"Tortoise-shell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... More than seventy years ago, Newport (1839) traced the rapid but continuous changes, which, during the early pupal period, convert the elongate nerve-cord of the caterpillar with its relatively far-separated ganglia into the shortened, condensed nerve-cord of the Tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa urticae) with several of the ganglia coalesced. In many Diptera, on the other hand, the nervous system of the larva is more concentrated than that of ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... him and laughed at the tops of their voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in their ears. Old Bosc had never budged an inch—he was totally indifferent. That sort of thing no longer interested him now. He was stroking a great tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on the bench. He did so quite beautifully and ended by taking her in his arms with the tender good nature becoming a worn-out monarch. The cat arched its back and then, after a ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... least like gold or copper or bronze—I scorn the hackneyed similes of metallurgical poets—but a straightforward yellow, darkening at the roots; and she wore it low down on her neck in great coils that were held in place by a multitude of little golden hair-pins and divers corpulent tortoise-shell ones. Item, her nose was a tiny miracle of perfection; and this was noteworthy, for you will observe that Nature, who is an adept at eyes and hair and mouths, very rarely achieves a creditable nose. Item, she had a mouth; and ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... exquisitely appointed, but stood prepared for use at a moment's notice; the bed itself was beautifully dressed; the dressing-table was decked with all manner of scent-bottles, mirrors, and trays, together with every conceivable toilet implement in tortoise-shell with a silver-inlay monogram—apparently A-M-S; the rugs were silken, princely, priceless; elusive wraiths of seductive perfumes haunted the air like memories ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... extraordinary variety of the work of the 16th and 17th centuries, and very often of the 18th also. The basis of the cabinet has always been wood, carved, polished or inlaid; but lavish use has been made of ivory, tortoise-shell, and those cut and polished precious stones which the Italians call pietra dura. In the great Flemish period of the 17th century the doors and drawers of cabinets were often painted with classical or mythological scenes. Many French ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... church, They caught nothing but weeds, and perhaps a few perch. The Humane Society Tried a variety Of methods, and brought down, to drag for the wreck, tackles But they only fished up the clerk's tortoise-shell spectacles. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the Duchess; 'you don't mean to say he is here?' and she began looking about for a small tortoise-shell fan and a very tattered lace shawl, so as to be ready to ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... as parts of the adornment of the women whom he knew. There in the mountains young girls did not wear them, save of the "circular" variety, designed to hold back "shingled" tresses. But from underneath a box of faded gum-drops and the store's one carton of cigars, came some of imitation tortoise-shell, gilt ornamented, of the sort old ladies sometimes stuck into their hirsute knots for mountain "doings" of great elegance, and the best of these Madge bought. Also she bought lace—great quantities of it, although, even after she had made the purchase, she ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... about this third, or in fact, this fourth Nile? These animals, covered with scales as hard as the tortoise-shell the Spaniards under Columbus found in that river, and which, as we have said, caused them to name that stream Los Lagartos, are certainly crocodiles. Shall we declare that these Niles rise in the Mountains of the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... deerskin hangs and flaps. It is ornamented with an embroidery of red and black threads, and quills of the porcupine. Below the knee, garters of buckskin, tinged red and yellow, form a fringe to which are attached tortoise-shell rattles and bunches of elk-hoofs. The ankles are encased with strips of the white and black fur of the skunk, and from the waist a fox-skin hangs, fastened to the back and reaching almost as far as the heel. Each man carries ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... announced, and entered, leaning on the arm of Talleyrand. She wore a dress of white muslin with short sleeves, and a necklace of pearls. Her head was uncovered; and the beautiful braids of her hair, arranged with charming negligence, were held in place by a tortoise-shell comb. The flattering murmur which greeted her appearance was most grateful to her; and never, I believe, did she ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... told Dr. Hanslick that she had sung Una voce poco fa at the age of seven with the same embellishments which she used later when she appeared in the opera in which the air occurs. No, these singers are freaks of nature like tortoise-shell cats and like those rare felines they are usually females of late, although such singers as Battistini and Bonci remind us that men once sang with as much agility as women. But when this type of singer finally ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Agnes put her handkerchief to her face, and her neck shake a minute convulsively. Duff Salter here sneezed loudly: "Jericho! Jerichew! Je-ry-cho-o!" He produced a tortoise-shell snuff-box, and Podge took a pinch, for fun, and sneezed until the tears came to her eyes and her hair was shaken down. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... spectacles were sent out by the gross to all part of the country, but they were of a kind now known as "goggles," the frames being large and clumsy, and made of silver, white metal, or tortoise-shell, the fine steel wire frames now used not being introduced until ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... navigate in the inclement seasons. But in summer the great inland sea was white with sails. Great fleets brought corn from Gaul, Spain, Sardinia, Africa, Sicily, and Egypt. This was the most important trade. But a considerable commerce was carried on in ivory, tortoise-shell, cotton and silk fabrics, pearls and precious stones, gums, spices, wines, wool, oil. Greek and Asiatic wines, especially the Chian and Lesbian, were in great demand at Rome. The transport of earthenware, made generally in the Grecian cities; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of counsel, after citation of cases, after the applause of Market Street at some incidental obiter dicta of Judge Van Dorn's about the rights of property, after the court had put on its tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, which the court had brought home from its recent trip to Chicago to witness the renomination of President Taft, after the court, peering through its brown-framed spectacles, was fumbling over its typewritten opinion from the typewriter of the offices of Calvin & Calvin, written ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... tower dimly lighted, hung with cobwebs, and filled with old red velvet furniture. I sat down on a sofa, and before long became conscious that I was being gazed upon by a haughty young woman, with an aristocratic nose, large dark eyes, hair caught back by tortoise-shell combs under a peculiar head-dress, having a gleam of gold directly on the top. Her gown was of dark green, with white puffs let into the sleeves below the elbows; around her tapering waist was a narrow belt of jewels; the front of her corsage was also trimmed with jewels. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... and Sanders[45] were made with 600 pupae of Vanessa urticae, the "tortoise-shell butterfly." The pupae were artificially attached to nettles, tree-trunks, fences, walls, and to the ground, some at Oxford, some at St. Helens in the Isle of Wight. In the course of a month 93% of the pupae at Oxford were killed, chiefly by ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... can we do against them?" he cries at dinner, combing his mustache with the little tortoise-shell comb he carries in ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... men of Ceylon wear tortoise-shell combs in their hair. They are very proud of these combs, and some of them ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous
... a white-haired, somewhat corpulent gentleman sitting with his back to the light reading the Times. He was clean shaved, with a heavy face modelled to suggest a rhinoceros. The features were large; the nose swollen and a little veined with purple, the eyes hidden behind owl-like spectacles with tortoise-shell rims, and the brow very broad, but not high. From it abundant white hair ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... lay a large tortoise-shell paper knife. That, thrust under the door as a wedge, would be almost as good as a lock. At least she might count on it to protect her for those so necessary five minutes. But if she pushed it through to the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... between them merely a Fellowship of the Super-Mind, or what a Wimp wearing Tortoise-Shell Spectacles would ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... and bonbonniere. What lady carries snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!— ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with thee ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... feet from the window. On it was a large brass lamp which cast a brilliant circle of light upon the broad flat top of the desk with its orderly array of letter-trays, its handsome silver-edged blotter and silver and tortoise-shell writing appurtenances. By the light of this lamp Dr. Romain, looking from the doorway, saw that Hartley Parrish's chair was vacant, pushed back a little way from the desk. The rest of the room ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... the dress-maker's sharp swarthy person stood out vividly between the neutral-tinted sisters. Miss Mellins was a small woman with a glossy yellow face and a frizz of black hair bristling with imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her sleeves had a fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled on her wrists. Her voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a stream of anecdote and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped with acrobatic velocity from one face to another. Miss Mellins ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... crews of which had jumped into the sea, were captured. Of great length and well made, these boats were decorated in front with a man's head carved, the eyes of which were formed of mother of pearl, the ears of tortoise-shell, and the lips ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... drew up her tall, gaunt, richly-clad figure and examined Private Thomson through eye-glasses on a long tortoise-shell handle. ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... his rumpled bed, but freshened and brightened and deceptively free from pain, he woke at last to find the pleasant yellow sunshine mottling his dingy carpet like a tortoise-shell cat. Instinctively with his first yawny return to consciousness he reached back under his pillow for ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... had to provide myself with certain necessaries for the way. These were not numerous. The silver-mounted dressing-case is here supplied by a rag containing a miswak, a bit of soap, and a comb—wooden, for bone and tortoise-shell are not, religiously speaking, correct. Equally simple was my wardrobe: a change or two of clothing. The only article of canteen description was a zemzemiyah, a goatskin water-bag, which communicates to its contents, especially when new, a ferruginous aspect and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... kitty, kitty!' and that great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing round his legs, and all the other cats followed after. I shut the door before these last ones got into the parlor." Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and various stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly black cat, which sat glaring at her ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... no response. She knocked again while Hermia waited, a question on her lips. There was a sound of heavy footsteps and the door was flung open wide and a big man with rumpled hair, a well-smeared painting-smock and wearing a huge pair of tortoise-shell goggles peered out into the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... without seeing the king, and three shots opened his gate immediately to me. He was sitting on the iron chair in the shade of the court, attended by some eighty women, tweedling the loading rod in his fingers; but as my rod appeared a better one than his, they were exchanged. I then gave him a tortoise-shell comb to comb his hair straight with, as he invariably remarked on the beautiful manner in which I dressed my hair, making my uncap to show it to his women, and afterwards asked my men to bring on the affair of last night. They feared, they ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... expressed. Love and friendship are, without doubt, charming passions; which absence serves only to heighten and improve. Your kind present of the garnet bracelets, I shall keep as carefully as I preserve my own life; and I beg you will accept, in return, my heart-housewife, with the tortoise-shell memorandum-book, as a trifling pledge ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... verging on orange or red; in Magarornis the bosom is black, and beautifully ornamented with small leaf-shaped spots of a delicate straw-colour. There are several other very pretty birds in this homely family; but the finest of all is Thripodectes flammulatus, the whole body being tortoise-shell colour, the wings and tail bright chesnut. The powerful tanager-like beak of this species seems also to show that it has diverged from its timid shade-loving congeners in another direction by becoming a seed and ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... he bore in his hands, O king, a staff made of gold and a waterpot made of the same precious metal. Accomplished in song and dance and adored by gods and Brahmanas, he had with him a beautiful Vina of melodious notes, made of the tortoise-shell. A provoker of quarrels and ever fond of quarrels, the celestial Rishi came to that spot where the handsome Rama was resting. Standing up and sufficiently honouring the celestial Rishi of regulated vows, Rama asked him about all that had happened to the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... ripening tomatoes lay along the ledges of the windows, and a tortoise-shell cat snoozed on one of the broad sills. The tall clock in the corner ticked peacefully. Priscilla Hollis never tired of looking at the jolly red-cheeked moon, the group of stars on a blue ground, the trig little ship, the old house, and the jolly moon again, creeping one after another across ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rust along the chains and around the hawse-holes. She might be mistaken for a whaler coming off a four years' cruise. And nearly that length of time has she been cruising, but not after whales. Her cargo, a full one, consists of sandal-wood, spices, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, and real pearls also—in short, a miscellaneous assortment of the commodities obtained by traffic in the islands and around the coasts of the great ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... coming once or twice a week, during the autumn, to smoke his pipe and lounge over his books, sometimes making extracts from them and sometimes making observations in the margin with a pencil. Whenever a very curious passage occurred, he would take out a small memorandum book and put on a pair of large tortoise-shell spectacles with powerful magnifying glasses in order to insert this passage with particular care and neatness. He usually concluded his evening amusements by sleeping in the very bed in which ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... its chances and contingencies. If they had protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-looking personages, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... front with dark black buttons, and a great breastpin of twisted gold. Her hair was looped down over her ears in two folds like shiny drab satin. It scarcely looked like hair, the surface was so smooth and unbroken; and a great tortoise-shell comb ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that perfect fit and finish which makes the simplest dress seem all that can be desired. There was a knowing look to each little detail, from the slender silver bangles which appeared beneath the loose wrinkled wrists of their very long gloves to the tortoise-shell pins with which their hats were fastened to the tightly braided hair coiled low down on the nape of the neck. Candace's hair fell in curls to her waist. She had always worn it so, and no one had ever thought anything about it; ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... apparently on the best of terms with themselves, and they all seemed to make a point of absolutely ignoring Pritchard's presence. Elizabeth was the one exception. She was carrying a tiny Chinese spaniel under one arm; with the fingers of her other hand she held a tortoise-shell mounted monocle to her eye, and stared directly at the two men. Presently she came languidly across the room ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... expected from the contact of their own dreamy and delicate nature with unromantic matter. It is perhaps safer to refer the origin of the name Cheli or tortoise, as applied to corded instruments, to the fact of their having sound chambers, constructed with tortoise-shell, as was the case with the Greek Lyre, or to the circumstance of the bodies of the instruments being shaped like the tortoise. The Germans used the word Chelys to designate their Viols; and Christopher Simpson, in his famous treatise on the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... head, and fastened with a silver bodkin or pin. In the other mode, which is more general, they give the hair a single twist as it hangs behind, and then doubling it up they pass it crosswise under a few hairs separated from the rest on the back of the head for that purpose. A comb, often of tortoise-shell and sometimes filigreed, helps to prevent it from falling down. The hair of the front and of all parts of the head is of the same length, and when loose hangs together behind, with most of the women, in very great quantity. It is kept moist ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... comfortable chair in the house, by the way—had, in his less distinguished days, been his throne. In it he would sit all day long, cutting and whittling, filing and polishing curious trinkets of tortoise-shell for watch-guards and tiny baskets made of cherry-stones, cunningly wrought and finished. He was an expert, too, in corn-cob pipes, which he carved for all his friends; and pin-wheels for everybody's children. When ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "and now, to reward your constancy to him, I tell you that whenever they're settled, or, at all events, out of their troubles, if you think me worth your while, I won't have any objection to become your wife; and—there—what are you about, Fergus? See this, now—you've almost broken the tortoise-shell crooked-comb that she ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Hermes had on his tortoise-shell instrument is a much disputed question. Some say there were but three and that they represented the three seasons—spring, summer, and winter—into which it was the custom of the Greeks to divide their year. Some authorities ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... entered; and this embroidery was designed for a fire-screen. It represented a parroquet intensely crimson, on a background uniformly emerald; and the eyes of the melancholy lover dwelt wistfully upon the snowy hands selecting the different colors from a tortoise-shell work-box filled ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... on them, and then lulling them to sleep. She would sustain the loud parts, then linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... dyed in red patterns, the ends of the ribbons falling down in large tassels. Under this belt is stuck the end of the enormous nambas, also consisting of red grass fibres. Added to this scanty dress are small ornaments, tortoise-shell ear-rings, bamboo combs, bracelets embroidered with rings of shell and cocoa-nut, necklaces, and thin bands bound under the knees and over ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... hypothesis of my guilt. There was another, and even more fatal circumstance still,—the discovery of the knife with which George Conway had been slain. That knife was my own; it was one of peculiar shape, with a handle of tortoise-shell, and I had often used it in presence of my friends and others. A dozen persons could make oath to it as my property; but it was not needed; the scene at the grave made that useless. I evidently did not deny the ownership ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Californian and did not hold the members of this race in a tithe of the esteem he accorded other Orientals. This Japanese was rather shorter and thinner than the majority of his race. He wore large, round tortoise-shell spectacles, and clothes that proclaimed the attention of the very best tailors; a gold-band ring, set with one blue-white diamond and two exquisite sapphires, adorned the pudgy finger of his right hand. Farrel judged that his gray beaver ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... left, that one could almost believe it sees its own way and moves by its own intelligence. And again we pass by extraordinary islets of prismatic rock whose sides, just below the water-line, are heavily mossed with seaweed. The polygonal masses composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell stones.' There is a legend that once Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, to try his strength, came here, and, lifting up one of these masses of basalt, flung it across the sea to the mountain of Sanbeyama. At the foot of Sanbe the mighty rock thus thrown by the Great Deity of Kitzuki ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Morning. Fontange, the Tire-woman, her Account of my Lady Blithe's Wash. Broke a Tooth in my little Tortoise-shell Comb. Sent Frank to know how my Lady Hectick rested after her Monky's leaping out at Window. Looked pale. Fontange tells me my Glass is not true. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... once set about and in the course of a few days had effected all the necessary repairs, and then steered westward for Admiralty Island, calling at various islands on our way, trading with the wild natives for coco-nut oil, copra, ivory nuts, pearl-shell and tortoise-shell, and doing very poorly; for a large American schooner, engaged in the same business, had been ahead of us, and at most of the islands we touched at we secured nothing more than a few hundredweight of black-edged pearl-shell. Then, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... of stuff in front, which was thrown over the shoulders and hung loose at the back. The women were dressed the same as the men, except that their loin vestment reached to their knees. The King's daughter wore, moreover, tortoise-shell ornaments. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the nose on either side of the mouth. Above the nose there was a sort of bump, from which the low forehead slightly retreated to the curves of strong white hair. The ears were large but well shaped. In order to read he had put on pince-nez with tortoise-shell rimmed glasses, from which hung a rather broad black riband. His thin figure looked stiff even in an arm-chair. His big brown-red hands held the book up. His legs were crossed, and his feet were strongly defined by the snowy white spats which partially concealed ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... the best tortoise-shell shop in all Naples to buy one dozen shell hair-pins, but such was the misery we experienced at leaving any of the treasures we encountered that we bought three hundred dollars' worth before we left, and of course did not have enough money ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... and the Snakes, Each has from twenty to thirty members, some of whom are boys who serve as acolytes. When the open air ceremony of the Snake Dance begins, the members of these brotherhoods appear scantily clothed, with their faces painted red and white, and with tortoise-shell rattles tied to their legs. The Antelope fraternity first enters the square, preceded by a venerable priest carrying two bags filled with snakes. These serpents, which have been previously washed and covered with sacred meal, are deposited by the priest ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... is a tortoise-shell, yellow and black, With a lot of white about him: If you tease him, at once he sets up his back: He's a quarrelsome Tom, ne'er doubt him! I think we shall call him this— I think we shall call him that; Now, don't you fancy "Scratchaway" A nice name ...
— The Nursery, April 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... this particular occasion, as she brushed her hair and inserted the tortoise-shell curling-pins which should secure to-morrow's decorative effects, she felt almost daring and dangerous. She wondered whether she had really enjoyed the evening or not; whether she had held her own and shown ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... dress with care, and neither too old nor too wicked nor too ugly to find pleasure in it. She might have been a born lady just restored to the habits of her youth, to judge by her delight over the ivory brushes and tortoise-shell comb, and great mirror. In an hour or so she made her appearance—I can hardly say reappeared, she was so altered. She entered the room neither blushing nor smiling, but wiping the tears from her eyes like a too blessed ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... want of lofty mirrors, and The tables, most of ebony inlaid With mother of pearl or ivory, stood at hand, Or were of tortoise-shell or rare woods made, Fretted with gold or silver:—by command, The greater part of these were ready spread With viands and sherbets in ice—and wine— Kept for all comers at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... shy and agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened polished and brown as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and perfume, sunned themselves like white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old forest-trees,—the maple, scarred with the wounds which had drained away its sweet ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wood so carved as to have caused envy to Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen, if they had been present; a drawing-room upholstered in buttercup damask, and with doors, cornices, skirting-board, and embrasures in ebony; a library arranged in bookcases inlaid with tortoise-shell and brass in Boule style; a bathroom in yellow and black marble, with stucco bass-reliefs; a dome boudoir, whose ancient paintings had been restored by Edmond Hedouin; a gallery lighted from above, which we recognized later in the collection of Cousin Pons. There were what-nots ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... heavily carved bedsteads, of Queen Elizabeth's time, or of the Stuarts, hung with rich tapestry curtains of similar date, and with beautiful old cabinets of carved wood, sculptured in relief, or tortoise-shell and ivory. The very pictures and realities, these rooms were, of stately comfort; and they were called by the name of kings,—King Edward's, King Charles II's, King Henry VII's chamber; and they were hung with beautiful pictures, many of them portraits of these kings. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the coast of New Guinea. He belonged to a small trading vessel from Ceram, or one of the neighbouring islands, which are accustomed to visit that coast to barter fire-arms, calico, and ironwork, for slaves, nutmegs, trepang, tortoise-shell, and edible birds' nests. She had been driven out of her course by a gale, and found herself on a part of the coast with which no one on board was acquainted. Before she could make good her retreat, she ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... packed up, they do not come. My sorrowing heart is greatly distressed. The time is past, and he is not here, To the multiplication of my sorrows. Both by the tortoise-shell and the reeds have I divined, And they unite in saying he is near. My warrior is ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... him as he said good-by to Mr. Sinclair and started for home. Tommy grabbed his books, another lad gave him a little penknife with a tortoise-shell handle, and a third offered him a ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... of interest in Henry IV.'s room, in which he is said to have been born 13th December, 1553, including the magnificently carved bedstead; but the chief attraction is the tortoise-shell cradle, which as a rule Frenchmen come only to see. Why they should come is quite a different matter, seeing that although a tortoise's shell might make a very comfortable cradle for even such an ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... of petticoat; and some of them had something over their shoulders like a bag, in which they carry their children. None of them came off to the ship, and they generally kept at a distance when we were on shore. Their ornaments are ear-rings, made of tortoise-shell and bracelets. A curious one of the latter, four or five inches broad, wrought with thread or cord, and studded with shells, is worn by them just above the elbow. Round the right wrist they wear hogs' tusks, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... past—colour, atmosphere, the subtle fragrance and flavour of other days. We read that James Anderson of Broadway has just arrived from London "in the brig Betsy" with a load of "the best finished boot legs." Another gentleman urges people to inspect his "crooked tortoise-shell combs for ladies and gentlemen's hair, his vegetable face powder—his nervous essence for the toothache, his bergamot, lemon, lavendar and ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... top of her head. First, her maids washed it beautifully clean with the juice of the lime and the lather of the soap-nut; then it was combed and brushed until every hair glistened like ebony; next it was twisted up and stuck full of the quaint golden and tortoise-shell bodkins, with here and there a spray of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Walking, or rather rolling, across the moor singing the burden of the last catch he had trolled with his fellows at the ale-house, all on a sudden he stumbled into a circle of sorcerer-cats squatting around a cross of stone. They were of immense size and of all colours, black, grey, white, tortoise-shell, and when he beheld them seated round the crucifix, their eyes darting fire and the hair bristling on their backs, his song died upon his lips and all his bellicose feelings, like those of Bob Acres, leaked ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... for she had always thought of corn as a civilized sort of thing to have. She sat on a bench against the wall wondering, for the lovely clean stillness of the room encouraged thinking, and the clink of her father's hammers on the pipes fell presently into the regular tink-tink-a-tink of tortoise-shell rattles, keeping time to the shuffle and beat of bare feet on the dancing-place by the river. The path to it led across a clearing between little hillocks of freshly turned earth, and the high forest overhead ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... countenance nor made one fearful to set foot upon it. It was a jolly, chummy sort of carpet that seemed to say, "Walk on me all you want to, and don't be afraid to spill your crumbs; I like crumbs." A very large tortoise-shell cat lay stretched along the arm of the couch, half asleep, and purred as Eve dipped her fingers in the long fur. The windows on the side of the room were open and the draperies swayed gently with the little breeze. Wade, seated at the other end of the couch from his hostess, was feeling ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... not long after Nannie's story a great tortoise-shell tomcat appeared in the Earnest home. No one thought of asking Mrs. Earnest if she had brought him there, and the others knew nothing about him. More curiously still, when Mr. Earnest began to grow sulky or ugly, Sir Tortoise Shell would ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... went the pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who dare ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... out four tortoise-shell pins that upheld the silken lightness of her hair, so that it fell in a fair soft cloud about her neck ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... out his hands and drew the burning brazier close to his feet; then, suddenly, from a sleeve of his robe he took a little box of the sacred tortoise-shell, pressed his lips to it, opened it, poured its contents upon the flame, leaned over with his face close to the brazier and inhaled the little puff of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... called Lauteas, consisting both of strangers who have conquered the country, and natives who have embraced that religion. The inhabitants of Guzerat are very ingenious mechanics in works of silk, gold, ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, crystal, ebony, and other articles. They follow the rules of Pythagoras, killing no creature; but rather buy all, though even venomous, from those who take them, on purpose to set them free. They have even a set of men whose ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... running at and butting every animal that came in his way. Two half-grown llamas, which are naturally as quiet and timid as sheep, bit each other very furiously, until they foamed at the mouth. And, lastly, a large mastiff made his appearance, walking in a slow, measured gait, with a sleek tortoise-shell cat on his back; and she, in turn, was surmounted by a mouse, which formed the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... are eleven cats at the farm here now. Papa's favorite is a little tortoise-shell kitten he has named "Sour Mash," and a little spotted one "Fannie." It is very pretty to see what papa calls the cat procession; it was formed in this way. Old Minniecat headed, (the mother of all the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... were studded images, five feet high, of forgotten gods, silver with jewelled eyes; there were coats of mail, gold inlaid on steel, and fringed with rotted and blackened seed-pearls; there were helmets, crested and beaded with pigeon's-blood rubies; there were shields of lacquer, of tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-hide, strapped and bossed with red gold and set with emeralds at the edge; there were sheaves of diamond-hilted swords, daggers, and hunting-knives; there were golden sacrificial bowls and ladles, and portable altars of a shape that never sees ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the leaves, chequering the ground as the fawn is dappled. Similarly the spots on the nebris of Dionysus, thought of sometimes as stars (apo tes ton astron poikilias, Diodorus, I. 11), as well as those of his panthers, and the cloudings of the tortoise-shell of Hermes, are all significant of this light of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... her. In the meantime they overwhelmed her with offers of everything she could need, which was kindly but not essential, for after the funeral expenses had been paid (Grizel insisted on paying them herself) she had still several gold pieces, found in her mamma's beautiful tortoise-shell purse, and there were nearly twenty pounds in ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... lady's husband, Mr. Macfarlane, was agent in Scotland for Balhaldie. To him Balhaldie wrote frequently on business, sent him also a 'most curious toy,' a tortoise-shell snuff- box, containing, in a secret receptacle, a portrait of King James VIII. Letters of his, in April 1753, show that James Mohr was so far right; Balhaldie WAS living at Bievre, in a glen three leagues from Paris, and was amusing himself by the peaceful art of making loyal snuff-boxes ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... no such things as plebeian names—only plebeian hearts," said the countess, as she glanced at the card, and then put it away in her own elegant tortoise-shell case, which bore her monogram and crest in gold ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... visitor was not so much good-natured, as accommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion might arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise-shell lorgnette on a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive gold ring with a cheap ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... letters than a State functionary," Aunt Rose informed me when I came upon her early the next morning, already installed behind her huge flat-topped desk, her tortoise-shell spectacles tipped down towards the end of ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... he was comically alarmed by an inoffensive animal; as he was walking along a deer-track, he chanced to spy a very fine tortoise-shell box, as he imagined, though he could not conceive how it could be dropped there; and, thinking he might make good advantage of it among the Indians, claps it into his pocket; he had not gone far before he heard a hissing noise, which seemed to be very ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... portions of gorse bushes projecting through the snow. My optical delusions as to colour were perhaps the most remarkable; the protruding rocks invariably appeared of a strange orange yellow, with black lines along them, producing a short of tortoise-shell effect. I took these mysterious appearances at first for dead animals, ponies or sheep, and touched them to try to ascertain the fact. My hands, however, were so utterly devoid of sensation, that they were of no more use than my eyes in identifying objects. I was therefore quite in the dark ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... yesterday's roast. And then, let me see,— He had two,—perhaps three Cups, with sugar and cream, of strong gunpowder tea,— But no matter for that— He had called for his hat, With the brim that I've said was so broad and so flat, And his "specs" with the tortoise-shell rim, and his cane. With the crutch-handled top, which he used to sustain His steps in his walk, or to poke in the shrubs Or the grass, when unearthing his worms or his grubs; Thus armed he set out on a ramble—a-lack! He set out, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... elfin girl Of mother-of-pearl And moonshine made, With tortoise-shell hair Both dusky and fair In its light ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... not so certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her tortoise-shell box (the companion of her whole married life, as she acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were still sitting over their wine and peaches; passing by Marion, Alice ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... received instructions to open the tortoise-shell box, and give Mr Merdle the tortoise-shell knife. On his doing so, his wife said to the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... plenty of room on the quarter-deck. I could not imagine why she gazed about her with such obtrusive caution. She inspected the occupants of the various chairs around with deliberate scrutiny through a long-handled tortoise-shell optical abomination. None of them seemed to satisfy her. After a minute's effort, during which she also muttered a few words very low to her husband, she selected an empty spot midway between our group and the most distant group on the other side of us. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Lucien, in a suppressed voice, "it is a fox-squirrel, and such a beauty! See! it is marked like a tortoise-shell cat! Papa would give twenty dollars for ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... from Everywhere is not company. He is simply a permanent institution and can go on dropping in as usual all summer if he likes. Ann-stasia adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandalwood rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair of real tortoise-shell combs not two months ago? And of course Maria Maxwell will not object; why should she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly know that he is in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... it could properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and gilded surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss Barrace—which was the lady's name—looked at them with convex Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle. Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar, freely contradictions and reminding him of some last-century portrait of a clever head without powder—why Miss Barrace should have been in particular ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... whereof we are writing, though the Great George was on the throne and ladies wore gigots and large combs like tortoise-shell shovels in their hair, instead of the simple sleeves and lovely wreaths which are actually in fashion, the manners of the very polite world were not, I take it, essentially different from those of the present day: and their amusements pretty similar. To us, from the outside, gazing over ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which cannot "be more aptly described than by comparing them to a white fowl drawn down a sooty chimney; it is, however," adds Mr. Layard, "a remarkable fact that a male bird of the pure sooty variety is almost as rare as a tortoise-shell tom-cat." Mr. Blyth finds that the same rule holds good with this breed near Calcutta. The males and females, on the other hand, of the black-boned European breed, with silky feathers, do not differ from ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... him waiting about fifteen minutes. With perfect patience he stood in front of an Italian mirror in the drawing-room, smoking a cigarette through a long tortoise-shell holder. He regarded himself with keen and friendly interest, not in the least surprised that his wife's little friend from the country so evidently liked him. He found that he looked up to his best form, murmured a word of praise for the manner in which ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Old Bahama Channel, and also opposite the Isle of Pines, which Columbus named Evangelista,—on this south shore, large numbers of turtles are taken annually, which produce the best quality of tortoise-shell. It is strange that the habits of these creatures down here in the Caribbean Sea should so closely resemble those of the tiny tortoises described by Thoreau as frequenting Walden Pond. The female turtle digs the hole ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Sanders ("Report of the British Association" (Bristol, 1898), London, 1899, pages 906-909.) were made with 600 pupae of Vanessa urticae, the "tortoise-shell butterfly." The pupae were artificially attached to nettles, tree-trunks, fences, walls, and to the ground, some at Oxford, some at St Helens in the Isle of Wight. In the course of a month 93 per cent of the pupae at Oxford were killed, chiefly by small birds, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... is that of tortoise-shell, i.e. black and yellow cats. The tortoise-shell with very rare exceptions is female, the corresponding male being yellow, without any black colour. Doncaster found that a yellow male mated to a black female produced black male offspring ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... in this country, is the marine family (Chelonidae), to which the edible and tortoise-shell turtles belong. The best known family in the United States and in the Continent of Europe, is the Emydae, to which pertain the terrapins or ordinary river tortoises. Besides these, however, there is a very ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... however, turned out to be the very things of which we were in search; old-fashioned furniture in all kinds of incongruous styles, and of all epochs—Louis Quatorze cabinets in cracked tortoise-shell and blackened buhl—antique carved chairs emblazoned elaborately with coats of arms, as old as the time of Albert Duerer—slender-legged tables in battered marqueterie—time-pieces in lack-lustre ormolu, still pointing to the hour at which they had stopped, who could tell how many ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... just returned from a trip to the village for the Sunday papers to amuse his leisure. Noah is a very cultivated person; he not only reads perfectly, but he wears tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles while he does it. He also brought from the post office a letter from you, written Friday night. I am pained to note that you do not care for "Gosta Berling" and that Jervis doesn't. The only comment I can make ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... just such a tinge of critical surprise as the occasion called for: he toyed with a slender tortoise-shell paper-cutter. The pendulum of the sombre, costly grandfather clock behind him swung tolerantly, silently; the murmur of the bank beyond them was utterly lost behind the heavy double doors and forgotten behind the bronze velvet ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... notched beak so completely recalls the warlike bill of a hawk, that it is usually known by the name of the "Hawk's-bill Turtle." You ought to know about this tortoise, for it is the one which furnishes tortoise-shell, that nice material which is so smooth to the touch, so pretty to look at, and so very fragile, that it seems only fit for the use of ladies' hands. I could hardly speak of tortoises without saying something ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... earliest Arabian geographers, describing, in the ninth century, the habits of the pearl-divers in the Persian Gulf, says that, before descending, each filled his ears with cotton steeped in oil, and compressed his nostrils by a piece of tortoise-shell.[2] This practice continues there to the present day[3]; but the diver of Ceylon rejects all such expedients; he inserts his foot in the "sinking stone" and inhales a full breath; presses his nostrils with his left hand; raises his body as high as possible ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... looked at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare through the glasses, a strange expression, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax, alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered about ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... therefore proceeded to adjust the settlements according to her own rule, fair and softly. But one morning her maid came to me in tears to intreat my interest for a reconciliation with her mistress, who had turned her out at night for breaking six teeth in a tortoise-shell comb; she had attended her lady from a distant province, and having not lived long enough to save much money, was destitute among strangers, and, though of a good family, in danger of perishing in the streets, or of being compelled ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... that I made with some companions towards the upper part of the Red River, we met with several of these trappers; amongst others, with one weather-beaten old fellow, whose face and bare neck were tanned by sun and exposure to the colour of tortoise-shell. We hunted two days in his company, without noticing any thing remarkable about the man; he cooked our meals, which consisted usually of a haunch of venison or a buffalo's hump, instructed us where to find game, and was aware of the approach ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even our men, who might be called moderately cool, don't care to beat that country if they hear that Jan Chinn is running about on his tiger. It is supposed to be a clouded animal—not stripy, but blotchy, like a tortoise-shell tom-cat. No end of a brute, it is, and a sure sign of war or pestilence or—or something. There's a nice family ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... lodge-keeper, sat rocking her baby in the old porch seat; through the open door one could catch glimpses of the bright red-tiled kitchen with its wooden settle and the tortoise-shell cat asleep on the great wicker chair; beyond, the sunny little herb-garden with its plots of lavender, marjoram, and sweet-smelling thyme, the last monthly roses blooming among the gooseberry bushes; a child cliqueting up the narrow brick ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and the port of communication with Axuma, was, in the age of the Periplus, subject to the same prince, who possessed the whole coast, from Berenice. The exports from this place were confined to ivory, brought from the interior on both sides of the Nile; the horns of the rhinoceros, and tortoise-shell. The imports were very numerous, forming an assortment, as Dr. Vincent justly observes, as specific as a modern invoice: the principal articles were, cloth, manufactured in Egypt, unmilled, for the Barbarian market. The term, Barbarii, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Then she went back to her stool and began to paint in silence. The stuffs were coloured and dark and pale; they made a curious swarm of lines and colours upon the counterpane, with the reddish lumps of stone and peacocks' feathers and clear pale tortoise-shell combs ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... was very great, and not to be endured. So, with some of her women, she took me to a place called Falema'a, where the cliffs rise up straight from the sea. Her hair was then oiled and dressed, and then she made gifts of her rings of gold and tortoise-shell to her women, and bade them farewell. Then she took me in her arms, and leapt over the cliff into ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the peruke, at the time when men of fashion wore large wigs, was even at public places an act of gallantry. The combs, for this purpose, were of a very large size, of ivory or tortoise-shell, curiously chased and ornamented, and were carried in the pocket as constantly as the snuff-box. At Court, on the Mall, and in the boxes, gentlemen conversed and combed their perukes "(Sir John Hawkins' "Hist, of Music," vol. iv. p. 447, note). Cf. Dryden's ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... behind at home. There were pots of [v]pomade and face cream, and nail polish; bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash; half a dozen gleaming razors; the array of brushes and combs and [v]manicure set in [v]tortoise-shell with his crest in silver; bottles of scent; the purple silk dressing-gown; a soft-fronted shirt fitted with ruby and diamond sleeve-links; the dinner jacket and suit laid out on the glass-topped table, with tie and handkerchief; the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the name of tortoise, he begins to think of tortoise-shell. This ought really to be called turtle-shell, as it is made from the shell of the hawk's-bill turtle. Tortoise-shell is made by soaking the plates of the shell in warm water until they are soft; then they are pressed into the shapes wanted in warm iron moulds, and taken ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the neat, shining, dimpling little Advocate turned his bright eyes from one to the other of us, and tapped his tortoise-shell snuffbox with a kind of elvish joy. It was clear that we were better than many stage-plays ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... reflections of old Sheraton as even the ancient horsehair had not done; the silver candlesticks, the miniatures, and on the mantel those two royal flower-pots whose precarious existence was to his aunt a very fearful joy. Even the tortoise-shell cat, sprawled between the two figures like a tiny tiger-skin, was in the picture. It was a room that gently put you into your place. Hugh recalled with a faint grin certain meetings here of philanthropic ladies whose paths had seldom turned into the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... kitchen-garden; parsley was there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or two tin boxes and a yellow ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... subject for anecdote. Who has not some faithful black Topsy, Tortoise-shell, or Tabby, or rather succession of them, whose biographies would afford many a curious story? Professor Bell[122] has well defended the general character of poor pussy from the oft-repeated calumnies spread about it. Cats certainly get much attached to individuals, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... a soil capable of producing the most varied vegetation of the tropics, a liberal policy is all that the country lacks. The products of the Philippine Islands consist of sugar, coffee, hemp, indigo, rice, tortoise-shell, hides, ebony, saffron-wood, sulphur, cotton, cordage, silk, pepper, cocoa, wax, and many other articles. In their agricultural operations the people are industrious, although much labour is lost by the use of defective implements. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... and began to shake out the masses of her black hair, that was as the thickness of night spun fine. And as she drew out the thick tortoise-shell pins that bore it up, it rolled down heavily in a soft dark flood and covered her as with a garment. Then she leaned back and sighed again, and her eyes fell on a book that lay at the corner of her dressing-table, where she had left it before dinner. It was the book they had been reading, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... America in the time of Queen Isabella and Queen Elizabeth, but ages before that period the Aztecs at their banquets had the "fragrant weed" offered to the company, "in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver." The smoke after dinner was no doubt preliminary to the siesta or nap of "forty winks." It is not known if the Aztec ladies, like their descendants in modern Mexico, also appreciated the yetl, as the Mexicans called "tobacco." Our ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... Angelo, representing Pan discovering a woman under the skin of a young shepherd, the original of which is in the royal palace of Vienna. On either side were candelabra of Renaissance design. A clock, by Boule, on a tortoise-shell stand, inlaid with brass, sparkled in the centre of one panel between two statuettes, undoubtedly obtained from the demolition of some abbey. In the corners of the room, on pedestals, were lamps of royal magnificence, as to which a manufacturer had made ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac |
