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More "Broom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the common Broom, and these are adapted by a curious mechanism for cross-fertilisation. When a bee alights on the wing-petals of a young flower, the keel is slightly opened and the short stamens spring out, which rub their pollen against the abdomen of the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I say I would become ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... are hidden by great trees of white broom, while from north to south every wild piece of land is starred with the brilliant blue flowers of the lithospermum. There are also endless varieties of cistus, from the small yellow annual with rich brown heart to the large gum cistus that covers so much of the poor soil in the Alemtejo. These ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... ablution, lavation[obs3], colature|; disinfection &c. v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin|, malkin|, handkerchief, towel, sudary[obs3]; doyley[obs3], doily, duster, sponge, mop, swab. cover, drugget[obs3]. wash, lotion, detergent, cathartic, purgative; purifier &c. v.; disinfectant; aperient[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... were lifted to the pedestal and took our places as we expected to stand. Then Mr. Booth came—such a picture in his Greek garments as made even the men exclaim at him—and began to pose us. It happened one of us had very good limbs, one medium good, and the third had, apparently, walked on broom-sticks. When Mr. Booth slightly raised the drapery of No. 3 his features gave a twist as though he had suddenly tasted lemon-juice, but quick as a flash ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... capital, several are reflected in the waters of Vltava. There is, for instance, the bridgehead tower on the Mala Strana side, a graceful monument to Charles's gracious days. You may notice on passing under the gateway from the bridge the figure of a witch carved in stone, complete with broom and general air of nocturnal enterprise. I often wonder as I pass by here whether this figure inspired Marion Crawford when he was casting about for a title to his novel which you may have read, The Witch of Prague. There lingers a strong, a powerfully attractive allure of old Prague, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... smeared with snuff; knuckle-bones well set up by muscles that, under pretence of being hands, played nonchalantly with a pack of cards, like some machine the movement of which is about to run down. The body, a species of broom-handle decently covered with clothes, enjoyed the advantages of death and did not stir. Above the forehead rose a coif of black velvet. Madame Fontaine, for it was really a woman, had a black hen on her right hand and a huge toad, named Astaroth, ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... ruled by fear. We could not permit the slightest infraction of rules, the slightest insolence. If we did, we were lost. Our own rule was to hit a man as soon as he opened his mouth—hit him hard, hit him with anything. A broom-handle, end-on, in the face, had a very sobering effect. But that was not all. Such a man must be made an example of; so the next rule was to wade right in and follow him up. Of course, one was sure that every hall-man in sight ...
— The Road • Jack London
... who pauses every other minute from his task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pavement in front of it, to tell another apprentice similarly employed, how hot it will be to-day, or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes, and his left resting on the broom, gazing at the 'Wonder,' or the 'Tally-ho,' or the 'Nimrod,' or some other fast coach, till it is out of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the passengers on the outside of the fast coach, and thinking of the old red brick house 'down in the country,' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... never housed and nursed, I, for a witch had ne'er been cursed. To you I owe, that crowds of boys Worry me with eternal noise; Straws laid across, my pace retard, The horse-shoe's nailed (each threshold's guard), 30 The stunted broom the wenches hide, For fear that I should up and ride; They stick with pins my bleeding seat, And bid me show my secret teat.' 'To hear you prate would vex a saint; Who hath most reason of complaint?' Replies a cat. 'Let's come to proof. Had we ne'er starved ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... length, scarce longer than one's Finger. His Pipe smoak'd out with aweful Grace, With aspect grave and solemn pace; The reverend Sire walks to a Chest, Of all his Furniture the best, Closely confined within a Room, Which seldom felt the weight of Broom; From thence he lugs a Cag of Rum, And nodding to me, thus begun: I find, says he, you don't much care For this our Indian Country Fare; But let me tell you, Friend of mine, You may be glad of it in time, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... her mind—"If you marry him you will be undoubtedly eternally lost," and her very soul cried out that they were folly. Why should she be eternally lost? What cobwebs were these, cobwebs of an old brain preoccupied with shadows, dusty things to be swept away at the first touch of Nature's vigorous broom? Indeed she thought it far more likely that she would be eternally found. But she was ashamed of herself, ashamed of all she had done, ashamed of the disgraceful way she had treated this man, terribly disillusioned, terribly out of conceit with herself, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the silence. It did not in a single tone disturb the heavenly harmony of the hour, for it was the voice of the orphan dependent of the house, Miriam Haven, whose dark-bright eye and graceful form glimmered, as though she were the spirit of all the softened beauty of the scene, from amid the broom-corn, where she was busy in one of the duties of the season. Well might she sing the song of lament, for her people had gone down far away in the sea, and her lover—where ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... half a dozen winters, two or three times a week upon him, we shall know more as to his digestion. Still that dinner was enjoyable. Beginning with the suspicious salmon, the statesman with the brush-broom head, the one who had overthrown Louis-Philippe without suspecting it, started to explain how, if they had listened to his advice, this constitutional king's dynasty would yet be upon the throne; and at the moment when the wretched butler poured out his most ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... charming. Do you know that he will soon be five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who had on knee-caps, and he said, "What has he got on his knees?" He is a charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom about the room, like a carriage, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... old woman tossed up in a basket, Nineteen times as high as the moon; Where she was going I couldn't but ask it For in her hand she carried a broom. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... 's to leave London, Mr. Woodseer. I've seen Kit Ines. And she 's to have one of the big houses to her use. I guessed Kit Ines was his broom. He defends it because he has his money to make—and be a dirty broom for a fortune! But any woman's sure of decent handling with Kit Ines—not to speak of lady. He and a mate guard the house. An old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cold, woodeny room, the neglected tavern, the autumn night wind coming down the chimney and starting the fire, all seemed instinctive, like him, with mischief, as if Patty Cannon's soul flew astraddle of a broom and led a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... description of this animal; what follows is the result of my own observation upon that species of the insect called a house spider. I perceived about four years ago a large spider in one corner of my room, making its web; and tho the maid frequently leveled her fatal broom against the labors of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to prevent its destruction; and I may say it more than paid me by the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... country. Good-night, and bad luck to you, Old Mog." Notwithstanding the words they used, there was terror in the voices of most of the children. Some of them shouted, "She's coming after us! The witch is coming after us! She's mounting her broom, and out she'll ride. Run—run—run!" On this the urchins shrieked louder, and ran faster and faster down the slope. One boy, more daring than the rest, and superior in appearance to most of them, lingered behind, and finding a stone remaining in his pocket of those with which he ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... flourishes, in the first fair mornings of the spring, when the birds were returning thanks to their Maker for the coming again of the seed-time, and the busy bee goeth forth from her cell, to gather honey from the flowers of the field, and the broom of the hill, and the blue-bells and gowans, which Nature, with a gracious and a gentle hand, scatters in the valley, as she walketh forth in her beauty, to testify to the goodness of the Father of ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber-room: I wiped the dust from off the top, While Molly mopp'd it with a mop, And brushed it with a broom. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... belfries, of the eaves, vibrate. The cold breeze plays at the cross-streets, and amuses itself by twisting the stems of the geraniums and pinks that flame on the balconies. Everywhere there is an odour of cistus and of burning broom, which comes from the ovens where the bread is baked, and an odour of lavender that comes from the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... are among our common surnames. Hill also appears as Hull and is easily disguised in compounds, e.g. Brummel for broom-hill, Tootell and Tuttle for Toothill, a name found in many localities and meaning a hill on which a watch was kept. It is connected with the verb to tout, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... the vigorous broom of the north wind was sweeping the broken storm-clouds across a gray sky. The drive to the yacht club was ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... turning sideways. On the landing at the top, outside the closed door and waiting for visitors, sits the pig—a pig larger, better fed and by one shade of filthiness cleaner than other pigs. Don Pietro Casale has been seen to sweep his pig with a broken willow broom, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... it, an' there if he doesn't go and make his web in a corner of a great big gould pictur' frame. Well, there he sat, the poor fellow, but ne'er a fly at all come next or nigh him, an' by-an'-by in walks the housemaid wid her great big broom, an' ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... properly interpreted and applied would spiritualize a broom and duster and all the utensils of a home or the tools ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... was, I had both. I've described you the charms and grace of each, and when I add that both were elegant housekeepers, ye'll admit that my dilemma was greater than ever. They both handled the broom to perfection; they could knock a chap clane across the cabin and out of the window before ye could know what was coming. Me mither used to say it was the housekeeping qualities that should decide, and she told me to call upon 'em sometime when they was n't expecting me, and obsarve the manner ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... but a very short time to clear the path; the dust was so light that one sweep of the broom cleared it away. When they got to the farther end they returned to examine the floor. For four or five feet from the cistern the rock had been evidently untouched, except to cut off any projecting points. Then there was a clear line running across ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... knewed—jever hear such foolishness! I'll take the broom to this floor. You go along to bed now. Didn't I hear you ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... what could be more lovely than the sunny days: pure, hot, blue days among the mountain foothills: irregular, steep little hills half wild with twiggy brown oak-trees and marshes and broom heaths, half cultivated, in a wild, scattered fashion. Lovely, in the lost hollows beyond a marsh, to see Ciccio slowly ploughing with two great white oxen: lovely to go with Pancrazio down to the wild scrub that ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... heretical? who dares call me rabbi? who dares call me Scotus? Spider! spider! yea, thou hast one corner left; I espy thee, and my broom shall reach ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the hospital only a few days, used to think he was deaf, since he failed to hear their requests, and they did not like to yell at him, out of consideration for their comrades in the adjoining beds. Nor was he a success at sweeping the ward, since he did it with the broom in one hand and a copy of the Petit Parisien in the other—in fact, when he sat down on a bed away at the end and frankly gave himself up to a two-year-old copy of Le Rire, sent out with a lot of old magazines for ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... confusion of social pleasures and pains; to have at your door the good and evil of it all; and yet to be able in half an hour to gallop away and leave it a hundred miles, a hundred years, behind, and to look at the tufted broom glowing on a lonely tower-top in the still blue air, and the pale pink asphodels trembling none the less for the stillness, and the shaggy-legged shepherds leaning on their sticks in motionless brotherhood with the heaps of ruin, and the scrambling ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... in the warm dusk by the edge of a little dip of heather sheltered by a tuft of broom, when suddenly they heard the purring sound of the night-jar, and immediately after the bird itself lurched past them, and as it disappeared into the darkness they caught several times the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 148. SPARTIUM Scoparium. BROOM.—Is a very ornamental plant, and is used for making besoms. It was once considered as a specific in the cure of dropsy, but is now ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... with anxious delight to the coming of court week. Every preparation was made for the judge and lawyers. Beds were aired and the bugs hunted out. Saturday previous to the coming Monday was a busy day in setting all things to rights, and the scrubbing-broom was heard in consonance with calls to the servants to be busy and careful, as Sally and Nancy sprang to their work with a will. With garments tucked up to their knees, they splashed the water and suds over the floors, strangers to the cleansing element until then for months ago. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Batho, duellethe at the cytee of Orda. And treuly no gode man scholde not duellen in that contre. For the lond and the contree is not worthi houndes to dwelle inne. It were a gode contree to sowen inne thristelle and breres and broom and thornes; and for no other thing is it not good. Natheless there is gode londe in sum place; but it is pure litille, as men seyn. I have not ben in that contree, ne be tho weyes: but I have ben at other londes, that marchen to tho contrees; and in the lond of Russye, and in the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... dressy set over heer." Her husband was leaving the room, and she waited till he had closed the door after him. "I want to talk to you like a mother, John," she said, sitting down near him and holding the bundle of broom between her knees. "The truth is, I've had a sight o' worry over you. I often lie awake at night thinkin' about you, an' wonderin' ef yore ma wouldn't blame me ef she wus alive fer not lookin' atter you more. ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... her and came to pull the tree out where she could see it, and, sure enough, there was a dust-pan tied on with a red tape, and a whisk-broom with another red tape, and a little sweeping-cap with a red bow, some gingham aprons and white aprons, and brown towels and red-and-white towels, and dust-cloths, all with red M's in their corners; and put at the top was a little book tied on the tree with a big red bow. Her mother took this ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly; that too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... signified the city of Sparta, and also a kind of broom used for weaving rough matting, which served for the beds of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... not church, however, and briskly applying a light whisk-broom to the coat, she hummed one of the songs her father taught her when he was in his buoyant or in his sentimental moods, and that was a fair proportion of the time. It used to perplex her the thrilling buoyancy and the creepy melancholy which alternately mastered her father; but as a child she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... about, it was such a very exasperating one all around. One thing after another happened to make things go wrong, till it fairly seemed as if some evil genius had affairs under control. The door opened and a sweet round face, framed by a sweeping cap, appeared. A graceful young girl armed with broom and dustpan stepped lightly across the kitchen, deposited her broom in the corner, and proceeded to empty the contents of the pan in ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... said Harriet. "And here is the old broom I promised you, and the felt hat. Do you know how to build a snow man, ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... stream he had been unaware of when crossing the bed itself, now began again. The Wadi went rushing past before the broom of moonlight. Again, the enormous and the tiny combined in one single strange impression. For, through this conception of great movement, stirred also a roving, delicate touch that his imagination felt as bird-like. Behind the solid mass of the Desert's ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... as the Furze, Broom, Laburnum, etc., are also opened by Bees. The petals lock more or less into one another, and the flower remains at first closed. When, however, the insect alighting on it presses down the keel, the flower bursts open, and dusts ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... he soon found, that, though no one stopped to tell him "why" he must not come in, it was quite true that he might not. The first who saw him was the cook, who had a broom ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... this inconvenience Captain Calver devised an arrangement not unlike that employed by the coral- fishers. He fastened half a dozen swabs, such as are used for drying decks, to the dredge. A swab is something like what a birch-broom would be if its twigs were made of long, coarse, hempen yarns. These dragged along after the dredge over the surface of the mud, and entangled the creatures living there—multitudes of which, twisted up in the strands of the swabs, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... present outward woman stands to me in lieu of the housemaid's broom, and the united authority of the Captain and Mrs. Crompton make up the mistress between them. And the worst of it all is, that though I have to endure the tyranny, I have not got the follower. It is as hard upon Mr. Shand as ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... hand, to hunt for "Venice, Her Spirit," in the Pescaria; Miss Gould to lie down on her bed and recover from lunch; the curate to take the air and photographs for his magic lantern lectures to be delivered in the parish-room at home; and Mrs. Johnson to find a feather broom. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland, and the corsairs of Algiers and the Levant; in Cromwell's time, when Robert Blake swept the Narrow Seas of all the keels of a Dutch Admiral who insultingly carried a broom at his fore-mast; it is not a dumb thing that, at a period deemed so glorious to the British Navy, these Articles ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... withered grass stood out upon the hill-top; the furze bushes were black, and now and then a black shiver crossed the snow as the wind drove flurries of frozen particles before it. The sound was that of a broom sweeping—sweeping. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... "'gainst witchcraft much avayling." Rue, likewise, which entered so largely into magic rites, was once much in request as an antidote against such practices; and nowadays, when worn on the person in conjunction with agrimony, maiden-hair, broom-straw, and ground ivy, it is said in the Tyrol to confer fine vision, and to point out the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... like a luminous dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes, sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on his broom like a grenadier on his musket; or the pauper wayfarer, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Most of us aren't married, and don't intend to. No, sir, we've no use for a missis rustling round with a long-handled broom on the track of us, and I'm going to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... truss of straw, covered with a rug and a thin old blanket, which had constituted a wretched substitute for a bed. That, however, which alarmed Barney most, was an old broomstick with a stump of worn broom attached to the end of it, as it stood in an opposite corner. This constituted the whole furniture of ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in the distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave of the sky. The bare needle-like ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... wanting the usual gentle poetry of flowers; for white iris leaned its fairy pavilion over the black void like a pale-cheeked princess from the window of some dark enchanted castle, and scarlet geranium and golden broom and crimson gladiolus waved and glowed in the shifting beams of the sunlight. Also there was in this little spot what forms the charm of Italian gardens always,—the sweet song and prattle of waters. A clear mountain-spring burst through the rock on one side of the little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... not observed it, nor did he seem to see the red-headed canvasman striding his way. Mr. Kennedy, the keeper, was at the far end of the line sweeping off the baby elephant with a broom, while Phil and Teddy were sitting on a pile of straw back of Emperor discussing ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Mrs. Comstock took the broom and swept the moth out of the door. Then she got down on her knees and carefully examined the steps, logs and the earth of the flower beds at each side. She found the place where the creature had emerged from the ground, and the ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... Lent. S. John the Baptist's Day is one of their principal feasts. On the Eve the shepherds light fires on all the hills. On the morning they swim for the first time in the year, or wash from head to foot, and also wash all their animals. The girls and boys make garlands of flowers and broom, set them on their heads, and dance "with devotional joy." This is no doubt part of the ancient heathen festival of midsummer. Another festival which has nothing to do with the Church is the "Fasching" or "Pust," on Monday during ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... welcome inasmuch as Blake had previously suffered a signal defeat (28 Nov., 1652) at the hands of the Dutch admirals and had himself been wounded. Moreover Tromp had been so elated at his victory that in bravado he had fixed a broom to his masthead, in token of his resolution to sweep the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Burney's, a Mr. Bewley, known—in Norfolk at least—as the "philosopher of Massingham." When Burney at last gained the honour of a personal interview, he wished to procure some "relic" of Johnson for his friend. He cut off some bristles from a hearth-broom in the doctor's chambers, and sent them in a letter to his fellow-enthusiast. Long afterwards Johnson was pleased to hear of this simple-minded homage, and not only sent a copy of the Lives of the Poets to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the Battery. Set the battery on the tear down rack. See that the vent plugs are all tight in place. Then clean the outside of the battery. Remove the greater part of the dirt with a brush, old whisk-broom, or a putty knife. Then put the battery in the water, using a stiff bristled brush to remove whatever dirt was not removed in the first place. A four-inch paint brush is satisfactory for this work, and will last a year ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... down by one on the table, the clean floor, — yes," — and rising Rufus even went and looked into the closet. There was the little stack of wood and parcel of kindling, likewise in order; there stood Winthrop's broom in a corner; and there hung Winthrop's few clothes that were not folded away in his trunk. Mother Hubbard's department was in the same spare and thoroughly kept style; and Rufus came back thoughtfully to his seat before ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... contracted valley, lying between the rocky wall which divided the island, and a chain of sandy hills, which hid the sea and sheltered the valley from the wind. Fritz and I ascended one of these hills, on which a few pines and broom were growing, and perceived beyond them a barren tract, stretching to the sea, where the coral reefs rose to the level of the water, and appeared to extend far into the sea. Any navigators, sailing along these shores, would pronounce the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... oesophagus for the purpose of dislodging the foreign body. There is always danger of the whip becoming broken off, and the broken part lodging in the oesophagus. Neither should such rigid objects as a broom or rake handle be introduced, because of the danger from serious injury to the walls of the pharynx and oesophagus. The flexible probang, which is usually made of spiral wire covered with leather, is a very useful instrument to relieve choke when in the hands of an experienced ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... one midsummer day twenty years ago. A great longing seized me; I was tempted to set off at once, and find again that spot under the high elm trees, where, as I smoked a delicious pipe, I heard about me the crack, crack, crack of broom-pods bursting in the glorious heat of the noontide sun. Had I acted upon the impulse, what chance was there of my enjoying such another hour as that which my memory cherished? No, no; it is not the place that I remember; it is the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... and Marcia's father listened to these words with the patience of people who had heard them many times before; but at the end Olive glanced at Halleck's downcast face with fond pride in the satisfaction she imagined they must give him. The old man ruminated upon a bit of broom straw, and absently let the little girl catch by his hands, as she ran to and fro between him and her mother while her mother talked. Halleck made a formless sound in his throat, for answer, and Marcia ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... lang at the ha', Through the mist o' my tears, Where the kind lassie lived, I had run wi' for years; E'en the glens where we sat, Wi' their broom-covered knowes, Took a haud on this heart That ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... hours wore on. So languid, in fact, was his resolution that at one moment he thought he would just sthreel home again without going any farther; if he went aisy everybody would have cleared out of Kilmacrone before he got back. But at this time he was sitting among some broom-bushes, under which last year's withered black pods were strewn, and he determined that if there were an odd number of seeds in the first one he opened he would go on to Tullykillagin. There were nine in it, and he logically ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... back to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. She did not dare scrub the porch floor for fear that it would not dry in time, but she swept it carefully and spread down the rug. Then one by one, and making a separate trip each time, she carried out the table and the chairs. With a passing sigh for ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... Come away! come along! The way is wide, the way is long, 170 But what is that for a Bedlam throng? Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom. The child in the cradle lies strangled at home, And the mother is clapping ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Without a summons e'er to quit, From old Hippocrates. The spider, on the lofty ceiling, As if she had a life-lease feeling. Wove wide her cunning toils, Soon rich with insect spoils. A maid destroy'd them as she swept the room: Repair'd, again they felt the fatal broom. The wretched creature, every day, From house and home must pack away. At last, her courage giving out, She went to seek her sister gout, And in the field descried her, Quite starved: more evils did betide ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... organ-grinder, without seeking to found any argument on the prevalence of the jew's trump, there is surely one instrument that may be said to be national in the fullest acceptance of the word. The herdboy in the broom, already musical in the days of Father Chaucer, startles (and perhaps pains) the lark with this exiguous pipe; and in the hands of the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of the tent," called Hazelton, as Dick started inside to use a broom there. "You fellows are the providers, and I can do the little housework ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... naught to do but learn of the Black Man now; they do say he rides his ferule and bunch of twigs high up in the air, like Mistress Hibbins used her broom-stick," cried William Bartholomew, the sneak of ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the city are ringing in the night, High above the gardens are the houses full of light, On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free, And the broom is blowing bonnie ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... on the sofa, a great low red shadow in the depths of the room near the window. She leaned her broom beside her. Her dust cloth fell to the floor and was ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... shut within my mew, A-painting for the great man, saints and saints And saints again. I could not paint all night— Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. {50} There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song— 'Flower o' the broom, Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! Flower o' the quince, I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? Flower o' the thyme'—and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter Like the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... only way to reform is to put a good honest Democratic president in in 1884; then turn on the hose and give him a good hickory broom and tell him to sweep the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... out the sentence. And then, too, somewhere else in the palace, an unknown Lombard master painted that fresco of Italy as a fair queen, with the names of the chief cities embroidered on her robes, and the Moro standing at her side, brushing the dust off her skirts with the scopetta or little broom, that favourite emblem which appears in so many illuminated books of the day. On the wall below the painting, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... light in which to see the last of the hill. On that evening, I remember, the reds and saffrons in the sky were of an astonishing richness. The sea wall, the bastions, the faces of the great rocks, the yellow broom that sprang from the clefts therein, were dyed as in a carmine bath. In that mighty glow of color, all things took on something of their old, their stupendous splendor. The giant walls were paved with brightness. The town, climbing the hill, assumed the proportions of a mighty citadel; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... watch 'em allus, when you know they're weak an' ill, Coz th' minute that yer back is turned they'll labor fit to kill. Th' house ain't cleaned to suit 'em an' they seem to fret an' fume 'Less they're busy doin' somethin' with a mop or else a broom; An' it ain't no use to scold 'em an' it ain't no use to swear, Coz th' next time they will do it jes' ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... deem myself unpardonable, were I to be the cause of so much mischief." "Then tell me sincerely," said he, "how came you by this wound." I answered, "That it was occasioned by the inadvertency of a broom-seller upon an ass, who coming behind me, while he was looking another way, his ass came against me with so much violence, that I fell down, and hurt my cheek upon some glass." "If that is the case," said my husband, "to-morrow ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... joining him, and the two looked the ground over, inch by inch, from the place where Mr. Deane had set foot to ground in alighting from his carriage to the exact spot where he had stood when he had finally seized hold of the horse. But no ruby. Then Harrison (that is my son's name) sent for a broom and went over the place again, sweeping aside the surface snow and examining carefully the ground beneath, but with no better results than before. No ruby could be found. My son came to me panting. Mrs. Burton ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... showed himself in the street all the relatives of the criminals got after him. The wasps stung him, a game-cock pecked at him, a beetle nipped him, a dog barked at him, an old woman ran after him with a broom, a wooden-legged soldier pursued him with a sword, a rat gave chase to him, while a rabbit took down his shot-gun and cried out, fiercely, that he would blow the top of that old lion's head off, if he could only get a ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... come over Nelly!" Mrs. Williams would say to her daughter. "She's not the same girl she was when she came here, and she seems to grow lazier every day. Well, it's the way with them all. A new broom sweeps clean." ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices. There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of it as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has ever been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the fact. It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the Academy of Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of the light by the benches, and the impossibility ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... so pleased that he undertook at once some primary steps in the process of purification. He cut a number of small, straight boughs, tied them together with a piece of bark, the leaves at the head thus forming a kind of broom, and went to work. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... preclude the necessity of my speaking. I felt I could do this well and successfully. I determined to try the experiment upon this old lady. I walked quietly up to her, took the shutters out of her hands and laid them in their proper places. I then took a broom and began sweeping away the water which had accumulated in front of her cottage, and seeing a kettle inside the door, I walked gravely into the house, took it, and filled it at a pump close by. The old woman was dumb-struck. Not a word did she say, but stood looking on with mute amazement, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... appear to be a man over 30 years of age, and a large proportion were from 15 to perhaps 22 or 23. They had all the look of veterans, worn, stain'd, impassive, and a certain unbent, lounging gait, carrying in addition to their regular arms and knapsacks, frequently a frying-pan, broom, &c. They were all of pleasant physiognomy; no refinement, nor blanch'd with intellect, but as my eye pick'd them, moving along, rank by rank, there did not seem to be a single repulsive, brutal or ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... blankets; *one quilted bed-cover; one chair; one tumbler; *one trunk; one account-book; and will unite with his room- mate in purchasing, for their common use, one looking-glass, one wash-stand, one wash-basin, one pail, and one broom, and shall he required to have one table, of the pattern that may ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... She was the nearest approach to the cheery orderlies of those far away days in France, I had struck since I came over. Her smiling face, as she appeared at the door every morning with broom and coalscuttle, was a tonic in itself. I used to keep her talking just as long as I could—she was ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... chaise in which poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber-room: I wiped the dust from off the top, While molly mopp'd it with a mop, And brush'd it with a broom. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... bait tub, a boat hook and a "swabbing-out" broom, and lashed them all together in a sort of bridle. Then he attached the Flying Fish's mooring cable to the contrivance and paid it out for a hundred feet or more, while the storm-battered craft drifted steadily backward. Instead, however, of lying beam on to the big sea, she ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... he was afraid that if he sat down he would fall into the odd detached kind of stupor in which he had spent so large a part of his life, he continued to sweep for two or three hours. The station platform was built of rough boards and Hugh's arms were very powerful. The broom he was using began to go to pieces. Bits of it flew about and after an hour's work the platform looked more uncleanly than when he began. Sarah Shepard came to the door of her house and stood watching. She was about to call to him and to scold him again for his stupidity ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... opened the door, and a colored servant, half dressed, with a broom in her hand, came slouching down the passage. Beatrice turned and fled out of the greasy, noisome atmosphere, down the wooden, uneven steps, out into the ugly street. She turned toward the nearest elevated as though ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which must, of course, be abandoned. Nay, if no journey is to be taken, a visitor, perhaps, comes unexpectedly; the little naturalist's apartment must be vacated on a few minutes notice, and the labour of years falls a sacrifice, in an instant, to the housemaid's undistinguishing broom. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... found that best of bake-shops. I was going quietly along, when the sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as they rushed ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... afternoon she decided to clean the chicken house, one of the tasks in which her strange nature delighted. To splash about with hose and broom, tip over the littered drinking trough, wash cobwebs from the windows with a well-directed stream of water; in these things Martie found some inexplicable satisfaction. She went upstairs after luncheon to get into old clothes, came down half an hour later with her best ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... feel, while he climbed with careful footsteps up the rugged path to Dinas, lighted only by the moon, whose beams were continually obscured by the flying clouds. Pushing his way between the furze and broom bushes, he was careful to let no stray branch catch Valmai's face or hair, and as he reached the farm-yard in the rear of the house, he was delighted to feel a strong and swift motion ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... take a big hunt manana. Not me. That horse was a blind. They pottered round tryin' to find some trace of Foy—blind fools!—till I met up with 'em. I'd done gathered in that mizzable red-headed Joe Cowan on a give-out horse, claim-in' he'd been chousin' after broom-tails. He'd planted Foy's horse, I reckon. But it can't be proved, so I let him go. He'll have to walk in; that's ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... masterly keeper of her box of a house. Her one living-room never seemed to have in it any of the dust which the friction of life with inanimate matter produces. She swept, and there seemed to be no dirt to go before the broom; she cleaned, and one could see no difference. She was like an artist so perfect that he has apparently no art. To-day she got out a mixing bowl and a board, and rolled some pies, and there was no more flour upon her than upon her daughter who was doing finer work. Nanny ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Oh—Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round by Camp Mount, and home through the meadows. But it was very dull. He hardly saw a single person. He had much rather ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... couldst see my courtyard! It seems carpeted with snow, so many are the cherry-blossoms on its pavement. They say I am untidy that I permit it to be untouched by broom or brush. It is cleaned and spotless all the year, save at this the time of cherry-blossoms, when 'tis ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... before some such occasion of clerical entertainment, the little housewife, supported by Esther with broom and a great array of mops, would wait upon the parson in his study and order him away to his walk in the orchard,—an order which the poor man never ventured to resist; but, taking perhaps a pocket volume of Doddridge, or of Cowper,—the only poet he habitually read,—he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... hour's time lost to his trade. But life does not stand still while one is wishing, and so the Tailor did that for which there was neither remedy nor substitute; and came down this morning as other mornings to the pail and broom. When he came in he looked round, and started, and rubbed his eyes; looked round again, and rubbed them harder: then went up to the fire and held out his hand, (warm certainly)—then up to the table and smelt the mushrooms, (esculent fungi beyond a doubt)—handled the loaf, stared at the open ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... supply the distinguished literary element. Senator March represents the conservative Democrat who is too good for the present depraved condition of his State. If you want to immortalize yourself, invent a political broom. Senator Eustis: he thinks the only fault with the Senate is that it is too good-natured and does not say No often enough. Who are the Representatives? The only Speaker, the immortal Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means—don't ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... boys lost no time in walking over to the other side of the city, where Abe Blower lived. They found the front windows of the house open and an elderly woman was sweeping off the front stoop with a broom. ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... a devoted elderly creature, a sort of cross between a charwoman and a housekeeper. I was not yet eighteen when I first went to Paris, to study under my cousin, the eminent painter, Henri Lehmann. At his studio I found Virginie installed as the presiding genius of the establishment, using in turn broom or tub, needle, grill or frying-pan as the occasion might require; the wide range of her powers I further extended by making a truly remarkable mesmeric subject of her. My debut in Paris was that of the ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the garden hedge; so it drives stray human creatures to the door. A third came—an old gipsy woman—still stout and hearty, with green fresh brooms to sell. We bought some brooms—one of them was left on the kitchen floor, and the tame rabbit nibbled it; it proved to be heather. The true broom is as green and succulent in appearance in January as June. She would see the 'missis.' 'Bless you, my good lady, it be weather, bean't it? I hopes you'll never know what it be to want, my good lady. Ah, well, you looks good-tempered ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... round beehive ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave of the sky. The bare needle-like ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... street. Then she shook herself, and, hands on hips, danced a little defiant jig in her sabots as she went back to get the horse. Another girl came across a bridge. She was precisely of the opposite type, slender, creamy-skinned, and delicate-featured. She carried a brand-new broom over her shoulder through that desolation, and bore herself with the pride and ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... was no help to be got from her old servants, and that the best thing she could do was to mount on her broom and set off in pursuit of the children. And as the children ran they heard the sound of the broom sweeping the ground close behind them, so instantly they threw the handkerchief down over their shoulder, and in a moment a deep, broad river ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... recent agricultural fairs a farmer exhibited 109 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and cereals. These included the best qualities of Yellow Nansemond sweet potatoes, mammoth melons of all varieties, eggplant, sorghum and syrup cane, broom-corn, tobacco, grapes, cotton, peanuts, and many other things, some of which do not attain to so high a degree of excellence elsewhere farther north than the Carolinas. Peaches, apples, and prunes of superior ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... piece of pasteboard, but could find none. I told him a round stick would do as well as anything. Thereupon he went to the wood-shed, and I heard the saw go, and he soon returned to the dining-room (where I did the work), whittling off the end of a piece of broom-handle. I remarked to him that he need not whittle off the edges. 'Oh, well,' said he, 'I thought I would like to have it nice.' When I had successfully cast the mould of the right hand, I began the left, pausing ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... broom, she advanced resolutely to the attack, and an instant later, to my loud distress and to Samuel's unspeakable horror, she had whisked him across the kitchen and through the back door ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... bestowed—have they not all been converted into poisons? Who dares to drink a light summer wine now? Are not all vegetables abjured, peaches thrown to the pigs, and strawberries ventured upon only by little boys who sweep the streets, with the broom in one hand and the pottle in the other? Are not melons rank poison, and cucumbers sudden death? And in the winter, sir, are we better off? Instead of the wholesome frosts of olden days, purifying the air and the soil, and bracing up our nerves, what have we but the influenza, which ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... won't be one Texan in arms a month from now! I'm willin' to give my word that here are six of us who will be in arms then, roarin' an' rippin' an' t'arin'! They'll sweep the country clean, will they? They'll need a bigger broom for that job than any that was ever ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an' a spar' rib or so would have been all you'd ever found of him agin. I've never yit laid eyes on the man I couldn't settle with a single sweep, an' when a lone woman comes to wantin' a protector, I've never seen the husband that could hold a candle to a good stout broom. That's what I said to Jinnie when she got herself engaged to Fred Boxley. 'Married or single,' I said, 'gal, wife, or widow, a ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... doll out of a good-sized cork—one from a Champagne bottle is best, because broader at the base; into this base insert a number of stout bristles, as in Fig. 1. If you can not procure bristles, fine broom-corn will answer the purpose. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... I have to cut a stick of blue beech to make a broom for sweeping the house, sister of mine, and that is for your use, Miss Kate, and in the next place, I have to find, if possible, a piece of rock elm or hickory for axe handles: so now you have the reason why I take the axe ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... outward woman stands to me in lieu of the housemaid's broom, and the united authority of the Captain and Mrs. Crompton make up the mistress between them. And the worst of it all is, that though I have to endure the tyranny, I have not got the follower. It is as hard upon Mr. Shand as ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Andalusia. My mind is suddenly ablaze with its sunshine, with its opulent colour, luminous and soft; I think of the cities, the white cities bathed in light; of the desolate wastes of sand, with their dwarf palms, the broom in flower. And in my ears I hear the twang of the guitar, the rhythmical clapping of hands and the castanets, as two girls dance in the sunlight on a holiday. I see the crowds going to the bull-fight, intensely living, many-coloured. And a thousand scents are wafted across my memory; ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the field toward the group in the woods came the girl. Off to the side of these woods were extensive fields of broom straw that lay outside the course. But they looked "birdy," those fields, and the girl ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... McWriggler, his western friend, Ald. Toper, the president of the association, Rivers, Bottlesby and Capt. Flannigan, were elevated into an open "bus," and drawn by their enthusiastic admirers through the principal streets of Bayton. They had hoisted a broom in the front of their vehicle as ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... woman went up in a basket, Seventy times as high as the moon; What she did there I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?" "Only to sweep the cobwebs off the sky, And I shall be back ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... ornamentation. Extreme cleanliness smiles at the observer from the most hidden corners. In the little garden it reaches such a pitch that it hardly dares to smile. The garden does not look as if it were cleaned with a hoe and broom; it looks as if it had been brushed. The little beds that stand out so sharply against the yellow gravel of the walks look, not as if they had been dug by a cord, but as if they were drawn on the ground with a ruler and compasses, the box edging ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... doing is worth doing well. (To Rock.) Look now at the marks of your boots upon the ground. Get up out of that till I'll bustle it with the broom! ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... started on a small steamer, to go down the Clyde. It has been a very, very exciting day to us. It is so stimulating to be where every name is a poem. For instance, we start at the Broomielaw. This Broomielaw is a kind of wharf, or landing. Perhaps in old times it was a haugh overgrown with broom, from whence it gets its name; this is only ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... 27: Laneham gives a splendid list of Romances and Old Ballads possessed by this said CAPTAIN COX; and tells us, moreover, that "he had them all at his fingers ends." Among the ballads we find "Broom broom on Hil; So Wo is me begon twlly lo; Over a Whinny Meg; Hey ding a ding; Bony lass upon Green; My bony on gave me a bek; By a bank as I lay; and two more he had fair wrapt up in parchment, and bound with a whip cord." Edit. 1784, p. 36-7-8. Ritson, in his Historical Essay on Scottish ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... office of the editor of "The Financial Pilot" had fallen into a state of sordid dilapidation. If the janitor had received orders never to use a broom or a duster there, he obeyed them strictly. Disorder and dirt reigned supreme. Papers and manuscripts lay in all directions; and on the broad sofas the mud from the boots of all those who had lounged upon them had been drying for ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... who backed out of danger—the woman had reached for the broom by the wall—"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new preacher; I just dropped ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... should strike the railroad at Follonica; and we merely asked of intermediate places that they should not detain us. We dined in Grossetto at an inn of the Larthian period,—a cold inn and a damp, which seemed never to have been swept since the broom dropped from the grasp of the last Etrurian chambermaid,—and we ate with the two-pronged iron forks of an extinct civilization. All the while we dined, a boy tried to kindle a fire to warm us, and beguiled his incessant failures with stories ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... stood there, wild-eyed and tearful, a thought made its way through the kinky hair into her bewildered brain. She darted back into the house, and reappeared with a broom. ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... Mrs. Mason came hurrying into the room. Not seeing anyone there but their cat, who was standing right beside the dough, they of course thought it was she that had caused all this trouble. So Diana grabbed up a broom and would have pounded her to a jelly in her anger at spoiling all her nice bread dough, but pussy was too quick for her. She saw what was coming and flew out the door and hid under the currant bushes in the garden, from which place she ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... "temple sweeper" goes over the ground around the altar with a broom; then the regular priest, a dignified gray-headed man with a long ungirt purple chiton, and a heavy olive garland, comes forward bearing a basin of holy water. This basin is duly passed to the whole company as it stands in a ring, and each in turn dips ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... beside a heap of half-read books, marked newspapers, clippings and letters, a welter of concerns which he refused to have removed by the broom of the caretaker, and now and again as he wished to show me something he rose and hobbled a step or two to fish a book or a letter out of the pile. He was quite lame but could move without a crutch. He talked mainly of his good friends in Boston and elsewhere, and alluded to his enemies ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... pitched their camp beneath a gum tree upon the edge of the wood. It was October, and the gum was the colour of blood. Behind it rolled the autumn forest; before it stretched a level of broom-sedge, bright ochre in the light of the setting sun. The road ran across this golden plain, and disappeared in a league-deep wood of pine. From an invisible clearing came a cawing of crows. The sky was cloudless, and the evening wind had not begun to blow. The small, shining leaves of the gum ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... preparing our coffee." Then I would moderate my steps in order to get my breath a little, while I scanned the little windows and laughed with anticipated pleasure. The door opens, and Mother Gredel, with her woollen petticoat and a big broom in her hand, turns round and exclaims: "Here he is! here he is!" Then Catherine runs up, always more and more beautiful, with her little blue cap, and says: "Ah! that is good; I was expecting thee!" How happy she ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... and her rival, Lady Binks, formed the attraction. But whatever may have been the gallant things he was saying, they were soon ended in the bustle consequent upon the sudden rushing in of the brave Captain McTurk, followed by the enraged Meg Dods, with no less a weapon in her hand than a broom-stick, with which she was striving to belabor the shoulders of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... quiet a little village to-day, the neighbourhood of Ockley has seen some wild doings. Holmbury Hill, to the north, was once one of the principal settlements of the "Heathers," or broom squires, who still survive, a more respectable and a weaker folk, under Hindhead and elsewhere. Here one of their chief occupations was smuggling; indeed, the range of hills round Ewhurst and Holmbury Common served as a kind of halfway house for the gentlemen who were riding with silk ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... is just nothing else to do, but turn to on the beds now, wrong end first, but next year you'll know," she answered me with indulgent compromise in her voice. "And I guess we'll find some broom and mop work yet to be done. Come on, Mrs. Tillett. I guess Nancy can mind the baby ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of twelve years of age, used to fall into fits of sleep, and afterwards she told her parents, and the judge, how an old woman and her daughter, riding on a broom-stick, had come and taken her out with them. The daughter sat foremost, the old woman behind, the little maid between them. They went away through the roof of the house, over the adjoining houses and the town gate, to a village some way off. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to go to court in. My sister said I could not take my brother's suit. He told me to take it and bring it home in good condition at night. My sister is supposed to be the plaintiff, but she did not make the complaint. The landlady came in and hit me three times in the head with a broom. My sister called her in and then she threw a piece of wood after me. Sister started crying, but she did not get hit. The landlady got hit. When I fell down I striked her with my head and hurt my head bad. I think I hit ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... detail. On one particular occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman and three other persons, "No woman was ever more miserable than I during my married life." And at another she had said, "All new, all fine! A new broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only loved ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... wot it is," said the night-watchman, trying to sneer— "pure jealousy." He had left his broom for a hurried half-pint at the "Bull's Head"—left it leaning in a negligent attitude against the warehouse-wall; now, lashed to the top of the crane at the jetty end, it pointed its soiled bristles towards the ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... surgeon had intrusted the task of clearing away the dirt to certain men. A sorry job they made of it. For accumulated nastiness that waiting room was an Augean stable and the two soldiers who dawdled about in it with brooms lacked woefully in the qualities of Hercules. Putting a broom in a man's hands is the best argument in favor of woman's suffrage that I know of, anyhow. A third man who helped at chores in the transformed lunch room had gathered up and piled together in a heap upon the ground near us a bushel or so of used ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... laments (and rightly) the absence in the tropic forests of such grand masses of colour as are supplied by a heather moor, a furze or broom-croft, a field of yellow charlock, blue bugloss, or scarlet poppy. Tropic landscape gardening will supply that defect; and a hundred plants of yellow Allamanda, or purple Dolichos, or blue Clitoria, or crimson Norantea, set side by side, as we might use a hundred Calceolarias or ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he grumbled a good deal. When he got his pay he went over to Thompson's saloon, and he didn't leave it until all the money was spent. When his wife heard of it she was mad, and I expect she gave Joel a taste of the broom handle." ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... blankets, and how we suffered with the cold! I shall never forget that night of December 18th, 1862. We would form little columns of twenty or thirty men, in two ranks, and would just trot round and round in the tall weeds and broom sedge to keep from chilling to death. Sometimes we would pile down on the ground in great bunches, and curl up close together like hogs, in our efforts to keep warm. But some part of our bodies would be exposed, which soon would be stinging with cold, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Cheap whips should not be introduced into the oesophagus for the purpose of dislodging the foreign body. There is always danger of the whip becoming broken off, and the broken part lodging in the oesophagus. Neither should such rigid objects as a broom or rake handle be introduced, because of the danger from serious injury to the walls of the pharynx and oesophagus. The flexible probang, which is usually made of spiral wire covered with leather, is a very useful instrument to relieve choke when in the hands of an experienced ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... several miles long—over three—and averages 100 yards in width at the top. All the slopes are one solid mass of shrubbery—laurel, juniper, dwarf conifers, holly oak, and brilliant flowers innumerable. I brought back a bunch of Cytisus whose individual flowers might have been our broom (C. Scoparius). ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... world is shabby in the way It treats a fellow too; It just endures him while he works, And kicks him when he's through. It's ruthless, yes; let him make good, Or else it grabs its broom And grumbles: "What a clutter's here! We can't have ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... washed dishes to their obvious places upon the shelves and with a broom she battled with the dust upon the floor and drove it out the open door. Then she swept up the hearth, singing as she swept, and tidied the arrangement of books, bait and tobacco upon the mantel, ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here, and one ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... will wait a moment," said Mrs. Gordon, "I will get a broom and brush the snow from you before it melts. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... barbed arrow head was found near Bardney, with an orifice large enough to receive a broom handle. {108c} ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Even the petty officers of the ship are not free from being made the objects of the sport, and passengers of especial prominence have often been treated to a bath in a tub of cold water or had their faces lathered with a broom as a shaving brush while a bar of old iron served the purpose ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... Axe (in cover). Axle-grease. Bacon. Barometer (pocket). Bean-pot. Beans (in bag). Beef (dried). Beeswax. Bible. Blacking and brush. Blankets. Boxes. Bread for lunch. Brogans (oiled). Broom. Butter-dish and cover. Canned goods. Chalk. Cheese. Clothes-brush. Cod-line. Coffee and pot. Comb. Compass. Condensed milk. Cups. Currycomb. Dates. Dippers. Dishes. Dish-towels. Drawers. Dried fruits. Dutch oven. Envelopes. Figs. Firkin (see p. 48). Fishing-tackle. Flour (prepared). ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... also have noticed something else. Plants in the drier soil have generally {72} narrow leaves and the grasses are rolled up and fine, whilst those on the damp soil, including the grasses, have usually broad leaves. Thus in the dry sandy soil you may find broom, spurrey, sheep's fescue, pine trees, all with narrow leaves; whilst on the moister soil you may find burdock, primroses, cocksfoot and other broad-leaved plants. Figs. 34 a and b show some plants we found ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... proceeding from steading to steading in the sparse woods of Andred where is sometimes an open heath, and sometimes a mile of oak, and often a clay swamp, and, seen from little lifted knolls of sand where the broom grows and the gorse, the Downs to the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the April day, O brighter than the golden broom, O blither than the thrushes' lay, O ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... comfort of wearing them. Now do tell me, candidly,—what impropriety is there in a woman showing her leg and foot, more than in another woman showing her hand and arm? The evil lies in your own thoughts. You see the Bavarian buy-a-broom girls passing before your windows every day, with petticoats cut three or four inches shorter than mine. You perceive no harm in that. 'It is the fashion of her country,' you cry. Custom banishes from our minds the idea of impropriety; and the naked savage of the woods is as modest as the closely ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... chosen well girl. The oracle guaranteed you a safe road to tread through life. As to the dust of which it speaks, it exists no doubt in a certain sense, but this hand wields the broom that will sweep it away. Solemnize your marriage in Alexandria as soon as you will, but then come to Rome, that is the only condition I impose. A thing I always have at heart is the introduction of new and worthy members into the class of Knights, for it is in that way alone ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "What is that broom handle for?" questioned the red-haired girl, wondering if she would be expected to crack the desperado ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... shelves; in short, in addition to a pallet bedstead and bed that were very rarely used, a most glorious muddle of the odds and ends and collections dear to the heart of a country lad, all of which were under an interdict not to be touched by the brush, broom, ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... old worn-out broom-end! She's of a good old family—quite good enough for his, you may take your oath! Why, my girl! the thing's not worth burning your fingers with. You've brought me here on a goose-errand. I'll go and have ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... stark, staring mad or not," whispered Susan, "but he's in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all the other cats, and they're nosing round, and I don't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can't think ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Park, about three or four feet high, with a covering of something between feathers and hair, of a dark brown colour, without wings, but in the place thereof two or three little branches coming down like sprigs of Spanish broom, long great legs, with feet only of three claws, and without a tail; I must make this description of it, and so may make others understand me. But when I am told that the name of it is CASSUARIS, I may then use that word to stand in discourse for all my complex ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... (PIGNUT. BROOM-HICKORY.) Leaflets 5 to 7 (usually 7), oblong-ovate, acuminate, serrate, smooth. Fruit pear-shaped to oval, somewhat rough, splitting regularly only about half-way. Nut large (1 1/2 to 2 in. long), brownish, somewhat obcordate, with a thick, hard shell, and poor, bitter ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... tailed it as it went past and hung on, kissing any bits he could reach. When the mother reappeared they were worrying the baby between them as a couple of hound puppies worry the hind leg of a cub. She beat them faithfully with a broom and hove both of them out into the wide wet world, and we all slept in a bog that night, and William was much abused and loathed. But that was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... notice of his inspection. One bluejacket was whitewashing the inboard part of the cable. The boatswain, believing he was not doing it as quickly as he might, passed a deprecating remark. The sailor in an instant seized a broom which lay near, and lifted it to strike the boatswain, but hesitated, and laid it down. He was put under arrest then and there, the charge against him being "Attempting to strike a superior officer." The boatswain demanded a court-martial, which was held later ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... been three weeks shut within my mew, A-painting for the great man, saints and saints And saints again. I could not paint all night— Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. {50} There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song— 'Flower o' the broom, Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! Flower o' the quince, I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? Flower o' the thyme'—and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,—three ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... 'spirit' standing over his grave. And no wonder if he walked; a decent 'ghost' would feel unhappy in such a 'yard,' then a receptacle for native impurities. We represented the case to Mr. Alexander Allan, who succeeded poor Captain O'Brien, and that active and energetic 'new broom' at once took steps to abate the nuisance. The 'ghost' has not been seen since its last home has been surrounded by a decent paling and inscribed 'Ci-git Thiebaut.' The same pious service was then done for one of our countrymen, Mr. Crawford ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... legal broom's a moral chimney-sweeper, And that's the reason he himself's so dirty; The endless soot[532] bestows a tint far deeper Than can be hid by altering his shirt; he Retains the sable stains of the dark creeper, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... stone-pines, and little streams in all directions flowing over the brown sandstone. The country is like some parts of rural England—Devonshire or Sussex. Not only is the sandstone here, as there, broken into deep gullies; but the vegetation is much the same. Tufted spleenwort, primroses, and broom tangle the hedges under boughs of hornbeam and sweet-chestnut. This is the landscape which the two sixteenth-century novelists of Siena, Fortini and Sermini, so lovingly depicted in their tales. Of literature absorbing in itself the specific ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a broom: exaggeration indeed is a necessary part of his equipment. Garibaldi could not understand that Italy was not ripe for a simple religion of love for wife, child and neighbor, paying one's debts, and earning one's daily bread by honest toil. He could not appreciate ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... with somewhat of anxiety to get sundry things out of the way, which yet there seemed no other place for; a frying pan was set up in a corner; a broom took position by the fire place; a pail of water was lifted on the table; and divers knives and forks and platters hustled into a chimney cupboard. Little room enough when all was done. At last the woman caught up the sprawling baby and ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... the plain behind them, Peronnik and his steed found themselves in a narrow valley in which was a grove of trees, full of all sorts of sweet-smelling things—roses of every colour, yellow broom, pink honeysuckle—while above them all towered a wonderful scarlet pansy whose face bore a strange expression. This was the flower that laughs, and no one who looked at it could help laughing too. Peronnik's heart ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... inconvenience I had to endure on that occasion was as nothing in comparison to the satisfaction which the public got out of it. No, Mr. Prime Minister, if you are going to do away with things because they are forms and superstitions, then I institute the Order of the New Broom, and I make you the first Knight of it; and the rest of your life will have to be spent in sweeping." ("And oh!" thought the King, feeling himself in form, "I only wish Max could hear ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... many such officials in France and elsewhere, he would have been content with an assurance that I had "nothing to declare" and the offer of my keys, but I was mistaken. This particular official was perhaps a "new broom." It may be that he had caught some smugglers not long before, and the excitement had not yet worn off. At all events, instead of allowing me to pass he ordered me to open ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... Explain why cobwebs do not fall from the ceiling; why dust clings to a wet broom; why a postage stamp does ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... and having seized her darling pig by the two ears, does, with the assistance of a policeman, who kindly takes him by the tail, extricate his porkship, to the great joy of herself. The animal scampers, grunting, up the alley, as Mr. Korner, in his shirt sleeves, throws his broom after him, and the policeman surlily says he wishes it ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... behind a hayrick. I was so startled that I turned to fly, and in my precipitancy tripped on a tussock and fell. Mr. Diggles came to my assistance, and, when he had helped me to my feet and brushed me down with a birch broom he was carrying, I could do nothing less than buy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... such hard fare began to sink under the accumulated difficulties of their journey. In this situation they were stopped by a wide and rapid though shallow river. Sir Isumbras, taking his eldest son in his arms, carried him over to the opposite bank and placing him under a bush of broom, directed him to dry his tears, and amuse himself by playing with the blossoms till his return with his brothers. But scarcely had he left the place when lion, starting from a neighbouring thicket, seized the child and bore him away into the recesses of the forest. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... putting down the cloth, before commencing, to prevent the carpet from getting soiled. In the country, a room would not require sweeping thoroughly like this more than twice a week; but the housemaid should go over it every morning with a dust-pan and broom, taking up every crumb and piece she may see. After the sweeping she should leave the room, shut the door, and proceed to lay the breakfast. Where there is neither footman nor parlour-maid kept, the duty of laying the breakfast-cloth rests on ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... aggressive. As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a broom ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... long rolls of snow, and one was crossed on his chest, holding a broom. An old hat of Mr. Bobbsey's on top of the snow man's head ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... tall awkward young countryman, with a cap set on one side of his head, was busying himself with sweeping off the floor of the piazza, but in a very leisurely manner; and between every two strokes of his broom he was casting long looks at Ellen, evidently wondering who she was, and what she could want there. Ellen saw it, and hoped he would ask her in words, for she could not answer his looks of curiosity but she was disappointed. As he reached ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... OF THE ROOM BY THE NURSE.—The furniture should be wiped off with a damp cloth and the floor swept with a broom covered with a damp cloth wrung out of a 1-20 (five per cent) carbolic acid solution; besides this the floor must be rubbed thoroughly with a damp cloth every second or third day. If the disease is contagious ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the yellow broom, The ancient poets sung it, And sweet it is on summer days To lie at ease ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... where he will find the young lady who lives there?" said she archly, jerking her head and a broom ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the septuagenarian "mother." The strangers were shown through the dormitories, the kitchen, the laundry, the garden, the community-room, where embroidery, painting and study diversify the labors of the broom and the dishcloth, and everywhere the same exquisite neatness struck the eye. Everything used in the house was of the coarsest description—the linen like sack-cloth, but speckless; the delf as thick ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... select some slender, elastic sapling; that of the hickory is the best, and is generally to be found in open woods—if not, some other kind will answer very well. It should be about five or six feet in length, (trimmed of its branches,) and in diameter need be no larger than an axe-handle or a broom-stick. When this is decided, some spot about five feet distant from the sapling should then be selected. The hatchet and knife will now come into excellent use, in cutting the sticks for the little inclosure ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... pillars within had acquired, by time, a sombre hue, which accorded with the architecture; and the gloom increased its dimensions to the eye by hiding its parts; but now it all bursts on the view at once, and the sublimity has vanished before the brush and broom; for it has been white-washed and scraped till it has become as bright and neat as the pots and pans in a notable house-wife's kitchen—yes; the very spurs on the recumbent knights were deprived of their venerable rust, to give a striking proof that a love of order in trifles, and taste for proportion ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... over dry ground? Why did she go only through the water? The horseman meanwhile squatted down among the broom, rested his gun upon his knee, made sure that it was cocked and that the powder had not fallen from the pan, and noiselessly crouched down, gazing after the retreating steed, as she reached the opposite bank. Suddenly she drew in her tail, bristled her mane, pricked up her ears. Her eyes ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... and looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, which she had ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... worried her; I could see they did. She never said any thing; but she would get up, take up the hat, brush the table with her handkerchief, and hang the hat in its right place, or send the house-girl with the broom after his ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... when it contains and supports great clouds, and large blue spaces are seen between them. On the hillsides the fields here and there are yellow and the corn is in sheaves. The birds are mostly dumb, the glory of the furze and broom has passed, but the heather is in flower. The trees are dark, and even sombre, and, where they are in masses, look as if they were in solemn consultation. A fore-feeling of the end of summer steals upon me. Why ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... nature. Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: 'Well,' says Math, 'we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect.' Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... which have most enriched and diversified both flowers and fruits. The dodders and mistletoes rob juices from the stem and branches of their unfortunate hosts; more numerous still are the unbidden guests that fasten themselves upon the roots of their prey. The broom-rape, a comparatively recent immigrant from Europe, lays hold of the roots of thyme in preference to other place of entertainment; the Yellow Rattle, the Lousewort, and many more attach themselves to the roots of grasses—frequently with ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... "Then I took my broom and swept the ground. I had not been hired as one of the camp sweepers, and so could move about and sweep where I chose. No one ever asked me any questions. The soldiers heeded me no more than if I had been ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... when Sherman with ten thousand of his destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department headquarters in that State capital; ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... the word, so strong and baleful, To make it what it was before! There it skips with pail on pailful— Would thou wert a broom once more! Still new streams he scatters, Round and ever round me— Oh, a hundred waters Rushing in have bound me! No—no longer Can I bear it. No, I swear it! Gifts and graces! Woe is me, my fears grow stronger, Look what grinnings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... dawned upon him that there were novel disproportions in the world. "Lord sakes," he cried, sitting up and looking animated for the first time, "but them's mortal great thissels growing out there on the bank by that broom. If so be they be thissels? Or 'ave I been forgetting?" But they were thistles, and what he took for tall bushes of broom was the new grass, and amidst these things a company of British soldiers—red-coated as ever—was skirmishing in accordance with the directions of the drill book ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the dishes now; and as she took the broom in hand to begin sweeping out the kitchen, Tim gave a frightened growl, and fled ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... takes off one of my great crimes. You know I have deprived the court of the privilege of living in the palace, and I have given them wherewith to find lodgings in the city. Here go the ladies with their bundles under their arms, and the lord high-steward has a broom sweeping after them as they go. This charming individual in the corner with a hunting-whip, is myself. And here is the pith of the joke. 'Rooms to let here. Inquire of the proprietor on the first floor.' [Footnote: Hubner, i., p. 190.] What do ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... tail between his legs and crept through the doorway, keeping one eye on the broom that Mrs. Green held in her hand. And as soon as he was safely outside he gave two or three sharp yelps, telling Miss Kitty Cat that he would watch for her the very first time she set foot ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... very long room, as plain and even sordid as the drawing-room was inviting: the unpapered walls were a cold drab, and wanted washing; there was a thick cobweb up in one corner, and from the ceiling hung the tail of another, which the housemaid's broom had scotched not killed: that side of the room they entered by was all books. The servant said, "Stay here a moment, sir, and I'll send her to you." With this he retired into the drawing-room, closing the door softly after him: once closed it became invisible; it fitted like wax, and left ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... be more and more careful. A false blow with pick or chisel might destroy irreparably some important bony structure. Bit by bit he traces out the position and lay of the bones, working now mostly with awl and whisk-broom, uncovering the more massive portions, blocking out the delicate bones in the rock, soaking the exposed surfaces repeatedly with thin "gum" (mucilage) or shellac, channeling around and between the bones until they stand out on little pedestals above the quarry floor. Then, after the gum or shellac ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... be accounted for when the form of early mound-dwellings is taken into consideration, and when it is remembered that among savage tribes there are often taboos connected with the door, the two-faced god being essentially a deity of the door. Besides this the fertility rites connected with the broom should be taken into account. The second should be compared with similar accounts of transformation into animals among the cults of other nations. Mr. A. B. Cook's comment on the Greek ritual applies quite as well ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... times are coming!" cried Simon the cobbler, who was close by, with his coarse laugh. "The cardinal took a girl from the streets for the Queen of France; but wait a little and we shall see the time when she will have to sweep the streets with a broom, that the noble people may ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... dealing with souls. My lessons on those lines have thus far been dearly purchased; for I have ignorantly, zealously, made many mistakes, thus for the time being, hindered, more than aided their spiritual progress. To illustrate: A janitor's child has a toy broom. Papa has just swept one part of the hall and is about to remove the accumulated dust. "Papa, let me help you," and forthwith the child sweeps a large portion of the dust over the already cleaned floor. Papa sighs, sadly smiles, says ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... between the rocky wall which divided the island, and a chain of sandy hills, which hid the sea and sheltered the valley from the wind. Fritz and I ascended one of these hills, on which a few pines and broom were growing, and perceived beyond them a barren tract, stretching to the sea, where the coral reefs rose to the level of the water, and appeared to extend far into the sea. Any navigators, sailing along ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a "fender," a tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... basement, and received such sweeping and dusting and polishing, such scouring and scrubbing, that it was a marvel Miss Hepsy was not exhausted at the end of it. She had just turned out the parlour chairs into the lobby, and was busy with broom and dust-pan, sweeping up invisible dust, when Ebenezer brought her Mr. Goldthwaite's letter. So much did it upset her, that he had to depart without his glass of cider, for she took no more notice of him than if he had been one of the pillars at the door. It was eleven o'clock almost; ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... for instance, a smooth top coat, the consistency of the two kinds of concrete should be alike, and the top coat should be applied almost immediately after the bottom layer is put in place. Where concrete is used to hold water, a coat of neat cement should always be put on with a broom or a whitewash brush, mixing the neat cement with water in a pail, and it does no harm to go over the surface three or four times, the object being to thoroughly close the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... Piroo that he struck the man; but the sweeper, who was generally accustomed to winding up his performance by a grand broom fight with some brother of the same craft, was quite ready for an affair that could only increase his popularity. Catching up his jharroo, or broom, he began to shower blows upon the unfortunate Piroo, yet never ceasing to dance round him so grotesquely ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... was used to, were still advantages. The halls were warmed by a furnace, and she came to like the little logs burning in her rooms. In the care of her own fire, she went back to the simple time of her life in the country, and chose to kindle it herself when it died out, with the fagots of broom that blazed up ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the broom in a corner.] 'Tis no end to the vexation. But she'll have to wait on herself. I've no time to play the dancing bear. And that ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... and college lads in boating costume. It was wonderful how much these holiday makers were willing to do for the entertainment of the passing travelers. A favorite pastime in this peaceful region was the broom drill, and its execution gave an operatic character to the voyage. When the steamer approaches, a band of young ladies in military ranks, clad in light marching costume, each with a broom in place of a musket, descend to the landing and delight the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... II.'s reign in 1154 to the end of Richard III.'s on Bosworth Field in 1458. The name was adopted by Geoffrey of Anjou, the husband of Matilda, the daughter of Henry I., whose badge was a sprig of broom (which the name denotes), and which he wore in his bonnet as descended from the Earl of Anjou, who was by way of penance scourged with twigs ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Downing Street, might be invaluable! One noble man, at once of natural wisdom and practical experience; one Intellect still really human, and not red-tapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there in that dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules-like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, and say as with a fiat, "Here shall be truth, and real work, and talent to do it henceforth; I will seek for able men to work here, as for the elixir of life to this poor place ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... they chew betelnut and smoke tobacco, and although intoxicants are forbidden, they tap the toddy palm and drink of its easily fermented juice. Where metal finds its way into domestic utensils it is usually in the form of tin water-bottles and ewers. Every native possesses a sweeping broom, sleeping mats, coarse or fine, and bamboo or grass baskets. Most families use an iron pan for cooking, with a half cocoa-nut shell for a ladle. A large nut shell filled with palm-oil, and containing a pith wick, is the ordinary Malay lamp. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... pointed out Brutus to Mme. de Noriolis. Brutus was there, quite near us, untied, peacefully crunching little tufts of broom. ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... hospitalized with a broken back; Dr. Castle, a broken leg; Dr. Angelillo, Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Maranos and four lab technicians severely burned; Dr. Grossblatt and two assistants, badly clawed; Dr. Cahill, clawed and burned; and no one knows what's wrong with Dr. Zimmerman. He's locked himself in the broom closet and refuses to come out. Twelve other people will be out a day or two with minor injuries, including your secretary who was pursued by Elvira, the orangutan, and is now being ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... far, that I begged my Friend Sir ROGER to go with me into her Hovel, which stood in a solitary Corner under the side of the Wood. Upon our first entering Sir ROGER winked to me, and pointed at something that stood behind the Door, which, upon looking that Way, I found to be an old Broom-staff. At the same time he whispered me in the Ear to take notice of a Tabby Cat that sat in the Chimney-Corner, which, as the old Knight told me, lay under as bad a Report as Moll White her self; for besides that Moll is said often to accompany ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of grateful at that, and sticks out a soft, lady-like paw for me to shake. Say, that wasn't such a slow play, either! He was too groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near winnin' me right there. I sets Swifty to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a glass of ice-water, and in a minute or so ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... and arrange the dining room. It came awkward to me at first, but, after the madam told me how, I soon learned to do it satisfactorily. Then I had to wait on the table, sweep the large yard every morning with a brush broom and go for the mail once a week. I used to get very tired, for I was young and consequently not strong. Aside from these things which came regularly, I had to help the madam in warping the cloth. I dreaded this work, for I always got my ears boxed if I ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... the old woman and the niece came in,—the latter with a head not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom,—and testified surprise at sight of me and the fire. To whom I imparted how my uncle had come in the night and was then asleep, and how the breakfast preparations were to be modified accordingly. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... taken the cat on his lap, and in a chair tipped back against the wall, with a broom splint between his teeth, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... let the black steed pass, And syne she let the brown, And then she flew to the milk-white steed, And pulled the rider down: Syne out then sang the queen o' the fairies, Frae midst a bank of broom, She that has won him, young Tamlane, Has ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... his soul in uneasiness and fear. But she rose to a real outburst of house-work, turning him away as she shoved the furniture aside to her broom. He stood hanging miserable near. He wanted her back. Dread, and desire for her to stay with him, and shame at his own dependence on her drove him to anger. He began to lose his head. The wonder was going to pass away again. All the love, the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... name, and then noticed for the first time that both father and son wore in their velvet caps a short dry sprig of the broom-plant. He sprang to the ground and came forward on foot, bareheaded, and stood beside the Duke's ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... drums. Twice on such a day, once the day before, thrice the next day, till by and by it was the common thing. High-stepping childhood, with laths and broom-handles at shoulder, was not fated, as in the insipid days of peace, to find, on running to the corner, its high hopes mocked by a wagon of empty barrels rumbling over the cobble-stones. No; it was the Washington ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... hold the position of a gentleman. I have always done so. I do so still. It is the custom of this place that each of the inmates of a cell shall take his morning's turn of sweeping it out. I occupy a cell with a bricklayer and a sweep, but they never offer me the broom!' When a friend reproached him with the murder of Helen Abercrombie he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Yes; it was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very thick ankles.'—Pen, Pencil ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a broom. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and disdainful, and treated her young husband in the most contemptuous way; and Geoffrey avoided her in return, spending most of his time in hunting in the woods, where he used to wear the spray of broom that became the cognizance of his house, and caused their surname of Plantagenet. Perhaps it was in contrast to his wife's haughtiness that he chose to adopt this plant, considered as the emblem of humility, and reminding her ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the students because "every one of them has a mother"; now there is a red-haired shopkeeper sitting in it, a very stolid man who drinks tea from a copper teapot. And here are the gloomy gates of the University, which have long needed doing up; I see the bored porter in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow.... On a boy coming fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression. Altogether the dilapidated condition ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sofa with quick movements. She rose and gazed at him in bewilderment; the broom fell from her hand and she swayed to and fro. Pelle caught her, and she leaned inert and helpless against him, and remained thus for a considerable time, pale and with closed eyes. When at last he turned her inanimate face toward him and kissed, it, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared from the household broom, a gossamer arena of two years' standing, which makes a dense span of a length of about two feet from a clump of dried hydrangea blossoms to the sill of a transom-window, and which, of course, somewhere in its dusty spread, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... and putting out the fire, and then the worst had passed. The earth around was on fire in spots, house and mill were gone, leaves, brush, and logs were swept clean away as if shaved off and swept with a broom, and nothing but soot and ashes ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... more in the outskirts of the woods, and the time comes for others besides the squire's guests to take their education in hand, and teach pheasants at least that they are no native British birds. These are a wild set, living scattered about the wild country; turf-cutters, broom-makers, squatters, with indefinite occupations, and nameless habits, a race hated of keepers and constables. These have increased and flourished of late years; and, notwithstanding the imprisonments and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... foreigner is as bigoted to his original dinginess and discomfort, as the Turk to the Koran. Nothing but fear or force ever changes him. The French invasions were desperate things, but they swept away a prodigious quantity of the cobwebs which grow over the heads of nations who will not use the broom for themselves. Feudalities and follies a thousand years old were trampled down by the foot of the conscript; and the only glimpses of common-sense which have visited three-fourths of Europe in our day, were let in through chinks made by the French ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Broom," said the Hatter. "There's been another election. Evidently the Democrats won, as there goes the Donkey, waving his ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Mary leaned forward to reach for the turkey-wing hanging beside the tongs. There had always been a turkey-wing beside her Grandmother Ware's fireplace. That is why Mary insisted on using one now instead of a modern hearth-broom. It suggested so pleasantly the housewifely thrift and cleanliness of an earlier generation which she loved to copy. She had prepared this wing herself, stretching and drying it under a heavy weight, and binding the quill ends into a handle with a piece ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hands atop her broom in a solemn and hieratic gesture; her face was full of lines, as though time had autographed it many times over ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... just been delighted with Mrs. Ward's article. She has swept away the greater part of Wace's sophistries as a dexterous and strong-wristed housemaid sweeps away cobwebs with her broom, and saved a lot ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... "I'll keep it shut." Her curiosity was excited. She took a book and tried to read, but the letters danced up and down before her eyes, and she couldn't help listening. Bridget was making a most ostentatious noise with her broom, but through it all, Katy seemed to hear other sounds—feet on the stairs, doors opening and shutting—once, a stifled giggle. How queer ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... "Lawdy, no'm. De broom wus de law!" Then she laughed. "Jus' say you wanner be married and de couple git together 'fore witnesses and step ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... explaining the identity of the Sicily Flora with that of South Italy, by its having been wholly upraised within the recent period; and, so I believe, with mountain-chains separating floras. I do not remember Humboldt's fact about the heath regions. Very curious the case of the broom; I can tell you something analogous on a small scale. My father, when he built his house, sowed many broom-seeds on a wild bank, which did not come up, owing, as it was thought, to much earth having been thrown over them. About thirty-five ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... cloth, a white bodice and kirtle, a yellow silk turban wound low over her brown curls, and long coral pendants in her ears. Her ears had been pierced against a piece of cork by her great-aunt when she was seven years old. In those germless days she had worn bits of broom-straw, plucked from the common sweeping-broom, in the lobes until the holes were healed and ready for little ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... sniper myself, so I sent Jenks to chase a broom and picked my own men for this job that mattered. I'd no sooner done it than Ruggles marched up and asked to be made one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... use, dame Peake; they won't be gammon'd, take notice. If you have any old broom-handles, throw 'em out directly, and if not, throw all the brooms you have in the house out of window—throw out all your sticks—throw Peake out. I'm for the gown, take notice. Down with the town! down ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... you are worth." For, said Paddy Flynn, who told me the tale, "the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making the sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom." Well, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, "What can I do for you now?" said he. "Nothing but this," said the boy: "my mother has a cottage on your land-they stole me from the cradle. ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... and part of the men; the rest being obliged to make the distance on foot in a drenching rain, with night just at hand. Such adventures as this,—and they are common in this region,—console me for my disappointment in not having been able to see the Heather in its mountain home. The Gorse, the Broom, the Whins, not to speak of the Scottish Thistle, have been often visible by the roadside, and the prevalence of evergreens attests the influence of a colder clime than that of England; indeed, the backwardness of all the crops argues a difference of at least a fortnight ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and I drily retailed the official's story, very busy with a deck-broom the while. 'We're all square now, aren't we?' I ended. 'I'll go below and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Mace, and set it on the coales close covered, and boyle it above an houre and a halfe, but turn it often in the mean time; then with a spoon take of the fat and fill it with Claret wine, and slice six Onyons, and a handfull of Cappers or broom buds, halfe a dozen of hard Lettice sliced, three spoonfuls of wine-Vinegar and as much verjuyce, and then set it a boyling with these things in it till it be tender, and serve it up with brown Bread and Sippets fryed with butter, but be sure there be not too much ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... enter in at the first door, when Maslova, stooping and pushing a large heap of rubbish and dust towards the stove with a handleless birch broom, came out of the other. She had a white jacket on, her skirt was tucked up, and a kerchief, drawn down to her eyebrows, protected her hair from the dust. When she saw Nekhludoff, she drew herself up, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... woman tossed in a basket, Seventeen times as high as the moon; But where she was going no mortal could tell, For under her arm she carried a broom. ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... showing the laths underneath, with here and there, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that her predecessor had been an artist in his way,—his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... occasion she had remarked, in presence of the milk-woman and three other persons, "No woman was ever more miserable than I during my married life." And at another she had said, "All new, all fine! A new broom sweeps clean. My defunct husband only ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Blister. A past occurrence as far as its relation to time was concerned, he always established by a contemporary event of the turf. Pressed as to when a thing had taken place he would say, "The year Salvation cops all the colt stakes," or "The fall Whisk-broom wins the Brooklyn Handicap." This had interested me and I now tried to get something more definite from him. He answered my ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... our Government, entrusted to the personnel of the Provisional Cabinet, is a pitiful and helpless Government, which only awaits the sweep of the broom of History to give way to a really popular Government. But we are trying to avoid a conflict, even now, to-day. We hope that the All-Russian Congress will take... into its hands that power and authority which rests upon the organised freedom of the people. If, however, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... of it of high grade. So far, ambition has in few cases gone beyond utilization of the native woods, some of which are surprisingly beautiful. Many small establishments in different States make such special products as spokes, shuttle blocks, pails, broom handles, containers for fruits and vegetables, and the like, but the total value of these products is small compared with the value of the crude lumber which is ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... that of a nurse maid. "I had to hol' the baby all de time she slept" she said "and sometimes I got so sleepy myself I had to prop ma' eyes open with pieces of whisks from a broom." ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... experiments and observations of Spallanzani it appears that in the Spartium Junceum, rush-broom, the very minute seeds were discerned in the pod at least twenty days before the flower is in full bloom, that is twenty days before fecundation. At this time also the powder of the anthers was visible, but glued fast to their summits. The seeds however ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... to my nurse's account, 'must be a haggard old woman, living in a little rotten cottage under a hill by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning by the door; she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, and must be herself of so dry a nature, that if you fling her into a river she will not sink: so hard then is her fate, that, if she is to undergo the trial, if she does not drown she must be burnt, as many have been within the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and directly after one of the great glossy black birds alight, right on the edge of the cliff, from whence it hopped into the air, and seemed to let itself fall some forty feet, down behind a stunted patch of broom, which had rooted in a cleft. There it disappeared for a few moments, to reappear, diving down toward the stream, but only to circle upward again, rise higher and higher, and finally disappear over the cliff, half a ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... to be able to walk at all," said the girl, interrupting, then. "I think we ought to be very grateful, Mrs. Broom, instead of complaining so much about what's a very ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... his mother, seeing him unexpectedly, should die of joy. The sister comes in. Humming, the servant begins to dust, to prevent her going near the curtain; but unconsciously, in his delight, his humming grows louder and louder, until, in a hymn of jubilation, tratara-tratara! he flings the broom up over his head, then stops short suddenly, noticing that the poor child is standing there, mute with astonishment, not knowing what to think. Capital, too, was the acting of a now forgotten actress, Mlle. Dubois, who played the young girl. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Laneham gives a splendid list of Romances and Old Ballads possessed by this said CAPTAIN COX; and tells us, moreover, that "he had them all at his fingers ends." Among the ballads we find "Broom broom on Hil; So Wo is me begon twlly lo; Over a Whinny Meg; Hey ding a ding; Bony lass upon Green; My bony on gave me a bek; By a bank as I lay; and two more he had fair wrapt up in parchment, and bound with a whip cord." Edit. 1784, p. 36-7-8. Ritson, in his Historical Essay ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... On the summit are the remains of a walled village and castle, and less than half-way up the ruins of a castle of the Knight-Templars. The road up to the summit is by the first narrow path beyond the castle, ascending through beds of wild thyme and bushes of the prickly broom. The next hill is the Rocher-Noir, having on its eastern side, right above the bed of the Cagnes, a "foux," an immense cave called the Riou, containing a large basin of water, whence flows a copious stream. It is 3m. from Vence. The next cliff ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... hunchback, vehemently suspected of dealings in necromancy, and of riding to nocturnal orgies on a broomstick, according to the custom of witches. Certain persons had seen her putting the harness on her broom in the stable, which, as everyone knows is on the housetops. To tell the truth, she possessed certain medical secrets, and was of such great service to ladies in certain things, and to the nobles, that she lived in perfect tranquillity, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... been there was a vast depression, half-filled with distorted steel and debris indescribable, twisted iron and splintered wood, with the water from the river pouring into it. The commissary buildings and the surrounding bunk-shanties were gone, swept away as with the stroke of a mighty broom; and the trees on the hill-sides above were scorched and shriveled as if a forest fire had ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... long been fast asleep, and was with difficulty roused up and directed to beat the cur away. She attempted to perform the duty, arming herself with the broom; but the moment she opened the door Snarleyyow dashed in between her legs, upsetting her on the brick pavement. Babette screamed, and her mistress came out in the passage to ascertain the cause; the dog not being able to run into the parlour, bolted up the stairs, and snapping at the widow ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... the finch's nest, Feathers, and moss, and a wisp of hay: "The arrow it sped to thy brown mate's breast; Low in the broom is thy ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... his books piled in order on the window-sill — his papers held down by one on the table, the clean floor, — yes," — and rising Rufus even went and looked into the closet. There was the little stack of wood and parcel of kindling, likewise in order; there stood Winthrop's broom in a corner; and there hung Winthrop's few clothes that were not folded away in his trunk. Mother Hubbard's department was in the same spare and thoroughly kept style; and Rufus came back thoughtfully to ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... new idea. "I'll tell you what! We'll come in here this afternoon with old clothes on, and have a regular house-cleaning! It can't hurt anything, I'm sure, for we won't disturb things at all. I'll bring a dust-cloth, too, and an old broom. But let's go and finish our studying now, and get that out of the way. ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... deaf and dumb person, which would preclude the necessity of my speaking. I felt I could do this well and successfully. I determined to try the experiment upon this old lady. I walked quietly up to her, took the shutters out of her hands and laid them in their proper places. I then took a broom and began sweeping away the water which had accumulated in front of her cottage, and seeing a kettle inside the door, I walked gravely into the house, took it, and filled it at a pump close by. The old woman was ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... to see places celebrated in Scottish song, and fields where battles for the independence of his country had been stricken; and, with money in his pocket which his poems had produced, and with a letter from a witty but weak man, Lord Buchan, instructing him to pull birks on the Yarrow, broom on the Cowden-knowes, and not to neglect to admire the ruins of Drybrugh Abbey, Burns set out on a border tour, accompanied by Robert Ainslie, of Berrywell. As the poet had talked of returning to the plough, Dr. Blair imagined that he ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... What does anybody know about him beyond that the Bishop recommended him, as if a Bishop must know what's what better than other people, forsooth! Don't tell me!" said Mrs. Upjohn, in unutterable scorn. "He's a new broom, and he's raising a big dust, and I would liefer have Mr. White back and let ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... their fill again the bride's granny carried out her part of the tradition. She hobbled in with a rived oak broom. This she placed in the center of the floor with the brush toward the door. Everyone knew that was the sign for ending the frolic at the bride's home. Also they knew it was the last chance for a shy young swain to declare himself to his true love ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... happy in this good family if it had not been for the ill-natured cook, who was finding fault and scolding him from morning to night, and besides, she was so fond of basting, that when she had no meat to baste, she would baste poor Dick's head and shoulders with a broom, or anything else that happened to fall in her way. At last her ill-usage of him was told to Alice, Mr. Fitzwarren's daughter, who told the cook she should be turned away if she did not treat ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... EMILY. [Putting the broom in a corner.] 'Tis no end to the vexation. But she'll have to wait on herself. I've no time to play the dancing bear. And ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... A like desolation pervades the atmosphere on holiday and day of toil. I was so lucky as to meet a shirt-sleeved overseer in the doorway. Preceding him were two ill-clad, pale children of nine and twelve, armed with a long, mop-like broom with which their task was to sweep the cotton from the floors—cotton that resettled eternally as soon as it was brushed away. The superintendent regarded me curiously, I thought penetratingly, and for the first time in my experience I feared detection. My dread was enhanced by the loneliness, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a sound of drums. Twice on such a day, once the day before, thrice the next day, till by and by it was the common thing. High-stepping childhood, with laths and broom-handles at shoulder, was not fated, as in the insipid days of peace, to find, on running to the corner, its high hopes mocked by a wagon of empty barrels rumbling over the cobble-stones. No; it was the Washington Artillery, or the Crescent Rifles, or the Orleans Battalion, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... wind blew it out. They had to go back to relight it. Kate knew they would burn their fingers, and she prayed they would not set the house on fire. When the light showed again, at the top of her lungs she screamed: "Adam, set the broom on fire and carry it to the end of the bridge; the water isn't deep enough to hurt you." She tried twice, then she saw him give Polly the lamp, and run down the hall. He came back in an instant with the broom. Polly held the lamp high, Adam went ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... centre-vein of a cocoanut leaf gives a long tapering stick of the average thickness of a match stick, and a bundle of these goes to make the common Bengal household broom which in the hands of the housewife is popularly supposed to be useful in keeping the whole household in order from husband downwards. Its effect on a bare back is here ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... state of mind that induces gentlemen in private life to take sticks to their aggravating spouses, under similar circumstances. However, it might not be just the thing, perhaps, for kings and queens to take broom-sticks to settle their little differences of opinion, like common Christians; and so the prince peaceably followed her, and entered the salle a manger with the rest, and Sir Norman and his keepers were left in the hall of state, monarchs of all they ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... resolutely in a mill. "Canta!" says the master, and the poor slave gives tongue like a hound on the scent. "Baila!" and, a stick being handed him, he performs the gymnastics of his country, a sort of war-dance without accompaniment. "El can!" and, giving him a broom, they loose the dog upon him. A curious tussle then ensues,—the dog attacking furiously, and the blind man, guided by his barking, defending himself lustily. The Chino laughs, the master laughs, but the visitor feels ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... certainly dirty and they looked hot. But he was not obliged to shake hands. Mary Ellen realised that he was a kind of man new to her, one who did not want a drink. She left the room, came back again almost at once for the broom which she had forgotten, and then left decisively, ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... the civilest man in the company is commonly the dullest, so these authors, while they are afraid to make you laugh or cry, out of pure good manners make you sleep. They are so careful not to exasperate a critic, that they never leave him any work; so busy with the broom, and make so clean a riddance that there is little left either for censure or for praise: For no part of a poem is worth our discommending, where the whole is insipid; as when we have once tasted of palled wine, we stay not to examine it glass by glass. But while they affect to shine in trifles, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... Inquisitor put on his priestly robes, and followed by several others, took off from them the ban of excommunication (which they were supposed to have fallen under), by throwing holy water on them with a small broom. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... I had both. I've described you the charms and grace of each, and when I add that both were elegant housekeepers, ye'll admit that my dilemma was greater than ever. They both handled the broom to perfection; they could knock a chap clane across the cabin and out of the window before ye could know what was coming. Me mither used to say it was the housekeeping qualities that should decide, and she told me to call upon 'em ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... foreground form a tall pyramid. The shape of the churn gives us the line at the right side, and the figure of the cat carries the line of the woman's skirt into a corresponding slant on the left. The lines of the tiled floor add to the pyramidal effect by converging in perspective. Even the broom leaning against the shelf near the door takes the same diagonal direction as the tiles of the ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... composed of, but the English called it coal tar. It struck me that I might save myself by means of this offensive composition. I knocked out the head of the remaining cask, and arming myself with a broom dipped in it, I jumped into the cask which contained the remainder, and awaited any fate with anxiety. The serpent came; as usual, forced his head and part of his body down the hatchway, perceived me, and with eyes darting fire reached out ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the languid feeling of pleasure and contentment enjoyed by the bathers. Their keepers, helped by a small boy who clambered up their steep sides, assisted the cleansing process by scrubbing them vigorously with a sort of stable-broom. As soon as one side was thoroughly cleaned the boy jumped off, and at the word of command, with a tremendous upheaval, and amid a great displacement of water, the huge beast flopped down again on its cleansed side, uttering a prodigious grunt of satisfaction, and quite ready ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the scrubbing party was Little, and the skipper quickly forgot the seaman's fright in amusement at his friend's antics. Broom in hand, his trousers rolled above his knees, and his shirt flying open at the neck, his face glowing with the exercise, the late typewriter salesman darted in and out among the other scrubbers, leaving ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... more snow. No one could by any possibility have left the house during the night. Even Jones himself had not been out, for there was a little eddy of snow before the back door, and I remember calling to him that he would want his broom." ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... speaking two boys stole away, unnoticed by their parents, from a house on the edge of the waste place, and were coming across it looking for adventures. One of them carried a broom, and when he saw the rocking-horse he said nothing, but broke off the handle from the broom and thrust it between his braces and his shirt on the left side. Then he mounted the rocking-horse, and drawing forth the broomstick, which ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... within my mew, A-painting for the great man, saints and saints And saints again. I could not paint all night— Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. 50 There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song— Flower o' the broom, Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! Flower o' the quince, 55 I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? Flower o' the thyme—and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight—three ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... poetry of Scotland, the heroic part, founded almost entirely on the villainous deeds of the Scotch nation; cow- stealing, for example, which is very little better than drabbing baulor; whilst the softer part is mostly about the slips of its females among the broom, so that no upholder of Scotch poetry could censure Ursula's song as indelicate, even if he understood it. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... up here? The wind smells of seaweed, and there must be some shrub or flower——" She opened her eyes and looked along the cliffs, "There's something smelling divinely. Wild broom, is it?" ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... to fix in a hurry, and make choice of him that seemed more exactly cut out for my purpose. In the course of a few weeks three or four cast up, among whom was a laddie of Ben Aits the mealmonger, and a son of William Burlings the baker; to say little of the callant of Saunders Broom the sweep, that would fain have put his blackit- looking bit creature with the one eye and the wooden leg under my wing; but I aye looked to respectability in these matters; so glad was I when I got the offer of Mungo Glen.—But more of this in half ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... am content to take leave of him, while he is flattering himself that he has "found the pearl of great price, after sweeping the house:" (p. 414:) and under that melancholy delusion, I fear he must be left,—holding the broom in his hands. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... old woman went up in a basket, Seventy times as high as the moon; What she did there I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?" "Only to sweep the cobwebs off the sky, And I shall be ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... adorn them, will go the ceremonial procession, all glorious with banners and censer-bearers, and the meek blue-shaven priests and barefooted, rope-girdled, holy men. And the artful politician of the coming days, until the broom of the New Republic sweep him up, will arrange the miraculous planks of his platform always with an eye upon the priest. Within the ample sheltering arms of the Mother Church many eccentric cults will develop. The curious may study the works of M. Huysmans to ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... ROOM BY THE NURSE.—The furniture should be wiped off with a damp cloth and the floor swept with a broom covered with a damp cloth wrung out of a 1-20 (five per cent) carbolic acid solution; besides this the floor must be rubbed thoroughly with a damp cloth every second or third day. If the disease is contagious a damp sheet kept moist should be hung in the line of the air currents. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... at the servant, who, with her head bound up in a duster, passed at the double with a broom. Then he walked ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... entreating their new friend to bear everything in the most submissive and patient manner, as the only means of escaping from menial employment, and being promoted to the clerks' office. Not long was he permitted to rest. A convict came and ordered him to take a broom and sweep away a mass of dirt that some masons had left; a murderer was his companion; and thus he went on until nightfall, when his two friends were permitted to visit him, in the presence of the soldiers and convicts, most of the latter ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... arrived, as I generally used to get off as soon as it began to fill, and the Country to become amiable. Here at last we have the 'May' coming out: there it is on some Thorns before my Windows, and the Tower of Woodbridge Church beyond: and beyond that some low Hills that stretch with Furze and Broom to the Seaside, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... by the name of Mr. White, who had a job cleaning the streets. He was a friend of Mr. Blue, and the janitor gave him the hat. This is the way Mr. White looked in it: [Draw the face under the hat, A; this completes Fig. 101.] Mr. White had a little cart and a big shovel and an old broom, and he worked all day sweeping up and carting off the old paper, the stubs of cigars and everything else which, if allowed to accumulate, would soon make the streets look ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the Red Pertolepe will not be eager for our blood? But yest're'en, when I might have slain yon knavish Gurth, I suffered him to go—and wherefore? For that Gurth, being at heart a traitor and rogue ingrain, might straightway his him to the Duke at Barham Broom with offers to guide his powers hither. But when they be come, his chivalry and heavy armed foot here within the green, then will we fire the woods about them and from every point of vantage beset ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... took the broom and began to sweep, but only succeeded in raising such a dust that they were nearly blinded, and had to run out of the house and sit on the door-step ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... floor was grouped with dancers. It was evident the affair was a "success." There were four or five hundred persons present, nearly half of them ladies. Many were in character costumes, as Tyrolese peasants, Andalusian majas, Bavarian broom-girls, Wallachian boyards, Turkish sultanas, and bead-bedecked Indian belles. A greater number were disguised in the ungraceful domino, while not a few appeared in regular evening dress. Most of the ladies wore masks; some simply hid their faces behind the coquettish reboso topado, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... has Cunina when lying in the cradle, Statina when he stands, Edula when he eats, Locutius when he begins to speak, Adeona when he makes for his mother, Abeona when he leaves her; forty-three such gods of childhood have been counted. Pilumnus, god of the pestle, and Diverra, goddess of the broom, may close our small ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... moors the gorse is gay, And England's lanes and fallows Are decked with broom whose winsome grace The hovering linnet hallows; But the robin sings from his maple bow, "Ah, linnet, lightly won, Your bloom to my blaze of wayside gold Is the wan moon ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... and watched, for what these men were up to was more than I could make out. When the wood was all burned down they brushed the coals and ashes away with an old broom, and two colored men came up from the shore, carrying a two-bushel basket full of little longish-round creatures, hard as stone, and with a long black sort of a knot hanging out of one end. They were dripping wet, and pieces of sea-weed clung to them, as if they grew ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... love, to the bank where the violets blow, Beside the calm waters that slumber below, While the brier and beech, the hazel and broom, Fling down from their branches a flood of perfume; Oh! what is the world, with its splendours or care, When you are beside me ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... clerk sprawled behind him in the desk, and the back-handers occasionally intended to reduce them to order were apt to resound against the impassive boards. During the sermon this zealous servant of the sanctuary would take up his broom and sweep out the middle alley, in order to save himself the fatigue of a weekday visit. Soon, however, the clerk and his broom followed Moses and Aaron, the fiddles and the bassoons ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... struck on a good place when he crossed where he did, for you see the rock here is as smooth as the top of a table, and the wind has swept it as clean of dust as if it had been done by an eastern woman's broom. If the horses had been shod there would have been scratches on the rock that would have been enough for the dullest Indian to follow, but an unshod horse leaves no mark on ground like this. I expect the red-skins who followed them were just as much puzzled ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... are!" shouted Dick, and pointed to a parlor car. He ran forward, and so did his brothers. The porter was out with his box, but it was the boys who assisted the girls to alight, and Dick who tipped the knight of the whisk-broom. ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... childish feet, but mellow and sweet, like an old violin, and herself sitting practising, over and over, that part of Paderewski's Minuet where, as every one knows, the fingering is rather difficult, and outside the open window, leaning on his broom, worthless Johnny Fraser, staring in with friendly eyes and an extremely dirty face. To Twenty-two's unbounded amazement she flung down the cushion and made for the ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pours between its piers. On the road which leads from Nice to the town of Grasse, where are located the famous perfumeries, you will pass orange orchards, flower farms, and charming meadows with patches of wild broom lying iii vast sheets of gold. The dark gray rocks are filled with pits and holes, and when viewed from a distance resemble the homes of the cliff dwellers. The views ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... access to its iron gate. "With the night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in within the bars; stands looking in, for a little while. It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean. It does so, very busily, and trimly; looks in again, a little while; and so departs." These are among the things in Dickens that cannot be forgotten; and if Bleak House ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... as with a broom, and already Matanzas is bulging with refugees," the officer told him. "They call themselves pacificos, but they carry information and aid our enemies. We'll have no ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... was hunted up, and some hard knots made to become very respectable-looking sticks of wood, which he piled in the wood-box. Kitty, under the influence of his strange behaviour, washed the dishes, and even got out the broom and swept a little. ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... Pont de Panis. Dijon. The hills are higher, and more abrupt. The soil a good red loam and sand, mixed with more or less grit, small stone, and sometimes rock. All in corn. Some forest wood here and there, broom, whins, and holly, and a few enclosures of quick-hedge. Now and then ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Across Lincoln's Inn Fields, down by the Law Courts, and so to Waterloo. I felt I must have a confidante, so I told the slate-coloured pigeons in the square where I was off—out among the thrushes, the broom, and the may. But they wouldn't come. They evidently deemed that a legal purlieu was ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... I have the broom-handle out in the entry? Some of the boys knew you wouldn't let me, but I said you would. I knew you would let a feller take ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... between England and Holland for sea supremacy was at this time very keen, and the ships of both nations sometimes carried a broom at the masthead to signify the sweeping of the ocean. We found, however, no English or other vessels to dispute with us our landing at the Moluccas, where the King received us with ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... half-past ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs—and go faster than that!" he added, a republican allusion which in past days had been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of Brittany in 1799. (See ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river, and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white, In rainfall at morning ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... going to take heart o' grace and begin again," declared Mother Brace, coming in with her broom over her shoulder in time to hear the last words. "I suppose, then, you're willing to come and scrub my barn floors for me to-morrow morning. They won't be very hard, but I can't get down so long on account of my knee. I can pay ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... Express Building. From the first floor sounded a deep and continuous thunder; that afternoon's issue was coming from the press. She lifted her skirts and gingerly mounted the stairway, over which the Express's "devil" was occasionally seen to make incantations with the stub of an undisturbing broom. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the crossest old made in the U.S., and all armed with broom-sticks and darnin'-needles, the door of my editorial offis was busted open, and the whole caboodle of wimmen, famishin' for my ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... for having a little lost her senses under the conditions—it was all too new, and I was too hasty. I was too much inspired by the ungoverned energy of the new broom. I should do better now ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... were all still in Paris, and while your great uncle was still Emperor of France—one day, you met in your room a little Savoyard who had just crept out of the chimney in his black dress, his black broom in his hand. You cried out with horror, and were about to run away, but I held you back and told you that these chimney-sweeps were poor boys, and that their parents were so poor that they could not support their children, but were compelled to send them to Paris to earn their bread by creeping ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... utterly forgetful of his own position, Bristol saw the messenger, all unconscious of danger, come up the stairs carrying a pail and broom. As his head reached the level of the railings The Stetson Man neatly sand-bagged him, rushed across to the outer ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... room to wash and dress; which process completed, he entered the dining-room to find the table laid with tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the place, for there remained traces of the previous night's dinner and supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... tell of many colored weddin's. We jes' jumps over de broom an' de bride she has to jump over it backwards and iffen she couldn' jump it backwards she couldn't git married. Dat was sho' funny, seein' dem colored gi'ls a tryin' to jump ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... got a broom from a corner, and as Bruno stood upright on his hind legs the switchman put the broom over the dog's ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... century—and after! The critics were unanimous in their violent condemnation of Delacroix's works: "the compositions of a sick man in delirium," "the fanaticism of ugliness," "barbarous execution," "an intoxicated broom"—such are some of the terms of abuse showered upon him. The gentlest among them commiserate the talent which here and there can be seen "struggling with the systematic bizarrerie and the disordered technique of the artist, just as gleams of reason and sometimes flashes of genius may be ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... noble. As a thing of purity, as a thing of calmness, as a thing of beauty, in short, the "Captain's Daughter" stands unsurpassed either in Russia or out of Russia. Only Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," Gogol's "Taras Bulba," and the Swiss clergyman's "Broom Merchant," can be worthily placed by its side. But this nobility is of the lowly, humble kind, to be indeed thankful for as all nobility must be, whether it be that of the honest farmer who tills the soil in silence, or that of the ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... lips and marched out, muttering that it was just as she had thought all along—Bud wasn't there. And when the neighbors dropped in that afternoon to plan out a memorial service for her "lost lamb," she chased them off the lot with a broom. Said that they had looked in the river for him and that she had looked beyond the river for him, and that they would just stand pat now and wait for him to make the next move. Allowed that if she could once get her ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... became a huge steel broom, sweeping the Germans irresistibly before it. The operation extended from the Oise southeast to the Aisne, broadening thence until it included the entire front. The Hindenburg line, the Somme battle-field, the Hunding line, were all quickly overrun. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... bake-shops. I was going quietly along, when the sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as they rushed by. I scrambled over the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the boatbuilder, he stepped briskly across the room, pulling open the door of a cupboard. Taking out a broom, he began to sweep very carefully where the Melville group had sat or stood, and continued his sweeping across the threshold of the doorway. Then, returning, he tossed the broom into the cupboard. Stepping springily over, he dropped into his ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... gentlemen of the court, but all were as silent as statues and as immoveable. Their clothes, strange to say, were fresh and new as ever: and not a particle of dust or spider-web had gathered over the furniture, though it had not known a broom for a hundred years. Finally the astonished prince came to an inner chamber, where was the fairest sight his ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... or coppice shrubs (as you might call them), and we know tomillares, or undergrowth; but in Corsica nature heaps these together with both hands, and the Corsican, in despair of separating them, calls them all macchia. Cistus, myrtle and cactus; cytisus, lentisk, arbutus; daphne, heath, broom, juniper and ilex—these few I recognised, but there was no end to their varieties and none to their tangle of colours. The slopes flamed with heather bells red as blood, or were snowed white with ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the situation at a glance and resolved what to do forthwith. There was a house a quarter of a mile down the road, and thither she bent her sprightly steps. Fifteen minutes later she returned with two buckets, a scrubbing brush, a broom and a mop. She rolled up her sleeves, disclosing an arm that you well might envy, my dear, you who delight in the display of such charms in parlor or ball room—charms which no cosmetics can rival—turned ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... same state as the one below, though, perhaps, there was more hay, and certainly there was the added ingredient of broken glass, the man who stole the window-frames having apparently made a miscarriage with this one. Without a broom, without hay or bedding, we could but look about us with a beginning of despair. The one bright arrow of day, in that gaunt and shattered barrack, made the rest look dirtier and darker, and the sight drove us ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Duaraidh, that was the first and last to move in a battle; and Faolan's banner was the Coinneal Catha, the Candle of Battle; and Oisin's banner was the Donn Nimhe, the Dark Deadly One; and Caoilte's was the Lamh Dearg, the Red Hand; and Osgar's was the Sguab Gabhaidh that had a Broom of rowan branches on it, and the only thing asked when the fight was at the hottest was where that Broom was; and merry Diarmuid's banner was the Liath Loinneach, the Shining Grey; and the Craobh Fuileach, the Bloody Branch, was the banner of Lugaidh's Son. And as to Conan, it ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... around my study. I saw nothing that would answer for a weapon but a whisk broom, which I seized, and endeavored to thrust through ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... Shutters are closed, and blinds drawn down— Untrodden door-steps go unwhitened! The echoes of some straggler's boots Alone are on the pavement ringing While 'prentice boys, who smoke cheroots, Stand critics to some broom-girl's singing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... imitated her obeisance, then they both straightened. The woman pointed to herself and to the man, and around the circle of huts and landing craft. She began scuttling about, picking up imaginary litter and sweeping with an imaginary broom. The man started pounding with an imaginary hammer, then chopping with an ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... return to the Church of the Cocoa-nuts. The blessing pronounced, the congregation disperse; enlivening the Broom Road with their waving mantles. On either hand, they disappear down the shaded pathways, which lead off from the main route, conducting to hamlets in the groves, or to the little marine villas upon the beach. There is considerable hilarity; and you would suppose them just from ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... to do very queer things, that I know now no housekeeper should do. I have seen her catch up the broom to pound potatoes in the pot. She pounded with the handle, and the broom would fly up and down in the air, dropping dust into the pot where the potatoes were. Her pan of soft-mixed bread she often left ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... when there's threepence to be earned, even if you are tired all over," he murmured, as he trudged to and fro. Presently a cheerful sound of teacups and a delightful smell of toast came from the cottage, and then the old woman brought out a broom to sweep ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... apprentice, who pauses every other minute from his task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pavement in front of it, to tell another apprentice similarly employed, how hot it will be to-day, or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes, and his left resting on the broom, gazing at the 'Wonder,' or the 'Tally-ho,' or the 'Nimrod,' or some other fast coach, till it is out of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the passengers on the outside of the fast coach, and thinking of the old red brick house 'down in the country,' where ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... horror by their enormous atrocity. When the Sacristan had concluded, he rose up, descended to the court of the convent, and ordered the lay brethren, on pain of the worst consequences of spiritual disobedience, to beat Hayraddin out of the sacred precincts with their broom staves ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... grew still. Father smoked a pipe and took a stroll in the moonlight through the orchard, where he had always something to look after or to do. Indoors the broom went steadily over the floor; whole kettlefuls of water were poured out and swept away and rubbed dry. Then the stove was lit; and, while mother blacked the shoes, father made the coffee. They mumbled a bit together—about to-morrow's ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... its own brooms, but one young man in this community earned his way through the local college by making brooms from corn raised on the college farm. The college cornfield disappeared in the course of time, but on one part of it there grew up a broom factory employing a large number of workmen. These city industries were thus literally "children of the soil," and the city's prosperity depended upon the agriculture of the surrounding region. On the other ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... intended for him being at the last moment sent in other directions, according to the more pressing requirements of the hour. Moreover, a good many of the weapons which Keratry actually received were defective. In the early days of the camp, many of the men were given staves—broom-sticks in some instances—for ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Chantemesse realised the turn that things were taking she wrathfully upbraided Cadine and struck out vigorously at her with her broom. But the hussy only laughed and dodged the blows, and then hied off to her lover. And gradually the markets became their home, their manger, their aviary, where they lived and loved amidst the meat, the butter, the vegetables, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. She did not dare scrub the porch floor for fear that it would not dry in time, but she swept it carefully and spread down the rug. Then one by one, and making a separate trip each time, she carried out the table and the ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... extended wings upon the whitewashed walls. And often the most exciting incident of the day happened just as I was falling asleep; sometimes then an unwelcome bat found his way into the room and circled wildly about the lighted candles; or an enormous moth buzzed in and we would chase him with a cobweb-broom. Or again a storm descended upon us and the great trees lashed their branches against the house, and the old shutters slammed back and forth, and we ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... to-night that the Germans are coming into Ostend to-morrow, so once more we fly like dust before a broom. It is horrible having to ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... on which he had accompanied Gloria and had shielded her from the rain with his gigantic brass-tipped umbrella. He took an interest in her, and would wait a long time in the hope of seeing her, sitting on a rush-bottomed stool outside the wine shop, and generally chewing the end of a wisp of broom. He had the faculty of sitting motionless for an hour at a time, his sturdy white-stockinged legs crossed one over the other, his square peasant's hands crossed upon his knee,—the sharp angles of the thumb-bones marked the labouring race,—his soft black ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... chief occupation three years before, he answered evasively. By little and little, however, he threw off his reserve and told, at first with studied flippancy and then with frank bitterness, how "the new Republican broom swept clean," and how he had lost his job because of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the Republicans with "offensive partisanship," a Cleveland phrase then as new as four-in-hand neckties. And in the next breath he proceeded ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures—one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... and stretched out where he could see the road, for he always ran and welcomed his folks when they came home from their drives. He was very happy and comfortable until the new housekeeper came out with a broom. ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... only a minute to get down the ladder into Shadow's stall where a broom tail jiggled up and down above absurdly long baby legs and small rounded haunches. Shadow's small daughter breakfasted. Callie squatted on his heels near-by watching the ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... sympathy in her grievous strait. They walked on swiftly, the one staring straight forward, yet seeing nothing; the other, although thoughtful, losing not one feature of the landscape—the light-gray sky, the encircling forest, the yellow broom-straw clothing the hill-sides, the crooked fences, lined with purple brush, golden-rod, black-bearded alder and sumach, flaming with scarlet berry cones and motley leaves. It was her principle and habit to seize upon whatever morsels of delight were dropped in her way, and she had a ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... we all took coach, and to our office, and there sat till it was late; and so home and to bed by day-light. This day was kept a holy-day through the towne; and it pleased me to see the little boys walk up and down in procession with their broom- staffs in their hands, as I ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... which a drum major could not lie at full length. This is called the garden. Issuing shiveringly from the earth is a little tree, long, spare and sickly, which seems always to be in winter, for it has not a single leaf. This broom is called a poplar. The remainder of the garden is strewn with old potsherds and bottoms of bottles. Among them one notices two or three list slippers. In a corner on top of a heap of oyster shells is an old tin watering can, painted green, dented, rusty and cracked, inhabited by slugs which silver ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... of years existence under an autocrat—an autocrat like Cromwell, for example. A man strong and fierce, intelligent and candid,—who would expose shams and destroy abuses,—who would have no mercy on either religious, social, or political fraud, and who would perform the part of the necessary hard broom for sweeping the National house. But, unfortunately, we have no such man. You have,—in ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... denyes that confession of a Witch, when she confesseth any improbability, impossibility, as flying in the ayre, riding on a broom, &c. ...
— The Discovery of Witches • Matthew Hopkins
... Gregory's throne a spider swings,[25] And snares the people for the kings; "Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; The stake's black scars are healed with grass;" So dreamers prate; did man e'er live 65 Saw priest or woman yet forgive; But Luther's broom is left, and eyes Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies. Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! 70 In the shadow, year out, year in, The ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... more rapidly and the old man resumed his sweeping, muttering crossly into his long, white beard. As she came down the other side of the street half an hour later, she was watching Schulte from the corner of her eye. He was leaning on his broom, watching her. Seeing that she was going to pass without stopping he called to her and went slowly across the street. "You would make good tenants," he said. "I had to sue Bischoff. You can have it for forty—if you'll pay for the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... finding so proficient a Latin and Greek scholar, and one so familiar with the characters he had hitherto monopolized. Archilus, Acestius, Stephanus and Phisistion were superb. Mithaceus on Hotch-potch, Agis on Pickled Broom-buds, Hegesippus on Black-pudding, Crito on Soused Mackerel, were joyously hit off in turn, after which Malcolm began a description of the luxury of living ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the streaks of dust that Lena was leaving, and finally she pointed them out to Lena. She was astonished when Lena threw down her broom, and cried out, "You just sweep it ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various
... Marse George, I ain't breck hit. I uz des' hol'n it in bofe my han's same es I'se hol'n dis yer broom, w'en it come right ter part. I declar 'twarn my fault, Marse George, 'twarn nobody's ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... repair damages and collect his ships in readiness again to encounter the enemy. Such was the last action which was fought before we left England," continued the officer; "but I am ashamed to say that Tromp was seen vauntingly sailing up and down the Channel with a broom at his mast-head, as if he had swept ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... with seventy-three ships of war. Blake had but half the number, but he at once accepted the challenge, and throughout the twenty-eighth of November the unequal fight went on doggedly till nightfall, when the English fleet withdrew shattered into the Thames. Tromp swept the Channel in triumph, with a broom at his masthead; and the tone of the Commons lowered with the defeat of their favourite force. A compromise seems to have been arranged between the two parties, for the bill providing a new Representative was again pushed on; and the Parliament ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... You don't say so!" cried Tilly Toad, as she stood her broom in the corner and started down the path. "I will hop down and ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... I glanced at Madonna Serafina, wondering whether she had an eye for contrasts. She had picked up one of the little couples and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... a mistake. When judiciously and tastefully performed, it is a charming style of music, and will always give pleasure to the intelligent hearer. I have heard two young friends, who have attained great skill in scientific and elaborate compositions, execute the simple song of "Low down in the Broom," with an effect I shall not easily forget. Who that has heard the Countess of Essex, when Miss Stephens, sing "Auld Robin Gray," can ever lose the impression of her heart-touching notes? In the case of "Auld Robin Gray," the song composed ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... down the stairs; papa could not hold her nor catch up with her, and we all ran after her to the edge of the cellar. Our pretty Robinson Crusoe house was all ruined. Dirt, sticks, stones, and everything that had lain about the yard were just as if they had been swept with a big broom into the cellar; and the big chimney—all blown to pieces now—helped to ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that they had arranged for a cargo for him, when a new governor of the place came unexpectedly out from home, and gave notice that he would not allow anything of the sort. Whether he was in earnest about preventing the traffic, or whether he only wished to show that a new broom sweeps clean, I don't know. Certain it was that we had to get out of the place as fast as we could, and made sail to ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and children, enlivening all by his encouragement and cheerfulness. He was a martinet on one question, and that was cleanliness, and its kindred virtue, orderliness. He was never above working with mop, broom and duster indoors, and shovel and rake in the garden; and this trait added much to the appearance of things as well as to the comfort of all concerned in the use of the convent and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... up my eyes, And play with the flies, But underneath I am wondrous wise: I know where your nest is, And just where you hide When you have been thieving, And fear you'll be spied. I saw your small tracks all over the meal; And I saw your tail, and I heard you squeal When grandmamma's broom Nearly sealed your doom, And you went whisking out of the room. I am only a lazy old cat: I care not much for a rat; But a nice tender mouse About in the house Might prove a temptation too great, Should I be in a hungry state. Little mouse, ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... blue cap, and they all looked forward with anxious delight to the coming of court week. Every preparation was made for the judge and lawyers. Beds were aired and the bugs hunted out. Saturday previous to the coming Monday was a busy day in setting all things to rights, and the scrubbing-broom was heard in consonance with calls to the servants to be busy and careful, as Sally and Nancy sprang to their work with a will. With garments tucked up to their knees, they splashed the water and suds over the floors, strangers to the cleansing ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and her voice as she spoke was hardly gentle, nor was it indicative of much patience. Her hysterics also seemed for the time to have given way to her strong passionate feeling. "Aunt," she said, "I would sooner take a broom in my hand, and sweep a crossing in London, than lead such a life as that. What! make myself the slave of some old woman, who would think that she had bought the power of tyrannising over me by allowing me to sit in the same room with her? ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... hotel again; she went to Burlingham's room, gathered his belongings—his suit, his well-worn, twice-tapped shoes, his one extra suit of underclothes, a soiled shirt, two dickeys and cuffs, his whisk broom, toothbrush, a box of blacking, the blacking brush. She made the package as compact as she could—it was still a formidable bundle both for size and weight—and carried it into her room. Then she rolled into a small parcel her own possessions—two ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... old Broom in the House last night, and today I lunched with him at Tabley's. They call him an orator and the king of conversationalists. He speaks like a pump, and talks like a bottle running water. No conviction, no sincerity, no appeal. Civil enough to me though, and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Hood and Little John Down a down, a down, a down, Went o'er yon bank of broom, Said Robin Hood to Little John, "We have shot for many a pound: Hey down, a ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... words, and that is endeared and hallowed by centuries of association. As easily might we explain why the words and air of the 'Old Hundredth' or the 'Old 124th' belong to each other, as analyse the wedded harmony of the verse and music in The Broom o' the Cowdenknowes, or Barbara Allan, or The Bonnie House ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... gone, Marianne, who had lighted her fire, came from the kitchen with a broom in her hand. She opened the door, shook the mat, and began to sweep the steps. A sharp tinkle, tinkle met her ear from the back gate. It was the milkman ringing for some one to come and take in the milk. Marianne set her broom against ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: "Well," says Math, "we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect."[271] Celtic romance is full of exquisite ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... designed by that trite apothegm, "a fine woman." Large-boned but shapely, as she came in with her long dark hair neatly plaited, it seemed to her husband—who had remained her lover—that he saw before him the rosy-cheeked lass whom ten years before he had met and claimed on the chilly shores of Loch Broom. By all her neighbors Mrs. Kerry was looked upon as a proud, reserved person, who had held herself much aloof since her husband had become Chief Inspector; and the reputation enjoyed by Red Kerry was that of an aggressive and uncompanionable man. Now here was a lover's meeting, not lacking ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... so commonly up to the extent of their means. If we build houses, they are generally of wood, and hardly calculated to outlast the builder. If we plant trees, they are generally Lombardy poplars, that spring up of a sudden, give no more shade than a broom stuck on end, and grow old with their planters. Still, however, I believe all this has a salutary and quickening influence on the character of the people, because it offers another spur to activity, stimulating it not only ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... together, brought the step ladder and set it up on the piazza. Then Billy climbed up, and Betty reached up the flag on the broom so Billy could hook it into place. It was done at last. The wind took it, and the Stars and Stripes blew out over the lawn just as ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... had passed, the head teacher said to me: 'The adjoining recitation room needs sweeping. Take the broom ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... all, to the Eclaireur. But no such thing; let them paddle and shout as hard as they like, the hippo's weight simply anchors them. The Eclaireur by now has dropped down the river past them, and has to sweep round and run back. Recognising promptly what the trouble is, the energetic Captain grabs up a broom, ties a light cord belonging to the leadline to it, and holding the broom by the end of its handle, swings it round his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a merciful Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Sol, "you'd better get busy with the broom, hadn't you. It's standin' over in that corner and I wouldn't wonder if it needed exercise. Sim, the train ain't due for twenty minutes yet. That gives us at least three quarters of an hour afore it gets here. Come outside a spell. I want ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Once when the Dutch fleet entered the Thames with a broom at the masthead to show that they were going to sweep the British from the seas. They beat it again when Nelson broke the sea ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... original dinginess and discomfort, as the Turk to the Koran. Nothing but fear or force ever changes him. The French invasions were desperate things, but they swept away a prodigious quantity of the cobwebs which grow over the heads of nations who will not use the broom for themselves. Feudalities and follies a thousand years old were trampled down by the foot of the conscript; and the only glimpses of common-sense which have visited three-fourths of Europe in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to clean the chicken house, one of the tasks in which her strange nature delighted. To splash about with hose and broom, tip over the littered drinking trough, wash cobwebs from the windows with a well-directed stream of water; in these things Martie found some inexplicable satisfaction. She went upstairs after luncheon to get into old clothes, came down half an hour later with her best hat on, walked ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... boy prowled about the house of Mr Spivin in the hope of seeing David Laidlaw go out or in; but our Scot did not appear. At last a servant-girl came to the open door with a broom in her hand to survey the aspect of things in general. Tommy walked smartly up to her, despite the stern gaze of a suspicious policeman on the opposite side ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... lady once tried with indifferent success to hold back the incoming tide of the Atlantic with a broom. As one watches the efforts of the machine, through such agents as Gus Hartman, Eddie Wolfe and Frank Leavitt, to stem the reform movement which is sweeping the country, he is strongly reminded of the ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... the coast trended South 10 degrees West, and was fringed with mangroves; a few straggling casuarinas grew near the sandy parts, a feature which we constantly afterwards found to recur; their tall broom-like shapes form a remarkable element in the coast ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... was through washing the dishes now; and as she took the broom in hand to begin sweeping out the kitchen, Tim gave a frightened growl, and ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... her shovel and broom of twigs was sweeping up the market litter in the square. Nick wondered if his own mother's back would be so ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... see me now,' he exclaimed, 'and the moon can see me now, and the sun too. Ya-hip! ya-hip!' And he flourished his broom in triumph." ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... week bigger at times than all his past incarnations. He was going to forego a sight of his dog in order to be early on the ground. He would see the practice and thrill to the first line-up. He had lived over and over that supreme moment when the umpire sweeps the plate with a stubby broom and adjusts ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Day is one of their principal feasts. On the Eve the shepherds light fires on all the hills. On the morning they swim for the first time in the year, or wash from head to foot, and also wash all their animals. The girls and boys make garlands of flowers and broom, set them on their heads, and dance "with devotional joy." This is no doubt part of the ancient heathen festival of midsummer. Another festival which has nothing to do with the Church is the "Fasching" or "Pust," on Monday during Carnival. Groups of masked male dancers ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... once with six hundred Canadians surrounded all New England. Prayers were put up in all the churches of Boston for deliverance when we swept the Connecticut from end to end with a broom of fire." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... size of the loom, sew on three sides and run a gathering-string around the top. It will fit better if it has a piece of cheese cloth sewn at the top through which the gathering-string can be run. This makes a fine duster to slip over a broom. If one prefers, a continuous warp can be strung—the length to be twice the length of the broom part—and a long piece woven which will require ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... large enough to admit their bodies seemed to have a powerful fascination for them. They carried straws and weed stalks and filled up one portion of it, and then another and another, till the crack was packed with rubbish from one end of the porch to the other, and the indignant broom of the housekeeper grew tired of sweeping up the litter. The birds could not effect an entrance into the interior of the plate, but they could thrust in their nesting-material, and so they persisted week after week, stimulated by the presence of a cavity beyond ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... encountered was Allan's dressing-case, turned upside down, with half the contents scattered on the floor, and with a duster and a hearth-broom lying among them. Replacing the various objects which formed the furniture of the dressing-case one by one, Midwinter lighted unexpectedly on a miniature portrait, of the old-fashioned oval form, primly framed in a ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... bobbing around against wall or ceiling; and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner of my room I boast of a prize dusty "cobweb," as yet spared from the household broom, a gossamer arena of two years' standing, which makes a dense span of a length of about two feet from a clump of dried hydrangea blossoms to the sill of a transom-window, and which, of course, somewhere in its dusty spread, tapers off into a dark tunnel, where lurks the eight-eyed ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... a remote side-hill, between two woods, a dead porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes of the neighborhood had nightly banqueted. The clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand, already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... same locality. This acid is prepared for use as follows: about twenty drops of muriatic acid are procured from a druggist in a half-ounce bottle, which is then filled up with water and kept tightly corked. It is applied by taking a drop out on a wisp of broom or a small minim dropper, which may be obtained at the druggist's also. I do not say that in every case this mineral should be rejected, because it is frequently very beautiful and worthy of place in a cabinet, but should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... buttered and floured mould, and set this into a large pot with boiling water enough to come two-thirds up the side of the mould; steam the pudding three quarters of an hour, or until you can run a broom splint into it without finding the pudding stick to the splint. Turn the pudding out of the mould, and send it to the table with ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... left the plain behind them, Peronnik and his steed found themselves in a narrow valley in which was a grove of trees, full of all sorts of sweet-smelling things—roses of every colour, yellow broom, pink honeysuckle—while above them all towered a wonderful scarlet pansy whose face bore a strange expression. This was the flower that laughs, and no one who looked at it could help laughing too. Peronnik's heart beat high ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... "we'll have it slick here in a minute. Let me take the broom. You've got it wrong side up. By Harry, we've got the deluge inside ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... better bring all the edibles to an end at once upon her plate,—an indication of Providence that the proper feast is finished. Wonderfully independent all this! Life with the genuine bachelor flavor. As L. remarked, even the small broom in the corner had a sturdy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... singly, which had attained great size. The rest of the space between the ruins and the hill was a close-cropt sward, which the daily pasture of the sheep kept in much finer order than if it had been subjected to the scythe and broom. The whole scene had a repose, which was still and affecting without being monotonous. The dark, deep basin, in which the clear blue lake reposed, reflecting the water lilies which grew on its surface, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... disapproval at the streaks of dust that Lena was leaving, and finally she pointed them out to Lena. She was astonished when Lena threw down her broom, and cried out, "You just sweep it ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various
... esparto, vegetable hair, broom corn, willow, straw, palm, and other similar materials, manufactured into articles ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... and peaceful folk. It be not for me to here put an argument in the favour of what do now be doubted and scorned by some. I will but say that I have seen and know that which hath been wrought by these hags o' the broom and of their power which they held at their beck and wink the which is not to be set on one side at the flip and flout of our young masters and misses, fresh from some teaching drove into their brain ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... conceal her hatred for her, and when the sudden death of my father was closely followed by that of my mother, she forbade Madre Moreno the house. To this I could say nothing, as I have always a reverence for the woman who rules at home, and Catalina now was my housekeeper, in charge of broom and wash tub, and grand almoner of my dinners ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... of this odorous place were sawing wood in an unsynchronous chorus. No one seemed to be about, so he seized a pail half filled with sujee, a block of holystone, and a stiff broom. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... village of my own, no birthplace, any more than I had a father or mother—the village where I spent my childhood was called Chavanon; it is one of the poorest in France. Only sections of the land could be cultivated, for the great stretch of moors was covered with heather and broom. We lived in a little house ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... on the nine-fold bands, And the Law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands. This for the waxen Heath, and that for the Wattle-bloom, This for the Maple-leaf, and that for the southern Broom. The Law that ye make shall be law and I do not press my will, Because ye are Sons of The Blood and call me Mother still. Now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you, After the use of the English, in straight-flung words and few. Go to your work ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... with hose and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of Madame ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... outlines of the houses, of the belfries, of the eaves, vibrate. The cold breeze plays at the cross-streets, and amuses itself by twisting the stems of the geraniums and pinks that flame on the balconies. Everywhere there is an odour of cistus and of burning broom, which comes from the ovens where the bread is baked, and an odour of lavender that comes ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Liege was peculiarly French, not only in outward appearance, but in language and sentiment. Here were low hills covered with pines and beeches, here charming valleys; there wide plains where the flowering broom flourished in profusion. It was the Walloon country, and the Francks claimed descent from a family of early Walloon painters of the same name. The earliest of these painters was Jerome Franck, born away back in 1540. Thus the name Franck ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... have to cut a stick of blue-beech to make a broom for sweeping the house, sister of mine; and that is for your use, Miss Kate; and in the next place, I have to find, if possible, a piece of rock elm or hiccory for axe handles; so now you have the reason why I take the ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... is neither expensive nor hard to prepare. It consists of (1) an insect net for catching the insects, made by sewing a bag of cheese-cloth to a stout ring one foot in diameter, which is fastened to a broom handle; (2) a cyanide bottle for killing the insects, prepared by pouring some soft plaster-paris over a few lumps of potassium cyanide (three pieces, each of the size of a pea) in a wide-mouthed bottle. When the plaster has set, keep the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the kitchen floor and scrubbed and scraped until the boards were immaculate. Then, with a wet towel about a broom, he cleaned the walls and ceiling; he washed the panes of window glass. The dishes followed; they were dried and ranged in rigid rows on the dresser; the pots were scoured and placed in the closets underneath. Now, he thought vindictively, when he had finished, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... obedient if you find it necessary to tell him twice, provided he understands that you want it done immediately. Prompt obedience should be required. "John, bring me the broom," said a mother. "Yes," said the boy, and went on with his own work. "John, how often must I tell you before you obey?" asked the mother impatiently. Then John went for the broom. But he had disobeyed, and his mother should ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... which no beings are known with greater power than can be attained to by man, and according to which at death the soul migrates into anything from a deified human being to an elephant, a bird, a plant, a wall, a broom, or any piece of inorganic matter, was imported ready made into China and took the side of popular superstition and Taoism against the orthodox belief, finding that its power lay in the influence on the popular mind of its doctrine respecting a future state, in contrast to the indifference of Confucianism. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... expanse was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom; there was no red weed to be seen, and as I prowled, hesitating, on the verge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and vitality. I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... next week by sea. You will find in it some pieces of the broom bush, which you saw growing on the old castle of Auchinleck. The wood has a curious appearance when sawn across. You may either have a little writing-stand made of it, or get it formed into boards for a treatise on witchcraft, by way of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and leave me in Paris. Well, at Paris, I can at least amuse myself, while you go with Madame de Fischtaminel to the woods. What is a Villa Adolphini where you get nauseated if you go six times round the lawn? where they've planted chair-legs and broom-sticks on the pretext of producing shade? It's like a furnace: the walls are six inches thick! and my gentleman is absent seven hours a day! That's what ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... daily duty be assigned to each one; such simple responsibilities as picking up all papers and magazines and seeing that they are properly stacked or disposed of may be given to one; another may sweep the stairs every day with a whisk broom (in one instance a boy of eight did this daily); another may be "librarian," caring for all books; each one, after eight years of age, should make her own bed; each one should be entirely responsible for his own table in his room. Many homes permit of many other "chores," such as keeping up the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... an old woman had said, "she'll mek his heart ache many a time. She'll comb his haid wid a three-legged stool an' bresh it wid de broom. Uh, huh—putty, is she? You ma'y huh 'cause she putty. Ki-yi! She fix you! Putty women ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Henley's joke was borrowed. In a copy of verses, entitled the Time Poets, preserved in a miscellany called Choice Drollery, 1656, are these lines: Sent by Ben Jonson, as some authors say, Broom went before, and kindly swept the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... this bag, tie it to a strong frame or to the backs of two kitchen chairs. If the chairs are used, place some heavy articles in them; or the bag may hang on a pole (a broom handle) which rests on the backs of the chairs. A high stool turned upside down makes a good support for the bag. Put a bowl on the floor under the bag, then pour in the fruit juice, which will pass ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... the widow; "av' you say lies to me agin, in this house, I'll smash the bones of ye myself, with the broom-handle. Lies, indeed! and from you, Barry Lynch, the biggest liar in all Connaught—not to talk of robber and ruffian! You'd betther take yourself out of that, fair and asy, while you're let. You'll find you'll have the worst of it, av' you come rampaging here wid ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now led to an understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she was the domestic of the cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, attended by a pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom three times her height. He therefore rose to take his leave, and took it; saying that, if Phoebe had no ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... musketry, and two small eight-pounders in battery at the gate. I looked back for my companions, but they were not up, not a man of them to be seen. 'No matter,' thought I 'they'll be here soon; meanwhile, I'll make for that little copse of brushwood;' for a small clump of low furze and broom was standing at a little distance in front of the farm. All this time, I ought to say, not a man of the enemy was to be seen, although I, from where I stood, could see the crenelated walls, and the guns, as they were pointed: at a distance all ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the Turk to the Koran. Nothing but fear or force ever changes him. The French invasions were desperate things, but they swept away a prodigious quantity of the cobwebs which grow over the heads of nations who will not use the broom for themselves. Feudalities and follies a thousand years old were trampled down by the foot of the conscript; and the only glimpses of common-sense which have visited three-fourths of Europe in our day, were let in through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... one of them had it in for us. Thirteen against five hundred, and we ruled by fear. We could not permit the slightest infraction of rules, the slightest insolence. If we did, we were lost. Our own rule was to hit a man as soon as he opened his mouth—hit him hard, hit him with anything. A broom-handle, end-on, in the face, had a very sobering effect. But that was not all. Such a man must be made an example of; so the next rule was to wade right in and follow him up. Of course, one was sure ...
— The Road • Jack London
... smith, he trusted his wife; his heart was empty of fear. High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a beacon of love and cheer. High on the hill they builded their bower, where the broom and the bracken meet; Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily sweet. Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol, the light of his eye; Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a butterfly. The weight of her arms around his neck ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... feather-broom in hand, an apron tied round her waist, waging her daily battle against a dust that existed only in ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... small islets of rock in that situation; and, some way to the eastward I perceived a much larger island which I concluded was one of Lady Julia Percy's Isles. At a quarter of a mile back from the beach broad broom-topped casuarinae were the only trees we could see; these grew on long ridges parallel to the beach, resembling those long breakers which, aided by winds, had probably thrown such ridges up. They were abundantly covered ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... decoration—possibly to supply an artist's omission. Such sketches were "The Cabman's Ticket" in February, 1854, put upon the wood from a scribble by Gilbert a Beckett—his sole artistic contribution to Punch; "Broom v. Brush" in May, 1859; and "The Turkish Bath" in 1880. And, above all, "process" had not yet held out its alluring promise of nearly equal results, to the inexpert eye, at a quarter of the cost ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... attitude of a biped. The happy group separated, looked round, and saw Loony's stupid face. He looked even duller than usual, as he stood quite still in the doorway, staring with wide stretched eyes, and holding a feather-broom under his arm, and in his hand the ever-present ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... gate, and the Captain entered the house to find Mrs. Snow wielding a broom and surrounded by a cloud of dust. Perez was upstairs with the patient, and Captain Jerry, whose habits had been considerably upset by the sweeping, ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the world are you going to do now, Jo?" asked Meg one snowy afternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... And then for the first time it dawned upon him that there were novel disproportions in the world. "Lord sakes," he cried, sitting up and looking animated for the first time, "but them's mortal great thissels growing out there on the bank by that broom. If so be they be thissels? Or 'ave I been forgetting?" But they were thistles, and what he took for tall bushes of broom was the new grass, and amidst these things a company of British soldiers—red-coated as ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Fatigue was beginning to tell upon Mr. Heard. They had left he cultivated ground behind and were now ascending, by a cindery track of pumice-stone, among grotesque blocks of lava and scoriae that glowed like molten metal. Tufts of flowery broom scented the air. The soil, so recently drenched by the miraculous shower of rain, was once more dry and dusty; its fragile flowers wilted in the sirocco. And still the young man marched ahead. Always upwards! The landscape ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the first fair mornings of the spring, when the birds were returning thanks to their Maker for the coming again of the seed-time, and the busy bee goeth forth from her cell, to gather honey from the flowers of the field, and the broom of the hill, and the blue-bells and gowans, which Nature, with a gracious and a gentle hand, scatters in the valley, as she walketh forth in her beauty, to testify to the goodness of the Father ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... distinguished literary element. Senator March represents the conservative Democrat who is too good for the present depraved condition of his State. If you want to immortalize yourself, invent a political broom. Senator Eustis: he thinks the only fault with the Senate is that it is too good-natured and does not say No often enough. Who are the Representatives? The only Speaker, the immortal Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means—don't ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... there, wild-eyed and tearful, a thought made its way through the kinky hair into her bewildered brain. She darted back into the house, and reappeared with a broom. ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... when a lay sister rushed out of the door they were about to enter, with a broom in her hand, which she had ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... an accompaniment of "God Save the King;" "Birdie's Burial," an elegy of the most sincere pathos, quite worthy of a larger cause,—if, indeed, any grief is greater than the first sorrows of childhood; the surprisingly droll "Barley Romance;" "The Broom and the Rod," with its programmatic glissandos to give things a clean sweep; and other delights like the "Rain Song," "The Tomtit Gray," "Mamma's Birthday," and "Christmas at the Door." To have given these works their present value and perfection, is to have accomplished ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... her mood changing in an instant. "There's Rod coming over the bridge now! Toss me my gingham apron and the scrubbing-brush, and the pail, and the tin of soft soap, and the cleaning cloths; let's see, the broom's down there, so I've got everything. If I wave a towel from the store, pack up luncheon for three. You come down and bring your mending; then, when you see how I'm getting on, we can consult. I'm going ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his gloves, he groped painfully until he came to the third story. A candle was in the passage of one of the two sets of rooms; the doors were open, and the names of Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were very clearly visible to the Major as he went in. An Irish charwoman, with a pail and broom, opened the door ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the bunk house. After all, what did she care where they floated—Venus and Johnny Jewel? Riding the sky with Venus when he knew very well that his place was out in the big corral, riding some of those broom-tail bronks that he was being paid a salary—a good salary—for breaking! Mary V thought that her father ought to be told about the way Johnny was spending all his time—writing silly poetry about Venus. It was the first she had ever known about his being a poet. Though it ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... home, anyway," she remarked, aloud, to herself as she hung her dish-cloth tidily over the upturned dish-pan and took up her broom. "I 'ain't felt noways easy 'bout her sence she left, though I do suppose there ain't any sense to it. But I'm glad ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... tales Robert Louis Stevenson remembered, these of Laboulaye's have "the golden smell of broom and the shade of pine," and they will come back to the child whenever the Wind ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... has seen the Cumberland moors and fells in July can ever forget them?—the yellow broom and purple heather, the pink and white waxen balls of the rare vacciniums, the red-leaved sundew, the asphodels, the cranberries and blueberries and bilberries, and the wonderful green mosses in all the wetter ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... after a while it was discovered that the ice was so smooth that almost anything could be used for coasting. The sledless ones rushed home and reappeared with all kinds of things. One little lad went down on a shovel and his intrepid little sister followed on a broom. Boxes and shingles and even dish-pans began to appear. Most reckless of all, one big fellow slid down on his two feet, landing in a heap in ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... stepped into the pastrycook's shop a poor, industrious man with a wooden leg, who usually sweeps the dirty corner of the walk which turns at this spot to the Wells, held his hat to Ben, who, after glancing his eye at the petitioner's well-worn broom, instantly produced his twopence. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... near, it makes me shrink from happiness almost as much as from grief. It seems only grief's forerunner. On the evening of my sixteenth birthday, we were all having a very merry time in papa's study, popping corn over the open fire. We had wheeled Nat near the fire, and tied the corn-popper on a broom-handle, so that he could shake the popper himself; and I never saw him laugh so heartily at anything. Papa laughed too, quite loud, which was a thing that did not happen many times a year. It was the last time we heard the full sound of dear papa's voice. Late that night he was called out to ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... than the April day, O brighter than the golden broom, O blither than the thrushes' lay, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... best of all what trouble I take, Mr. Barssegh. When I open the store in the morning, I never wait until Micho comes, but I take the broom in my hand and sweep out the store. And how I behave with the customers, ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... do—all except Chee-Chee, who had hands, and could do things like a man. But they soon got used to it; and they used to think it great fun to watch Jip, the dog, sweeping his tail over the floor with a rag tied onto it for a broom. After a little they got to do the work so well that the Doctor said that he had never had his house kept so ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... deliberately, taking time to brush every crumb from his lap. At the door he reached for a whisk broom and wielded it conspicuously. He could not have said whether bravado or contempt was moving him to such flamboyant dawdling. Or was he merely trying to persuade himself that he had nothing to fear in any case? He stepped out into a shower ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... about that in Paulson,' he said. 'A father gave his sons a broom to break. At first they could not break it, but when they took it twig by twig they broke it easily. And it's the same here,' and he gave a broad smile. 'I'm ready!' ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... the cabin. He placed them on a shelf and turned away, but after a second's hesitation he closed the box and arranged the sticks neatly. Then he set the room in order and carefully swept the floor. As he replaced the broom he thought for an instant, then opened the door and whistled softly. Belshazzar came at a rush. The Harvester pushed the plate of food toward the hungry dog and he ate greedily. The man returned to the front room and ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... quietly along, when the sound of another horse coming made me look round; and there I saw a dreadful sight,—a wild horse, tearing over the ground, with fiery eyes and streaming tail. On his back sat a crazy man, beating him with a broom; a crazy woman was behind him, with her bonnet on wrong side before, holding one crazy child in her lap, while another stood on the horse; a third was hanging on by one foot, and all were howling at the top of their voices as they rushed by. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... to him. Lying there he looked down the slope, clad with stunted cork-trees and evergreen oaks; here and there was the golden gleam of broom; yonder over a spur of whitish rock sprawled the green and living scarlet of a cactus. Below him about the caves of Hercules was a space of sea whose clear depths shifted with its slow movement from the deep ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... not the less worthy of consideration, perhaps, on this account. But on this account it appears to me more likely to play a subordinate than a leading part in the political movement of these times. It is rather a broom, if I may so speak, than a sceptre which the 'brav' general' is expected to wield. In conversation with M. Fleury, another of General Boulanger's intimate and confidential lieutenants, M. Turquet, formerly an Under-Secretary of State in ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... by doing so"—"that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide"—"that she was locked up in Maidstone Jail for child-stealing"—and that "she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind and make direct for Calais"), Mr. Ashby-Sterry succeeded, although his greatest embarrassment arose from that irrepressible nuisance, "Buggins the Builder," who cannot be controlled even in the neighbourhood of Dover, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the Grand Inquisitor put on his priestly robes and, followed by several others, took off from them the ban of excommunication (which they were supposed to have fallen under), by throwing holy water on them with a small broom. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... New York harbor. On the trip across she had once more had the big British greyhound of the seas for a rival. But this time there was a different tale to tell. The Columbia was coming home, as Billy Raynor put it, "with a broom at the ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... moccasins. At a bend in the iced channel he came on a pack of mangy coyotes. Before he had thought he had sicked the dogs on them. With a yell they were off out of sight amid the goose grass and reeds with the sleigh and his garments. Those reeds, remember, are sixteen feet high, stiff as broom corn and hard on moccasins as stubble would be on bare feet. To make matters worse, a heavy snowstorm came on. The wind was against the direction the dogs had taken and the man hallooed himself hoarse without ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... those preparations were. It was all in vain that a meeting was held, and the perch taken; everybody wanted to talk at once, and, what was worse still, everybody did talk at once, and made such a clatter, that Tom, the gardener's boy, threw his birch-broom up in the cedar-tree, and then had his ears boxed because it did not come down again, but lay across two boughs ever so high up and out of reach, to the great annoyance of Mrs Turtledove, a nervous lady of very ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... man, at once of natural wisdom and practical experience; one Intellect still really human, and not red-tapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there in that dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules-like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in upon the place, and say as with a fiat, "Here shall be truth, and real work, and talent to do it henceforth; I will seek for able men to work here, as for the elixir of life to this poor place and me:"—what ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... cried Fern, clutching Peace about the ankles as she started toward the sagging door of the ramshackle old house. "Mrs. Burnett will chase you out with the broom like she did us. And 'sides, mamma won't know you. She doesn't even know Rivers ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... dratted cat," cried Mrs Gowler, as she caught up a broom and waddled from the kitchen. She returned, a moment later, with something remotely approaching a look ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... for after walking two or three hours he came to the end of that yellow plain to higher ground, where the earth was sandy and barren, with a few scattered bushes growing on it—dark, prickly bushes like butcher's broom. When he got to the highest part of this barren ground he saw a green valley beyond, stretching away as far as he could see on either hand. But it was nice to see a green place again, and going down into the valley he managed to find some sweet roots to stay his hunger and thirst; then, after a ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... Dolly Waring? I haven't no idee that even bees would dare get upon HER! If they did, they'd soon get the worst on't Her tongue is all-powerful, to say nawthin' of her arms; and if the so'gers can only handle their muskets as she can handle a broom, there is no need of new regiments to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... down with golden locks shalt not awake until they be turned to silver hairs; and that chin, on which scarcely appeareth soft down, shall be filled with bristles as hard as broom: thou shalt sleep out thy youth and flowering time, and become dry hay before thou knewest thyself green grass; and ready by age to step into the grave when thou wakest, that was youthful in the court when thou ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... immobility; a flattened nose, smeared with snuff; knuckle-bones well set up by muscles that, under pretence of being hands, played nonchalantly with a pack of cards, like some machine the movement of which is about to run down. The body, a species of broom-handle decently covered with clothes, enjoyed the advantages of death and did not stir. Above the forehead rose a coif of black velvet. Madame Fontaine, for it was really a woman, had a black hen on her right hand and a huge toad, named Astaroth, on her left. Gazonal ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... kangaroo. The country seemed to improve as we advanced, and at the ninth mile, as we had been gradually ascending, we were gratified by an open prospect to the eastward, which showed low gentle hills and valleys thinly studded with trees. The broom-grass, now dead, gave them a white appearance, and, contrasted with the acacia in full flower, and the darker foliage of the trees, gave the whole the most pleasing and varied aspect. To the north-west round to the north, the country ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... melodies are the voice of ancient Scotland is proved by the fact that no modern musician has been able to imitate them. Haydn tried to rearrange some of them, and failed, and Geminiani blotted quires of paper in attempting to write a second part to the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes." No: ere we can add anything to the national music of Scotland we must restore the precise national conditions of which it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... strong and fierce, intelligent and candid,—who would expose shams and destroy abuses,—who would have no mercy on either religious, social, or political fraud, and who would perform the part of the necessary hard broom for sweeping the National house. But, unfortunately, we have no such man. You ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... streets were empty of all life. Its bridges were intact; its hotels and restaurants still flying flags and inviting sky signs; its power-stations running. But about it the country on both sides of the gorge might have been swept by a colossal broom. Everything that could possibly give cover to an attack upon the German position at Niagara had been levelled as ruthlessly as machinery and explosives could contrive; houses blown up and burnt, woods burnt, fences and crops destroyed. The mono-rails had been torn up, and the roads in particular ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... in haste to make up the beds, and wash the dishes; but because she was in a hurry she could not work quickly, and when she took the broom to sweep the floor it was almost time for ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... they all looked forward with anxious delight to the coming of court week. Every preparation was made for the judge and lawyers. Beds were aired and the bugs hunted out. Saturday previous to the coming Monday was a busy day in setting all things to rights, and the scrubbing-broom was heard in consonance with calls to the servants to be busy and careful, as Sally and Nancy sprang to their work with a will. With garments tucked up to their knees, they splashed the water and suds over the floors, strangers to the cleansing ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... pleased that he undertook at once some primary steps in the process of purification. He cut a number of small, straight boughs, tied them together with a piece of bark, the leaves at the head thus forming a kind of broom, and went to work. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... reflection Lubin slipped on his green corduroy jacket, shouldered his broom, and trudged ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... theatre at night, as dull and senseless as a London one, and only remarkable for the summary way in which the house was cleared at eleven o'clock: which was done by a line of soldiers forming along the wall, at the back of the stage, and sweeping the whole company out before them, like a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the word, in the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo, and means a little lamp or candlesnuff) is supposed by some to be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the death of the Carnival: candles being indispensable to Catholic ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... on more rapidly and the old man resumed his sweeping, muttering crossly into his long, white beard. As she came down the other side of the street half an hour later, she was watching Schulte from the corner of her eye. He was leaning on his broom, watching her. Seeing that she was going to pass without stopping he called to her and went slowly across the street. "You would make good tenants," he said. "I had to sue Bischoff. You can have it for ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the line in triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his boat, proud as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... torture him, fit after fit, Without a summons e'er to quit, From old Hippocrates. The spider, on the lofty ceiling, As if she had a life-lease feeling. Wove wide her cunning toils, Soon rich with insect spoils. A maid destroy'd them as she swept the room: Repair'd, again they felt the fatal broom. The wretched creature, every day, From house and home must pack away. At last, her courage giving out, She went to seek her sister gout, And in the field descried her, Quite starved: more evils did betide her Than e'er befel the poorest spider— Her toiling host enslaved her so, And made her chop, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... whaur the yorlin[1] sings, Wi' a clip o' the sunshine atween his wings; Whaur the birks[2] are a' straikit wi' fair munelicht, And the broom hings its lamps by day and by nicht; Whaur the burnie comes trottin' ower shingle and stane, Liltin'[3] bonny havers[4] til 'tsel alane; And the sliddery[5] troot, wi' ae soop o' its tail, Is awa' 'neath the green weed's swingin' veil! Oh! the bonny, bonny dell, whaur I sang as I saw The yorlin, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... teachers and children, enlivening all by his encouragement and cheerfulness. He was a martinet on one question, and that was cleanliness, and its kindred virtue, orderliness. He was never above working with mop, broom and duster indoors, and shovel and rake in the garden; and this trait added much to the appearance of things as well as to the comfort of all concerned in the use of the convent ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... and last to move in a battle; and Faolan's banner was the Coinneal Catha, the Candle of Battle; and Oisin's banner was the Donn Nimhe, the Dark Deadly One; and Caoilte's was the Lamh Dearg, the Red Hand; and Osgar's was the Sguab Gabhaidh that had a Broom of rowan branches on it, and the only thing asked when the fight was at the hottest was where that Broom was; and merry Diarmuid's banner was the Liath Loinneach, the Shining Grey; and the Craobh Fuileach, the Bloody Branch, was the banner of Lugaidh's Son. And as to ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... be kept from a week to a fortnight, by the following process. Cover them with water, and wash them clean with a birch broom. Then lay them with the deep or concave part of the shell undermost, and sprinkle each of them well with salt and Indian meal. Fill up the tub with cold water. Repeat this every day; first pouring off the liquid of the ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... topgallant sails still set, came bulging up the harbor, not sixty minutes from deep water. Mr. James found McMurtagh already in the office and the mail well sorted, but he insisted on McMurtagh finding him a broom, and, wielding that implement on the second pair of stairs (for the counting-room of James Bowdoin's Sons was really a loft, two flights up in the old granite building), was discovered there shortly after by Mr. James Bowdoin. The ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... we all go to buy us a lock; What kind of a lock shall it be? We'll buy a broom handle; if that will not do, With a poker we'll try it alone. But if neither the broom nor the poker will do, We'll open it then with ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... though, and we went up to the cottage together, to find Kicksey kicking up a dust in the parlour with a broom. ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... he had not had a Mind to cheat or baffle the poor Man, what need he have taken a Cow so near home? if he had such and such Powers as we talk of, and as Fancy and Fable furnish for him, could not he have carried a Cow in the Air upon a Broom-stick, as well as an old Woman? Could he not have stole a Cow for him in Lincolnshire, and set it down in Herefordshire, and so have performed his Bargain, saved his Credit, and kept the poor Man out of Trouble? so that if the Story is True, as I really believe it is, either it is not ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Harry struck on a good place when he crossed where he did, for you see the rock here is as smooth as the top of a table, and the wind has swept it as clean of dust as if it had been done by an eastern woman's broom. If the horses had been shod there would have been scratches on the rock that would have been enough for the dullest Indian to follow, but an unshod horse leaves no mark on ground like this. I expect the red-skins who followed them were ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... and (10) in this Lesson, are called Epigrams. What quality do you think they impart to one's style?] 8. The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun.— Longfellow. 9. Things mean, the Thistle, the Leek, the Broom of the Plantagenets, become noble by association.—F. W. Robertson. 10. Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the night.— Beecher. 11. In that calm Syrian afternoon, memory, a pensive Ruth, went gleaning the silent fields of childhood, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... to plaster it with tender kisses. However the red man tailed it as it went past and hung on, kissing any bits he could reach. When the mother reappeared they were worrying the baby between them as a couple of hound puppies worry the hind leg of a cub. She beat them faithfully with a broom and hove both of them out into the wide wet world, and we all slept in a bog that night, and William was much abused and loathed. But that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... place, which bears as a sign a square-headed likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug of cider to the success of Admiral Van Tromp, whom they imagine is still sweeping the British Channel with a broom at ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... cried, "in Winisfarne lieth Pertolepe with over a thousand of his company, I judge—and in the woods 'twixt here and Winisfarne is Hollo of Revelsthorne marching on us through the woods with full five thousand of Ivo's picked levies, new come from Barham Broom!" ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... in deadly shock. More than an hour long they contended with varying success. Musketeers, pikemen, arquebusmen, swordmen, charged, sabred, or shot each other from the various hollows or heights of vantage, plunging knee-deep in the sand, torn and impeded by the prickly broom-plant which grew profusely over the whole surface, and fighting breast to breast and hand to hand in a vast series of individual encounters. Thrice were the Spaniards repulsed in what for a moment seemed absolute rout, thrice they rallied and drove their assailants at push of pike ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rightly) the absence in the tropic forests of such grand masses of colour as are supplied by a heather moor, a furze or broom-croft, a field of yellow charlock, blue bugloss, or scarlet poppy. Tropic landscape gardening will supply that defect; and a hundred plants of yellow Allamanda, or purple Dolichos, or blue Clitoria, or crimson Norantea, set side by side, as we might use a hundred Calceolarias or Geraniums, will ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... under similar circumstances, and with the same result. The detector was, however, an English seaman, now captain of a well-known steam-vessel, who forming part of a crew one of whom had lost a sum of money, broke off ten twigs of equal length from a broom, and distributed them among his shipmates, with the same observation as was used by the Argentine chief. Two hours later he examined them, and found that the negro steward had shortened his allotted twig. The money was restored.—The coincidence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... happened to June. Everything went on as in the old days before Master Linkum came. She washed dishes, and scrubbed knives, and carried baskets of wood, so heavy that she tottered under their weight, and was scolded if she dropped so much as a shaving on the floor. She swept the rooms with a broom three times as tall as she was, and had her ears boxed because she sould not get the dust up with such tiny hands. She worked and scrubbed and ran on errands from morning to night, till her feet ached so she cried out with the pain. She was whipped and scolded and threatened ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... very important, the lady who drove up in the open cab did not notice that he was even more solemn than usual. When she appeared, he gave one more glance at the spot he had been sweeping, and then grounded his broom like a musket, folded his hands on the end of the broomstick and looked at her as if he wondered what on earth had brought her to the palace at that moment, and wished that she would take herself off again ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and companionship; a tremulous kitchen table; a long box set on end and curtained off with a bit of faded calico, a single chair with a mended leg—these rude conveniences comprised my total list of housekeeping effects, not forgetting, of course, the dish-pan, the stubby broom, and the coal-scuttle, along with the scanty assortment of thick, chipped dishes and the pots and pans on the shelf behind the calico curtain. There was no bureau, only a waved bit of looking-glass over the sink in the corner. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... scarce longer than one's Finger. His Pipe smoak'd out with aweful Grace, With aspect grave and solemn pace; The reverend Sire walks to a Chest, Of all his Furniture the best, Closely confined within a Room, Which seldom felt the weight of Broom; From thence he lugs a Cag of Rum, And nodding to me, thus begun: I find, says he, you don't much care For this our Indian Country Fare; But let me tell you, Friend of mine, You may be glad of it in time, Tho' now your Stomach is so fine; And if within this Land you stay, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... its full power. Each sustained the other by a desperate cheerfulness. When they took their morning walk in the Luxembourg Gardens—what time the blue-aproned Jacques was polishing their waxed floors with his legs for broom-handles—they went into ecstasies over everything, drawing each other's attention to the sky, the trees, the water. And, indeed, of a sunshiny morning it was heartening to sit by the pond and watch the wavering sheet of beaten gold water, reflecting all shades of green in a restless shimmer against ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... a great beating and shaking of clothes, and a combined cleaning of the shack. Sam made a broom out of willow branches; Jack cut some poles, out of which he designed to make a chair ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... it? I'd lay my broom over his head if he had the impudence to ask me. When Maggie O'Keefe marries ag'in, she won't marry a ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... winged dashboard, black, crimson, purple, or blue, which trails in the snow in company with their tails and the heavy tassels of the fur-edged cloth robe. The horses, the wide-spreading reddish beard of the coachman, parted in the middle like a well-worn whisk broom, the hair, eyelashes, and furs of the occupants of the sledge, all are frosted with rime until each filament seems to have been ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... at midnight, When soft the winds blow, When clear falls the moonlight, When spring-tides are low; When sweet airs come seaward From heaths starr'd with broom, And high rocks throw mildly On the blanch'd sands a gloom; Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie, Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze, from the sand hills, At the white, sleeping town; At the church on the hillside— And ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the run of the piece an old Irishwoman who was duster of the theatre, and with whom the genial double of Sir Henry often had a friendly word, approached as she thought the familiar M., and in a rather frivolous mood innocently tickled the actor under the chin with her dusting-broom. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... The old broom hadn't lost its snap. It had swept clean the chambers of Perkins' soul—swished away the whole accumulation of nasty little cobwebs and malignant germs. Gone were the mean doubts that had formed in him, the lethargy, the cheap cynicism. Perkins was ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... front door thrown wide open, with every indication of its being entered by all comers without the least ceremony—not even that of wiping the shoes. There was neither door-bell nor knocker, scraper nor mat; and the floor of the lobby seemed but slightly acquainted with the broom,—to say nothing of the scrubbing-brush. It looked like the floor of a corn or provision warehouse. I had no alternative but to venture in. Immediately after, there entered a young man with a fowling-piece, whom before I had seen at a little distance watching the movements ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... weight and authority; but behold, after the new has worn away, he can not preach any better than any other they have no more regard for his words than they have for the words of others. There is an old adage which says, "A new broom sweeps clean." The boy is eager to cut wood with the new ax. A child will carefully write like the copy for the first few lines; but the farther down the page, the greater the carelessness. The young ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... deepening hole. They worked with a will together; there was no complaining, though the rabbit wore its tail down till it was nothing but a stump, and the mouse stood ankle-deep in water, and the squirrel's fluffy tail looked like a stable broom. They worked like heroes without stopping even to talk, and as the water went pouring down the hole, the level of the sea, of course, sank lower and lower and lower, the shores of the tiny island stretched farther and farther and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... apologetically with his big whisk broom and told Luck that they would all presently be gazing at Dry Lake, or words which carried that meaning. So Luck permitted himself to be whisked from a half dollar while his thoughts were "in the field" with his camera men and company, shooting ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Good-night, and bad luck to you, Old Mog." Notwithstanding the words they used, there was terror in the voices of most of the children. Some of them shouted, "She's coming after us! The witch is coming after us! She's mounting her broom, and out she'll ride. Run—run—run!" On this the urchins shrieked louder, and ran faster and faster down the slope. One boy, more daring than the rest, and superior in appearance to most of them, lingered behind, and finding a stone remaining in his pocket of those with which he ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... is not at home." And, as Therese remained silent, immovable, Fusellier came near her with his broom, hiding with his left hand his pipe ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... reduced resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures—one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... his hair brush and his little whisk broom were missing," declared Allan, with a chuckle. "Why, that boy seems to only live to fight against dirt. He's the most particular fellow ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Sodomceum), the yellow-flowered acacia, and the liquorice plant. Among the forms due to high elevation are the famous Lebanon cedar, several oaks and juniper, the maple, berberry, jessamine, ivy, butcher's broom, a rhododendron, and the gum-tragacanth plant. The fruits additional to those of the north are dates, lemons, almonds, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... water tight roof. Cracks between the logs were daubbed with mud which soon dried. The joists were thrown on top of them and gable ends of the same kind of boards that made the room. Bunks three or four feet wide made in two tiers were at rear end and sides bottomed with small poles, and broom-sedge and oak and pine leaves, with a blanket spread over. Four-legged slabs made good benches, but many split bottom chairs were obtained from country chair makers. With a good log fire three or four feet long ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... ground for planting hemp, flax, rush and Spanish broom (spartum) which serve to make shoes for the cattle, thread, cord and rope. Other situations are suitable for still other kinds of planting, as, for example, some plant garden truck and some plant other things, in a nursery, or between the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... wings by Daedalus designed, And China waggons wafted by the wind? A Spaniard reached the moon, upborn by geese; (Then first 'twas known that she was made of cheese.) A fidler on a fish through waves advanced, He twanged his catgut, and the Dolphin danced. Hags rode on broom-sticks, heathen-gods on clouds; Ladies, on rams and bulls, have dared the floods. Much famed the shoes Jack Giant-killer wore, And Fortunatus' hat is famed much more. Such vehicles were common once, no doubt; But modern versemen must even ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Catherine who made the fire," I thought, "and she is preparing our coffee." Then I would moderate my steps in order to get my breath a little, while I scanned the little windows and laughed with anticipated pleasure. The door opens, and Mother Gredel, with her woollen petticoat and a big broom in her hand, turns round and exclaims: "Here he is! here he is!" Then Catherine runs up, always more and more beautiful, with her little blue cap, and says: "Ah! that is good; I was expecting thee!" How happy she is, and ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... lashing rain leaped down upon them as if they were all it had come for, and with words lost in a second thunder-clap the mate threw open the captain's room, pressed them in, and began to dry them with a whisk-broom. The captain, he said, was below. "Off watch didn't mean ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... again, and we commenced to traverse a dreary plain of yellowish white pumice-stone, interspersed with huge blocks of obsidian, thrown from the mouth of the volcano. At first the monotony of the scene was relieved by large bushes of yellow broom in full flower, and still larger bushes of the beautiful Retama blanca, quite covered with lovely white bloom, scenting the air with its delicious fragrance, and resembling huge tufts of feathers, eight or nine ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... is kept very clean. It is built of sticks, stones, and mud, and is well plastered outside and in. The trowel the beaver uses in plastering is his tail; this is considered a great delicacy at the table. Their beds are made of chips, split as fine as the brush of an Indian broom; these are disposed in one corner, and kept dry and sweet and clean. It is the bark of the green wood that is used by the beavers for food; after the stick is peeled, they float it out at a distance from the house. Many good housewives ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... and observations of Spallanzani it appears that in the Spartium Junceum, rush-broom, the very minute seeds were discerned in the pod at least twenty days before the flower is in full bloom, that is twenty days before fecundation. At this time also the powder of the anthers was visible, but glued fast to their summits. The seeds however at this time, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... governethe that contree, that thei clepen Batho, duellethe at the cytee of Orda. And treuly no gode man scholde not duellen in that contre. For the lond and the contree is not worthi houndes to dwelle inne. It were a gode contree to sowen inne thristelle and breres and broom and thornes; and for no other thing is it not good. Natheless there is gode londe in sum place; but it is pure litille, as men seyn. I have not ben in that contree, ne be tho weyes: but I have ben at other londes, that marchen to tho contrees; and in the lond of Russye, and in the lond ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... addressed her as "woman," and had insisted on knowing what she was doing there. And after that she had lost all terror of him. And he had even allowed her with a grim smile to enter occasionally the sacred study with her broom and pan. It had evidently made a lasting impression ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... sepulchral note that the chained watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle. Luis, a cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting moustache and thick, dark lips, would stop sweeping the cafe with a broom of palm-leaves to let a gentle shudder run down his spine. His languishing almond eyes would remain ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to his own room to wash and dress; which process completed, he entered the dining-room to find the table laid with tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the place, for there remained traces of the previous night's dinner and supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... me wise. I did not feel discouraged by the humbleness of my employment, and I fulfilled my duties with exactitude, handling the duster and broom to the satisfaction ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... Jacks-o'-both-sides rule England, even as the Parnell brigade ruled Parliament. To this floating population is it given to make or unmake Cabinets; theirs is the righteous indignation that sweeps the country like a new broom, and sweeps Ministries into limbo; to them is made the magniloquent "appeal to the country!" L'etat, c'est nous! might be the motto of this third party, were it but conscious of itself as ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... hear me gie a loud, loud cry,— The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,— Shoot an arrow frae thy bow, and there let me lie, And we'll never gang down to the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... again. He knew it from many things—the white fence, the clean stable, the Mexican hostler with broom in hand. And though he was at home where he wanted to be, yet he found himself filled with vague uneasiness. After a time he sought to relieve it. He made his way into the stable, but he found no relief there. He returned to the corral, and began slowly to circle inside the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... SMUGGINS, I don't like my limes to look like gouty posts, my branchy elms to show as bare as broom-sticks, and my fruit-trees ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... would you even higher fly, And found a "Cult"? You've but to try. That blend fools follow in full cry, Meaninglessness plus Mystery! A witch astride upon a broom, A bogie in a darkened room, Nonsense and nubibustic gloom,— Mix them like witch-broth; they will "boom"! Chorus—Tra-la! We "boom" to-day! [Till you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each stood open, disgorging their contents. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... from underfoot, and then pretty soon I do something that makes her angry and she makes me go to my room or she spanks me. Bobby doesn't like this. Once when she spanked me he growled at mommy, and mommy chased him outdoors with a broom before she sent me to bed. I cried all day that day because it was cold outdoors and I wanted ...
— My Friend Bobby • Alan Edward Nourse
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