"Flax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we have pulled them out, piled them in heaps, and burnt them. This clearing is ready for the plough. Besides, there is a piece of flat, marshy ground below our shanty on the left, and this was only covered originally with flax, swamp-grass, and small shrubs. In the dry season we have burnt this off as it stood. The soil is not deep, but it is good, and we shall plough this in with the other. There will be about fifty acres of plough land altogether, and twice as much more next year, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... they could make brick, which should be sold to the Trustees' agent at 15 shillings per 1,000, two-thirds of the price to be applied on their debt, and one-third to be paid them in cash. Moreover several English boys should be apprenticed to them to learn the trade. Hemp and flax seed should also be given them, and he urged them to weave the linen, for they had men who understood the art, and cloth was scarce and dear in Georgia. He also advised them to buy oxen to use in cultivating their land; and said that they should have one-third ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... the drowsy hum of the bees among the thyme, and smell the scented hay-meadows in the distance, and feel that it is midsummer in England! That would indeed be truth, and that would be art. Shall I paint the Bobby baby as he stoops to pick the cowslips and the flax, his head as yellow and his eyes as blue as the flowers themselves; or that bank opposite the gate, with its gorse bushes in golden bloom, its mountain-ash hung with scarlet berries, its tufts of harebells blossoming in the crevices of rock, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... such use of the minimum device as would give a practical monopoly of the American market to the domestic manufacturers in the class of goods in which they were most interested. To conciliate other sections, the convention adopted the plan of an additional duty on hammered bar-iron, hemp and flax, and various other products. [Footnote: Stanwood, Tariff Controversies, I., 264; Niles' Register, XXXII., 369, 386, XXXIII., 187; ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... were as play compared with the home manufacture of dry goods. Ralph, Jack and Jim had no time for such work, so two other men were all winter kept busy in the barn at "crackling flax" and afterward passing it through a coarse hetchel to separate the coarsest or "swingling tow." After this the flax was made up into switches or "heads" like those which we see in pictures, or that which Faust's Marguerite so temptingly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... vols Pike and Hayward's cases of conscience, with the spiritual companion Dickenson's religious letters Neil's 23 sermons on important subjects Durham's exposition of the ten commands Owen on the CXXX Psalm Sibb's soul's conflict, together with the bruised reed and smoaking flax Dickson's truth's victory over error Durham's unsearchable riches of Christ, in fourteen communion sermons Adamson's loss and recovery of elect sinners Rawlin's sermons on justification Durham's 72 sermons on the LIII of Isaiah Watt's ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the enemy, it was employed with equal effect by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper, which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the mouths of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... narrowing gorge, with a bridge arched boldly over it, awakens at once his artistic sense. Even the smallest details give him delight through something beautiful, or perfect, or characteristic in them—the blue fields of waving flax, the yellow gorge which covers the hills, even tangled thickets, or single trees, or springs, which seem to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... artery in a large stream. His fellow-workmen, without delay, wound a piece of rope around each bleeding member, and the man recovered after primary amputation of each stump. Will gives an excellent instance of avulsion of the right arm and scapula in a girl of eighteen, who was caught in flax-spinning machinery. The axillary artery was seen lying in the wound, pulsating feebly, but had been efficiently closed by the torsion of the machinery. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Strickland; they are making judicious and incessant exertions for the relief of the poor and the improvement of the people in their neighbourhood. It is very extraordinary that, in the part of the County of Monaghan to which Mr. Strickland went last week for flax seed for the poor tenants in his neighbourhood, he found that there is plenty of everything—no distress felt. The famine seems to have been as capricious as the malaria in passing over some places and settling upon others. Here we go on ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... surroundings, it was some time before he was aware that the youth whom Garton had called "a Saxon type" was standing outside the stable door; and a fine bit of colour he made in his soiled brown velvet-cords, muddy gaiters, and blue shirt; red-armed, red-faced, the sun turning his hair from tow to flax; immovably stolid, persistent, unsmiling he stood. Then, seeing Ashurst looking at him, he crossed the yard at that gait of the young countryman always ashamed not to be slow and heavy-dwelling on each leg, and disappeared round the end of the house towards the kitchen entrance. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of hay of a neighbouring farmer, for the use of his cattle, and it had to be stowed into the same barn with some flax and straw that belonged to Uncle Joe. Going early one morning to fodder the cattle, John found Uncle Joe feeding his cows with his master's hay, and as it had diminished greatly in a very short time, he accused him in no measured terms of being the thief. The other very coolly ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to be from the Teutonic heckelen, to dress flax for rope-making. Also, an artificial fly ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... I turned to ascertain its meaning. I was answered by the sight that met my eye. An object was hanging from the old man's belt, like a streak of snow-white flax. But it was not that. It was hair. It ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... times, with the treasurer 1, with Tomasin IIIIIIIIII times. Gave 4 stivers for tips. With Lazarus of Ravensburg 1, Wolff of Rogendorf 1, Bernhard Stecher 1, Utz Hanolt Meyting 1, Caspar Lewenter 1. I gave 3 stivers to the man whose portrait I drew; gave the boy 2 stivers. I have given 4 florins for flax. Have taken 4 florins for prints; have changed 1 crown for expenses. Paid the furrier 4 stivers and again 2 stivers. Lost 4 stivers at play; spent 6 stivers. I have changed 1 noble for expenses; gave 18 stivers for raisins and three pairs ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... to be supplied from local resources, so that mixed farming was the rule. The land which its modern owners think unsuited to anything but grass, because it is such "heavy, clay soil," was made in the 18th century to bear, in addition to the grass for cattle and sheep, wheat, rye, oats and corn, flax, potatoes, apples. Of whatever the farmer was to use he must produce the raw material from the soil, and the manufacture of it must be within ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the spring of 1755, when my father was sowing flax-seed, and my brothers driving the teams, I was sent to a neighbor's house, a distance of perhaps a mile, to procure a horse and return with it the next morning. I went as I was directed. I was out of the house in the beginning ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... sew the sack, quoth Piers, For shedding of the wheat; And ye, lovely ladies, With your long fingers, That ye have silk and sendal To sew, when time is, Chasubles for chaplains, Churches to honor. Wives and widows Wool and flax spinneth; Make cloth, I counsel you, And kenneth[34] so your daughters; The needy and the naked, Nymeth[35] heed how they lieth, And casteth them clothes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... boon,' says the King, 'now let me understand?' 'It's, give me all the poor men we've starving in this land; And without delay, I'll hie me to Lincolnshire, To sow hemp-seed and flax-seed, and hang them ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... various descriptions, and littered over with billets of 'lightwood,' unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap stools, a pine settee—made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the upper-side—a full-grown blood-hound, two younger canines, and nine dirt-encrusted juveniles, of the flax-head species. Over against the fire-place three low beds afforded sleeping accommodation to nearly a dozen human beings, (of assorted sizes, and dove-tailed together with heads and feet alternating,) and in the opposite corner a lower couch, whose finer furnishings told ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... her, roasting chestnuts. Grandmother, a wrinkled old woman, with a red handkerchief wound about her head, was a chestnut merchant. The sailors, children, and Italians coming over the border bought her wares, and when she was not employed in serving them she twisted flax on ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... behold hills under culture—fields of hemp and flax, and the hardy cereals of the frigid zone. The rancho of the husbandman is a log cabin, with shingled roof and long projecting eaves, unlike the dwellings either of the great valus or the tierras calientes. I pass the smoking pits of the "carbonero", and I meet the "arriero" with ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... to the influence of labour. From the clay of the ground, man manufactured the vessels which were to contain his food. Out of the fleecy covering of sheep, he made clothes for himself of many kinds; from the flax plant he drew its fibres, and made linen and cambric; from the hemp plant he made ropes and fishing nets; from the cotton pod he fabricated fustians, dimities, and calicoes. From the rags of these, or from weed and the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... he gave me his hand it hurt mine, so firm and strong and loving withal was his grip, and that his heart was the same all men might see. His thick, red-gold hair and beard, streaked with snowy white, his light, flax-blue eyes and his green forester's garb, with high tan boots and a cap of otter fur garnished with the feather of some bird he had slain—all this gave him a strange, gladsome, and gaudy look. And as the stalwart man stepped forth with his hanger ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... When taxed on the platform by his rival, Douglas, with having sold liquor, Mr. Lincoln replied that if he figured on one side of the counter, Douglas figured on the other. "As a storekeeper," says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linen pantaloons—I thought about five inches too short in the legs—and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calico shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour; blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... a number of extraordinary and fantastic rituals; which the pompous elfland he has entered demands. The first is that he shall get inside a house of clothing, a tower of wool and flax; that he shall put on this foolish armour solemnly, one piece after another and each in its right place. The things called sleevelinks he attends to minutely. His hair he beats angrily with a bristly tool. For this is the Law. Downstairs ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... flax," said Pausanias, rising, and with passionate emotion. "And if you, the Greek of a happier state, you who know but by report the unnatural bondage to which the Spartans are subjected, can weary of the very name ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... thousand of pounds yearly, formerly sent over seas to fetch Lace from Flanders.' At this time the lace trade flourished greatly, although there was always a difficulty in competing with Belgium, because of the superiority of its silky flax, finer than any spun in England. Later the workers fell on evil days, for during the American War there was little money to spend on luxuries; and, besides, about this time the fashion of wearing much lace came to an end. In 1816 the introduction of 'machine net' supplanted the vrai reseau, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... owners with most of the necessaries of life, such rents as were collected being usually paid in kind, in oil and wine, in grain, fruit and vegetables, and even in salt meat, and horses, cattle for slaughtering and beasts of burden, not to speak of wool, hemp and flax, as well as firewood. But money was scarce and, consequently, all the things which only money could buy, so that a gown was a possession, and a corselet or a good sword a treasure. The small farmer of our times knows what it means to have plenty to eat and little to wear. His position is not ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... in the morning, but on this occasion we left Pompo and his cart behind, as we had not far to go—only a short distance down the stream, where Cudjo knew a large pool in which the fish were plenty. We took with us lines, made out of the wild flax that grows in the valley, and which, Mary tells us, is found in all countries that border upon the Rocky Mountains. Our rods were long tapering canes such as grew in abundance around us. For hooks we used pins bent into the proper shape; and our bait consisted of ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... foster the interests of the outlaws, I derived much entertainment from the traffic on the Flaminian Highway. Of course, there were Imperial couriers, travellers of all sorts, and convoys of every kind of goods, long strings of wagons, carts or pack- mules laden with wheat, other grains, wine, oil, flax, charcoal, firewood, ingots of bronze, lead or iron, and countless other commodities on their way to Rome; or convoys of clothing, hangings, furniture, utensils and the like, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Tillman nuster plant indigo. Seed lak a flax. Put myrtle seed in with indigo to boil. Gather and boil for the traffic. All the big folkses plant that fore the rice. Rice come in circulation, do way with indigo. Nuster (used to) farm indigo just like we work our corn. Didn't have nothing ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... door or window that opens on a trim and beautiful garden, where mulberry-tree is married to mulberry by festoons of vines, and where the maize and sunflower stand together in rows between patches of flax and hemp. But it is not in order to survey the union of well-ordered husbandry with the civilities of ancient city-life that we break the journey at Parma between Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by the fame of one great painter, whose work, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Flax and hemp will grow here, and might become profitable exports. There is excellent grazing land and no lack of pasturage, but at present bears make fearful havoc among the cattle and sheep. In some localities tigers are ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... enthusiastically. His own inventive genius was not idle, and while living in Devonshire, he produced an improved mill for sawing marble, which won him the thanks and medal of the British Society for the Promotion of the Arts and Commerce; a machine for spinning flax and making ropes; and an excavator for scooping out the channels of canals and aqueducts, all of which were patented. He published a number of communications on the subject of canals in one of the leading London journals, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... odd to read that the Harmonists, who have aimed to do all things well, were famous among Western men for many years for the excellence of the whisky they made; of which, however, they always used very sparingly themselves. Among their crops in succeeding years were corn, wheat, rye, hemp, and flax; wool from merino sheep, which they were the first in that part of Pennsylvania to own; and poppies, from which they made sweet-oil. They did not rest until they had established also a woolen-mill. It was a principle with Rapp that the society should, as ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... best in rich, light mould. The Linum Flavum, or Golden Flax, is very suitable for pot culture; it grows 9 in. in height, and bears brilliant yellow flowers. It requires the same treatment as other half-hardy perennials. The Scarlet Flax is an annual, very free-flowering, and unsurpassed for brilliancy; easily raised from seed ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... of Shammai said, "they must not put bundles of flax inside the oven, except it be sufficiently steamed while it is yet day, nor wool into the boiler except it imbibe sufficient dye in the eye of day." But the school of Hillel allow it. The school of Shammai said, "they must not spread nets for beasts, nor birds, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... is seen out of the body; for if a hair, or a single untwisted fibre of flax or silk, be soaked in water; it becomes longer and thicker by the water, which is absorbed into its pores. Now if a hair could be supposed to be thus immersed in a solution of particles similar to those, which compose it; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... is formed by a neatly-rounded bundle of leaves, held in place by a net-work of coarse cord. The edges of the wooden mask are perforated in several places; by means of these the back head, some long locks of fine flax which serve as hair, and a number of other ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... duty on silk, flax, hemp or grass, cotton, wool, worsted or any manufactures of the same, or of either or mixtures thereof; coffee, teas, sugar, molasses, tobacco and all manufactures thereof, including cigars and cigarritos; glass, china, and stoneware, iron and steel and all manufactures of either not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... thunderbolt conviction on you that all washerwomen, clear-starchers, getters up of fine linen, or under whatever name Eve's daughters—for as Eve brought upon us the stern necessity of a shirt, it is but just that her girls should wash it—under whatever name they cleanse and beautify flax and cotton, that they are all under some compact, implied or solemnly entered upon amongst themselves and their non-washing, non-starching, non-getting up sisterhood, that by means subtle and more mortally certain, they shall worry, coax, and drive all bachelors and widowers soever ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of that has been the means of bringing out a wonderful study, that is explained by the nature of the soil itself. In every country certain sections will spontaneously produce product alike, in almost every essential quality. Thus, flax, for instance, is found, identical in its character, in Kamscatska, and in Minnesota; in the Siberian wilds and in Central America; on the heights of the Himalayas, and in the lowest plains of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... that but little dependence can be placed upon crops. The greater part of this region consists of lakes, swamps, forests of pine, and extensive and barren plains. The mines of Siberia may be regarded as the most valuable feature in this desolate region. The production of flax and hemp in the province of Petersburg, and the lumber products of the forests which are accessible to the capital, give some importance to such portions as border on the southern and European limit of this great ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... fellow-mortals. A fine was imposed on every woman wearing her hair cut short like a man's; all gaming for amusement or gain was forbidden, and cards and dice were not permitted in the colony. A father was fined if his daughter did not spin as much flax or wool as the selectmen required of her. No Jesuit or Roman Catholic priest was permitted to make his residence within the colony. All persons were forbidden to run or even walk, "except to and ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... lochs, and I was able sometimes to add to the general stock of provisions by the aid of my gun. The feathers and oil from the wild sea fowl I shot were sold or bartered for other commodities; and the wool of the few sheep we kept, and the flax we grew, were helpful in supplying us ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... language says, "On Christmas each of us stood in line to get our clothes; we were measured with a string which was made by a cobbler. The material had been woben by the slaves in a plantation shop. The flax and hemp were raised on the plantation. The younger slaves had to "swingle it" with a wooden instrument, somewhat like a sword, about two feet long, and called a swingler. The hemp was hackled by the older slaves. The hackle was an instrument ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... savage races; they knew scarcely anything of the mechanic arts, their skill being limited to the scooping out of a boat from the trunk of a tree, and the fabrication of fishing-nets from the coarse fibre of the wild flax. They also made spears, shields, and clubs. They had no beasts of burden, and so their women were made to supply the place. Their agriculture was confined to the raising of sweet potatoes and the taro root, while their more substantial food consisted of fish, rats, wild fowl, and human ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... idea, gentlemen, that though, in giving them such a chance, we might not be acting in accordance with man's idea of strict justice, we should be following pretty closely upon God's idea of it. He breaks not the bruised reed nor quenches the smoking flax; and if He thus declares his readiness to give even the most doubtful and unpromising of His creatures another trial, I really do not see that we are called upon to be more strict than He is. My proposal, therefore, is that we should accept these men's proffered assistance; that we should ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sight of that one of the important industrial arts brought to America was of untold benefit. Not only did every colony bring with them agricultural implements needful for the culture of flax, but also the small wheels and the loom for spinning and weaving the fibre. Nothing so much excited the interest of Puritan Boston, in 1718, as the small wheels worked by women and propelled by the foot, for turning ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... personal healing for such as it would bring at once into some relation of heart and will with himself; whence arose his frequent demand of faith—a demand apparently always responded to: at the word, the flickering belief, the smoking flax, burst into a flame. Evil, that is, physical evil, is a moral good—a mighty means to a lofty end. Pain is an evil; but a good as well, which it would be a great injury to take from the man before it had wrought its end. Then it becomes ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... much softer for stitching through. Coloured linens are rarely satisfactory, a certain kind of blue being almost the only exception. The safest plan is to keep to pure white, or to the unbleached varieties that have a slightly grey or warm tone about them. Wools, silks, and flax threads all look well upon a linen ground; it is not usually in good taste to embroider with poor thread upon a rich ground material, and, upon the other hand, gold thread and floss demand silk ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... the beginning of the present century, poor women found profitable employment in spinning flax or wool. This was a better occupation for them than straw plaiting, inasmuch as it was carried on at the family hearth, and did not admit of gadding and gossiping about the village. The implement used was a long narrow machine ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... of Wales or Lanarkshire, pottery districts of Stafford, woollen and cotton factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire, mills driven by steam, wind and water, lighthouses, the sheep-rearing districts of Cumberland and Midlothian, the flax-growing of northern Ireland, and much else, and the means of transit and communication between all these. The children will gradually realise that many of the things they are familiar with, such as tea, oranges, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... all the idle hands in this kingdom were employed on hemp and flax, we might not find ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... the two looms the original shows a man spinning coarse thread into finer(?) using two spindles at once; the threads pass through rings fixed in the ceiling as in a picture at Beni Hasan. Behind him two girls are breaking up the flax and two others are making coarse threads of the fibres, almost exactly like those in the tomb of Daga (No. 103) a couple of ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... Miss Colishaw, taking a firmer grasp of the baluster. "There's a wool-wheel, and a flax-wheel, and a ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... from the country of the Blacks were running over their bags of palm bark; and gold dust heaped up in leathern bottles was insensibly creeping out through the worn-out seams. Delicate filaments drawn from marine plants hung amid flax from Egypt, Greece, Taprobane and Judaea; mandrepores bristled like large bushes at the foot of the walls; and an indefinable odour—the exhalation from perfumes, leather, spices, and ostrich feathers, the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... estate of this innocent gentleman, to be a moth and a caterpillar among it, and bring the judgments of heaven upon him, and upon what he has, for my sake? Shall my wickedness blast his comforts? Shall I be fire in his flax? and be a means to provoke heaven to curse his blessings? God forbid! I'll keep them ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... June took her meals. A vase on it was full of Iceland poppies; the girl raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger. To her new-fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees, June took a sudden liking—a charming colour, flax-blue. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... use. She learned how to take the wheat and corn, the beef and pork, and to prepare healthful and appetizing meals for the household; she practised making butter and cheese for home use and exchange. She took the flax and wool and spun and wove them into cloth, and with her needle fashioned garments for every member of the household and furnishings for the common home. She kept clean and tidy the home and its ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... the smoking flax, But raise it to a flame; The bruised reed he never breaks, Nor scorns ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... green and silent spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised himself— But the dell, Bathed by the mist is fresh and delicate As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve, The level sunshine glimmers with ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... illustration of the products of the business toward which he was hastening I might have taken him by the arm and led him across two sets of tracks and shown him men in the prime of life who were hatcheled like flax, and mauled like blocks, and riddled like sieves, and macerated out of the living image ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... attention of Russo-maniacs to the fact that eighty years ago, soon after the second partition of Poland, flax in Riga brought eight hundred and seventy florins, while in 1845 it hardly brought two hundred and forty florins; and the famous wheat of Sandomir sold, at the first-named period, at sixty, while in 1856 it brought barely thirty-five. Yet money now is cheaper ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was wont to say that his sister's accomplishments were innumerable. After only a few months on the border she could prepare the flax and weave a linsey dresscloth with admirable skill. Sometimes to humor Betty the Colonel's wife would allow her to get the dinner, and she would do it in a manner that pleased her brothers, and called forth golden praises from the cook, old Sam's wife who had been with the family twenty ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Illinois are greater than those of any other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels, while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... her passage thither. The people were directed at the same time to procure some of the bark of the tree lately discovered, to be manufactured into cordage; for which purpose it was reckoned superior to any of the flax that had been brought from ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... which before could give grain to all, is dying of hunger; Russia, which had sufficient quantities of coal for herself and could give petroleum to all Europe, can no longer move her railways; Russia, which had wool, flax, linen, and could have easily increased her cotton cultivation in the Caucasus, cannot even clothe the soldiers and functionaries of the Bolshevik State. Ceased is the stimulus of individual interest; ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... abroad In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone; And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks, His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw Of Verli and of Vecchio, well content With unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax.... One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lulled the parents' infancy; Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectured them Old tales of Troy, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... his feet were walking! and she would have been successful, but for one thing. The customs of society were against her. She could not keep him away from the parties and evening entertainments of her friends; and here all the good resolutions she had led him to make were as flax fibres in the flame of a candle. He had no strength to resist when wine sparkled and flashed all around him, and bright eyes and ruby lips invited him to drink. It takes more than ordinary firmness of principle to abstain in a fashionable ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... (Trophy that was to be of life long pain), The thread no other skill can ever knit again. 'Twas so with him, for he was glad to live, 'Twas doubly so, for he left work begun; Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive Till all the allotted flax were spun? It matters not; for, go at night or noon, A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too soon, 460 And, once we hear the hopeless He is dead, So far as flesh hath knowledge, all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the Indians from killing our cattle, a house to be set up to lodge our cattle in the winter, and hay to be appointed in his due time to be made, a smith's forge to be perfected, caske for our Sturgions to be made, and besides private gardens for each man common gardens for hemp and flax and such other seeds, and lastly a bridge to land our goods dry and safe upon, for most of which I ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... into the country, sometimes to a village, the chimnies only of which were visible; at other times to a chateau, the gilded pinnacle of which shone afar from some distant hill. I observed several fields of flax and hemp, and we passed several cottages, in the gardens of which the flax flourished in great perfection, Mr. Younge informed me, that every peasant grew a sufficient quantity for his own use, and the females of his family ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... to earls and barons, and now clucks to a wheen o' hens; me that once had my coach and pair, and now have only an ass with a creel o' turf; and no care of money once on me, and now all I have is my spinning-wheel, and the flax not what it used to be, but getting coarser. And my eyes going out, that were the delight of many ... I hope you're better off nor me at the end of the hard and dusty road, wee Shane. I hope to ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... search of Diversion could roll Kelly Pool at 10 Cents a Cue in the Morning, go to the Track in the Afternoon, take in a 20-round Scrap in the Evening and then Shoot at the Wheel a few times before backing into the Flax. ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave the dirt in heaps i' the corners—anybody 'ud think you'd never been brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin. And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the way with you—that's the road you'd all like to ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... to give her a daughter, even if she should die of the smell of flax. When the girl was ten years old, the king's son passed through the street, saw her at the window, and fell in love with her. An old woman discovered that he loved Sittoukan, the daughter of a merchant, and promised to obtain her. She contrived to set her to spin flax, when a splinter ran ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... for many years, and, even after they were partially expelled by the settlers, they used to make occasional descents upon the settlements, and many a farmer that counted his sheep by twenties at night, would be thankful if he could muster half a score in the morning. It was flax, the pedlar's pack, and buckskins that the early settlers had to depend upon for clothing when their first supply was run out. Deerskins were carefully preserved and dressed, and the men had trowsers and coats made of them. Though not very becoming, they were said to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... introduced to the chief, father, and mayor of the Iroquois tribes. Alas! this former chief, son of "Big White Eagle," surnamed during his childhood "Sun of the Nights," now clothed in sorry European rags, was selling liquor, thread, needles, flax, pork fat, chocolate, &c. All that remained of his mad rovings through the old wild forests—when he roamed naked over a land free of all allegiance—was the stupor of the bull held prisoner by the horns. It is true he also sold brandy, and that ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... time, near a castle in a lonely wood, there lived an orphan maiden named Olga. She would have been all alone in the world had it not been for an old woman who befriended her. This woman was an old flax-spinner, and lived in a humble thatched cottage near the castle. She had taken pity on Olga when the little orphan was a helpless baby, and so kind had she always been that Olga had grown to maidenhood without feeling the lack of father, mother, brother, or sister. In all ways ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is no stream in the whole island, but they drink rain-water. The merchants who come from India and the islands encamp there with their wares. Moreover, men from Shinar, El-Yemen and Persia bring thither all sorts of silk, purple and flax, cotton, hemp, worked wool, wheat, barley, millet, rye, and all sorts of food, and lentils of every description, and they trade with one another, whilst the men from India bring great quantities of spices thither. ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... 12th day of July, as William Robinson, Thomas Hellen and Coleman Brown were pulling flax in a field opposite the mouth of Simpson's creek, Logan and his party approached unperceived and fired at them. Brown fell instantly; his body perforated by several balls; and Hellen and Robinson [119] unscathed, sought safety in flight. Hellen being then an old man, was soon overtaken and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the valley were covered with fragrant tassels, and the old women and children sat all day on door-stones and by the wayside stripping the long, white wands for basket-making. Flax fields were blooming in the meadows, and acres of buckwheat, with its rosy stems and snowy blossoms, whitened the uplands with a fair prophecy of bread ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... dwelt his sister Peg, Once a wild lass as ever shook a leg When the blithe bagpipe blew—but, soberer now, She DOUCELY span her flax and milk'd her cow. And whereas erst she was a needy slattern, Nor now of wealth or cleanliness a pattern, Yet once a month her house was partly swept, And once a week a plenteous board she kept. And, whereas, eke, the vixen used her claws And teeth of yore, on ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... land which panted to produce. To be sure, we grew some sod-corn, and some sod-potatoes, and sowed some turnips and buckwheat on the new breaking; but after my hair was gray, I found out, for the first time as we all did, that a fine crop of flax might have been grown that first year. Dakota taught us that. But the farmer of old was inured to waiting—and so we waited until another spring for the sod to rot, and in the meantime, it grew great crops of tumble-weeds, which in the fall raced over the plain like scurrying scared wolves, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... poor, lame weaver, How he will laugh outright When he sees his dwindling flax-field All full ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... in other places—Egypt, Africa, Mexico, and America; but whether it was native to these lands or had been transplanted to them it is impossible to say. We do know, however, that the ancient Egyptians depended chiefly on flax for their cloth and imported cotton from other countries, so although the plant did grow there they could not have had much of it. The little they had was cultivated, I believe, almost entirely as a shrub and used ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... with which the country is exceedingly well supplied. The dress of the Indians of the coast is made of the skins of sea-wolves, which the Indians tan and dress very well. They have abundance of thread made from Castilian flax, hemp, and cotton. By these Indians and by many others whom the said Sebastian Vizcaino discovered along the coast in the more than eight hundred leguas of his voyage, he was everywhere informed that there were great settlements inland, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... to postpone his tax for a year, so that the assemblies might have an opportunity to consent to it. By way of tempting them to do this, he sought for special inducements; he revived the hemp and flax bounties; he permitted rice to be carried south of Carolina and Georgia on payment of half subsidy; and he removed the restrictions on the New England whale fishery. He then informed Parliament of his purpose of applying the stamp-tax to America, and asked if ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... "Do what I tell you! Never mind what it's for—that's my business!" So the old man made a straw ox and smeared him over with pitch. Then his wife got ready in the early morning and drove the ox to pasture. She sat down under a tree, and began spinning flax and saying to herself: "Feed, feed, ox, on the fresh green grass. Feed, feed, ox, on the fresh green grass!" And she went on spinning and spinning, and fell asleep. Suddenly from out of the thick wood, ...
— More Russian Picture Tales • Valery Carrick
... it before," said Miss Mitchell. "I know ever so many of the flowers are supposed to belong to the fairies in various parts of the country. Foxgloves are really 'the good folks' gloves,' and they're called fairies' petticoats in Cheshire, and fairies' hats in Ireland. Wild flax is always fairy flax, and harebells ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... medicine, a school of music and a school of iron-working and wood-working. The textile industries for which Amiens has been celebrated since the middle ages include manufactures of velvet, cotton-, wool-, silk-, hemp- and flax-spinning, and the weaving of hosiery and a variety of mixed fabrics. Manufactures of machinery, chemicals, blacking, polish and sugar, and printing, dyeing and iron-founding are also carried on. Market gardens, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... smiling upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner and set his humble apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted mending (and indeed the captain's linen-closet contained some curious specimens of manufactured flax and cotton). She would mend his shirts—all his shirts. What horrid holes—what funny holes! She put her little face through one of them, and laughed at the old warrior in the most winning manner. She would have made a funny little picture looking through the holes. Then she daintily removed Costigan's ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the colony are suggested by a list of tradesmen the company invited to adventure to Virginia in 1620: among them, sawyers, joiners, shipwrights, millwrights, coopers, weavers, tanners, potters, fishermen, fishhookmakers, netmakers, leather dressers, limeburners, and dressers of hemp and flax. Even more important because so much depended upon persuading the individual adventurers to invest their own money in the development of their land, were plans for the production of sugar, wine, indigo, silk, cotton, olive oil, rice, etc. ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... richer blood. Rapidly on the spindle, gather threads from the pendent roll, Not by machinery anatomized, till stamina and staple fly away, But with hand-cards concocted, and symmetrically formed, Of wool, white or grey, or the refuse flax smoothed to a silky lustre, It greeteth the fingers of the spinner. In this Hygeian concert Leader of the Orchestra, was the Great Wheel's tireless tenor, Drowning the counter of the snapping reel, and the quill-wheels fitful ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... relief of creditors against fraudulent devices; an act for explaining and supplying the defects of former laws for the settlement of the poor; an act for the encouragement of the breeding and feeding of cattle; and an act for ascertaining the tithes of hemp and flax. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... grassy slope adorned with chapels that contain illustrating scenes in the history of the Virgin. These figures are of terra-cotta, for the most part life-size, and painted up to nature. In some cases, if I remember rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as at Varallo, and throughout realism is aimed at as far as possible, not only in the figures, but in the accessories. We have very little of the same kind in England. In the Tower of London there is an effigy of Queen Elizabeth going to the city to give thanks for the defeat ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... lands, corn and clover, flax and beet, and all the various crops with which the industrious German yeoman ekes out his little patch of soil. Past the thrifty husbandman himself, as he guides the two milch-kine in his tiny plough, and stops at the furrow's end, to greet you with ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... back. The carpenter again swung his hammer and drew his saw. The broken and scattered spinning-wheels and looms from under the storms and debris of winter again took form and motion, and the fresh bundles of wool, cotton, flax, and hemp in the waiting widow's hand brought hopeful visions of the revival of industries which should not only clothe ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... them to the house of Rahab, the harlot. She proved a very good friend; for when messengers came from the king in the morning to inquire about them, she said that they had gone, and advised the messengers to go after them, which they did. Meanwhile she hid the spies under some flax on the roof of her house, and at night "let them down by a cord through the window, for she dwelt on the town wall." Before they left, however, she made a covenant with them. Like many other ladies of easy virtue, or no virtue at ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... disestablishment and razee the parsons—we are prepared to believe that the iron business was not flourishing. Under a despotism tempered so very moderately by bribes, a similar blight fell upon all other branches of manufacture. Among these, wool, flax, paper, hats and leather are specified in a Parliamentary report as interfering with "the trade, navigation and manufactures" of the mother-country. An act of Parliament accordingly forbade the exportation of hats to foreign countries, and even from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the majority of vegetable textile substances, such as cotton, flax, and hemp, to cite only those most generally known, is in fact completely destroyed only by the combined action of oxygen and chlorine, which always act in the same manner, whether the fibers be in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... or in water or in mire or on wooden planks or on diverse kinds of beds; or impelled by desire of fruits, he regards himself as clad in a scant piece of cloth made of grass or as totally nude or as robed in silk or in skin of the black antelope or in cloth made of flax or in sheep-skin or in tiger-skin or in lion-skin or in fabric of hemp, or in barks of birch or in cloths made of the produce of prickly plants, or in vestures made of threads woven by worms or of torn rags or in diverse other kinds of cloth too numerous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... field at Rome, might have afforded clearer solution. But their insatisfaction herein begat that remarkable invention in the funeral pyres of some princes, by incombustible sheets made with a texture of asbestos, incremable flax, or salamander's wool, which preserved their bones ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... trustful of the Indians and not to sell them ammunition, "for they are warring against our government." The route was by way of Lee's Ferry, the crossing completed May 11. On the 22d was reached the Little Colorado, the Rio de Lino (Flax River) of the Spaniards. From the ferry to the river had been broken a new road, over a tolerably good route. There was no green grass, and water was infrequent, even along the Little Colorado, it being found necessary to dig wells in the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... must now speak. Timmermann had become one of his constant companions, and was always teaching him something new. One day in 1688, when Peter was sixteen years old, he was wandering about one of the country estates of the throne, near the village of Ismailovo. An old building in the flax-yard attracted his attention, and he asked one of the servants ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
