"Riband" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the powerful electric lamp fitted in the bows to illumine the narrow water-lane which joins East and West. The broad shaft of light lent a solemn beauty to the bleak wastes on either hand. In front, the canal's silvery riband shimmered in magic life. Its nearer ripples formed a glittering corsage for the ship's tapered stem, and merged into a witches' way of blackness beyond. The red signal of a distant gare, or station, or the white gleam of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the half hour before dinner, when my attention was attracted by a singularly-looking man. He was dressed in a green coat, brass-buttoned close up to the neck, light gray, approaching to blue, elastic pantaloons, white cotton stockings, dress shoes, with more riband employed to fasten them than was either useful or ornamental; a hat, smaller than those usually worn, placed rather on one side of a head of dark curly hair; fine black eyes, and what altogether would have been pronounced a handsome ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... horizon peeps, As pitying these lovers, downward creeps; So that in silence of the cloudy night, Though it was morning, did he take his flight. But what the secret trusty night conceal'd, Leander's amorous habit soon reveal'd: With Cupid's myrtle was his bonnet crown'd, About his arms the purple riband wound, Wherewith she wreath'd her largely-spreading hair; Nor could the youth abstain, but he must wear The sacred ring wherewith she was endow'd, When first religious chastity she vow'd; Which made his love through Sestos to be known, And thence unto ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... went over the contents. Among the various odds and ends was a leather purse. He opened it with trembling fingers. There was a sovereign, five one pound notes folded up, eight shillings in silver, and a small silver cross hanging on a black silk riband. He dropped the silver with a sigh of satisfaction into his trousers pocket, and the notes he stored in the lining of his hat. He took up the little cross and was about to thrust it into the thick grass, when he paused for a moment, and was aware of ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... their very number makes men hard By the infinities of agony, Which meet the gaze whate'er it may regard— The groan, the roll in dust, the all-white eye Turn'd back within its socket,—these reward Your rank and file by thousands, while the rest May win perhaps a riband at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... time after this, but the same day, his gentleman came to me again, and with great ceremony and respect, delivered me a black box tied with a scarlet riband and sealed with a noble coat-of-arms, which, I ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... see, it is dawn already. Draw back the curtains and open the windows wide. How cool the morning air is! Piccadilly lies at our feet like a long riband of silver. A faint purple mist hangs over the Park, and the shadows of the white houses are purple. It is too late to sleep. Let us go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses. Come! I am tired ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... bailiff; "I am as good a fellow as yourself, I believe, though you have that riband in ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... one; and, unexpected honour! I was actually addressed by Henry Saint Albans himself as "honest Ralph Rattlin, the brave boy who slept in the haunted room." There was a distinction for you! Of course, I cannot tell how an old gentleman, rising sixty-five, feels when his sovereign places the blue riband over his stooping shoulders, but if he enjoys half the rapture I then did, he must be a very, very happy ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... directress of the ceremony. 'Do you not know how delicate is your mistress?—you are not dressing the coarse horsehair of the widow Fulvia. Now, then, the riband—that's right. Fair Julia, look in the mirror; saw you ever anything ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... rustling and bustling to see them, bevies of long-tongued belles, who ever, as they walk and meet their acquaintance, are announcing themselves in swift alternation "charmees," with a blank face, and "toutes desolees," with the best good-will! Here you learn to value a red riband at its "juste prix," which is just what it will fetch per ell; specimens of it in button-holes being as frequent as poppies amidst the corn. Pretending to hide themselves from remark, which they intend but to provoke, here public characters ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... my dear Kitty; would not do the same? What's eau de Cologne to the sweet breath of fame? Yards of riband soon end—but the measures of rhyme, Dipt in hues of the rainbow, stretch out thro' all time. Gloves languish and fade away pair after pair, While couplets shine out, but the brighter for wear, And the dancing-shoe's gloss in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... pp. 7. 196.).—The cockade was simply the knot of the riband that served to cock the broad flapped hat worn by military men in the seventeenth century, and which in fine weather, or going into action, &c., they used to cock, by means of hooks, laces, and ribands. We see ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... finished half the muffin, and drunk one cup of tea, when he was called into the shop by a customer of great importance— a prosy old lady, who always gave her orders with remarkable precision, and who valued herself on a character for affability, which she maintained by never buying a penny riband without asking the shopman how all his family were, and talking news about every other family in the place. At the time Mr. Morton left the parlour, Sidney and Master Tom were therein, seated on two stools, and casting up division sums on ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The drawing among the Print-room series—"It is always well to be well informed"—is a good instance. It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. A lady asks her partner: "Who's my sister's partner, vis-a-vis, with the star and riband?" He: "Oh, he—aw—he's Sir Somebody Something, who went somewhere or othaw to look after some scientific fellaw who was murdered, or something, by someone—!" The word othaw in this legend is itself pictorial. Du Maurier was like our own Max Beerbohm in this—his ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... sought the drawing-rooms, he found them filled with the customary snob of good society. In one corner he discovered Castruccio Cesarini, playing on a guitar, slung across his breast with a blue riband. The Italian sang well; many young ladies were grouped round him, amongst others Florence Lascelles. Maltravers, fond as he was of music, looked upon Castruccio's performance as a disagreeable exhibition. He had a Quixotic idea of the dignity of talent; and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... splendid material, for the approaching procession. "Magnificent! Charming! Excellent!" resounded on all sides; and everyone was uncommonly gay. The Emperor shared in the general satisfaction; and presented the impostors with the riband of an order of knighthood, to be worn in their button-holes, and the title of ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Since all things lost on earth are treasur'd there. There Hero's wits are kept in pond'rous vases, 115 And beau's in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases. There broken vows and death-bed alms are found, And lovers' hearts with ends of riband bound, The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs, The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, 120 Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, Dry'd butterflies, and ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the tape, Oswyn noticed that a great many of the letters had the appearance of being in the same handwriting; these were tied up separately with a piece of narrow faded silk riband, and it was evident that they were arranged more or less in order of date; the writing in the case of the earliest letter being that of a child, while the most recent, dated less than a year ago, was a short note, an invitation, with the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... not lean over the railing of the car. Nevertheless I perceived a little black spot. This was Spire. The broad Rhine looked like a riband, the great roads like threads. Above our heads the sky was of a deep azure; I was benumbed with the cold. The birds had long since forsaken us; in this rarefied sir their flight would have been impossible. We were alone in space, and I in the ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... my trumpery; not a counterfeit stone, not a riband, glass, pomander, brooch, ... to keep my pack from fasting." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... each other, and at him, as if they were at a loss how to pursue the subject. At length Hugh, after some elbowing and winking between himself and Mr Dennis, ventured to stay his hand, and to ask him why he meddled with that riband in his hat. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... shoulder of the moor broke off four hundred feet below. Where the sun did not strike, the snow was a curious delicate gray, and the bottom of the dale was colored an ethereal blue. The pale-gray riband, winding in a graceful curve round the crag, marked the old green road that was sometimes used for bringing down dry fern, and Grace's face got thoughtful as she noted a row of men and horses some distance off. She imagined they ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... mayst—for Italy's brown maids Send the dark locks with which their brows are dressed, And Gascon lasses, from their jetty braids, Crop half, to buy a riband for the rest; But the fresh Norman girls their tresses spare, And the Dutch damsel keeps her ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... work,—stubbornness, namely, and flaccidity. On the one hand, a sternness and a coarseness of structure which changes its stem into a stake, and its leaf into a spine; on the other, an utter flaccidity and ventosity of structure, which changes its stem into a riband, and its leaf into a bubble. And before we go farther—for we are not yet at the end of our study of these obnoxious things—we had better complete an examination of the parts of a plant in general, by ascertaining what a Stem proper is; and what makes it stiffer, or ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... was a young girl of twenty-eight—it is not so very long ago—I had my Diary bound in pale blue watered silk; it had three locks and a little silver key which I wore on a riband round my neck. I never took it off except to—I mean for the purposes of the toilette. There was a pocket at the end of the book, which would hold a faded flower or any little souvenir. I always wrote it in solitude and by night. Secresy has its ritual, and it is infinitely sweet and consoling. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... yon birkie ca'd a lord, Wha struts and stares, and a' that: Though hundreds worship at his word He's but a coof for a' that. For a' that and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... mid-air, at a point south of the River Inn, which is seen as a silver thread, winding northward between its junction with the Salza and the Danube, and forming the boundaries of the two countries. The Danube shows itself as a crinkled satin riband, stretching from left to right in the far background of the picture, the Inn discharging its ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the other Frenchmen with whom she had been brought in temporary contact. She was familiar, through newspaper paragraphs, with the name of his brother-in-law, the French duke who had won the Derby. The Duc d'Eglemont, that was the racing French duke who had carried off the blue riband of the British Turf—the other name was harder to remember—then it came to her. Count Paul de Virieu. How kind and courteous he had been to her and her friend in the Club. She remembered him very vividly. Yes, though not exactly good-looking, he had fine eyes, and a clever, if ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... make his public entry into London on one of the pale horses of his brewery. As he knows that we are pleased with the Paris taste for the orders of knighthood,[13] he will fling a bloody sash across his shoulders, with the order of the holy guillotine surmounting the crown appendant to the riband. Thus adorned, he will proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of Pall Mall, all the music of London playing the Marseillaise Hymn before him, and escorted by a chosen detachment of the Legion de l'Echafaud. It were only to be wished that no ill-fated loyalist, for the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... moment out of the iron rule of cause and effect; and so we revert at once to some of the pleasant old heresies of personification, always poetically orthodox, and attribute a sort of free-will, an active and spontaneous life, to the white riband of road that lengthens out, and bends, and cunningly adapts itself to the inequalities of the land before our eyes. We remember, as we write, some miles of fine wide highway laid out with conscious aesthetic artifice through a broken and richly cultivated tract of country. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... compass! and yet there Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair: Give me but what this riband bound, Take all the rest ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... not only small, but without proper equipment; and the want of military experience among its soldiers was only equalled by the incapacity of their leaders. "We have no general," Lord Grenville wrote bitterly, "but some old woman in a red riband." Wretched, too, as had been the conduct of the war, its cost was already terrible; for if England was without soldiers she had wealth, and in default of nobler means of combating the revolution Pitt had been forced to use wealth as an ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat— Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 5 So much was theirs who so little allowed; How ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... surrender to it was luxury, yet her hand on the rein held her own will ready at call; and twice, where Sweetwater brook meandered, she braced herself for the water-jump, judging the pace and the stride; and twice, with many feet to spare, Madcap sailed over the silver-grey riband. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... one straw as to any difficulty which the Prime Minister might feel in filling the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. There were men by dozens ready and willing, and no doubt able,—or at any rate, one as able as the other,—to manage the taxes of the country. But the blue riband and the Lord Lieutenancy of Barsetshire were important things,—which would now be in the gift of Mr. Daubeny; and Lady Glencora would at last be a duchess,—with much effect on Society, either good or bad. And Planty Pall would ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... frequently laid upon graves, as ribands; whence it is said that Epaminondas's soldiers being disanimated at seeing the riband that hung upon his spear carried by the wind to a certain Lacedaemonian sepulchre, he bid them take courage, for that it portended destruction to the Lacedaemons, it being customary to deck the sepulchres of their dead with ribands. Another thing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... already. First I sent her a lovely nosegay of fresh pomegranate-blossoms, and with it a few verses I hammered out in the course of the night; then a basket of peaches which she likes very much, and now the doves. And there lie her answers—the dear, sweet creature! For my nosegay I got this red riband, for the fruit this peach with a piece bitten out. Now I am anxious to see what I shall get for my doves. I bought that little brown scamp in the market, and I shall take him with me to Corinth as a remembrance of Memphis, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses, Stained with time, set warm in orchards, and meadows, and wheat, Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward, Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind. Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow, Shorn of the laboring grass, bulwarked well from the sea, Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dikes from the turbid Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores. Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes,— Miles ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... limits were so narrow that the river was but a smooth riband darting between walls worn glassy by the wear of ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... him, and an hour later returned with a sleigh-load of birch branches, which he flung down before the shanty. Then, he turned the team towards Fremont ranch, and his face was grave as he stared over the horses' heads at the smear of trail that wound away, a blue-grey riband, before the gliding sleigh. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... which abound in the neighbourhood of Beaucaire, as also a singular defile near the post-house of La Pin. The high gray rocks which inclose this spot appear as if seared to the quick with drought, and for some distance leave room only for the road and a narrow riband-shaped line of rich cultivated ground of a few yards in breadth; which is again succeeded by a small village, whose houses completely block up the defile. From this point you creep and wind gradually to the ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... and not had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram about you—watched for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful company in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Cf. i. 363 above. Scott has the following note here: "The snood, or riband, with which as Scottish lass braided her hair, had an emblematical signification, and applied to her maiden character. It was exchanged for the curch, toy, or coif, when she passed, by marriage, into the matron ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... he saw coming towards him a band of harpers, dressed in green and gold, and when the harpers had saluted the prince they marched in front of the cavalcade, playing all the time, and it was not long until they came to a stream that ran like a blue riband around the foot of a green hill, on the top of which was a sparkling palace; the stream was crossed by a golden bridge, so narrow that the horsemen had to go two-by-two. The herald asked the prince to halt and to allow all the champions to go before him; and the cavalcade ascended the hill, the ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... the appearance of a piece of very fine Taffety-riband in the bigger magnifying Glass, which you see exhibits it like a very convenient substance to make Bed-matts, or Door-matts of, or to serve for Beehives, Corn-scuttles, Chairs, or Corn-tubs, it being not unlike that kind of work, wherewith ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... have little boys who are conquering heroes and little girls who are heroines. Here we have shepherdesses in hoops and wreaths of roses and shepherds in satin coats, who carry crooks tied with knots of riband. Oh! what white, pretty sheep they must be these shepherds tend! Here are Alexander the Great and Zaire, and Pyrrhus and Merope, Mahomet, Harlequin, Pierrot, Scapin, Blaise and Babette. They have come ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... page that has long since been closed down—when innocent men and women were transported to shame, misery, and horror; when mere boys were sent out on suspicion of stealing a hare from the squire's preserves, and mere girls on suspicion of lifting a riband from the merchant's counter. But the many kindly and self-sacrificing and even noble things that free and honest settlers did, in those days of loneliness and hardship, for wretched runaway convicts and others, are closed down with the pages too. My old grandmother used to tell me ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... Ortiz. To class it according to the type of European formations I would range it among the gypsums, often muriatiferous, that cover the Alpine limestone or zechstein. Farther north, in the direction of the mission of San Josef de Curataquiche, M. Bonpland picked up in the plain some fine pieces of riband jasper, or Egyptian pebbles. We did not see them in their native place enchased in the rock, and cannot determine whether they belong to a very recent conglomerate or to that limestone which we saw at the Morro ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... in twenty places, That by a tissue* hung his back behind; *riband His shield to-dashed was with swords and maces, In which men might many an arrow find, That thirled* had both horn, and nerve, and rind; *pierced And ay the people cried, "Here comes our joy, And, next his brother, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... vibrating in the breeze like the strings of a harp. The road could be distinguished from the rest of the plain only by the clouds of fine dust which rose under the wheels of the tarantass. Had it not been for this white riband, which stretched away as far as the eye could reach, the travelers might have thought themselves in ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... footsteps coming down a paved footpath which ran like a white riband through the cobble-beaded width of the high-street, and withdrew swiftly to the shelter of a disused tannery adjoining the village end of the bridge. A cloaked female figure sped past. Though the night was rather ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... shady walls the smiles of all shapes that could respond—the old pier-glass, with gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry knobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband bell-pull on either side of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... all their thoughts to a race of men whom they neither know, nor can know; from whom nothing is to be feared, nor any thing expected; who cannot even bribe a special jury, nor have so much as a single riband to bestow. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... however, could throw no further light upon the subject. In the same county, I was also informed it was in many places customary for the maids to hang up in the kitchen a bunch of such flowers as were then in season, neatly suspended by a true lover's knot of blue riband. These innocent doings are prevalent in other parts of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... of her face and shape. In the presence of polite strangers, whether ladies or gentlemen, Mistress Clorinda in these days chose to chasten her language and give less rein to her fantastical passions, but alone in her closet with her woman, if a riband did but not suit her fancy, or a hoop not please, she did not fear to be as scurrilous as she chose. In this discreet retirement she rapped out oaths and boxed her woman's ears with a vigorous hand, tore off her gowns and ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... excessively wet with perspiration. His boots were as shiny as his hair; his waistcoat was of a startling pattern; his pantaloons were very tightly strapped down; and at the end of a showy watch-riband hung ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Dennison I cannot say; somebody said that he was going round the world or on to the Stock Exchange, but Lambert denied both these reports, and declared that he had reformed so violently that he had become a teetotaler and intended to wear a blue riband in his button-hole. I doubted the blue riband part of the story, and if Dennison ever wore one I think it would only be on Boat-race day, for it takes a tremendous lot of courage to wear a badge ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... bed. This night late coming in my coach, coming up Ludgate Hill, I saw two gallants and their footmen taking a pretty wench, which I have much eyed, lately set up shop upon the hill, a seller of riband and gloves. They seek to drag her by some force, but the wench went, and I believe had her turn served, but, God forgive me! what thoughts and wishes I had of being in their place. In Covent Garden to-night, going to fetch home my wife, I stopped at the great Coffee-house' there, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I see this day My little Nancy well and merry Than the blue riband of Earl Grey, Or the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... to bestride his long-ear'd Arabian, and belabor his panting sides with merciless stick and iron-shod heels to impel him to the goal in the mimic race—or the sleek and polish'd courtier to lick the dust of his superiors' feet to obtain a paltry riband or ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... [Footnote: fellow], ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof [Footnote: fool (pronounce like German o or oe)] for a' that; For a' that, an' a' that, His riband, star, an' a' that; The man of independent mind, He looks ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... noticed her. As she was a debutante her dress was naturally snow-white. There was no touch of colour about it—not a flower, not a jewel. Her hair was the palest yellow I had almost ever seen—the colour of an early primrose. Naturally fluffy, it nearly concealed the white riband that ran through it, and clustered in tendrils and tiny natural curls upon her neck. Her skin was whiter than ivory—a clear, luminous white. Her eyes were very ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... sorry you do not return sooner—you have already been gone an age. I perhaps may have taken my departure for London before you come back; but, however, I will hope not. Do not overlook my watch-riband and purse, as I wish to carry them with me. Your note was given me by Harry, [2] at the play, whither I attended Miss Leacroft, [3] and Dr. S——; and now I have sat down to answer it before I go to bed. If I am at Southwell when you return,—and I sincerely hope you will ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... look at," was the answering comment, "but open to the sea. If you look at the smooth riband of water out there, you will perceive a passage through the reef. A great place for sharks, Miss Deane, but ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... nap himself; but observing the princess's girdle lying by her, he took it up, and looked upon the diamonds and rubies one by one. In doing so, he saw a little purse hanging to it, tied fast with a riband; he felt it, and found there was something in it: being desirous to know what it was, he opened the purse, and took out a cornelian engraved with unknown characters and figures. This cornelian, said the prince to himself, must have something extraordinary in it, or ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... belong to the lotiform type. The shaft is composed of eight triangular stalks rising from a bunch of leaves, symmetrically arranged, and bound together at the top by a riband, twisted thrice round the bundle; the capital is formed by the union of the eight lotus buds, surmounted by a square member on which rests the architrave. Other columns have Hathor-headed capitals, the heads ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry Mississippi. The river astonished the children beyond measure. Its mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight, and the vague riband of trees on the further shore, the verge of a continent which surely none but they ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... even a mandoline, with a blue riband attached to it cruising round the bottles; which seemed quite out of its latitude there! ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... opposite, was the likeness of a very tall, thin, old man, whose dress was nearly concealed by the dirt which had been allowed to accumulate upon it; I could only distinguish that it was ornamented with a broad riband. When I had sufficiently surveyed this chamber, the simplicity of which, so closely bordering on want and misery, pained me to the heart, I directed my attention to the extraordinary man who was the occasion of ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... struck his riding boot a resounding blow with his whip, and whistled; while the Marquis dangled his eyeglass by its riband, viewing it with eyes of mild surprise, and the Viscount glanced from one to the other with an enigmatical smile ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... glasses; above the desk hang a number of photographs. These photographs represent HASSENREUTER in the part of Karl Moor (in Schiller's "Robbers"), as well as in a number of other parts. One of the mailed dummies wean a huge laurel wreath about its neck. The laurel wreath is tied with a riband which bears, in gilt letters, the following inscription: "To our gifted manager Hassenreuter, from his grateful colleagues." A series of enormous red bows shows the inscriptions: "To the inspired presenter of Karl Moor ... To the incomparable, unforgettable Karl Moor" ... ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Como was left behind. The thickly-wooded shores of the lake, dotted with many villas, the tall green mountains covered with chestnut trees, framed the long, winding riband of water which was the way to Casa Felice. There were not many other boats out. The steamer had already started for Bellagio, and was far away near the point where Torno nestles around its sheltered harbour. The black gondola was quickly left behind. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... bird to visit the sorcerer, she changed herself into an eagle, and circled about in the air till the bird for which she was waiting came in sight. She recognised him at once by the ring, which he carried on a riband round his neck. Then the eagle swooped upon the bird, and at the moment that she seized him in her claws she tore the ring from his neck with her beak, before he could do anything to prevent her. Then the eagle descended to the earth with her prey, and they both stood ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, His riband, star, and a' that; The man of independent mind, He looks ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... intimates of the usurper. One was an old man frail and bent, remarkable for nothing but a blue riband crossed over his coarse gray cloth cafetan; but I shall never forget his companion. He was tall, of powerful build, and seemed about forty-five. A thick red beard, piercing gray eyes, a nose without ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... be fifty. He had that dull-looking boiled eye which is often to be seen in the heads of people who have applied themselves during many years to a weary and laborious course of study; and which would have been sufficient, without the additional eye-glass which dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... variety of shape; sometimes it appeared like a trowel, then flattened like a spatula, and at other times like a pencil, ending in a point. The scale, moistened with a frothy liquid, became glutinous, and was drawn out like a riband. This bee then attached all the wax it could concoct to the vault of the hive, and went its way. A second now succeeded, and did the like; a third followed, but owing to some blunder did not put the wax in the same line with its predecessor; ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... William Henry Cranstoun, with a rope round his neck, and crossing his body like a riband of knighthood; in his pocket is "Powder to Clean Pebbels" in his mouth a label, "Jammy will save me." Before him rises the ghost of Miss Mary Blandy, saying, "My Honour, Cra——s ruin'd me." The ghost of her mother rising at the side ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... we should remember that the names by which people classify their opinions are generally little more than arbitrary badges; and even in these days, when practice treads so closely on the heels of theory, some persons profess to know extreme radicals who could be converted very speedily by a bit of riband. Walpole has explained himself with unmistakable frankness, and his opinion was at least intelligible. He was not a republican after the fashion of Robespierre, or Jefferson, or M. Gambetta; but he had some meaning. When a duke in those days proposed annual parliaments and universal suffrage, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Your Red Riband is certainly postponed. There was but one vacant, which was promised to General Draper, who, when he thought he felt the sword dubbing his shoulder, was told that my Lord Clive could not conquer the Indies a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... viscount. 'But my zeal would be much greater, if I were made an earl.' 'Rouse all the marquess within me!' exclaims the earl, 'and the peerage never turned out a more undaunted champion in the cause.' 'Stain my green riband blue,' cries out the gallant knight, 'and the fountain of honour will have a fast and faithful servant.' But, what are the people to think of our sincerity? What credit are they to give to our professions? It there nothing which whispers to that right honourable gentleman, that the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... way, for it was not a main road; and the long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's pace, and continually looking behind him—the heavy bundle he ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... is locked in another house,' the hostess answered, 'and should have been this three week.' She swung her keys on a black riband and gazed at him masterfully. 'Will your magistership eat capon or ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... vexed." Swift was for ever urging Stella to walk and ride; she was "naturally a stout walker," and "Dingley would do well enough if her petticoats were pinned up." And we see Stella setting out on and returning from her ride, with her riband and mask: "Ah, that riding to Laracor gives me short sighs as well as you," he says; "all the days I have passed here have ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring opened the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the fields of the little narrow farm running back from the St. Lawrence like a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with their riverine population floating down ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... negro, who was intelligent and well educated. Peter the Great, true to his generous system of rewarding merit wherever he found it, made Annibal Lieutenant-General and Director of the Russian Artillery. He was decorated with the riband of the order of St. Alexander Nenski. His son, a mulatto, was Lieutenant-General of Artillery, and said to be a man of talent. St. Pierre and La ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... his possessions among his sons, and to his daughters he gave what is more precious than all earthly goods, to each of them one riband of the celestial girdle he had received from God. The magic virtue of these ribands was such that no sooner did their possessors tie them around their waists than they were transformed into higher beings, and with seraphic voices they ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... reached the government with the official accounts of the victory. Immediately, as Walpole tells us, the Court was filled with "an extravagance of joy." The relief was so great that it was displayed with "the utmost ostentation." The king at once determined to send Howe "a red riband;" and Lord Mansfield, who had thrown the weight of his great legal abilities against America, was created an earl. The Mayor and Corporation of York voted an address to his Majesty "on the victory at Long Island;" at Leeds they rang the bells, lighted windows, fired cannon, and ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... Barricades the influence of M. Bertin was most considerable, yet he only used this influence to obtain orders and decorations for his contributors. As to himself, to his honor and glory be it stated, that he never stuck the smallest bit of riband to his own buttonhole, or, during the seventeen years of the monarchy of July, ever once put his feet inside the Tuileries. At the Italian Opera or the Varietes, sometimes at the Cafe de Paris, the Maison Doree, or the Trois Freres, M. Bertin may be seen enjoying the music, or his dinner and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... strip of the finest white muslin, often exquisitely embroidered. It is fastened just between the eyes, conceals all the other features, and reaches to the feet. She next envelopes herself in large cloak of rich black silk, tied round the head by a piece of narrow riband. Her costume is completed by trousers of silk gauze, and yellow morocco boots, which reach a considerable way up the legs. How any human being can bear such a heap of clothing, especially under the fiery sun and hot winds of Egypt, is to us inconceivable. It must melt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... N. vinculum, link; connective, connection; junction &c 43; bond of union, copula, hyphen, intermedium^; bracket; bridge, stepping-stone, isthmus. bond, tendon, tendril; fiber; cord, cordage; riband, ribbon, rope, guy, cable, line, halser^, hawser, painter, moorings, wire, chain; string &c (filament) 205. fastener, fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of Probable Starters (who are all coming on well, and might therefore be called, in the quaint turf Italian, "comeystarters"), I cannot help feeling that this year the Blue Riband of the Turf will fall to the flower of the flock—as, indeed, it should. But if it does not, why, there are other really sound horses that are sure to give a good account of themselves. We may take it, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... that. Upon my life, Mr. Caudle, that's very cool. I can't leave the house just to buy a yard of riband, but you storm enough ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... time the word camisa was taken indifferently for shirt or chemise. And hence arose the term camisado for a night-attack, in which the assailants recognised each other in the dark by their white shirt-sleeves, sometimes further distinguished by a tight cincture of broad black riband. The last literal camisado, that I remember, was a nautical one—a ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... nature of the fibres of linen and cotton threads, have shown that the former invariably present a cylindrical form, transparent, and articulated, or joined like a cane, while the latter offer the appearance of a flat riband, with a hem or border at each edge; so that there is no possibility of mistaking the fibres of either, except, perhaps, when the cotton is in an unripe state, and the flattened shape of the centre is less apparent. The results having ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... those rich sauces of claret, anchovy, and sweet herbs in which our grandfathers delighted, and which was technically termed a Lear. A Florentine tourte or tansy, an old English custard, a more refined blamango, and a riband jelly of many colours offered a pleasant relief after these vaster inventions, and the repast closed with a dish of oyster-loaves and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... tiny, ascending track, that was like a yellow riband which had been let down from the sun, and she followed him round a rock that was thrust out as if to bar the way, and on to a flat ledge over which the mountain leaned. A long and broad shadow fell ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... made out nothing but the beauty of the spot upon which they had stumbled in the darkness of the night. He rose to his knees stiffly enough, and was in the act of getting upon his feet, realising that the beautiful greenery formed a riband on either side of the river, beyond which was the open veldt, when he dropped down again to reach out and grasp Ingleborough's shoulder, for in his rapid glance he had caught sight of a party of mounted men out in the full sunshine about ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... geraniums such as are found only in lady's bower, a cape jessamine, some musky carnations, and a rose that seemed the sister of the one that he had borne from Ducie. They were delicately bound together, too, by a bright blue riband, fastened by a gold and turquoise pin. This was most strange; this was an adventure more suitable to a Sicilian palace than an English farm-house; to the gardens of a princess than the clustered porch of his kind hostess. Ferdinand gazed at the bouquet with a glance of blended ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... down the stone, reworked the joints, and overlaid the whole with a coat of cement or stucco, coloured to match the material, which concealed the faults of the real work. The walls rarely end with a sharp edge. Bordered with a torus, around which a sculptured riband is entwined, they are crowned by the cavetto cornice surmounted by a flat band (fig. 53); or, as at Semneh, by a square cornice; or, as at Medinet Habu, by a line of battlements. Thus framed in, the walls ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... between the hillocks and ridges which diversified the contour of the basin, but did not disturb its general sweep, she marked brakes of tall, heavy-stemmed ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-green dress—a broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding like a stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of the hill, and delivered up the path to its grassy area. Among the ferns grew holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole surface ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... a pound of riband macaroni into a stew-pan, with a pint of boiling milk, or broth, or water; let it boil gently till it is tender, this will take about a quarter of an hour; then put in an ounce of grated cheese, and a tea-spoonful of salt; ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... hour appointed, Jeanie, dressed in white, was led out by the town- officers, and in the midst of the magistrates from among the ladies, with her hands tied behind her with a black riband. At the first sight of her at the tolbooth stairhead, a universal sob rose from all the multitude, and the sternest e'e couldna refrain from shedding a tear. We marched slowly down the stair, and on to the foot of the scaffold, where her younger brother, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... into the kitchen of the Grange, there was no light and the fire burnt low. So dark was the room that a white riband of paper pinned on to the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win the coveted "blue riband," he sold every horse in his stables at a word, and abandoned the Turf ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the possession of himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more leisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blue riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton—how could the Brewer resist such temptations? Mean rumours of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... brook, and waded along it for a great while in search of footprints. They looked faithfully far up and down the stream, for they knew the Indian stratagem. Presently Calloway leaped up for joy. "God bless my child!" cried he; "they have gone this way." He had picked up a little piece of riband which one of his daughters had dropped, purposely to mark the trail. Now they were on the track. Travelling on as rapidly as they could, from time to time they picked up shreds of handkerchiefs, or fragments of their dresses, that the girls had scattered by the way. ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... ungrateful." A more liberal sovereign undertook to console M. de Chateaubriand for this royal ingratitude; the Emperor Alexander, with whom he had continued in intimate correspondence, being anxious to signalize his satisfaction, conferred on him and M. de Montmorency, and on them alone, the great riband of the Order of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of his mental state in the odd detail, that he could not bear to write his romance on anything but the very finest paper with gilt edges; that the powder with which he dried the ink was of azure and sparkling silver; and that he tied up the quires with delicate blue riband.[264] The distance from all this to the state of nature is obviously very great indeed. It must not be supposed that he forgot his older part as Cato, Brutus, and the other Plutarchians. "My great embarrassment," he says honestly, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the more admirable for that he is known to care not at all for what may be reported in the newspapers. He has never touched a card, never entered a play-house. In no stud of racers has he indulged, preferring to the finest blood-horse ever bred a certain white and woolly lamb with a blue riband to its neck. This he is never tired of fondling. It is with him, like the roebuck of Henri ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... to the gaily credulous attitude toward mankind which had helped the dog-stealers to kidnap him after the first great triumph of his youth, when he defeated all comers, from puppy and novice to full-fledged champion, and carried off the blue riband of his year at the Crystal Palace. Well-mannered he would always be; but in these later days his attitude toward all humans, and most animal folk outside his own household, was characterized by a gravely alert and watchful kind of reserve. As the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... incorporation of the Ligurian Republic, in fact, originated, notwithstanding the great and deep calculations of our profound politicians and political schemers, in nothing else but in the keeping of a wife, and in the refusal of a riband. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... curiously spiced, too, with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the tailor by a court suit had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband imprinted "Corsica Boswell" round his hat, and, in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without saying and doing more than one pretentious ineptitude, all this unhappily is evident as the sun ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... a white field, encircled by a black band with the words, "Blessed are the merciful." The letters V. R., surmounted by a crown in diamonds, are impressed upon the centre of the cross. Green enamel branches of palm, tipped with gold, form the framework of the shield, while around their stems is a riband of the blue enamel with the single word "Crimea." On the top are three brilliant stars of diamonds. On the back is an inscription written by the Queen. The Sultan sent her a magnificent bracelet, and the government, $250,000, to found the school for ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... First there was a thick curl of the glossiest blackest hair you ever saw in your life, and next there was threepence: that is to say, the half of a silver sixpence hanging by a little necklace of blue riband. Ah, but I knew where the other half of the sixpence was, and envied that happy ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the teeth of the standing orders. But what do you say to a baronet? There's Sir Polloxfen Tremens. He got himself served the other day to a Nova Scotia baronetcy, with just as much title as you or I have; and he has sported the riband, and dined out on the strength of it ever since. He'll join us at once, for he has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... be reversed, and that his title would be borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the name of Halifax did not appear in the list of promotions. None could doubt that he might easily have obtained either a blue riband or a ducal coronet; and, though he was honourably distinguished from most of his contemporaries by his scorn of illicit gain, it was well known that he desired honorary distinctions with a greediness of which he was himself ashamed, and which was unworthy of his fine understanding. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my Nivernois hat can compare, Bag-wig and laced ruffles, and black solitaire, And what can a man of true fashion denote, Like an ell of good riband ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... found himself in front of Marylebone Church. The silent roadway looked like a long riband of polished silver, flecked here and there by the dark arabesques of waving shadows. Far into the distance curved the line of flickering gas-lamps, and outside a little walled-in house stood a solitary hansom, the driver asleep inside. He walked hastily in the direction of Portland ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... new cap had been already half-adorned. "Why, bless me, Molly!" she cried, "you are not going to put on that handsome white satin bow, are you?"—"Why, yes! I think I shall," replied Molly, "for now I look at your cap, with that there yellow riband upon it, mine seems to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... a rose, thistle and shamrock, issuing from a sceptre surrounded by three imperial crowns, enclosed within the ancient motto Tria juncta in uno. Of pure gold chased and pierced, it is worn by the knight elect pendant from a red riband across the right shoulder. The collar is also of gold, weighing thirty ounces troy, and is composed of nine imperial crowns, and eight roses, thistles, and shamrocks, issuing from a sceptre, enamelled in proper colours, tied or linked together with seventeen gold knots, enamelled white, and ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... higher and higher. But the thick branching trees kept off the heat, and the wood remained shady and cool. The paths twisted in and out, and looped into each other like a tangled riband. No grown person could have kept a straight course in their mazes. Archie did not even try, but turned to right or to left just as it happened, taking always the path which looked prettiest, or which ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... very curious long sort of riband," thought the drummer to himself in his amazement. They were in a great hurry, too, to get him under the yoke, he thought; but they should find that a soldier on his way to the manoeuvres is not to be betrothed and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... of a scarlet hue, No shoe-pikes plaited o'er with riband gear, No costly robes of woaden blue, Nought of a dress, but beauty did she wear; Naked she was, and looked sweet of youth, All did bewrayen that her ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... conclusion of the session, the Portland party joined the ministerial ranks. The Duke of Portland received a blue riband, with the office of third secretary of state; Earl Spencer accepted the privy seal, which he soon laid aside to preside over the admiralty; and Mr. Windham, was made secretary at war. Before the close of the year, Lord Fitzwilliam was promoted to the vice-royalty of Ireland, in the place of Lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... courage. He ever led the way upon the most dangerous and desperate ventures, and, like his uncle and his imperial grandfather, well knew how to reward the devotion of his readiest followers with a poniard, a feather, a riband, a jewel, taken with his own ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is to have the red riband, which is comical enough. I will take particular care of what you mention about Fitzherbert; was he desirous of the riband? if he was, I should think we might manage it on another opportunity; though, if I was in his situation, I should certainly think myself better without ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... entirely interwoven the skull with their fine network. His hair, so much praised for its uncommon beauty, was tied, on the day of his execution, according to the fashion of the times. When his grave was opened, half a century afterwards, the riband was found in perfect preservation, and sent to his sister in England. When it was known that the sarcophagus containing his remains had arrived in New York, for London, many ladies sent garlands and emblematic devices, to be wreathed around it, in memory of the 'beloved and lamented ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various |
