|
|
|
More "Mantelpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... usual custom, she hovered about the dining-room after breakfast was over that morning, trying to make up her mind to speak. She watched her uncle wind the clock on the mantelpiece, saying to herself that she would speak when he left off turning the key, but she let the opportunity slip by. Then the doctor gathered up his letters and papers and went to his study without a word or a look in her direction. In fact, he was quite unconscious of her presence ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... her, and a morning's work pretty near she found it. Then she had to rub bright all the brass handles of the doors, and the big brass andirons in the parlour, and the brass candlesticks on the parlour mantelpiece. When at last she got through and came to the fire to warm herself, she found her grandmother lamenting that her snuff-box was empty, and asking her daughter to fill ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... weather, and possibly also to the assaults of the unchecked relic-monger, who until recent years could with his hammer collect souvenirs with impunity. In this connection, there is a story afoot that a hammer was kept upon the mantelpiece of a well-known hotel in Salisbury, which was reserved for the use of those intending to see Stonehenge, who might be wishful to bring back some convincing ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... him out, left him standing on the verandah. After a lengthy absence, he returned, and with a "Well, come along in then!" opened the door of a parlour. This was a large room, well furnished in horsehair and rep. Wax-lights stood on the mantelpiece before a gilt-framed pierglass; coloured prints hung on ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... stolidly in the easy chair by the long windows. At twenty-four minutes to three the baron flung out the last damning phrase (with the appropriate splendid gesture) at his image in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Then he turned to beam triumphantly on his little charge. The easy chair was ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... I know he comes on account of the fair Wilhelmine." His tone was conciliatory. Once more he drew Bobinette to him; but she seemed to object more and more strongly to the captain's caresses. Glancing at a clock on the mantelpiece she cried: "Why, it is four o'clock! ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected from the flies by a brown paper bag inverted over its head. Two plaster Samuels praying under the pink mosquito netting adorned the ends of the shelf. There were screens at all the windows, and ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to my wife, "My dear! I am going away for a few days to Brighton. Here are all the keys of the house. You may open every door and closet, except the one at the end of the oak room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on the mantelpiece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman—unless, to be sure, I want to get rid of her—because, after such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the closet at all. I keep ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... presented a greater contrast than the Anderson girls. Dona, at thirteen, was a shy, retiring, amiable little person, with an unashamed weakness for golliwogs and Teddy bears, specimens of which, in various sizes, decorated the mantelpiece of her bedroom. She was accustomed to give way, under plaintive protest, to Marjorie's masterful disposition, and, as a rule, played second fiddle with a good grace. She was not at all clever or imaginative, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... on the point of interrupting Marlow when he stopped of himself, his eyes fixed on vacancy, or—perhaps—(I wouldn't be too hard on him) on a vision. He has the habit, or, say, the fault, of defective mantelpiece clocks, of suddenly stopping in the very fulness of the tick. If you have ever lived with a clock afflicted with that perversity, you know how vexing it is—such a stoppage. I was vexed with Marlow. He was smiling faintly while I waited. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... falling off in places. Very old square carpet. Fire burning. No ornaments. Tin box on mantelpiece. A few plates, workbasket and tin boxes on dresser. Shoes, clogs on top of dresser. Old coloured tablecloth on table. Roll of leather, etc., at table behind screen. Three hat pegs on wall ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... the premises showed that all the tableware of value had disappeared, along with two rings which Laura had left on the mantelpiece in the living-room. From the kitchen nearly everything used in cooking was gone, and likewise almost everything from the pantry ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... to warn you that you can be prosecuted and fined twenty-five pounds for telling fortunes. I should like to know where you got that crystal! It's remarkably like the ball of glass that was broken off my Venetian vase. I missed it yesterday from my mantelpiece. By the by"—stooping down suddenly, and pulling aside the handkerchief from Zara's swarthy neck—"you are wearing a locket and chain that I know to be the property of one of my pupils. It is my duty immediately to put you in the hands ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and then, its faint silvery ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... revolution at that time was money. I went to Laffitte; but he was full of doubts, and dilly-dallied with the matter. Then I offered to do it without his help. Said I: 'On the first interview that you and I have without witnesses, put a million of francs, in bank-notes, on the mantelpiece, which I will pocket unseen by you. Then leave the rest to me.' Laffitte still fought shy of it, hesitated, deliberated, and at last decided that he would have nothing at ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... pealed imperiously, and Tudor looked up from his book. It was his custom to read far into the night, for he was a poor sleeper and preferred a cosy fireside to his bed. But that night he was even later than usual. Glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece, he saw that it was a quarter to two. With a shrug of the shoulders expressive rather of weariness than indifference, he rose to answer ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... rival had been here," and, picking it up, Charlie amused himself with putting it on the head of a little Psyche which ornamented the mantelpiece, softly singing as he did so, another verse ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... not as good? I don't live in such a fine house, crammed full of gimcracks; but I've got a dictionary that you can study in, and big Peter, your father, shall hang a great switch over the mantelpiece, to remind you that he won't stand any nonsense, or idleness, from you. Dear me! how glad he will be to see you! Come, run with a hop, skip, and jump, to the stable, and harness up old Whitenose: it's ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... previous, the first person of the opposite sex seen in the morning was the observer's valentine. We find Madam Pepys lying in bed for a long time one St. Valentine's morning with eyes tightly closed, lest she see one of the painters who was gilding her new mantelpiece, and be forced to have him for her valentine. Anna means, doubtless, that the first person she chanced to see that morning ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... frightened eyes of a woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room—the futile little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such environments—the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things which he could not do. He gazed—not without ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... I.—Breakfast-room at No. 92a, Porchester Square, Bayswater. Rhubarb-green and gilt paper, with dark olive dado: curtains of a nondescript brown. Black marble clock on grey granite mantelpiece; Landseer engravings; tall book-case, containing volumes of "The Quiver," "Mission-Work in Mesopotamia," a cheap Encyclopedia, and the "Popular History of Europe." Time, about 9:45. Mr. MONTAGUE TIDMARSH is leaving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... question. "A great actor," he writes, "comic or tragic, is not to be a mere copy, a fac-simile, but an imitation of nature; now an imitation differs from a copy in this, that it of necessity implies and demands a difference, whereas a copy aims at identity and what a marble peach on the mantelpiece, that you take up deluded and put down with a pettish disgust, is compared with a fruit-piece of Vanhuysen's, even such is a mere copy of nature, with a true histrionic imitation. A good actor is Pygmalion's statue, a work of exquisite art, animated and gifted with motion; ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... few more antiquarian facts about the room, and its builders, she meanwhile looking in some perplexity from the rich embossments of the ceiling with its Tudor roses and crowns, from the stately mantelpiece and canopied doors, to the few pieces of shabby modern furniture which disfigured the room, the half-dozen cane chairs, the ugly lodging-house carpet and sideboard. What had become of the old furnishings? How could they have ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me pretty often then! No one's ever called neatness my strong point. Are those photos on the mantelpiece your home folks? I'm going to look at them. What a lot of things you've got: books, and albums, and goodness knows what! I'll enjoy turning them over ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... steer my way to the window and pull back the drawn curtains I might be able to let in light enough to find matches on mantelpiece or table. Then, what good luck if I should discover the case containing the treaty and go off with it before "J.M." came back! It was not his, and he was a thief: therefore, I should be doing him no wrong and Maxine de Renzie much good by taking it, if ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the clock on the mantelpiece. It was Eustace's time for paying me his morning visit in my own little room. He might come in at any moment; he might see the letter; he might snatch the letter out of my hand. In a frenzy of terror and loathing, I caught up the vile sheets of paper and threw ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... sure to introduce them sooner or later to me. The next time that I spent the evening with her after this conversation, as I stood by the chimney talking to her, I suddenly perceived a most detestable-looking black creature on the mantelpiece. I started back in horror to my hostess's great delight, as she had been at the pains of cutting out in black paper an imitation scorpion, for my edification, and was highly satisfied with the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... regrets if I am boring you," said Marigny, leaning back in the chair and laying the cigarette on the mantelpiece. "Yet bear with me a little while, I pray you; these explanations are necessary. A sane man acts with motive, and it is only reasonable that you should understand my motive before you hear ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see on a mantelpiece. Nevertheless Mademoiselle Lupot essays her ballad; but she can never manage to overtake her accompanier, who, instead of following the singer, seems determined to make no alteration in the movement of his head and feet. The ballad ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... extreme edges of their chairs. They spoke with a faded propriety, dropped their final "g's," and specialised in the abbreviation "ain't." They stayed for a quarter of an hour exactly by the French clock on the mantelpiece, contriving, in this calculated period, to make it quite clear that they were on terms of intimacy with the Halbertons, and they invariably finished by inviting ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... his voice. He is pure mind, a practical mind taut with attention. If he have occasion in these moments to ring the bell for an adjutant or a colonel, that official is addressed with the brevity and directness of a manager giving an order to his typist. Instead of a text over his mantelpiece one might expect to find the commercial ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... I return at night. Master Johnny must needs apply a lighted match to this arrangement early in the forenoon. The fire was not discovered until the blower was one mass of red-hot iron, and the wooden mantelpiece was smoking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... but contemplate the shining ones from affar, and when weary of such a dazzling scene, turn for a change to the consideration of the carpet pattern. Mr. Crimsworth, standing on the rug, his elbow supported by the marble mantelpiece, and about him a group of very pretty girls, with whom he conversed gaily—Mr. Crimsworth, thus placed, glanced at me; I looked weary, solitary, kept down like some desolate tutor ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the daughter, her eyes glancing, as she spoke, at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I am afraid we shall not get this work done in time for me to take it home ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... tired of this entertainment, and turned their attention to the domestic bookshelf and the family treasures which adorned the walls and the mantelpiece. In a glass frame was an army biscuit of army hardness on which Mrs. George's brother had written a letter on a distant Christmas Day in South Africa and had posted to her. They deserted other relics for a large book of Boer War pictures, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... oak gate-table, one tapestried easy chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old engravings in maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small portraits in maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece and no clock, self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two windows opposite each other at either end of the long room), sundry rugs on the dark-stained floor, and so on! Not too much furniture, and not too much symmetry either. An agreeable ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Vincent. He was twirling softly in his strong fingers a little bronze candlestick that stood on the mantelpiece: his manner was completely unconcerned; he even seemed to be smiling ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to play with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the statue of the dinkus-thrower at the Vacation in Rome, but the color of it reminded you of the 'Sunset in ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... hands plunged deep in his pockets, but, at the outset of a reverie in which judgment and prudence might have helped in the council, he happened to catch sight of himself in an oblong mirror over the mantelpiece, for the apartment, redolent of New York's later architecture, contained an open grate, and was furnished with the chaste beauty of the Chippendale period. In his present position the reflection in the mirror was oddly reminiscent of a half-length portrait ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... description, save in the one chamber at the window of which I had seen the strange face. That was comfortable and elegant, and all my suspicions rose into a fierce bitter flame when I saw that on the mantelpiece stood a copy of a full-length photograph of my wife, which had been taken at my request ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... quick, now!" he commanded; and as the wondering flunky turned toward the telephone, he sprang up the stairs, threw open the library door and entered. The electric lights were blazing in the heat and silence of the closed room. The odor of violets hung reminiscent in the stale air. The panel by the mantelpiece was thrust back, and the door of the safe, so uselessly concealed, hung open, revealing the empty shelves within and the deep shadow of the inner compartment. He saw it all in a flash of understanding; ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... quite rested and alert by dinner time. It was an interesting group of men that stood around the little figure in the drawing-room after dinner. He himself stood almost always leaning against the mantelpiece. Prince Orloff, Russian ambassador, was one of the habitues of the salon, and I was always delighted when he would slip away from the group of men and join the ladies in Madame Thiers's salon, which was less interesting. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... to the fire and leans his elbows on the mantelpiece and his head on his hands. LARRY Sits ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be deemed more than a lad tried to assume an easy position, with his elbow on the corner of the mantelpiece; but his feet shuffled, and his eyes strayed vacantly. It cost him an effort to begin his customary account of how things were going with him at the shipping-office. In truth, there was nothing particular to report; there never was anything particular; but Horace always endeavoured to show that ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... tall man, and I am a small man," replied Plessis—"I have not the gift of turning keys, Captain. I'll send him down, however;" and taking a Venice glass from the mantelpiece, he went to the little vestibule at the top of the stairs, and called to the man who was sitting in the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... said. She went to the fireplace, leaned on the mantelpiece, and poked the fire. The attitude struck him. She was about to put some coals in the grate, but he interfered with an "Allow me," and performed the office for her. She thanked him simply, and sat down opposite to him, facing the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... are," remarked MacShaughnassy, somewhat abruptly, placing his feet on the mantelpiece, and tilting his chair back till it stood at an angle that caused us to rivet our attention upon it with hopeful interest. "I don't think we scribbling fellows ever fully grasp how much we owe to 'the poor.' Where would our angelic heroines and our noble-hearted heroes be if it were not for 'the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... that he was less equal to the veiling of his feelings in dignified indifference. He was annoyed that his daughter should recognize an alteration in him, and, turning away, leaned his head on the hand whose arm was already supported by the mantelpiece, and took no further notice of her presence; but perhaps conscience also had something to do with this behaviour. Ginevra knew from experience that the sight of tears would enrage him, and with all her might repressed those she felt ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... tree with its roots in the inevitable "kings." Her particular kings were the "seven kings of France"—the "Milesian kings"—and the tree grew up a parchment, in all its impressive majesty, over the mantelpiece of their descendant's modest drawing-room. This heraldic monster was regarded with deep respect by child Emily, a respect in no wise deserved, I venture to suppose, by the disreputable royalties of whom she was ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... go out an' take a look around the barn an' pens," said Phineas, depositing the candles on the mantelpiece. "See if everything's still there after the storm. No, Mr. Gwynne,—you set down. No need o' you goin' out there an' gettin' them boots ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... carefully and left the company without another word. He walked home with measured steps, struck a light with his flint and steel, and lit his tallow candle. Then, snatching an unlucky glass tumbler off the mantelpiece, he dashed it violently ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... change his position by the mantelpiece and he kept still as a bronze statue as he ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... with rifles came in with a commissar. They asked for me by name and said they had an order to search the place. They asked if I had any arms and I said I had a service revolver, which had been given to me by the British. I also had another revolver of mine which lay on the mantelpiece. Nelka, who was there in the room, did at that moment a most risky thing. Unobtrusively she slipped my revolver into the pocket of her dress. I noticed this, but the men did not. I produced the other gun which they dutifully registered and took. They then proceeded to search the place and after examining ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... him into the tent and watched him unload. First there was the old powder-horn that always hangs over the hall mantelpiece. Then there was a big, wide-necked bottle, a large, clean handkerchief, and a spool of thread. "You see this, Dago?" he said to me. "Now you watch and ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... had never seen him brighter, more radiant, more full of life and animation. She tried her best to throw off the cloud on her own spirits and to enter into the conversation, but the effort was not a success. The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece held her in fascinated attention. Every stroke seemed, to sound the knell of the bright hopes with which she had looked forward to this meeting, every stroke ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... little of the heavy old-fashioned sort. Besides the sideboard, he perceived a dining-table, six chairs, and a dingy brown carpet. There were no curtains on the window, and no pictures or prints on the drab-coloured walls. The empty grate showed its bleak black cavity undisguised; and the mantelpiece had nothing on it but the doctor's dirty and strong-smelling pipe. Benjulia set down his watering-pot, as a sign that the paroxysm of pain had passed away. "A dull place to live in, isn't it?" In those words he welcomed the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... suppliant. She sighed, and everything in her virginal chamber sighed in chorus, the holy-water font, the palm-branch above her white bed, the books of devotion on their little shelves, and the blue and white statuette of St. Orberosia chaining the dragon of Cappadocia, that stood upon the marble mantelpiece. Hippolyte Ceres was moved, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Hubert's steps dashed up the stairs to his mother's room. Isabel went in and stood on the hearth in the firelight that glowed and wavered round the room on the tapestry and the prie-dieu and the table where Hubert had been sitting and the tall shuttered windows, leaning her head against the mantelpiece, doubtful ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... in. We had seen little of him the last week; save when he was construing he had taken refuge in his own room. When he came in now, Gayford wagged his head significantly at me; apparently, it was my task to bell the cat. I rose, and went to the mantelpiece. Smugg had sat down at the table, and my back was to him. I took a match from the box, struck it, and applied it to my pipe, and, punctuating my words with interspersed ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... you mean. But that is different. I am always afraid to speak, but I dare write anything. The subject is closed now, however. I shall write no more." She advanced listlessly, and leaned against the mantelpiece close beside the couch on which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... think of has been exhausted, when Lippa finds that Dalrymple is looking at her, she fiddles with her teaspoon in her cup and then raises her eyes to his, and finding them still fixed on her, returns to the teaspoon symphony, but he rises and leans against the mantelpiece. ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... a sound in the inner room. Candle in hand, she opened the door and went in. She put the candle on the mantelpiece, and then going to the bed, bent over it and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the mantelpiece, and the articles of furniture are few but choice. A high-backed settee stands on the right of the fireplace; near the settee is a fauteuil-stool; facing the settee is a Charles II arm-chair. On the left of the room there is a ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... dollars won't—won't be needed?" I asked with a contemptible feeling of disappointment that the Byrds had got so rich before I had been able to do this one thing for them. I looked up at old Grandmother Byrd over the mantelpiece and said in ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... first only Sir Michael and Lady Randolph—the former crouching down in a huge arm-chair, the latter standing so as to display her majestic height, with an arm laden with jewels leaning on the mantelpiece. She saw the young girl come in; but the other persons present were turned from the door, and none heard the light footfall on the thick carpet till the childlike form, all fair and white, stood close to her aunt, contrasting strangely ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... caps, like the children of the Foundling Hospital. The building is on the site of Marylebone Park House, an old house, parts of which the architect has incorporated into its successor; a handsome oak floor and marble mantelpiece of the Queen Anne period are to be seen in the board-room. At its southern end High Street bifurcates, becoming Thayer ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fingers at the fire my eyes were arrested by a beautiful portrait hanging above the mantelpiece. It represented a lovely girl in the prime of youth and beauty, and attired ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... piously dusted, and the frames of the Family Register, "Napoleon Crossing the Alps," and "Maidens Welcoming Washington in the Streets of Alexandria," were carefully wiped off. Once a week the parlor was cleaned, the tarlatan was lifted from the two plaster Samuels on the mantelpiece, their kneeling forms were cleaned with a damp cloth, the tarlatan replaced, and the parlor closed again reverently. There was kindling to chop, wood to bring in, the modest cooking, washing, ironing, and sewing to do, the flower-beds ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hove in sight jes at the right minute, for I'm kind o' puzzled. Here's this conch-shell, which is the biggest I ever seed, and a king conch-shell at that, and I can't make up my mind whether she'd like it here in the middle of the mantelpiece, or whether she'd like to have the gilded idol here, where it would be the fust thing she'd see when she came into the room. Sometimes I'm inclined in the way of the heathen idol, and sometimes in the way of the king conch-shell. And how ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... plucking up courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay within reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all I accomplished was the demolition of the crystal which protected the dial of the clock upon the mantelpiece. As for the Angel, he evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard, consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. These reduced me at once to submission, and I am almost ashamed to confess that, either through pain or vexation, there came ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... neighboring boarding-house brought them within her means. They were no longer very red or very green, and the cheerfully hopeful design of the tidies and cushions had been to conceal worn places and stains. The mantelpiece was adorned by a black-walnut-and-gold-framed mirror, and innumerable vases of the ornate ninety-eight-cents order. The centerpiece held a large and extremely soiled spray of artificial wistaria. The end of the room was ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a good-sized hammer which had been lying on the rug in front of the fireplace—a substantial, workmanlike hammer. Cecil Barker pointed to a box of brass-headed nails upon the mantelpiece. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the mantelpiece, and buried his head on his hands. He was wholly unconscious of what he was doing, being too miserable to think of appearances. Lalage watched him a moment, then put her arm gently round his neck, and, for the first time, kissed ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two old-fashioned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather plain and scant, for Rob has not yet got to be a great engineer working on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish that the big fish are made to eat—an obscure man whose brains are carried up to the credit ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... there, it will be sort of nice having him round. I s'pose he will want to stick a lot of things into that room." And didn't he stick up "things" and make changes? Down came the two yellow crockery crow-biddies that had roosted on the mantelpiece the last twenty years, never having paid for the privilege with a single crow. Down came two vases of dried grasses. Down came a flaming red, yellow, orange, and green print of an American farm-yard. Up went various things. Over the mantel-piece ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... there were also large sconces of burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the bare spaces between these silver sconces were the heads of wild animals mingled with many rifles, both old and new, and other arms of the hunter. Over the tall mantelpiece there were crossed two untarnished swords which had been worn by the judge's father in the Revolution. On the red cedar of the floor, polished by wear and rubbing, there lay the skins of wild beasts, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... dress. Du Maurier was never for a moment conscious that there was in all the rigmarole of Victorian costume and decoration anything redundant. He seemed to take, in decoration for instance, the draped mantelpiece with its bows of ribbons, and pinned fans quite as seriously as Velasquez took the hooped skirt in costume. Artifice is fascinating in those with whom it is natural to be artificial. When du Maurier thought he recognised merely a passing "fashion" and hit out ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... something better of me than you did?"—said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantelpiece as if forgetting he ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... shadow of the mantelpiece, and looking down in his turn scanned her face and countenance as a little while before she had scanned his. Hers was a fine face, in some of the finest indications. It had not, probably it never had, the extreme physical beauty of her first-born, nor the mark of intellect ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... luxury. The little sitting-room Durtal had converted into a study, hiding the walls behind black wood bookcases crammed with books. In front of the window were a great table, a leather armchair, and a few straight chairs. He had removed the glass from the mantelpiece, and in the panel, just over the mantelshelf, which was covered with an old fabric, he had nailed an antique painting on wood, representing a hermit kneeling beside a cardinal's hat and purple cloak, beneath a hut of boughs. The colours of the landscape ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... furnished, but without luxury. Disordered bed stands L. A screen stands L. I. E., almost hiding Musotte, who lies stretched at length upon a steamer-chair. Beside the bed is a cradle, the head of which is turned up stage. On the mantelpiece and on small tables at R. and L. are vials of medicine, cups, chafing-dish, etc. A table stands, R. I. E. Musotte is sleeping. La Babin and Mme. Flache stand C. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... protest again. With her head up, and a look as if the three policemen were of no more importance to her than the furniture of the room, she walked to the mantelpiece and stood leaning her elbow upon it. Weariness, disgusted indifference, were in her attitude; but I guessed that she felt herself actually in need ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... smoking-room to the top floor," Louis continued. "You can then descend by the other lift to the fifth floor, and walk boldly into the sitting-room. The door on the right will be Mr. Delora's bedroom, and of that there will be, after midnight, a key upon the mantelpiece in ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... senility. What a fine picture she made too! Why had he never thought of painting her? Yes, such a picture of 'The Spinster' would be distinctly interesting. And he would put in the Kesubah, the marriage certificate that hung over the mantelpiece, in ironical reminder of her days of bloom. He unlatched the door—he had never been used to knock at grannie's door, and the childish ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... border of flooring all the way round; a few stained chairs and a pembroke table. A pink shell was displayed on each of the little sideboards, which, with the addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock's feathers tastefully arranged above them, completed the decorative ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... from the presence of a thick cushion in the seat of the armchair, I conjecture to be yours—between the writing desk and the N.W. bookcase, with the N.E. window at my back and my legs protruding beyond the jamb of the mantelpiece into the sacred [Greek: temeuos], which is guarded by a low marble fence, and over which the fire which I worship has sway. Both by day and by night the situation is perfect for distribution of light and warmth. And I can read almost all my waking hours; for all through my illness ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... and how mature all the arrangements upon the dressing-table were compared to what she was used to at home. Glancing round, she thought that the bills stuck upon a skewer and stood for ornament upon the mantelpiece were astonishingly like Katharine, There wasn't a photograph of William anywhere to be seen. The room, with its combination of luxury and bareness, its silk dressing-gowns and crimson slippers, its ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... speak. At last she said, "I should like to keep this pudding under a glass shade, my dear!" and the notion of the lion couchant, with his currant eyes, being hoisted up to the place of honour on a mantelpiece, tickled my hysterical fancy, and I began to laugh, which rather ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bare room in which he sat possessed very little furniture and no signs of comfort. There were a quantity of books piled on the floor and mantelpiece, and the centre space was filled by an enormous bureau heaped with a mass of printed and written papers, for besides his extensive correspondence he was part-editor of one of the Anarchist journals, which he enlivened by daring ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... turned before he spoke the last words, and he went out deliberately, shutting the door behind him. They heard him go out upon the landing, and they were alone again. Regina leaned back against the mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk up and ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... fireplace, holding out her arms. The odd thing was that, though those arms seemed to hold nothing, they were curved as if round someone's neck, and her own neck was bent back, her lips open, her eyes closed. She vanished at once, and there were the mantelpiece and his bronzes. But those bronzes and the mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only the fireplace and the wall! Shaken and troubled, he got up. 'I must take medicine,' he thought; 'I can't be well.' His ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a moment, one hand outstretched towards the mantelpiece, and resting there for support. The velvet gown clung to her, and almost every line of her form could be followed with the eye or divined. The throat was long, round, and full, the fall of the shoulder and the way its lines melted into the curves ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... will admit it. But sit down, anyhow, and make yourself at home. Watson has the 'makings' over there; I've got a cocaine-squirter here you can use, if you wish, and you will find a nice dish of red winter apples up on the mantelpiece. Beyond the mere facts that you are a bachelor, live at Hedge-gutheridge in County Surrey, do a great deal of writing, belong to the Fraternal Order of Zebras, and shaved yourself very quickly this morning, I know nothing ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... uncovered part at the side. For some time I felt uneasy and anxious, my spirits being in a strange fluttering state. At last my eyes fell upon a small row of tea-cups, seemingly of china, which stood on a mantelpiece exactly fronting the bottom of the bed. The sight of these objects, I know not why, soothed and pacified me; I kept my eyes fixed upon them, as I lay on my back on the bed, with my head upon the pillow, till at last I fell into a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... onlooker; but it is also evidence of discomfort and effort enough in the heroic character that has won the state which we contemplate with so much approval. I remember his standing once by the fire, leaning upon the mantelpiece, when a vase on the shelf toppled over in some way. It was a cheap, lodging-house article, and yet my father tried to save it from falling to the floor as earnestly as he did anything which he set out to do. His hand almost seized the vase, but it rebounded; ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... room was altogether that of the reign of James I.—a style square and massive, antiquated and magnificent. Like the carpet and the lining of the chamber, the dais, the baldaquin, the bed, the stool, the curtains, the mantelpiece, the coverings of the table, the sofas, the chairs, were all ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... except to watch the flies buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs and up came the doctor. He was an old friend, very good-natured, and he made fun with Lucy about having turned into a spotted leopard, just like the cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker's mantelpiece. Indeed, he said he thought she was such a curiosity that Mrs. Bunker would come for her and set her up in the museum, and then he went away. ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knocked the ashes from his pipe, and placing it on the mantelpiece, went to bed and soon fell asleep, but Mag, an insane decision taking shape in her brain, lay and brooded and tossed till well on in the morning, when she rose, kindled the fire, "redd up" the house, prepared the breakfast ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... the glass one on his mantelpiece until Pauli's death in 1897. Then he removed it. He would have removed it earlier, but Pauli came to his rooms to lunch three times a week, and would have noticed its absence. For Pauli ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... companion to one you may have noticed on my mantelpiece upstairs. I have been trying to get the pair of them for years. I should never have heard of this one if it had not been for that valet of mine, Parker. Very good of him to let me know of it, considering I had fired him. Ah, here is Binstead."-He moved to greet the small, middle-aged ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... apartment was distinguished by handsome austerity. The red-tiled floors reflected faintly the lights of antique candelabra, which shed their luster also upon chests quaintly carved, bric-A -brac that museums would have coveted, and chairs adorned with threadbare coats of arms. Beside the mantelpiece hung a small oil-painting, as I thought, of Antonio himself, his black hair reaching to his shoulders, and on his head a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... good taste and thoroughly well chosen. The dark oak bureau and writing-table, the book-shelves filled with well-bound volumes, the proof engravings on the walls, and a handsome bronze group on the mantelpiece; while the deep easy-chairs and couch gave ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the likeness," admitted Tristram, contemplating himself in the mirror that hung above the mantelpiece. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... jump, and bumped his head on the mantelpiece, and this so startled him that he dropped Mrs. Longtail, and she scampered off down in a deep, dark hole and hid safely away. Then the cat saw Mrs. No-Tail pouring water from the can, and he knew he had ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... bed," added the figure with a sound that was like the falling of an executioner's axe. And, as if to emphasise the arrival of the remorseless moment, the clock just then struck loudly on the mantelpiece—seven times. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... first person of the opposite sex seen in the morning was the observer's valentine. We find Madam Pepys lying in bed for a long time one St. Valentine's morning with eyes tightly closed, lest she see one of the painters who was gilding her new mantelpiece, and be forced to have him for her valentine. Anna means, doubtless, that the first person she chanced to see that morning was "an ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... little clock in his mantelpiece struck two, which was a miserable hour, sundered so ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... fell off the mantelpiece, the cannisters fell off the shelf; the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... about the third step that I must be right. Anybody with any sense wouldn't keep anything dangerous in their downstairs library. It would be too much like a safe-cracker storing his nitro in the liquor cabinet or the murderer who hangs his weapon over the mantelpiece. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... upon the Chancellor of the Augmentations who stood in the shadow of the tall mantelpiece. He was twisting his fingers in his thin grey beard that ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the closed door with the frightened eyes of a woman. He looked round at the familiar objects of his room—the futile little gimcracks with which he had surrounded an existence worthy of such environments—the invitation cards on the draped mantelpiece, the little glass vases of fantastic shape with a single bloom of stephanotis, the hundred and one fantasies of a finicking generation wherein Art sappeth Manhood. And his eyes were suddenly opened to a new world of things which he could not do. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the shape of grape bunches; and the leaves and berries are of such a deep, rich crimson in the late autumn that they sometimes make the slopes of the hills appear as if they were on fire. If any little girl would like to dress the vases on the parlor mantelpiece prettily, she could not do better than collect a handful of these delicate tendrils with their scarlet leaves, and use them as a background to the lovely little autumn flowers—late primroses, stars-of-Bethlehem, wild honeysuckles, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "handsome." From the centre of the ceiling a massive gilt chandelier, elaborately festooned with damaged garlands, shed, when it was lighted, a dim and troubled gloom down on the threadbare Axminster carpet. Above the white marble mantelpiece, the old French mirror, one of the few good things left over from a public sale of Mrs. Carr's possessions, reflected a pair of bronze candelabra with crystal pendants, and a mahogany clock, which had kept excellent time for half a century and then had stopped suddenly one day while ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... I'll go out an' take a look around the barn an' pens," said Phineas, depositing the candles on the mantelpiece. "See if everything's still there after the storm. No, Mr. Gwynne,—you set down. No need o' you goin' out there an' gettin' them boots o' your'n ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... seeing her hunt out and tread upon such things, and used to chaff her about it. At that time I was—as I am still—fond of lying at full length on a thick hearthrug before a good fire. One evening as I was lying in this way and we were alone, A. crossed the room to reach a bangle from the mantelpiece. Instead of reaching over me, she playfully stepped upon my body, saying that she would show me how the hay and straw felt. Naturally I fell in with the joke and laughed. After standing upon me a few moments she raised her skirt slightly and, holding ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... had risen and was standing in his favourite attitude, his elbow on the mantelpiece. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pattern-books—and books about all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (which were also of rather a curious hue), bald-headed, bold yet shifty-eyed, also clad in black, with a band of crape like to that of a Victorian mute, about his shining tall hat, he leaned against the florid, marble mantelpiece, a huge obese blot upon its whiteness. They were a queer contrast, as dissimilar perhaps as two human ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... not seen it! She was looking intently at her clock, which stood on the mantelpiece, and the embarrassment increased in midst of a glacial silence. Turning her face towards her daughter, the old woman, from whose eyes flashed fierce malice, said: "On Monday, you must take me away from here, so that I can see ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the pleasant flicker of the fire that burned between the polished sheets of Flemish tiles on either side of the hearth. A great globe stood in the corner furthest from the door, with a map of England hanging above it. A piece of tapestry hung over the mantelpiece, representing Diana bending over Endymion, and two tall candles in brass stands burned beneath. The floor was covered ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... himself at his table and prepared to begin work. Then he bethought him of the letter, which he had carelessly thrown on the mantelpiece. He tore it open, and drew out ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... in which he sat possessed very little furniture and no signs of comfort. There were a quantity of books piled on the floor and mantelpiece, and the centre space was filled by an enormous bureau heaped with a mass of printed and written papers, for besides his extensive correspondence he was part-editor of one of the Anarchist journals, which he enlivened by daring and sarcastic contributions. The fragment of the ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... promiscuously. In conclusion, anyone who knows me will refuse to believe that I have ever accepted more business than that to which I have been able to give proper attention. It is not my custom to crowd my mantelpiece with papers appealing to me in vain for my consideration. At this moment I have not a single matter demanding my care, except a bundle sent in to me three ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... brought in, all huddled and shivering; and although she was a little afraid at first, she soon got warmed up and sat on the edge of the mantelpiece and ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... vainly struggled for words, Rosalinde Eysvogel stood beside the lofty mantelpiece, weeping softly. Before Siebenburg appeared, spite of the early hour and the agitating news which she had just received, she had used her leisure for an elaborate toilette. A long trailing robe of costly brocade, blue on the left side and yellow on the right, now floated around her tall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... called herself Eunice (perhaps, because she was worth looking at, perhaps because she had partly risen at my words), he slipped toward a door I had before observed in the wainscoting on the left of the mantelpiece, and softly opened it upon what looked ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... found the house ornamented with some new trophy of his exploits. He was delighted to find that a miniature barkentine, which he had built with corks, paper, and thread when he was seven years old, still stood on his mother's mantelpiece. Even at that age his powers of observation had been evident, and he had forgotten no detail of sails ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... widow, Mary Anne Waller, and Louisa, motionless too, their heads bent. There was an end of candle in a basin behind the bed, which threw circles of wavering light over the coarse whitewash of the roof and on the cards and faded photographs above the tiny mantelpiece. ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness into our attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china dogs on a mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked the bubble. The blight of futility that lies in wait for men's speeches had fallen upon our conversation, and made it a thing of empty sounds. "Very well," I said, with a disconcerted smile; "but couldn't it reduce itself to not being ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... functionaries, except with the prefect of Caen and the general in command.... Their association with the prefect intimates their belief that they might need him. All pay their respects to the general of division; his mantelpiece is strewed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the room was a group of photographs on the mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents, both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young—a striking-looking woman, ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enormous rough stone fireplace, doubly cheering after their long drive through the cool October evening. A brass lamp of antique design, with perforated shade of the same material, was suspended from the ceiling, and helped illumine this strange apartment. From each end of the mantelpiece an immense high-backed sofa projected into the room, cushioned and padded, and looking as if built into its present position with the house. The walls were covered with odd portraits, whose frames were crumbling in decay, and the window curtains adorned with ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Hotel, and, not finding me in, invited me up to his house near York Gate, Regents Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the wall—that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... charmed the view. The subjects were all pastoral, the scenes were all sunny. There was a guitar and some music on a sofa; there were cameos, beautiful miniatures; a set of Grecian-looking vases on the mantelpiece; there were books well arranged in two ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... loyalist concluded his narrative the enthusiasm which had been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes and quivering across his wrinkled visage faded away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantelpiece threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seemed to disapprove of this levity. He shook his head and replaced the figure on the mantelpiece. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... time, dark in spite of two windows that opened on Union Square, with dull curtains and carpet, and heavy, respectable-looking furniture in somber colors. The place was saved from utter dismalness by a coal fire under the black marble mantelpiece,—brilliantly reflected in a long mirror that hung between the two windows. This was the first time Fred had seen the room, and he took it in quickly, as he put down ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... very pretty, neat little sitting-room, with the picture of a ship over the mantelpiece, and lumps of coral and large shells, and shell flowers, on it, and bows and arrows, and spears and models of eastern craft, and canoes from the Pacific, and some stuffed birds and snakes, and, indeed, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... Elva chose at least half a dozen different rooms in succession—this, because it had such a lovely little fireplace and mantelpiece; that, because it had such funny little cupboards; the other, because it had such ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... mark behind them still surviving in the town. Near the junction of East Street with South Street there still exists at the back of the second shop, in the former street (a repository for fancy needlework), a room lined with good oak wainscoting, with finely carved mantelpiece, over which is an inscription, richly carved in relief, with the letters "Ao Di" to the left, and to the right the date "1573;" while above, in the centre, are the initials "J H" and "M H;" separated by ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs and up came the doctor. He was an old friend, very good-natured, and he made fun with Lucy about having turned into a spotted leopard, just like the cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker's mantelpiece. Indeed, he said he thought she was such a curiosity that Mrs. Bunker would come for her and set her up in the museum, and then he went away. ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he said, stopping beneath an unusually large skull of a lion, which was fixed just over the mantelpiece, beneath a long row of guns, its jaws distended to their utmost width. "Ah, you brute! you have given me a lot of trouble for the last dozen years, and will, I suppose ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... and DeWitt stood staring at Porter with horror in their eyes. The clock ticked for an instant then DeWitt gave a groan and bowed his head against the mantelpiece. Katherine ran to him and tried to pull his ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... "be silent!" There was a moment of absolute stillness, broken only by the ticking of the little crystal clock on the mantelpiece, and then Mrs. Graham continued: "I must ask you not to speak again, my daughter, until I have finished what I have to say; and even then, I trust you will keep silence until you are able to command yourself. You are to stay with my old nurse, Mrs. Hartley, at her farm near Glenfield. ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... dining room of the home felicitous—a golden-oak room, with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart from the mantelpiece; and, last, two figures of connubial bliss, smiling and waxen, in rocking chairs, their waxen infant, block-building on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... granted. It is of a possible marriage I wish to speak to you this morning, my Karen. We will talk of it quietly." Madame von Marwitz raised herself in her chair to stretch her hand and take from the mantelpiece a letter lying there. "This came this morning, my Karen," she said. "From our ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... nine had not ceased striking on the clock standing on the mantelpiece in Mr. Gorham's study when James Riley was formally and seriously ushered by his father into these, the sacred precincts, where none entered except by its owner's invitation; but it was a far different James from the man who had called upon Mr. Gorham some weeks earlier. The younger Riley's ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... color; leaning minarets threatening to fall and never falling, luckily for their coating of enamel, which the intrepid traveller Madame De Ujfalvy-Bourdon, declares to be much superior to the finest of our crackle enamels—and these are not vases to put on a mantelpiece or on a stand, but minarets ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... examine these ornaments, or to handle the books, instead of having to pick up a title here and there by chance.—From the shelves, her eyes strayed to the pictures on the walls; one, in particular struck her fancy. It hung over the mantelpiece, and was a man's head seen in profile, with a long hooked nose, and wearing a kind of peaked cap. But that was not all: behind this head were other profiles of the same face, and seeming to come out of clouds. Laura stared hard, but could make nothing of it.—And ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two, three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,' ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... leaned against the mantelpiece in his quarters talking to his wife. They had just returned from some entertainment and Millicent, in beautiful evening dress, lay in a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... smoke came from a great flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... snatched the pink morsel to safety. Straight to the fire she carried it, and once more held it to the flames. But again she found it impossible to burn the thing. Once, twice, she tried. But each time something seemed to clutch back her wrist. At last she shrugged impatiently and laid the Angel on the mantelpiece beside the square old marble clock, which marked ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... she repeated aloud to herself in the silence. Then she rose quickly to her feet and leaned against the smooth white marble mantelpiece, and buried her face in her small white hands for ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... this to your mother when she comes in. See!—I will put it on the mantelpiece," she said to Harold; "and you must not touch these parcels until mother opens them herself. Yes; I will come again. Now, good-by." Her bonnet was decidedly crooked as she stepped into the carriage, her jacket was also much crumpled; but there was a very sweet feel of little ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... struck and gave me warning that Love and Comus were calling me to bestow new delights upon me. With my pockets full of gold and silver, I left the ridotto, hurried to Muran, entered the sanctuary, and saw my divinity leaning against the mantelpiece. She wore her convent dress. I come near her by stealth, in order to enjoy her surprise. I look at her, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... neglecting you." With his left hand the rogue picked up an ash-tray and stepped to my side. Then he backed to the mantelpiece, whence he picked up and brought me a handful of cigarettes, laying them on the broad arm of my chair. "I'm afraid the box has gone," he said regretfully. "May I mix you ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward over the mantelpiece. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... not know what befell the melancholy plaque that intruded his presence upon us last week," said the vase. "We pitched him off the mantelpiece, and he was ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... it for very poor wages, he felt now and then Charlie's immense superiority to himself, and, in a mood of pity, when, as they were standing one day in Mr Noel's private room to say a lesson, he caught sight of their two selves reflected in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and realised the immense gulf which separated them—a gulf not of void chaos and flaming space, but the deeper gulf of warped affections and sinful thoughts—he had felt a sudden longing to be other than what he was, to have ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... leisure for dreams." He stood up suddenly and leaned against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere had become electric. "A good thing, too, as far as some of us are concerned. The last thing for a columnist to indulge in is dreams. Fine hash he'd have ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the difference of national characteristics, the German tendency to make love by crying (so he put it) as contrasted with the laughing philosophy of his own country. At the end he apologized for talking so much, and pointed out to me a photograph of Coralie that stood on the mantelpiece more than half-hidden by letters and papers, saying, "I suppose she set me off; somehow she seems to me a sort of ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... when the negro had appeared and asked for Mr. Lundy. She had told him her husband was out, and then the colored man had wanted something to eat. She had refused to give him anything, and then, seeing the watch on the mantelpiece, he had snatched the timepiece and run. She had screamed for assistance and then fainted ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... the room, putting away papers and shutting drawers and winding up the eight-day clock on the mantelpiece a clear three days before it needed it, with a mixed motive of clearing up before her departure and making it clean and bare as befitted a place where heroes came to do business; and she was more than unaware that Mr. Philip was watching her like an ambushed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... he realised that the House had won, that his hopes were satisfied, that the Buller crowd had been routed, that the cup would shimmer on the mantelpiece. A wave of wild exultation came over him. The House poured over the touch-line, yelling and shouting. It was all "a wonder ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... portmanteaux. His brushes and razors were spread out on the blotched marble of the chest of drawers. A stack of newspapers had accumulated on the centre table under the "electrolier", and half a dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases and toilet bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic, almost sinister, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the best bed were two little pockets as in the time of our grandfathers; also there was a Chevalier looking-glass and on the dressing-table a pin-cushion with pins arranged in a pattern. The fire-place and the mantelpiece were of white marble and had on them two white vases picked out in bright green, a clock with a bronze upon it representing a waiter dressed up partly in fifteenth-century plate and partly in twelfth-century mail, and on the wall were two Jewish texts, each ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking itself in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in Dencroft's. The play of the team improved weekly. And its spirit improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a goal and a try to a goal. Dencroft's was not depressed. It put the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... West flung the words from between set teeth, and with them he abruptly turned his back upon Babbacombe, lodging his arms upon the mantelpiece. "I am not going into details on that point or any other. But the fact is there, and you know it. You have never been absolutely straight in your dealings with me. I knew you weren't. I always knew it. But how crooked you were I did ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... we had the keys, and this was the moment that Noel chose for dropping them. Why he was fingering them where they lay on the mantelpiece the author does not know, and never will know. There is something about 'previously demented' in some Latin chap—Virgil or Lucretius—that seems to hit the nail on the head. The keys fell on the cracked hearthstone with a clang that Oswald, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... room, the wainscoting of which was of dark oak, with a high mantelpiece, elaborately carved in the same wood, with groups of dead game and flowers, and a few choice pictures let into the panels,—upon an easy-chair, that once had been splendid with morocco and gold, sat ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hall one morning after breakfast when I was opening a parcel of books which had arrived for me. It was a fine, sunny day, and the sun lit up the portrait framed in the panelling over the mantelpiece, an old and skilful copy (at least I suppose it was a copy) of Reynolds' fine portrait of James, tenth Earl of Shropshire. Father Payne regarded the picture earnestly. "Isn't he magnificent?" he said. "But he was a very poor creature really, and came to great grief. My ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece, stood a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch, just as the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside, then flung herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little table on which she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil had 'placed' ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... amount must always be sent to Garden Green. There came a time when he broke in upon the last five pound note of his savings. He realized the position without any actual misgivings. He denied himself regretfully a tiny mezzotint of the Raphael "Madonna," which he coveted for his mantelpiece. He also denied himself dinner for several evenings. When fortune knocked at his door he was, in fact, extraordinarily hungry. He still had faith, notwithstanding his difficulties, and no symptoms of dejection. He was perfectly well aware that this need for food was, after ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and stood beside him, resting one foot on the fender and one hand on the mantelpiece; and he saw, with swift seeing, the shapeliness of the long, thin fingers and the graceful, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... he pointed his finger to a letter lying on the mantelpiece. I arose and picked it up. It bore ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... a remarkable Renaissance mantelpiece, which is embellished with the arms of the Allied Towns of Bruges and Ghent, between which are the standard bearers of the doughty Knights of Courtrai, and two statues of the Archduke Albert and his Lady, all surrounding a statue of the ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... were very elaborately furnished; the hangings were heavy and sumptuous. A massive oak mantelpiece harboured a fire of gas-logs. There were a few—not many—apparently personal belongings about the rooms; bric-a-brac and photographs—the latter mostly of actors and opera singers. In Althea's bedroom we ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... can talk sensibly and feel properly, I have no need to stand staring upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained my friend's purse-strings in the purchase), nor his five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old Nabbs the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just as important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world,—eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... entered the dark hallway and struck a light in the front room. A wood fire was smouldering on the andirons in the wide brick chimney place. An open book, face downward, was on the centre table. Two embroidered slippers lay as though hurriedly kicked off, one under the sofa beyond the mantelpiece, the other half way across the worn carpet. Striking another match at the doorway, Ray passed on to the little inner room,—the bed chamber. On the bed, carelessly thrown, were the young officer's best and newest forage cap, undress uniform ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... 'The Cave' was now elaborately furnished. A large mirror in a richly gilt frame reached from the carved marble mantelpiece to the cornice. A magnificent clock in an alabaster case stood in the centre of the mantelpiece and was flanked by two exquisitely painted and gilded vases of Dresden ware. The windows were draped with costly hangings, the floor was covered with ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... mantelpiece hung a picture, a landscape painting. A flock of sheep wandered through a misty valley. There were great mountains in the background, their slopes and tops dimly, discernible through a haze. The haze and the mist wreaths would certainly soon clear away, dispersed by a rising ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... with the contented look of a man who is in a warm room and has on his feet comfortable flannel-lined slippers, the soles of which are buried in a thick carpet. At the fireside my wife was cutting out something and smiling at me from time to time; a new book awaited me on the mantelpiece, and the log on the hearth kept shooting out with a hissing sound those little blue flames which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... opposite Graham's, and as she went in, leaving the door open, Horace, who had followed her without any very definite purpose, looked in. It was a tolerably large room, with a door to the left opening into a smaller apartment, Utrecht velvet chairs and sofa, a mantelpiece also covered with velvet, on which stood a clock, a tall looking-glass, and two lighted wax candles; a table in the middle with some packs of cards, and a liqueur bottle and glasses, and a bed on one side opposite the fireplace. The window looked on to a side street, noisy with the incessant ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... impaired, but rather enhanced and invigorated, by the mahogany bookcase full of imperishable printed matter, the horsehair sofa netted in a system of antimacassars, the waxen flowers in their glassy domes on the marble mantelpiece, the Canterbury with its spiral columns, the rosewood harmonium, and the posse of chintz-protected chairs. Mr. Knight, who was a sincere and upright man, saw beauty in this apartment. It uplifted his soul, like soft music in the gloaming, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... passed through a pine door, and there was the general's room—a bare and shabby room, with a large desk in front of the two windows that overlooked the street, a shaded lamp, more papers and a telephone. The room had a fireplace, and in front of it was a fine old chair. And on the mantelpiece, as out of place as the chair, was a marvellous Louis-Quinze clock, under glass. There were great maps on the walls, with the opposing battle lines shown to the smallest detail. General Foch drew my attention at once ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... me, what's the good of my saying anything?" she retorted. "Oh, how horrid you are to-day, Mark. I don't believe you love me a bit, any more." And leaning her head against the mantelpiece, she burst ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... exclaimed. I was so much interested in his story, as well as flattered by the confidence he was placing in me, that my ill-humour vanished. I went and stood with my shoulder against the mantelpiece, and he, passing to and fro between me and the light, continued ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... delight of it in that wilderness—but the crowning delight was the guestroom. As we entered, it was a wealth of colour in Japanese effect, soft glowing lanterns, polished floors, fur rugs, silk-furnished beds and a crystal mantelpiece (brought from Japan) which reflected the fire-light in a hundred tints. Beyond, through an open door, could be seen the tiled bath-room. It was a room that would be charming anywhere, but in that region a veritable fairy's chamber. ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the dining-room she stopped aghast. The walls had been distempered a particularly hideous drab; the curtains were mustard yellow; the carpet was a dull brown; the mottled marble mantelpiece, for which she had been intending to substitute one in walnut wood with tiles, still shone in slabs of petrified brawn; there was a huge mahogany sideboard of a kind she had only seen in ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... drawer full of letters. No! he could not take all his life away with him: He laid the drawer on the desk, then went into the drawing- room. A jug of milk and some bread stood on an album-table. The Prince lighted the fire, burnt some papers, and stood by the mantelpiece drinking his milk and eating the bread, for he had grown hungry during the day.... The milk was sour, the ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... then she stood up, tall and slim in her severe clothes, her high boots. The gilt clock on the mantelpiece said it was only five o'clock. There were five more hours before she ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... She went over and stood by the mantelpiece, and looked at a large, somewhat faded miniature which held a place of honor among a group of many other ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... expression on his face, picked up a photograph from the floor, and hung it neatly in its place over the mantelpiece. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... men went upstairs, and were ushered into the best room in the inn, where the officer received them lolling at his ease in an armchair, his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a long porcelain pipe, and enveloped in a gorgeous dressing-gown, doubtless stolen from the deserted dwelling of some citizen destitute of taste in dress. He neither rose, greeted them, nor even glanced in their direction. He afforded a fine example ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... been said before, to all good things an end must come at last, and when the old-fashioned Connecticut clock on the mantelpiece clanged out the midnight hour, as if by magic a hush came over the company and the jollities came to an end. Then followed a rush for capes, and coats, and jackets, and shawls, and hats. Then came good-byes and good-nights, and then the girls all kissed Huldy ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... broke from Campbell's lips, and he shivered all over. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be dividing Time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was too terrible to be borne. He felt as if an iron ring was being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace with ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... which can crush a tree or pick up a needle, they conquer a province and they pick a pocket. As soon as a German is quartered in a room he sends for a box and some straw; carefully and methodically packs up the clock on the mantelpiece, and all the stray ornaments which he can lay his hands on; and then, with a tear glistening in his eye for his absent family, directs them either to his mother, his wife, or his lady-love. In vain the proprietor protests; the philosophical warrior utters the most noble ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... gang, excepting Gilbert, knew, a flat with a private entrance. He was glad to take off his clothes and rub himself down; for, in spite of his strong constitution, he felt chilled to the bone. On retiring to bed, he emptied the contents of his pockets, as usual, on the mantelpiece. It was not till then that he noticed, near his pocketbook and his keys, the object which Gilbert had put into his ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... young man, with a little bit of fair moustache and still less chin, no practice to speak of, and a considerable quantity of unpaid bills. A man of such features and in such circumstances invites temptation. At the present moment, though his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his feet rested on the mantelpiece, his mind seemed not quite at ease. He looked back upon a number of fortunate events that had not occurred, and forward to various unpleasant things that might occur, and then he took a letter from his pocket ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... get a light. Matches are not yet invented. So he takes from the shelf over the mantelpiece an old tin or brass candlestick with a piece of tallow candle in it, and with the tongs takes a coal from the ashes, and holds the candle wick against the coal and gives a few puffs with his breath. If he have good luck, he lights the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
