"Varnish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chains they came out, like the peripatetic man on the Boulevards who sells them: his gloves, well-fitting, and buttoning at the wrist, were of the whitest kid, and grasped a yet whiter and highly-scented cambric: his boots shone bright with varnish, and his face with self-complacency. As the room filled, he went round, giving the girls permission to write subjects on bits of waste (wasted!) paper, which set them thinking at a great rate. Presently, a second circuit round the room, to collect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... manuscripts or books: "They wrote their books on a large, highly decorated leaf, doubled in folds and enclosed between two boards, and they wrote on both sides in columns corresponding to the folds. The paper they made of the roots of a tree, and gave it a white varnish on which one could write well. This art was known by certain men of high rank, and because of their knowledge of it they were much esteemed, but they did not practice the art in public. This people also used certain characters or letters, with which they wrote in their books of their antiquities ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... the City to Shaftesbury Avenue, where he entered a block of offices, studied the direction board on the wall for a few minutes, and finally took the lift to the fourth floor. Exactly opposite to him across the uncarpeted corridor was a door from which half the varnish had peeled off, on which was painted in white letters—MR. ANDREW SLATE. A knock on the panel resulted in an immediate invitation to enter. Wingate turned the handle, entered and closed the door behind him. The man who was the solitary ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... remembering. Of two practical jokers who sent in a marriage notice of persons not even contemplating matrimony, he said: "This deceit has been practised maliciously by a couple of men whose small souls will escape through their pores some day if they do not varnish their hides." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... lament that I am, in some degree, prevented from consecrating to immortal fame, by not knowing what it is—the Author, I say, has not branched his poem into excressences of episode, or prolixities of digression; it is neither variegated with diversity of unmeaning similitudes, nor glaring with the varnish of unnatural metaphor. The whole is plain and uniform; so much so indeed, that I should hardly be surprised, if some morose readers were to conjecture, that the poet had been thus simple rather from necessity than choice; that he had been restrained not ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... open to no fresh impressions, the other nine-tenths caring not one straw about the matter, as reading it in an age of irreflectiveness and purely through an act of obedience to their superiors, else not only does this hypocritical attempt to varnish give way all at once, and suddenly (with an occasion ever after of doubt, and causing a reflection to any self-sufficient man, suddenly coming to perceive that he has been cheated, and with some justification for jealousy thenceforwards ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... coachman, not so much abashed as they had expected. "And I wouldn't care for it if they did. I found that bit of bottle in the ash-barrel outside, and fished it out to put varnish in. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... admitting the truth of what indeed there was no gainsaying, we contended that the indestructibility of the glaze, tested as it had been with aquafortis by Rossi himself, proved the genuineness of its antiquity—it proved nothing but that we had something still to learn! The nola varnish was light as a soap-bubble, but this on the Ryton was thick and substantial. How he wished we had been to stay another week to have taught us the difference! and how we wished him gone, lest he should make some new revelations of a kindred character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... glass lid fitting tight. "When your oil has been washed in bottle, put it into this trough with water, and put the trough in the sun all day. You will soon see the water turbid again. But mark, you must not carry this game too far, or the sun will turn your oil to varnish. When it is as clear as crystal, not too luscious, drain carefully, and cork it up tight. Grind your own prime colours, and lay them on with this oil, and they shall live. Hubert would put sand or salt in the water to clear ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... very well with your delineations." Another observer had discovered a marvellous resemblance between the solar spots and the hollows left by the breaking and subsidence of bubbles, which rise when oil varnish, which has moisture in it, is boiled, and the streaky channels are left by the retiring liquid. "I cannot help," adds Sir John, "fancying a bare possibility of some upward outbreak, followed by a retreat of some gaseous matter, or some dilated portion of the general atmosphere struggling upwards, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the satiety such excesses never fail to produce, and, at no long interval after, by this series of half-fanciful attachments which, though in their moral consequences to society, perhaps, still more mischievous, had the varnish at least of refinement on the surface, and by the novelty and apparent difficulty that invested them served to keep alive that illusion of imagination from which such pursuits ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... have laid down all the shows of things with their own superficial countenances and mortal frames cannot be imposed upon by the faces of adulation we make up. They who listen to that other speech, whose tones are the literally translated truth, cannot be patient with the gloss and varnish of our, at best, imperfect language. Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express myself in music to you," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... of a good floor requires care and attention as well as special knowledge. Oil, varnish, shellac, and wax are the finishes ordinarily used, but wax is usually the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 05, May 1895 - Two Florentine Pavements • Various
... for Lady Sellingworth in misfortune. But Lady Sellingworth was cruel, too, had been cruel to him. And he saw humanity without tenderness, teeth and claws at work, barbarity coming to its own through the varnish. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... colors; equipped with all varieties of trappings; and carrying slung at their backs every known game-killer—from rifle to duck gun—they would have been a strange picture to the European officer to which their splendid horsemanship and lithe, agile figures could have added no varnish to ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... rice; sago; seeds, garden, &c.; silk (manufactures of), &c.; silk-worm gut; skins (articles manufactured of); soap, hard and soft; spa-ware; spirits, viz., brandy, geneva, and other foreign spirits, &c.; steel manufactures; tallow; tapioca; tin; tobacco; tongues; turnery; twine; varnish; wafers; washing-balls; wax (sealing); whipcord; wire; woollen manufactures. If any of the articles here enumerated was the production of a British possession, they were to be admitted at a reduced duty. Thus, while the woollen goods of foreign countries were to pay ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Distillery. Two dusty oleanders planted in half casks stood beside the doorway. A long bar with its tin measuring cups was on the left as you entered. The large room was decorated with casks painted a gay yellow, bright with varnish, and gleaming with ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... "You mustn't be surprised at what I am. You may think it's dreadful... even wicked. But at least don't expect anything like you've ever known before. Fifteen years with only cocoa-palms and naked savages... the Boston varnish rubs off one. But I'm going to try to behave. I expect to feel quite at home... I have pictures of all of you, and a picture of the house... I even have father's keys, to ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... when the moral sympathies have kept equal step. It includes something beyond an amateur sentiment; in favor of what we favor. If it does not open the ear to every cry of humanity, struggling up or slipping back, it is no culture properly so called, but a sham, a mask of wax, a varnish with cruel glitter; and what a double wrath will be poured on him who cracks the wax and the varnish, not only because of the rude awakening, but because the crack ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... if you don't live to use it yourself.' So if the moths ain't got the good of it, there's carpet that can be made into rugs with some fringe on the ends. I always did like the smell of fresh paint, anyhow. There's nothin' you can put into a house that'll make it smell as fresh and clean as paint. Varnish is good, too, but it's more expensive. I'll go down now, and get the hot water and the ladder. I reckon she's through with her breakfast by ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... tremblingly acknowledged, was fearful; his wrath, never was appeased except by the ruin of those who had offended him. With all this, the manners of Lord Lovat were courteous, and, for the times, polished; whilst beneath that superficial varnish lay the coarsest thoughts, the most degrading tastes. His address must have been consummate; and to that charm of manner may be ascribed the wonderful ascendancy which he acquired even over the respectable part ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... tiring-room, or closet, or something of that nature, fitted up hastily for our accommodation, and there were signs of a woman's dainty hand and occupation about it The floor was carpeted, the wall was hung with arras; a varnish 'scrutoire, some sweet-wood boxes, two little statues of marble, two raised silver candlesticks with snuffers conform, broidery-work unfinished, and my lord's picture, in a little gilded frame hanging over a dressing-table, were among ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... somewhere deep within, there radiated outward something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the canvases of the old masters—which survives mould and age, the opacity of varnish, and the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... picturesquely dotted with them. Branches also soon become fruitful. The average size of the tree is about thirty or forty feet in height and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long and covered with a sort of varnish and gum, rendering them ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the flourish of all gentle tongues, Fie painted Rethoricke, O she needs it not, To things of sale, a sellers praise belongs: She passes prayse, then prayse too short doth blot. A withered Hermite, fiuescore winters worne, Might shake off fiftie, looking in her eye: Beauty doth varnish Age, as if new borne, And giues the Crutch the Cradles infancie. O 'tis the Sunne that maketh all ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the nicely-sanded floor, The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door: The chest, contrived a double debt to pay, A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day; The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... to ideas.' Here, for the benefit of the philistine, insert a panegyric on Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Buffon. Hold forth upon the inexorable French language; show how it spreads a varnish, as it were, over thought. Let fall a few aphorisms, such as—'A great writer in France is invariably a great man; he writes in a language which compels him to think; it is otherwise in other countries'—and so on, and so on. Then, to prove your case, draw a comparison between Rabener, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... action and not of words, looked at him and said nothing. He was perhaps noticing that the dishonest boy had grown into a dishonest man. Monastic religion is like a varnish, it only serves to bring out the true colour, and is powerless to alter it by more than a shade. Those who have lived in religious communities know that human nature is the same there as in the world—that a man who is not straightforward may grow in monastic ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... order to deceive the person who is to take them, and cheat him of his money; and so far these false lights are really criminal, they are cheats in trade, and made to deceive the world; to make deformity look like beauty, and to varnish over deficiencies; to make goods which are ordinary in themselves appear fine; to make things which are ill made look well; in a word, they are cheats in themselves, but being legitimated by custom, are become a general practice; the honestest tradesmen have them, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... and down similarly crowded and displaying the flags of various journals and news organisations—the News, the Press, the Times, and the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful and gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic, solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from her turrets, a great, white battleship rode motionless ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... careless demeanour. A table well spread with fine-looking artificial flowers and viands may be nice for the eye, but who can satisfy his hunger and thirst with them? Thus it is with your altiloquent talkers, Miss Bunting. They give you, as a rule, only the tinsel, the varnish, the superficial, which vanishes into thin nothing under your analysis of thought or your ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... common parlour! it was ornamented with a sofa, having springs and upholstered in green rep—the only sofa of its kind in Szybow—several armchairs to match it, and a piano. It is true, it was not very new. In several places the varnish had been rubbed off, and the narrowness of the keys and the yellowness of the ivory betrayed its great antiquity. In fact, it was the only piano in the whole of Szybow. When a year ago it had been bought for the exclusive use of Mera, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... probably to somewhere near the beginning of that period. It is an early specimen of the class of black-figured vases, as they are called. The propriety of the name is obvious from the illustration. The objects represented were painted in black varnish upon the reddish clay, and the vase was then fired. Subsequently anatomical details, patterns of garments, and so on were indicated by means of lines cut through the varnish with a sharp instrument. Moreover, the exposed parts of the female figures—faces, hands, arms, and feet—were covered ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... been to Edentown and bought a little toy affair, the best she could get there, and Frances Martin had sent home for her big, comfortable Vermont-made sled that made up in dependability what it lacked in varnish and polish. Counting Betty's, this gave ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... raspings of the bark of trees, together with red clay, turmeric, and the soot of burnt candle-nut, furnished them with colouring matter and varnish, with which they daubed their native cloth in the form of squares, stripes, triangles, etc., but, with a few exceptions, perhaps, devoid of ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... and varnish shining in the sunlight, was waiting a little way up the street, and the first person Honora met in the vestibule of Delmonico's was Lula Chandos. She was, as usual, elaborately dressed, and gave one the impression ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... die for Miss Dolly would be a wild delight; and how could he do it unless he were at hand? And now there were so many young officers again, landing in boats, coming in post-chaises, or charging down the road on horseback, that Daniel, while touching up the finish of his boat with paint and varnish and Venetian Red, was not so happy as an artist should be who knows how to place the whole. Sometimes, with the paint stirred up and creaming, and the ooze of the brush trimmed warily, through the rushes and ragwort and sea-willow his keen, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... existing between the others. By daylight they were wont to walk together, and to sit together. At night, they would desist together, and rest together. Really it was a case of harmony in language and concord in ideas, of the consistency of varnish or of glue, (a close friendship), when at this unexpected juncture there came this girl, Hseh Pao-ch'ai, who, though not very much older in years (than the others), was, nevertheless, in manner so correct, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... blame on the thunder. And if—but no, it is quite impossible to suppose that, outside of those two inevitable, fearful house-cleaning weeks in each year, there could have been any disorder in the cold prim, varnish-odored best ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... difference, and of no small importance in a moral point of view. The country peculiarity is like the bloom of the plumb, or the down of the peach, which the fingers of infancy cannot touch without injuring; but this felt but not describable quality of the town character, is as the varnish which brings out more vividly the colours of a picture, and which may be freely and even rudely handled. The women, for example, although as chaste in principle as those of any other community, possess none of that innocent untempted simplicity, which ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... of the airship builder, the expense and tendency to "pinholes" of gold-beaters' skin, the curious fact that chemists had so far failed to discover a gasproof varnish. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... painted, while this"—pointing to the more costly equipage—"is as hard as a rock, and has been rubbed smooth, then polished until the surface is as fine as silk. Then it is flowed all over with the best varnish, left to dry ten days, and over-flowed again. That makes all the difference in the look of wagons. Two of them may be built just alike, and one will look like a grocer's errand-cart, while the other is a regulation gentleman's ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... simple and unaffected in private life. She had brought her wonderful Stradivarius violin, upon which she always played, and she took it out of its case and allowed the girls to admire its graceful curves, and its fine old varnish. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... an inveterate experimentalist in technical matters. His favourite method in wall-painting was to lay in his compositions in fresco and finish them a secco with a mixture of yolk of egg and liquid varnish. This, says Vasari, was with the view of protecting the painting from damp; but in course of time the parts executed with this vehicle scaled away, so that the great secret he hoped to have discovered ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Moths, your gold-eyed plumage furl, Bow your wide horns, your spiral trunks uncurl; Glitter, ye Glow-worms, on your mossy beds; Descend, ye Spiders, on your lengthen'd threads; Slide here, ye horned Snails, with varnish'd shells; 30 Ye Bee-nymphs, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... there was the Cliff House. And the Palace Hotel made it a specialty. And the officers took frawgs at the Presidio, an' Angel Island, an' Alcatraz, an' Benicia. Los Angeles was beginnin' its boom. The corner-lot sharps wanted something by way of varnish. An' so they dazzled Eastern investors with advertisin' Tulare frawgs clear to New Orleans an' New York. 'Twas only in Sacramento frawgs was dull. I expaict the California legislature was too or'n'ry for them ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... cell is joined to the negative of the next by burning or bolting. If the latter method is adopted, the surfaces ought to be very clean and well pressed home. The joint ought to be covered by vaseline or varnish. When this has been done, examination ought to be made of each cell to see that the plates are evenly spaced, that the separators (glass tubes or ebonite forks between the plates) are in position and vertical, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the emergency with quick tactics. He reversed and drove the car backward. The fingers of the attackers slipped from the smooth varnish and the wheels threatened those who tried to grab the running-boards. Men who seized the fender-bar were ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... lived about two hundred years ago, a true Cornishman, though he wrote in English, or in what he is pleased so to call. In blaming the Cornish gentry and nobility for having attempted to give to their ancient and honorable names a kind of Norman varnish, and for having adopted new-fangled coats of arms, Mr. Scawen remarks on the several mistakes, intentional or unintentional, that occurred in this foolish process. "The grounds of two several mistakes," ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... been using lay, like a great fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons, dingy stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable colour-tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and turpentine. A sketch for Mrs. Sylvester's portrait, in crayons, was propped against the foot of an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son might buy it for his chambers); the canvas which he had prepared against the much-delayed sitting due from Miss Sylvester exposed its blank surface on ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... will try if he cannot explain them better in those two little pictures below; which nobody ever looks at; the great Roman sarcophagus being put in front of them, and the light glancing on the new varnish so that you must twist about like a lizard to see anything. Nevertheless, you may make ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... at a street corner down near Washington Square, climbed up beside my driver, and rode to the end of the route. Here, thought I, is where I get a little appreciation. Here is a critic from the older civilization, a man with a proper reverence for the past, who can look beyond the freshness of varnish. I have a right to expect something in the nature of consideration from him. Bah! All he said was: 'Among the splendid carriages and the high-priced automobiles, perhaps to prove that we are in a land of freedom, the black, dirty, wretched omnibuses ply ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, one of the most permanent characteristics of Shakespeare. From the beginning to the end of the play, Duke Vincentio is weakly-kind in act and swayed by fitful impulses; his assumed austerity of conduct is the thin varnish of vanity that will not take on such soft material. The Hamlet weakness is so exaggerated in him, and so unmotived, that I am inclined to think Shakespeare was even more irresolute and indisposed ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... this son of a Genevan clockmaker. Society treated him harshly; and he avenged himself by making fierce war on society. The savage state is the best—society being revolting in its falseness and shallow varnish: all men are naturally equal and free; society is nothing but an artificial contract, an arrangement by which, in the end, the strong domineer over the weak; the state of nature is divine: there is a Garden of Eden for those who will cast society behind them. Sciences and arts, civilization ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... invention; the lupin has stout, podded, countable seeds that must of necessity fall to the ground by force of weight. Also in fingering the seeds, you will know why some are slow in germinating: these are either hard and gritty, sandlike, like those of the English primrose, smooth as if coated with varnish, like the pansy, violet, columbine, and many others, or enclosed in a rigid shell like the iris-hued Japanese morning-glories and other ipomeas. Heart of Nature is never in a hurry, for him time is not. What matters it if a ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... procure, a pattern of flowers of every kind that she was familiar with,—blue roses and green lilies having the preference, as making more show than their humbler sisters. This, when finished, she covered with a thick coat of varnish, thus making a very good substitute ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... London, St. Paul's, &c. apparently receded from our view, the country succeeded, resembling one continued garden. The fields of wheat, &c. were beautifully defined, and the clearness of the atmosphere threw a sort of varnish (if I may use the term) over the whole face of nature. We had the Thames in view the whole of the time, which appeared like a rivulet of silver; but below Kingston Bridge, about half an hour after our ascent, the setting sun gilded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... reeds, having heads of bones with three points[161] all of them feathered on three sides, and both them and his bow beautifully painted with some kind of bituminous substance, as smooth and glossy as the finest varnish. The last arrow which he drew out was headed with flint, sharp-pointed, and double-edged like a dagger. Seeing that the Spaniards were all intent upon observing the curious arrows, he cut his own throat ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... The varnish of unconscious affectation was transparent enough for Ferdinand to see through. The little old woman minced and bridled, and took quaintly sentimental airs, but she was moved a great deal, though in what way he could not guess. He sat ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... banar, to wet, to bathe, to water banco, bank, bench, desk banco de liquidacion, clearing-house barato, cheap barba, barbas, beard barbilla, barba, chin barco, navio, buque, ship, boat barniz, varnish barrer, to sweep barrica, cask base, basis bastante bien, pretty well bastar, to suffice, to be enough basto, coarse, common, inferior bata, wrap batista, batiste, lawn baul, trunk bayeta, baize beber, to drink belleza, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... None was needed. The woman's keen eye saw at a glance the perfection of care with which the master builder had wrought the slightest detail of every room. The floors were immaculate native hard-wood—its grain brought out through shining mirrors of clean varnish. There was not one shoddy piece of work from the kitchen sink to the big open fireplace in the spacious ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... never had an heir. The general built a comfortable house of a single story, with one sitting room, but many chambers; its materials were of the most durable kind of cypress; but it received no coat either of paint or varnish. Here his friends were received with a hearty welcome and good cheer, and the stranger with kind hospitality. His planting interest was judiciously managed, and his property increased yearly. In the summer months he made excursions, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... with the thought, Miss Deane, that your presence on the island will in no way affect my fate at the hands of the Dyaks. Had they caught me unprepared today my head would now be covered with a solution of the special varnish they ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... himself, if he be capable of such filling, with a flood of romance. The tropics will unfold to him all that vegetation in its greatest richness can produce. In Paris he will find the supreme of polish, the ne plus ultra of varnish according to the world's capability of varnishing. And in London he will find the supreme of power, the ne plus ultra of work according to the world's capability of working. Any one of such journeys may be more valuable to a man—nay, any ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a suggestion to PHOTO, that if he wishes to use collodion pictures for the purpose of dissolving views, he should first copy them in the camera as transparent objects so as to reverse the light and shade, then varnish them with DR. DIAMOND'S solution of amber in chloroform, when they will bear the application of transparent colours ground in varnish, such as are used ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... a species of prospect by no means beautiful to the mere lover of the picturesque. The only thing that I met with to attract my attention was a most beautiful species of ivy, the leaf longer and more graceful than that of the common English creeper, glittering with the highest varnish, delicately veined, and of a rich brown green, growing in profuse garlands from branch to branch of some stunted evergreen bushes which border the dyke, and which the people call salt-water bush. My walks are rather circumscribed, inasmuch as the dykes are the only promenades. On all sides ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... book was not a foolish one; Mark, whatever else he was, could scarcely be called a fool, and had a certain share of the literary faculty; it was full of smart and florid passages that had evidently been industriously polished, and had something of the perishable brilliancy of varnish. There is a kind of vulgarity of mind so subtle as to resist every test but ink, and the cheap and flashy element in Mark's nature had formed a deposit, slight, perhaps, but perceptible in more than one page of 'Sweet Bells Jangled.' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... [partial hold, of no use to her without the Passes] to the King of Sardinia." And of the JENKINS'S-EAR question, generous England will say nothing? Next to nothing; hopes a modicum of putty and diplomatic varnish may close that troublesome question,—which springs, meanwhile, in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... orientals has a white blossom. It is the latter which is chiefly grown, and the seeds afford the Gingellie oil or suffed-til, already extensively known in commerce in the East. The expressed oil is as clear and sweet as that from almonds, and probably the Behens oil, used in varnish, is no other. It is called by the Arabs "Siriteh," and the seed, "bennie " seed, in Africa. S. orientals is grown in the West Indies under the name of "wangle." It is said to have been first brought to Jamaica by the Jews as an article of food. 1,050 bags of gingelly ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... either in oil, or in alcohol, resins form varnishes. From these solutions they may be precipitated by water, in which they are insoluble. This I can easily show you. —If you will pour some water into this glass of mastic varnish, it will combine with the alcohol in which the resin is dissolved, and the latter will be precipitated in the form ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... document as atrocious,—and we repeat the word, as the most befitting that could be used. That object is nothing less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds which have marked the proceedings of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts. Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of the Territory had been led into civil ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the curing process has some advantages over the other, as by it the meat is subject to the action of creosote, a volatile oil produced by the combustion of the sawdust, which is powerfully antiseptic. The process also furnishing a thin covering of a resinous varnish, excludes the air not only from the muscle but also from the fat; thus effectually preventing the meat from becoming rusted; and the principal reasons for condemning the practice of removing the ribs from the flitches of pork are, that by so doing ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... unparalleled success. We have appeared before the crowned heads of Europe, and the woolly heads of Charleston and Savannah,—the verdict of praise is unanimous. Purchasing our oil and varnish at wholesale prices, we defy competition. While we have given orders to our artists to furnish the most brilliant colors and gorgeous imagination that the market affords, there is nothing here (except, perhaps, myself) to offend the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... eight. Very good white rice, cased, worth, the fares, eight three-fifths. Rice of a worse sort, the bale, worth seven three-tenths. At Jedo, Osaka, and Miaco, there is the best dying of all sorts of colours, as red, black, and green; and for gliding gold and silver, is better than the Chinese varnish. Brimstone is in great abundance, and the pekul may be bought for seven. Saltpetre is dearer in one place than another, being worth one and a half. Cotton-wool, the pekul, may ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... humiliations of that kind, and they had considered that he looked down upon them, and had accused him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost thoughts as he fathomed their natures in this way. Society with its polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was envied and hated for his wealth and superior ability; his reserve baffled the inquisitive; his humility seemed like haughtiness to these petty superficial natures. He guessed the secret unpardonable crime which he had committed against them; he had overstepped ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... of such dimensions that sixteen superintendents and twenty assistant superintendents were required to oversee the work. Most conspicuous was the Kinkaku-ji, or golden pavilion shrine, so called because its interior was gilt, the gold foil being thickly superposed on lacquer varnish. On this edifice, on the adjacent palace, and on a park where deer roamed and noble pine trees hung over their own shadows in a picturesque lake, immense sums were expended. Works of art were collected from all quarters to enhance the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Peerage," dressed as faultlessly as Tracy himself, and affected at all times a studious politeness of manner. He had been a good deal abroad, and as he constantly adopted the airs and the graces of a fashionable person, the boys had felicitously named him French Varnish. But Mackworth was a dangerous enemy, for he had one of the most biting tongues in the whole school, and there were few things which he enjoyed more than making a young boy wince under his cutting words. When Kenrick came to school, his wardrobe, the work of Fuzbeian artists, was ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... mankind—all that had to be reformed; and till that was done all outward reform would but have left them, at best, in brute ease and peace, to that soulless degradation, which (as in the Byzantine empire of old, and seeming in the Chinese empire of to-day) hides the reality of barbarism under a varnish of civilisation. Men had to be awakened; to be taught to think for themselves, act for themselves, to dare and suffer side by side for their country and for their children; in a word, to arise and ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... the chief one in parts of the South where the Long-leaved Pine thrives. The United States produces more turpentine and rosin than any other country in the world. The turpentine is used in paints and in various arts. The rosin is used in varnish, laundry soap, etc. These two products come from the sap or "gum" of the pine tree. The sap is secured by tapping or "boxing" the tree, and then keeping the cut ducts of the sap-wood open by "chipping" or "pulling," that is, by putting a new "streak" on the tree. This has to be done once ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... The kids sat in a half circle, their brows furrowed in concentration as lumber, nails and hammers moved under the guidance of their minds. When they had finished, the table was complete, even to the sanding and a coat of varnish. ...
— Stopover • William Gerken
... at length to the urgent importunities of Rose, I accompanied her in a visit to Wildfell Hall. To our surprise, we were ushered into a room where the first object that met the eye was a painter's easel, with a table beside it covered with rolls of canvas, bottles of oil and varnish, palette, brushes, paints, &c. Leaning against the wall were several sketches in various stages of progression, and a few finished ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... took his first lessons in forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny shipworm: he saw how the little creature perforated the wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction and then in another, till the archway was complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with a kind of varnish; and by copying this work exactly on a large scale, Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and accomplish his great ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... such disagreeably close proximity, we had of course a perfect view of the French frigate, and a most superb craft she certainly was. A bran-new ship, to all appearance: she seemed to have been at sea scarcely long enough to wash the varnish off her teak and mahogany deck-fittings. The planks of her deck were almost snow-white, and some little taste and trouble appeared to have been expended in a successful effort to impart a graceful effect ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... him because I always preferred 'Eddie'—old codger used to get quite het up about it. Julius sounds like you was an old Roman or something, and in the business you got to have a good easy name. Say, speaking of that, I ain't with Lowry any more; I'm chief salesman for the AEtna Automobile Varnish and Wax Company. I certainly got a swell territory—New York, Philly, Bean-Town, Washi'nun, Balt'more, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, and so on, and of course most especially Detroit. Sell right direct to the jobbers and the big ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... polished metal is hidden from the vulgar gaze save on ceremonial occasions. Unlike the gorgeous temple decorations of Atlantis however, the Shinto temples are characterized by an entire absence of decoration—the exquisite finish of the plain wood-work being unrelieved by any carving, paint or varnish. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... of my mind?' The sun had just set: and not the sky alone was flushed with red; the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with an almost unnatural purple. The leaves and grass never stirred, stiff as though freshly coated with varnish. In their stony rigidity, in the vivid sharpness of their outlines, in this combination of intense brightness and death-like stillness, there was something weird and mysterious. A rather large grey bird suddenly flew up without a sound and settled on the very window sill.... I looked at it, and ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... prothyrum, in which the objects mentioned are represented; while a medallion picture in the atrium, with heads of Mars and Venus, gave rise to the second appellation. The colors of this picture are still quite fresh, a result which Signor Fiorelli attributes to his having caused a varnish of wax to be laid over the painting at the time of its discovery. Without some such protection the colors of these pictures soon decay; the cinnabar, or vermilion, especially, turns black after a few days' exposure ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... demanded adherence and did not beg alms. This was the attitude of his mind, but unhappily it was often apparently contradicted by the cringing of his body and the wheedling of his tongue. In attempting smoothness he fell into oiliness; where he aimed at polished brilliance, the result was blazing varnish. Had he known what to pray for, he would have supplicated heaven that he might meet eyes able to see the man beneath the ape. Such eyes, dimly penetrating with an unexpected vision, he had won to his side in the Benyon brothers; ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... feelings. There was, indeed, about Winterblossom, nothing that was either warm or elevated. He was shrewd, selfish, and sensual; the last two of which qualities he screened from observation, under a specious varnish of exterior complaisance. Therefore, in his professed and apparent anxiety to do the honours of the table, to the most punctilious point of good breeding, he never permitted the attendants upon the public taste to supply the wants of others, until all his own ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause. Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your own word. Never imagine that anything you can say yourself will varnish your defects, or add lustre to your perfections! but, on the contrary, it may, and nine times in ten, will, make the former more glaring and the latter obscure. If you are silent upon your own subject, neither envy, indignation, nor ridicule, will obstruct or allay the applause which you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... terrifying to think that human beings could go through so much and continue to live. I was more frightened than ever before in my life. The smell of blood—the closeness of the hot sick-room—flies buzzing about. I saw brown varnish-like stains on some of the white bandages. The indifferent, business-like attitude of the nurses infuriated me. But, of course, they can't be any other way and deal with ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... dazzling incoherence of splendor, of a blare as of thousands of musical instruments all sounding different notes of delight, of a weaving pattern of colors, too intricate to master, of a mingled odor of paint and varnish, and pine and hemlock boughs, and then she spelled out the letters of the details. She looked at those counters set with the miniature paraphernalia of household life which give the first sweet taste of domesticity and housekeeping ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I had hardly a sufficient quantity for a completely destructive result, but he pressed me very earnestly to do my best. As he wanted something that could be carried openly in the hand, I proposed to make use of an old one-gallon copal varnish can I happened to have by me. He was pleased at the idea. It gave me some trouble, because I had to cut out the bottom first and solder it on again afterwards. When prepared for use, the can enclosed a wide-mouthed, well-corked ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... only a new method in wall decoration, but one that was entirely practicable. Glass would not craze like tiles or mosaic; it would not crinkle as will canvas; it needed no varnish. It would retain its color, freshness, and beauty, and water would ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... will not flow over glass? Solution too thick, glass greasy. 2. Rubber peels off on drying? Dirty glass. 3. Negative not dense enough? Use more bromide and longer development. 4. Gelatine cracks on being pulled off? Add more glycerine. 5. Gelatine not thick enough? Gelatine varnish too thin, not strong enough. 6. Does not dry sufficiently hard? Too much glycerine.—E.H. Jaques, Reported in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... tabel and workstand six or eight chairs crockery ware &c. Tooles and machinery as follows 1 planing machine 1 upright boaring machine 1 circular saw, irons for an upright saw morticing machine 1 turning lathe and belting 1 doz of hand screws 1 copper pot to make varnish in, two dimejons 3-5 gls. each for varnish and oil tooles for cutting bench screws &c likewise 1 cow 3 cosset sheep 1 yew & 2 wethers the cow 11 years old and little lame in one foot otherways a veryry good cow, also a verry light handcart. There are other articles not mentioned perhaps that ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... washed the chork over with a little shell or varnish or something, and, of course, it bruke right easy; so he wasn't the strongest man in the world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... with ironies. The life of a criminal—a life of danger and thirst, of nights spent bivouacking on the quays and river banks, on bridges and streets, and the orgies of strong drink by which successes are celebrated—had laid, as it were, a varnish over these features. Fil-de-Soie, if seen in his undisguised person, would have been marked by any constable or gendarme as his prey; but he was a match for Jacques Collin in the arts of make-up and dress. Just now Fil-de-Soie, in undress, like a great actor who is well ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... copying a pioneer's log cabin. So with Windsor Castle, which has the beauty of a ledge of rocks, and crowns the hill like a vast natural formation. The warm, simple interior, too, of these castles and palaces, the honest oak without paint or varnish, the rich wood carvings, the ripe human tone and atmosphere,—how it all contrasts, for instance, with the showy, gilded, cast-iron interior of our commercial or political palaces, where everything that smacks of life or nature ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... food and light; it is known in India as kekuna, and the tree as the "candle-nut.'' In the Sandwich Islands the nuts are strung upon strips of wood and used as torches. The oil is exported to Europe for candle-making. A. cordata flourishes in China, where it is known as the varnish- tree, on account of the lac contained in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Kur-Sachsen broke away again; made his Peace of Prag, [1635, 20th May (Stenzel, i. 513).] whom Brandenburg again followed; Brandenburg and gradually all the others, except the noble Wilhelm of Hessen-Cassel alone. Miserable Peace; bit of Chaos clouted up, and done over with Official varnish;—which proved to be the signal for continuing the War beyond visible limits, and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... of style; and thus a new school very fain of antiquity had sprung up, with Fronto for its acknowledged chief—a school pre-occupied above all things by the form; obsolete words set in a new setting, modern words introduced into old cadences to freshen them with a bright and delightful varnish, in a word, a language under visible sign of decay ... yet how full of dim idea and evanescent music—a sort of Indian summer, a season of dependency that looked back on the splendours ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... ready by his own hands, and set in the sun and dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal, but wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all polished, and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you spoke in this nest your voice sounded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... regulated by the season of the year. Let every man choose his idol as freely as he chooses his wife; let him be constant if he can; if he cannot, let him at least be civil. Whoever dares to scratch the face of any one in my empire, shall be condemned to varnish it afresh, and moreover to keep it in repair all ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... there were a mahogany sofa and some chairs in it, upon which nobody ever sat, and some books which nobody ever read, and a small Franklin stove, with brass knobs on top, in which a fire was never lighted, and an odor of mice and varnish, and that was all. The sitting-room on the other side of the entry was much pleasanter. It was a large, square room, wainscoted high with green-painted wood, and had a south window and two westerly ones, so that the sun lay on it all day long. Here and there in the walls, and ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... Death to Bugs:—Varnish is death to the most persistent bug. It is cheap—ten cents' worth will do for one bedstead—is easily used, is safe, and improves the looks of the furniture to which it is applied. The application, must, however, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... front of the huge Renaissance pile that Waldron's millions had raised on land which had cost him more than as though he had covered it with double eagles; and Flint himself ascended the steps of Pentelican marble. The limousine, its varnish and silver-plate flashing in the bright spring sun, stood by the curb, purring softly to itself with all six cylinders, a thing of matchless beauty and rare cost. The chauffeur, on the driver's seat, did not even bother to shut off the gas, but let the engine ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... the great desideratum, and this can be best attained by having all woodwork in and about the kitchen coated with varnish; substances which cause stain and grease spots, do not penetrate the wood when varnished, and can be easily removed with a damp cloth. Paint is preferable to whitewash or calcimine for the walls, since it is less affected by steam, and can be more ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Washinton and Baltimore, I felt that it wuz indeed well with us. He wuz talkin ez a Dimokrat to Dimokrats; and it wuz appreciated. Strippin off all uv the disguise he hed bin a wearin for four years,—washin off, in rage and whisky, the varnish and putty with wich he hed shined up his dullness, and filled up the cracks and cavities wich hed alluz troubled him,—he stood forth ez we knowd him—Androo Johnson! How he did froth and foam! How he did lash his late associates! ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... They have not our culture, and whatsoever they borrow from us is only skin-deep. Beneath the varnish they are their elemental selves—lazy, cruel, treacherous and unscrupulous. No, no. Each race must keep to itself. Our strength in India depends on our exclusiveness—upon keeping ourselves apart and above as superior beings. So long as they recognize we are ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... cabinet-maker, who had piled up in a corner of his shop a variety lot of rough timber, from which he fashioned and manufactured the most exquisite dressers, sofas and bureaus, dovetailing each piece of oak, rosewood or mahogany, with exact workmanship, and then with the silken varnish of his genius, sending his wares out to the rushing world to be admired, and transmitted to posterity, with perfect faith in ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... here and now. I do not like kissing. Even then, in that first embrase of to, I was worried because I could smell the varnish burning on the Piano. I therfore permited but one salute on the cheek and no more before removing the cigar, which ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... such Manhattan dirt as he could conveniently transport upon his person. Thus he enabled his aristocratic descendants to wax so fat on "unearned increment" that some of them must forswear their fealty to Uncle Sam and seek in Yewrup a society whose rough edges will not scratch the varnish off their culchah. Mrs. Bradley-Martin does not exactly "look every inch a queen," her horizontal having developed at the expense of her perpendicular, suggesting the rather robust physique of her father's beer ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... while retaining all the good qualities of the former method, is not subject to any of its disadvantages. This consists in diluting the balsam with an equal bulk of turpentine, and using it as a varnish, pouring it on like collodion, flowing it toward each corner, and pouring it off into the bottle from the last corner, avoiding crapy lines by slowly tilting the plate, as in varnishing. If the plate be warmed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various |
