles to the north-west, two midget mountains wavered in the sky. John Wesley nodded at their unforgotten shapes and pieced this vast landscape to the patchwork map in his head. Those toy hills were San Mateo and Magdalena. Pringle had passed that way on a bygone year, headed east. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... patchwork of small fields all over the slopes of the hills, and the snow had come upon them tentatively, but already the birds of the waste had moved to the sheltered places for every omen boded more to fall. Far away some ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... in the breathless heat, silent save for the echoes of the bleating goats. Crouched behind the screen of branches, for three long hours we sat in the patchwork shade,—motionless, dripping with perspiration, hardly breathing,—and watched the shadows steal slowly down ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... only blocks of wood and a rude bench on one side of the fireplace. The bed was a little platform of poles, on which were spread the furry skins of wild animals, and a patchwork quilt of homespun goods. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... in a ride in that clumsy old vehicle, nor dreamed that its halting, uncertain gait was other than the very poetry of motion! Even mother's own wooden rocking-chair, a bit of boughten elegance, with its gay patchwork cushion, and dull, contented "creak! creak!" as its dear occupant swayed meditatively to and fro, knitting in hand, in the quiet, restful gloaming, was not quite equal to that dear, delightful old cradle, for a good brisk canter to "Banbury Cross," or to the famous hunting grounds, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... the sitting-room door, she found the little old lady propped in a rocking chair just inside the doorway with a patchwork quilt across her lap, tucking her in. There was no appreciable change. She was as yellow, as parchment like as ever. Her eyes perhaps were brighter; indeed they seemed almost to have a heat of their own as Mary Louise stooped to kiss the cheek held ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... administration extant in the various political units in the United States present a patchwork of overlapping authority and undetermined responsibility. Highway laws are being constantly revised by state legislatures and with each revision there is some change in administrative methods and often ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... flying fast, even you, Alec, have to shoot passim," said a witty Hebrew, and Delgrado did not appreciate the mot until some one told him that passeem in Hebrew meant "patchwork," and that Jacob's offense to Joseph's brethren lay in the gift of a Prince's ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... in single file along a tiny track worn threadbare amid the brown, lumpy grass: and, as the man came round the mountain's shoulder, a narrow valley opened out beneath him—a scanty patchwork of green fields, and, here and there, a whitewashed farm, flanked by a dark cluster ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the world was a patchwork of transition, so that this great new fact came to him in a series of shocks of contrast. The process of change had not been uniform; it had spread from one centre of distribution here and another centre there. The country was in patches: great areas where the Food was still to come, and areas where ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the beds in the bag-and-bark partitioned-off room ('mother's bedroom') were simply poles laid side by side on cross-pieces supported by stakes driven into the ground, with straw mattresses and some worn-out bed-clothes. Mrs Spicer had an old patchwork quilt, in rags, and the remains of a white one, and Mary said it was pitiful to see how these things would be spread over the beds—to hide them as much as possible—when she went down there. A packing-case, with something like an old print skirt draped round it, and a cracked looking-glass (without ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... kindly sent us donations of work, and much more will be acceptable. Sheets, pillow cases, underclothing or patchwork, basted ready for sewing, will be very thankfully received. The work in the sewing classes includes patchwork, the making of dresses, all kinds of other garments, and quilting.—From the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... would notice an old wooden cradle, painted blue, that stood in a corner. A button-eyed, blank-faced rag doll, the size of a baby at the fist-sucking age, was tucked neatly under the red-and-white patchwork quilt made to fit the cradle. Hanging directly over the cradle by a stirrup was Jean's first saddle,—a cheap pigskin affair with harsh straps and buckles, that her father had sent East for. Jean never had liked that saddle, even when it was new. She used to stand perfectly still while her ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... water was far beneath the surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept away ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... So Rouland Leroux finished his contract in 1527, having left for himself a greater fame in the masonry of the central tower, whose base he rebuilt after the old stone spire had been destroyed by fire, and especially in the tomb of Cardinal d'Amboise, than ever he will gain by the patchwork of the west facade. What he could do with a free hand and his own designs to begin with, may be imagined from the fact that he built the Bureau des Finances on the opposite side of the Parvis and laid the first plans for the Palais de Justice. No wonder that he ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... twenty-four hours, I reckon, since every one o' them-ah sort o' shut-up-fan-shape sort o' fish-traps had a gray-jacket in it layin' flat down an' firin' through the rails, sort o' random-like, only not much so." His manner of speech seemed a sort of harlequin patchwork from the bad English of many sections, the outcome of a humorous and eclectic fondness for verbal deformities. But his lightness received a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... seemed as if up-country existed for the sake of its market town of Tideshead. Betty had been there once or twice in her childhood, but her memories even of sister Sarah were rather indistinct. She had taken a long nap once on the patchwork quilt in the bedroom, and had waked to find four or five women hooking a large rug in the kitchen, all talking together, which had made an impression upon her young mind. It was strawberry-time too on ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... we were enjoined to go to bed, and remember that to-morrow was Sunday, and that we must not laugh and play in the morning. With many a sorrowful look did Susan deposit her doll in the chest, and give one lingering glance at the patchwork she was piecing for dolly's bed, while William, John, and myself emptied our pockets of all superfluous fish-hooks, bits of twine, popguns, slices of potato, marbles, and all the various items of boy property, which, to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dual institution, responding as they do to the mechanical elements of modern work and of the mechanical worker-mind, admitting also of ready multiplications as patterns, ensure the wide extension of the prevalent style of imitating past styles, designing patchwork of these; and even admit of its scientific reduction to a definite series of grades, which imitative youth may easily pass onwards from the age of rudest innocence to that of art-knowledge and certificated ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... for the minister's family were also given by the women of the congregation. Sometimes each woman furnished a neatly pieced square, and all met at the parsonage and joined and quilted the coverlet. At other times the minister's wife made the patchwork herself, but the women assembled and transformed it into quilts for her. The parson was helped also in his individual work. When the rye or wheat or grain on the minister's land was full grown and ready for reaping ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... incongruous. If the fragment had ended abruptly at the moment when the lady arises in her shroud from the coffin, Sir Bertrand would have been a more effective tale of terror. From the historical point of view Mrs. Barbauld's curious patchwork is full of interest. She seems to be reaching out wistfully towards the mysterious and the unknown. Genuinely anxious to awaken a thrill of excitement in the breast of her reader, she is hesitating and uncertain as to the best way of winning her effect. She is but a pioneer in ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... specimens of the same kind were concealed inside the neck of the huge sack, but on the outside everything was comparatively small, and it seemed as if the hands that had worked it so elaborately had been directed by a brain in which familiarity with patchwork, and other homely forms of the sewing-woman's art, had been confused with an adequate idea of the rough use for which the garment was needed. Some knowledge of the skill with which fishermen prepare their floats had also evidently been hers, for ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... hearing in the stillness every beating of her heart. She stood by the bed. It was covered, not with its usual counterpane of patchwork stars, the work of Elspie's diligent hand through many a long year, and on which her own baby-fingers had been first taught to sew—but with a large white sheet. She stood, scarce knowing whether to fly or not, until she heard a footstep on the stairs. One minute, and it would ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... others; I was as happy there as could be; almost as happy as I was at home. Well, but next year I thought I could go at a leisure time, and missis telled me I should have a fortnight then, and I used to sit up all that winter working hard at patchwork, to have a quilt of my own making to take to my mother. But master died, and missis went away fra Manchester, and I'd to look out for a ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... marshalling of large bodies of facts were being written. Moreover, many of his researches were allowed to drop, and only resumed after an interval of years. Thus a rigidly chronological series of letters would present a patchwork of subjects, each of which would be difficult to follow. The Table of Contents will show in what way I have attempted to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... quaver of his voice was a remembering of long muletrains jingling through the gate, queens in litters hung with patchwork curtains from Samarcand, gold brocades splashed with the clay of deep roads, stained with the blood of ambuscades, bales of silks from Valencia, travelling gangs of Moorish artisans, heavy armed Templars on their way to the Sepulchre, wandering ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... said, pointing in-doors to where a long, motionless figure seated in a chair was covered with a ragged patchwork quilt. The doctor nodded gravely, paused, asked if ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... a fairly good idea of the decorations of the nave, in their general outline; but fails to show the details of Constantine's patchwork. His system of structure may be better understood by referring to another of his creations, the basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, of which a section of the interior ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... of a series of rooms which have been "knocked into one" by the removal of the partition walls. As all these rooms were not of the same height, the ceiling presents a curious patchwork appearance. A long counter occupies one end of the hall, at which refreshments and liquors are served. There is a stage at the other side, on which low farces are performed, and a tall Punch and Judy box occupies a conspicuous ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of the antique with the observation of real life,—their works undoubtedly would never have taken such a hold on the minds of their contemporaries, nor kept it so long. Everything to live must have an infusion of truth within it, and this "patchwork ideal," as it has been well styled, was held together by such a principle. The founders of the Caracci school, and their immediate followers, felt the influences of the time, and worked them out. They were devout believers in ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... just moved a chest from the depths of the patchwork cupboard in which they kept their food. It was a small receptacle hewn out of a solid pine log. The lid was attached with heavy rawhide hinges, and was secured by an iron hasp held by a clumsy-looking padlock. He set it down ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... Mr. Hodgson after his final reading; I can hardly say that I conversed with him, for our patchwork interview could not deserve that name. At the same time I noted with interest the Philosopher's expression as he and Mrs. Liscombe turned over a pile of music. If I had not known him so well I should have been deceived ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... like the one now described for purposes of hospitality; but in the state bed, overshadowing so large a portion of the floor, the births and, as far as may be, the deaths, of the household take place. At the Corneys', the united efforts of some former generation of the family had produced patchwork curtains and coverlet; and patchwork was patchwork in those days, before the early Yates and Peels had found out the secret of printing the parsley-leaf. Scraps of costly Indian chintzes and palempours were intermixed with ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Jew" and inchplant, the tendrils at least a yard long. In the other window was a blowzy-looking canary in a cage. A corpulent tortoise-shell cat occupied the turkey-red cushion in one generous rocking chair, There was a couch with a faded patchwork coverlet, several other chairs, and in a glass-fronted case standing on the mantlepiece a model of a brigantine in full sail, at ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... coast passed in the 17th century from Portugal to Holland and from Holland in the 18th and 19th centuries to France and England. The whole coast from Senegal to Lagos was dotted with forts and "factories'' of rival powers, and this international patchwork persists though all the hinterland has become either French or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in the wall, their deep window-seats serving as bookcase and sideboard: holding the Bible and almanac, the old lady's best bonnet, a pot or two of preserves, a nosegay of spring flowers, and a tea-caddy. An old-fashioned four-post bedstead stood in one corner, covered with a patchwork quilt; in another was an impromptu bed, spread on the floor, and occupied by a woman and two children, apparently asleep. A table, covered with oil-cloth, with some cups and saucers on it, stood between the bed and a dresser cupboard, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... box, and three more had slipped beneath a tattered piece of carpet under the table, there still remained five little bodies to be bedded. For them an old straw mattress, limp enough to be rolled up and thrust under the bed, was at night extended on the floor. With this, and a patchwork quilt, the five were left to pack themselves together as best they could. So that, if Ginx, in some vision of the night, happened to be angered, and struck out his legs in navvy fashion, it sometimes came to pass that ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... thing more," said Lund, grinning at them. "If enny of you saw a man hurtin' a dog, you'd probably fetch him a wallop. But you don't think ennything of scarin' the life out of a half-baked kid an' markin' up his hide like a patchwork quilt. Thet kid's stayin' aft after this. One of you monkey with him, an' you'll do jest what he's bin doin', wish you was ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... been carried on, not sparingly, but in good taste, with the result that, in spite of its newness at the present writing, it appears as a consistent and thoroughly conscientious piece of work, and not the mere patchwork that such repairs ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... facing Uncle Ish and Aunt Verbeny. Between them Delphy's son-in-law, Moses, was helping Bernard mend a broken hare trap, while Delphy, herself, was crooning a lullaby to one of her grandchildren as she carded the wool which she had taken from a quilt of faded patchwork. On the stones of the great fireplace the red flames from lightwood splits leaped over a smouldering hickory log, filling the cabin with the penetrating odour of burning, resinous pine. From the wall above ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... peers. The serjeant wears a lambskin tippet; the judge one of patchwork, de minuto vario, made up of a variety of little white furs, always excepting ermine. Ermine is reserved for peers and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... quite a curious collection as they gathered there by the door, and waited to see if the enemy would carry out those loud threats to break in. Rod was reminded of accounts he had read about the patchwork army gathered together by one Falstaff in early English days, which consisted of the lame, the halt and the blind. All the same, those old fellows had the right sort of spirit, and acted as though quite willing to yield up their own lives in ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant rooms, with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and permeating, faint odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the pictures, which covered the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and goddesses, portraits and landscapes: all that by popular repute were worth seeing had been exhibited already to the people who were now invited to view them,—at the studios on Show Sunday, and on the Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy gates of Burlington House on the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... all sides. My sad state Has given the licensed and unlicensed fool Charter to challenge me at every turn. The jester's laughing bauble blunts my sword, His gibes cut deeper than its fearful edge; And I, a man, a soldier, and a prince, Before this motley patchwork of a man, Stand all appalled, as if he were a glass Wherein I saw my own deformity. O Heaven! a tear—one little tear—to wash This aching dryness of the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... nothing perishes, that the Providence of God is not a patchwork of uncontinued efforts, but a plan and a progress, as surely as the Pilgrim embarkation at Delfshaven has a relation to the battle of Gettysburg, and to the civil rights bill giving the colored man permission to ride in a public conveyance and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Tibaldi, the invention of the learned Primaticcio, and a little of Parmigianino's grace; but without so much study and weary labor let him apply himself to imitate the works which our Niccolo—dell Abbate—left us here." Kugler calls this "a patchwork ideal," which puts ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing. Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank— the merry brown forms dancing or lying stretched on it: the gaudy- coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above, like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there would be bands of dancers on it with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... some of them very antique in appearance, the stones weather-worn, their edges rounded by time, blackened, and with all the tokens of sturdy and age-long decay; and in some of them I noticed windows quite full of old painted glass, a dreary kind of minute patchwork, all of one dark and dusty hue, when seen from the outside. Yet had I seen them from the interior of the church, there doubtless would have been rich and varied apparitions of saints, with their glories round ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the days that were past went over her in a great wave of agony, and overwhelmed her soul. In soft silk and lace petticoat and camisole with her pretty white arms and shoulders shaking with great sobs she buried her face in the old patchwork quilt that her hostess had brought from her village home, and gave way to a grief that had been long in growing. The other girl now thoroughly alarmed, laid the satin on a chair and went over to the little stranger, gathering her up in a strong embrace, and gradually ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... when you finish your practicing, I want you to come to my room and do a square of your patchwork. You know I let you off ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... other Wieroo doors he had seen, being made up of countless narrow strips of wood from four to six inches in length laid on in patches of about the same width, the strips in adjacent patches never running in the same direction. The result bore some resemblance to a crazy patchwork quilt, which was heightened when, as in one of the doors he had seen, contiguous patches were painted different colors. The strips appeared to have been bound together and to the underlying framework ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... geographer, as logician, as moralist, questioning its sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a pick-ax into every weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against its mystic walls, and into all doubtful places where ulterior patchwork disfigures the primitive structure.—He respects, however, the first foundation, and, in this particular, the greatest writers of the day follow the same course. Under positive religions that are false there is a natural religion that is true. This is the simple and authentic text of which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dearest Lord and Master," she prayed, at her evening devotions upon her knees and with her work-roughened hands clasped upon the gaudy patchwork quilt; "guide Thou my son. Bring him to feel that his perfect happiness can come only from going forth to preach Thy word to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... possible time. She was arrayed in a new black gown, worn under protest, for her own idea had been to wear her Sunday dress, a vivid purple, with trimmings which, for color and variety, looked "like a patchwork tidy," as Captain Dan expressed it. Also, under still greater protest, she wore a ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... flawless in technique, that great man of letters, to whom every lover of 'prose as a fine art' looks up with an admiration which may well become despair. What is it in this style, this way of putting things, so occasional, so variegated, so like his own harlequin in his 'ghastly vest of white patchwork,' 'the apparition of a dead rainbow'; what is it that gives to a style, which no man can analyse, its 'terseness, its jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter?' Those are his own words, not used of himself; but do they not do something ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the nursery door at home, she found Jennie building block houses, to Flyaway's great delight, while at the other end of the room sat Dotty Dimple, resolutely sewing patchwork. ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... is logical texture and cohesion in his pages; development, evolution, growth; one thing follows another naturally, and each paragraph follows from what went before. But most of his later writings are a kind of patchwork; unrelated ideas are in juxtaposition; the incongruities are startling. All those chapters, I suppose, were read as lectures to miscellaneous audiences in which the attention soon became tired or blunted if required ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... fit to be seen is emerging. Terry is sorting the coins, a pretty job, I should say; but felicity to him. But oh! the industrial articles! There are all the regalia, carved out of cherry-stones, and a patchwork quilt of 5000 bits of silk each no bigger than a shilling. And a calculation of the middle verse in the Bible, and the longest verse, and the shortest verse, and the like edifying Scriptural researches, all copied out like flies' legs, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... phrase from its pages. However, the view they take of the matter rather pleases me than otherwise. If they like, I am not unwilling they should think a dozen ladies and gentlemen aided at the compilation of the book. Strange patchwork it must seem to them—this chapter being penned by Mr., and that by Miss or Mrs. Bell; that character or scene being delineated by the husband, that other by the wife! The gentleman, of course, doing the rough work, the lady getting up the finer parts. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... trade and industry as a consequence of that discovery, and of the mastery of man over additional globe areas. Now, dismissing from consideration the so-called American protective system, likewise our currency issues and, generally, the patchwork, so to speak, of crazy-quilt legislation to which so much is attributed during the last thirty years, I confidently submit that in the production of the results under discussion, they are quantities and factors hardly worthy of ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... impossible, and the other characters mostly conventional, The Dangerous Age makes a very charming entertainment at the Vaudeville, a patchwork of humour and pathos ingeniously woven together; of which the humour was as fresh and jolly as anything I have heard on the stage, and the pathos put me in greater danger of being caught "blubbering like a seal" than I have ever been before. It is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... bleak poverty, up and away along Lone River in her father's shack. This log house of Pierre's was a castle by contrast. John Carver and his daughter had shared one room between them; Joan's bed curtained off with gunny-sacking in a corner. She slept on hides and rolled herself up in old dingy patchwork quilts and worn blankets. On winter mornings she would wake covered with the snow that had sifted in between the ill-matched logs. There had been a stove, one leg gone and substituted for by a huge cobblestone; there ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... corners, as shown by Fig. 305. Now, then, cover the rag with a thick coat (Fig. 306) of the white lead. Next tack the tin over the wounded spots, putting the tacks close together, as shown by Fig. 306. Afterward coat the tin with a covering of white lead and the patchwork is done. The roof will not leak again at those spots in the next twenty years. This will leave white, unsightly blotches on the roof, but after the white lead is dry a few dabs with the red roof paint will make the white patches the same color as the surrounding ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... be in vain to attempt the reduction of such a patchwork system to any single principle, astronomical or moral, as some have tried to do—a system originating from no single point as to country or to time. The gradual growth of many ages, its diversities are due to many local circumstances. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... tapestry o'er her shoulders hung— Her loins with patchwork cincture were begirt, That more than spoke diversity of dirt. Twain were her teeth, and single was her eye— Cold ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... darling! Such odds and ends! I cannot congratulate you upon your kindred, for I do not get on at all with these patchwork combinations, that are one-third man and the other two-thirds a vulgar fraction of bull or hawk or goat or serpent or ape or jackal or what not. Priapos is the only male myth who comes here in anything like the semblance of a complete human being: and I had infinitely rather ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Tully." To belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. The Consolatio is not, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork of translations from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Rather it is the supreme essay of one who throughout his life had found his highest solace in the dry light of reason. His chief source of refreshment, in the dungeon to which his beloved library had not accompanied him, was a memory ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... breaking through the interstices of the foliage of a poplar, sensitive to a slight breeze, came between the lattices in trembling patchwork on the bed, flickering over her face and losing itself in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... one kind and overdress of another. A very economical fashion, and one not destined to last long, because of its economy, and the fact that very elegant ladies rather curl their lips at it, and call it the "patchwork style." Eurie from necessity rather than choice adopted it, and it was also her misfortune rather than her taste that the colors were too light to be really according to the mode. Her gloves were of an entirely different shade from the rest ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... is sufficient to testify to the fragmentary nature of the Nibelungenlied. We can discern through the apparent unity of texture of the work as we now possess it the patchwork where scribe or minstrel has interpolated this incident or joined together these passages to secure the necessary unity of narrative. Moreover, in none of the several versions of the Siegfried epic do we get the 'whole story.' ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... that is best in the civilised machinery is put at the service of all that is worst in the barbaric mind. Here again the Prussian has no accidental merits, none of those lucky survivals, none of those late repentances, which make the patchwork glory of Russia. Here all is sharpened to a point and pointed to a purpose, and that purpose, if words and acts have any meaning at all, is the destruction ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... kettledrums, and horns. He wore on his head an ornament like a bishop's mitre, covered with strings of coral. His tobe was of green silk, crimson silk, damask, and green silk velvet, sewn together like a piece of patchwork. He wore English cotton stockings, and sandals of neat workmanship. His subjects as they approached prostrated themselves, rubbing their heads with earth, and kissing the ground repeatedly, till their faces were covered ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... reforms be undertaken by the Kings. That is the gravest thing to be taught you. The overtures of liberality made by the masters who have made the world what it is are only comedies. They are only ways of blockading completely the progress to come, of building up the past again behind new patchwork of plaster. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... two plump little hands, and her eyes were feasting on some charming pictures which were spread out before her. A pretty little work-basket stood on a chair at her side. It contained several yards of rumpled patchwork, two pieces of broadcloth with figures partially worked on them as if they were intended for a pair of slippers, a watch-pocket half finished, and a small piece of silk composed of very little squares. On the table close to her left elbow was a cambric ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... in supposing that this age more than any past or future one is destined to see the garments of antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; ... and more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her—now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to note now, and to note with a little care, that you cannot rationally accept a part of one theory and a part of the other, and so make up a patchwork to suit yourselves. Take, for example, the one question, Is man lost or is he not? He is not half lost or sort of lost: he is either lost or he is not lost. Which is true? If he is not "lost," then he does not need to be "saved." He may need something else; ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... and the soft shadows were creeping out of the corners of the little room. There was a gentle mellowness in the twilight which softened the darns in the patchwork picture the place presented. This room was before all things her shop; and, in consequence, comfort and the picturesque were sacrificed to utility. Yet there was a pleasant femininity about it. A femininity which never fails to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the patchwork made by the ladies in England, only that mine were ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... singers of a lay here and a lay there— lays now incorporated in the Iliad and Odyssey— scrupulously avoid such faults. They never even introduce a signet ring. These are difficulties in the theory of the Iliad as a patchwork by many hands, in many ages, which nobody explains; which, indeed, nobody seems to find difficult. Yet the difficulty is insuperable. Even if we take refuge with Wilamowitz in the idea that the Cyclic and ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... the annexed provinces present a strangely complex patchwork and oft-repeated palimpsest, civilization after civilization overlapping each other. If Alsace-Lorraine has produced no Titan either in literature or art, she yet shows a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... domestic accomplishments, and attentive to her lessons. She could make "pyes," and fine network; she could knit lace, and spin linen thread and woolen yarn; she could make purses, and embroider pocket-books, and weave watch strings, and piece patchwork. She learned "dansing, or danceing I should say," from one Master Turner; she attended a sewing school, to become a neat and deft little sempstress, and above all, she attended a writing school to learn that most indispensable and most appreciated ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Christmas comin' on—ain't it a wonder—Well, I stayed 'round an' talked to 'em," she went on, "while the navy-blue lady whisked her starched skirts some. She seemed too busy 'tendin' to 'em to give 'em much attention. An' they looked rill pleased when I talked to 'em about their patchwork an' knittin', an' did they get the sun all day, an' didn't the canary sort o' shave somethin' off'n the human ear-drum, on his tiptop notes? An' when I said that, Grandma Holly—her ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... much more curious. It was as if the gipsies set to work to refurnish Stonehenge and make it a commodious residence. It was as if they spread a sort of giant umbrella over the circle of stones, and elaborately hung curtains between them, so as to turn the old Druid temple into a sort of patchwork pavilion. In one sense there is much more vandalism, and in another sense much more practicality; but it is a practicality that always stops short of the true creative independence of going off and building ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... caught sight of Kate standing at the top of the rock talking to Peter M'Shane. In a few days they would come to him to be married, and he hoped that Peter and Kate's marriage would make amends for this miserable patchwork, for Ned Kavanagh and Mary Byrne's marriage ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... cheap and ragged checked cotton kerchief, was horrid with rebellious locks of hair, like the bristles of a wild boar. Her red and wrinkled neck was disgusting, and her little shawl failed entirely to conceal a chest tanned brown by the sun, dust, and mud. Her gown was patchwork; her shoes gaped as though they were grinning at a face as full of holes as the gown. And what an apron! a plaster would have been less filthy. This moving and fetid rag must have stunk in the nostrils of dainty folks ten yards away. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... thinks fit to say that he has delayed his visit to London on account of the battle-piece, which is a mere subterfuge. He stayed to finish his patchwork, as the first ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... after a very short visit in May. While hopping over the ground catching ants, of which he seems to be inordinately fond, or flitting actively about the shrubbery after grubs and insects, we may note his coat of many colors — patchwork in which nearly all the warbler colors are curiously combined. With drooped wings that often conceal the bird's chestnut sides, which are his chief distinguishing mark, and with tail erected like a redstart's, he hunts incessantly. Here in the garden he is as refreshingly indifferent to ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... to shrink with a senseless fear from using a plain word twice in the same page, and often from using a plain word at all. This unmanly dread of simplicity, and of what is called "tautology," gives rise to a patchwork made up of scraps of poetic quotations, unmeaning periphrases, and would-be humorous circumlocutions,—a style of all styles perhaps the most objectionable and offensive, which may be known and avoided by the name of Fine Writing. Lastly, there is the ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... from inside the pile and a huge jagged patchwork of metal shot out, smashing both arms. The slagger teetered, swaying more and more violently from side to side until it collapsed on its side. The rumbling grew. And then the pile, like a mechanical cancer, ripped the slagger apart and then ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... mental epoch for Katherine Liddell, the two companions were sitting by the fire in Miss Payne's comfortable though rather old-fashioned drawing-room, the curtains drawn, the hearth aglow, Miss Payne engaged on a large piece of patchwork which she had been employed upon for years, while Katherine read aloud to her. This was a favorite mode of passing the evening; it saved the trouble of inventing conversation—for Miss Payne was not loquacious—and it was more sympathetic than reading to one's self. Miss ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... said Ralph, patronisingly; "you certainly have a memory, and are quite as good at patchwork as the author of 'Delysle.' I could criticise on another count, but taking into consideration time, place, circumstances, and the female intellect, I refrain. That is the generous sort of creature I am. So, without expressing my own opinion ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the poor Wolfert undergo, and all in vain. It was a moving sight to behold him wasting away day by day; growing thinner and thinner and ghastlier and ghastlier, and staring with rueful visage from under an old patchwork counterpane upon the jury of matrons kindly assembled to sigh and groan and look ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... against both doors, Nekhludoff went out into the street, where the pink and the white boys were waiting for him. A few newcomers were standing with them. Among the women, of whom several had babies in their arms, was the thin woman with the baby who had the patchwork cap on its head. She held lightly in her arms the bloodless infant, who kept strangely smiling all over its wizened little face, and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... for a moment outside the hut, studying the sky, which was a patchwork of clouds scattered across grey splotches that would turn to blue with the coming of the sun. Evidently the sky had been quite overcast during the night, but the clouds were broken now, though ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... while. Well, Fatty went to bed, in one of the hay bunks, pretty soon after that. He stripped to his underclothes and turned in under the patchwork comforters. He was too beat out to want any supper, even if there'd been any in sight. I built a fire in the rusty cook stove and dried his duds and mine. Then I set down in the busted chair and begun to think. After a spell I got up and took account of stock, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I say, I made acquaintance with Sybaris. Nay, strictly speaking, my first visits to Sybaris were made there and then. What the Greek Reader tells of Sybaris is in three or four anecdotes, woven into that strange, incoherent patchwork of "Geography." In that place are patched together a statement of Strabo and one of Athenaeus about two things in Sybaris which may have belonged some eight hundred years apart. But what of that to a school-boy! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... suddenly shot forward, and with a wonderful curve avoided her. She ran to meet the peasants who were streaming now across the fields. We could hear for a few minutes her shrill cries to them. Then the vineyards became patchwork, and the still air a rushing wind. Our chauffeur sat grim and motionless, like a figure of fate, and we did ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gayly decorated with glowing masses of pelargoniums and vincas, belts of rich coleuses and fiery alternantheras, patchwork of feverfew and mesembryanthemum, and scroll-work of house leeks, but amid this gay checkering it is wonderful how few flowers there are for cutting for bouquets. As tender plants, except the few that may have been wintered in windows and cellars, are beyond ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... was not very pleasant," said Mrs. Boardman. "Now pat the pillow, this way, Maude, before you put it in its place, so. I did not have any lessons nor any books to read, and I had no time to bring my patchwork or knitting, and so the time hung very heavy on my hands. I helped about the work when there was anything that a little girl could do. I fed the hens, and looked for eggs, and wiped dishes, and ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... bed, gay with patchwork quilts—Nancy knew all the patterns: Sunrise on the Peaks; Drunkard's Path; the Rainbow—Mary was making up for all that her forebears had neglected to do. Early and late she spun and wrought—she piled her bed high with the results of her labours; she covered the floor with marvellous rugs; ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... keenness of his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers" with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads the preface signed by Duncan Campbell, "the good old gentleman who wrote the adventures of my life has made it his business to treat them with a great variety of entertaining passages ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher |
