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More "Mantelpiece" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more plain than the furniture of this sleeping-room, composed of a bed, a chest of drawers, a secretary of black walnut, four straw-bottomed chairs, and a table; white cotton curtains covered the windows and the bed recess; the only ornaments on the mantelpiece were a decanter and a glass. From the appearance of the bed, which was made, it could be seen that Germain had thrown himself upon it without taking off his clothes the night preceding ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... 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 and ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... This is what the snoopopath loves—no rage, no blustering—calmness, cynicism. He walked over towards the mantelpiece and laid his hat upon it. He set his boot upon ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... what is most likely to be the next outlet for Mr. CHURCHILL'S ebullient activity. Remembering that bust upon his mantelpiece it is hard to say. There are some who consider that, prevented by the sluggishness of our times from the chance of commanding an army in the field, he may turn his strategic mind at last to the position of Postmaster-General. If he does there can be no man better fitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... in it to look up at her; but if he had done so, he would have been startled by the fearful capacity of passion which changed, for the moment, that gay Queen Whims into a terrible Roxana, as she stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, but drawn up to her full height, her lips tight shut, eyes which gazed through and through him in awful scrutiny, holding her very breath, while a nervous clutching of the little hand said, "If you have ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... 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 man ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Gabrielle's drawing-room the visitors sat on the 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 Considines ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... 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
... Over the mantelpiece hung a large oleograph of Leo XIII, in cope and tiara, blessing with upraised hand and that eternal, wide-lipped smile; a couple of jars stood beneath filled with dyed grasses; a briar pipe, redolent and foul, lay between them. The rest of the room was in the same key: ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no business there, was a bedroom-candlestick; and every single article of furniture stood crookedly ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... him to the door, and watched him as he disappeared down the drive; then walked slowly back to the room and stood against the marble mantelpiece, her head upon her ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... a strange terror, and did not speak or move; and her sister slipped her hand softly under her bolster, and withdrew it. Then Una stood for while by the hearth, and stretched her hand up to the mantelpiece, from which she took a little bit of chalk, and Alice thought she saw her place it in the fingers of a long yellow hand that was stealthily introduced from her own chamber-door to receive it; and Una paused in the dark ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... until he left the rooms one member or other was staring at his neck. Andrew looked anxiously in the glass over the mantelpiece ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... I'm bound to say That a bank of tin is far the best, And I know of one that has stood for years In a pleasant home away out west. It has stood for years on the mantelpiece Between the clock and the Wedgwood plate— A wonderful bank, as you'll concede When you've heard the things ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... he bit his lip, and stopped it. Then he rose, and, leaning his great shoulders against the mantelpiece, stood before the fireless grate, and looked at Lee. Lee also looked at him, and I think that each one thought what a splendid specimen of his style the other was. If they did not think so, "they ought to it," as the Londoners say. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... A clock over the mantelpiece showed that it was a quarter-past ten, although I had thought it considerably later. As Patch followed me into the room, leaving damp footmarks on the clean linoleum, a short thin-faced woman, with fair hair drawn very tightly back, entered from the opposite door ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Tom and myself. We had just received the greeting of our handsome hostess, and were passing up the hall, when my eyes alighted upon the figure of an officer who stood alone, in an attitude of pensive negligence, beside the mantelpiece. He was fully six feet tall, but possessed a carriage of grace and elegance, instead of the rigid erectness of so many of his comrades. He had a slender, finely cut, English face, a long but delicate chin, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to be given to umpire of commencement of any work or the placing of a mine. In event of no umpire being available, a folded note must be put on the mantelpiece when entrenchment is commenced, and opponent asked to open it when the trench is ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... when my palate did not need moisture or refreshment. Would the heavy chestnut be very pleasant in the heat of the dog-days; should I prefer to have it hot from the stove, rather than the gooseberry, the strawberry, the refreshing fruits which the earth takes care to provide for me. A mantelpiece covered in January with forced vegetation, with pale and scentless flowers, is not winter adorned, but spring robbed of its beauty; we deprive ourselves of the pleasure of seeking the first violet in the woods, of noting the earliest buds, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... curate's visit, Mrs Clinton tidied the house and adorned herself. It has been said that she was a woman of taste, and so she was. The mantelpiece and looking glass were artistically draped with green muslin, and this she proceeded to arrange, tying and carefully forming the yellow satin ribbon with which it was relieved. The chairs were covered with cretonne which ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... half-hour after supper remained at the back of his mind—and he never forgot its slightest detail. The hideous dining-room with the large photographs of old grandfather and grandmother Westcott in ill-fitting clothes and heavy gilt frames, the white marble clock on the mantelpiece, a clock that would tick solemnly for twenty minutes and then give a little run and a jump for no reason at all, the straight horsehair sofa so black and uncomfortable with its hard wooden back, the big dining-room table with its green cloth ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... mittens, and wear white fichus and aprons and snowy Dutch 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 Street ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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 ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... 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 coat and trousers. He had ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... in the morning when she awoke. It was not yet five o'clock. Florence struck a light and saw by the little clock on the mantelpiece that the hands pointed to a quarter ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... secret of the transformation of the Belcovitch workshop (and living room) into a hall of dazzling light. Four separate gaunt bare arms of iron gas-pipe lifted hymeneal torches. The labels from reels of cotton, pasted above the mantelpiece as indexes of work done, alone betrayed the past and future of the room. At a long narrow table, covered with a white table-cloth spread with rum, gin, biscuits and fruit, and decorated with two wax candles in tall, brass candlesticks, stood or sat ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... 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. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... 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, together with costly foreign rugs. The same strange mixture ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... pretty woman ever be all I wish her to be? All she ought to be? I fear not! On the mantelpiece in my studio at home there stands a certain lady. She is but lightly clad, and what simple garment she wears is not in the fashion of our day. How well I know her! Almost thoroughly by this time—for she has been the ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... looking he slipped it into his pocket, as though, having taken the trouble to pick it up, this was the very least he could do with it. Heaven alone knows why, but he then took it upstairs with him, setting it on the marble mantelpiece among his field glasses, tobacco tins, ink-bottles, pipes and candlestick. At any rate, he kept it—the moist, shiny, lob-sided, juicy little oblong olive. The hotel lounge wearied him; he came to his room after dinner to smoke at his ease, his coat off and his feet on a chair; ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... put them upon an allowance. The morning after she was awoke with a loud hammering in the saloon below, the reason of which she could not comprehend; but on going down to breakfast she found one of the long loaves made in the country nailed up with tenpenny nails over the mantelpiece. She sent to inquire who had done it, and one of the servants immediately replied that she had nailed it there that my lady might see that the bread did not ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... silly,' said the Cat, taking a walk along the high wooden mantelpiece, 'any one would think you didn't like ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... the occupant of the room, Mr Marlowe,' replied Trent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. 'I found this lying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little pistol to me, and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say, since the last time it was used. But I know little ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... are impatient of irrelevance even in 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 ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... a transparent little pretence of requiring a hand-screen from the mantelpiece, and, having got it, she too sat down, and fell to examining a wretched little daub of a picture ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contemplate them with passionate approval. While we are thus occupied David has risen, and he is so thoroughly at his ease that he has begun to hum. He strolls round the kitchen, looking with sudden interest at the mantelpiece ornaments; he reads, for the hundredth time, the sampler on the wall. Next the clock engages his attention; it is ticking, and that seems to impress him as novel and curious. By this time he has reached the door; it opens to his touch, and ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... three feet from the floor and about seven feet high. It was a theory of Howard's that you ought to be able to see all your books without either stooping or climbing. There was a big knee-hole table and half a dozen chairs. There was an old portrait in oils over the mantelpiece, several arm-chairs, one with a book-rest. Half a dozen photographs stood on the mantelpiece, and there was practically nothing else in the room but carpets and curtains. Jack lit a cigarette, sank into a chair, and presently said, "You must get awfully sick of the undergraduates, I should ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... said excitedly, "this will be a small room, and over the mantelpiece is a little ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... his embraces, and asked him what he was about, Andy turned over the chairs, threw the mantelpiece ornaments into the fire, and banged the poker and tongs together, shouting! "Hurroo! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... iron it with a warm but not hot iron on the wrong side before laying down the gold thread. Leek embroidery is sold by the yard in strips, varying from one inch to twelve inches in width, and costing from 6d. to 2s. the yard. These strips are used for mantelpiece borders, table borders, chair backs, and curtain bands, according to their width. They look best mounted upon plush or velveteen, but are often mounted upon Liberty's Oriental silks, or made up as perfectly plain bands. When used for chair backs or for hanging firescreens the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... 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 ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 not know till lately. If ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... personal ornament of 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
... he said he would write out a card for me, adding, with a laugh, that he wanted me to be sure he was really Dave. He drew a blank card out of his pocket and turned to a table to write on it and then handed it to me. Here is the card now;" and, going to the mantelpiece, the lady of the ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... ever lived here since the place was built in the seventeenth century by an Alexander Hillard, an ancestor of Grandma's. A forbidding old prig he must have been, judging from the portrait over the dining-room mantelpiece, a worthy forbear of Ann Hillard, who had married Barrie's grandfather, John MacDonald of Dhrum. Barrie often said to herself that she did not feel related to Grandma. She wanted to be all MacDonald and—whatever her mother had been. But it was just that which she did not know, and not ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... man with a noble, olive-tinted, poetic face, and with a start read beneath it that it is the wicked Judge Jeffreys. Occasionally, however, as at Innsbruck, we are absolutely satisfied. I have before me on the mantelpiece yonder a portrait of a painting which represents Queen Mary's Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. Mark the big head, fit to conceive large schemes; the strong animal face, made to captivate a sensitive, feminine woman; the brutally forceful features—the mouth with a suggestion ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... intending to sit down. As he turned, his gaze encountered an oil-painting hanging above the mantelpiece. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... where his father, and his grandfather, put up before him, and where he is expected to dine in the same old room, with the pictures of famous rams, that have fetched fabulous prices, framed against the walls, and ram's horns of exceptional size and peculiar curve fixed up above the mantelpiece. Men come in in groups of two or three, as dinner time approaches, and chat about sheep and wool, and wool and sheep; but no one finally settles himself at the table till the chairman arrives. He is a stout, substantial farmer, who has dined there ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... coat on a chair, laid his hat on the mantelpiece, and was twirling his moustache at the mirror above it, when he caught sight in the mirror of Keith. Keith had stepped out behind him from the recess, and was standing by the table, quietly looking at him. He gave an ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... hall they passed into a room as odd as delightful. All the woodwork was of oak, age-darkened to a brown-black, and most curiously carved. The mantelpiece had high pillars decorated with ribbons and scrolls and shields and griffin's heads cut out of the wood; and deep shelves on which were arranged queerly shaped and colored china vases, teapots and teacups. Oscar thought them ugly, wondering at the ladies' admiration. Before ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... afternoon at the piano, having promised herself that she would put in a full two hours over her music. The numerous interruptions spun out the time so that when she finally closed the lid the little clock on the mantelpiece chimed five. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... straight by the mantelpiece, under the portrait of one of the Merryman great-grandfathers in a bag ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... of Stephen's connection with his family, and more especially with Pixie, but after one brief reference the subject had been buried, though Pixie herself was frequently mentioned. There was a portrait of her on Pat's mantelpiece to which Stephen's eyes often strayed during his visits to the flat. Truth to tell it was not a flattering portrait. Pixie was unfortunate so far as photography was concerned, since all her bad points were reproduced and her ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... and put his hand up to his eyes to conceal the tears fast welling from them. For some minutes the quiet of the room was broken only by Bert's sobs, and the steady ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... Lucia, under the impulse of excitement, had suddenly risen, and now stood pressing one hand upon the mantelpiece to steady herself. Her eyes were full of a wistful inexplicable meaning; her whole figure with its dark and graceful beauty seemed to express a mystery, but it was one to ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... green glass shades. The green shades were reflected in the glasses of the book-cases that contained not books but guns with gleaming brown barrels and fishing-rods in green baize over-covers. There was dimly to be seen, above a mantelpiece encumbered with spurs, hooves and bronze models of horses, a dark-brown picture of a ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... opened. Three men 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 ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... 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 above fireplace. ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... recollections, she talked of him simply and well—as befitted her situation, a worldling might say. But she did not conceal her relief in escaping to this quaint little refuge (she threw a kindly-comical look, not overtoned, at the miniature ships on the mantelpiece, and the picture of Joseph leading Mary with her babe on the ass) from the temptations I could imagine a face like hers would expose her to. The face was splendid, the figure already overblown. I breathed some ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cataclysm. One or two items that the chambermaid might possibly have overlooked in the normal course of things were carefully exhibited. For example, the sheet had been torn into half a dozen strips and they were lying side by side on the bed. The clock on the mantelpiece had been knocked into the fireplace and then pounded to pieces. All the looking-glasses in the room were smashed, apparently the electric lamp that stood on the night table by the bedside had been wrenched off and flung or hammered ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... a false position, outwardly, came to his aid. He rose likewise, and, while perfecting the minor details of an easy attitude against the mantelpiece, said: "I am so constituted, Charlotte, that I can't talk of my feelings in a business tone; and I avoid that subject unless... You spoke of a basket just now. Well, I confess I can't bring mine into the market and bawl out ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... over 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 him ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the work of the farm cannot suffer three days' delay, not to speak of the additional days impaired to a greater or to a less degree by the moral and physical drunkenness which follows a gala-day. I was seated beneath the great mantelpiece of the old-fashioned kitchen fireplace when shots of pistols, barking of dogs, and the piercing notes of the bagpipe told me that the bridal pair were approaching. Very soon Father and Mother Maurice, Germain, and little Marie, followed by Jacques ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... then said good night, passed into his chamber to the 'ruelle' of his bed, where he said his prayers, as in the morning, then undressed. He said good night with an inclination of the head, and whilst everybody was leaving the room stood at the corner of the mantelpiece, where he gave the order to the colonel of the guards alone. Then commenced what was called the 'petit coucher', at which only the specially privileged remained. That was short. They did not leave until be got into bed. It ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and partridge silk stockings, he has nevertheless contrived to leave in his letters an impression of almost perfect grace and dandyism. He had all the airs of a beau. He affected coolness, disdain, amateurishness, triviality. He was a china figure of insolence. He lived on the mantelpiece, and regarded everything that happened on the floor as a rather low joke that could not be helped. He warmed into humanity in his friendships and in his defence of the house of Walpole; but if he descended from his mantelpiece, it was more likely to be in order to feed ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... at their widest; and through them entered in the familiar, unforgettable smell of the Indian Empire under her yearly baptism of fire; a smell of dust, and baked brick work, and stale native tobacco. A hand-lamp on the mantelpiece diffused a yellow twilight through the room; a twilight flavoured with kerosine: and across the twilight the shadow of the punkah ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... half-open door was bright with firelight and sunshine; the spoons and cups on the little table shone cheerily in the glow; and all things were in their accustomed pretty order and disorder. But the couch was empty, and Mr. Linden stood by the mantelpiece, leaning one arm there, his face bent down and covered ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... matrimonial dialogue, Grace Nugent and Lord Colambre never once looked at each other. Grace was very diligently trying the changes that could be made in the positions of a china-mouse, a cat, a dog, a cup, and a Brahmin, on the mantelpiece; Lord Colambre as diligently ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... fumbled in her apron-pocket. 'There's a candle on the mantelpiece. Though I dare say he's left his lamp going. He generally does—he don't take no account of what I says to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as she went about the room, putting the touches of perfection to the festival. There were roses everywhere; on the table, on the mantelpiece; the room was sweet with the smell of them; there was a rose on each child's plate. The tremulous movements of her hands betrayed the immensity and the desperation of her passion to please. The very waiter was touched by her, and smiled secretly in sympathy as he saw her laying ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... letters from the mantelpiece and held them up. "She writes about them every day," he said, briefly, "and I have to ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... little pipe—for these two men would ever prefer a stem between their teeth to a cigar-stump. Statuettes in plaster of John Leech and of Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, as well as a bust of Douglas Jerrold, decorate the mantelpiece or the dwarf-cupboard; and on the walls are many frames of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... adorned with grotesque heads of men and animals, and surmounted by a small square case in which was a beautifully-mounted specimen of the little spotted brown owl of Greece, the species so common among the ruins of the Acropolis. On the mantelpiece were a small bronze clock, a quaint Chinese teapot and a pair of delicately-flowered Sevres vases. On the table the engraved tooth of a sperm whale did duty as a paper-weight, a miniature gondola held an inkstand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... The place was perfectly quiet, for the doctor's assistant who had brought him back to life, and who lay upon a couch at the further end of the room, slept the sleep of youth and complete exhaustion. Only an eight-day clock on the mantelpiece ticked in that solemn and aggressive way which clocks affect in the stillness. Geoffrey strained his eyes to make out the time, and finally discovered that it wanted a few minutes to six o'clock. Then he fell to ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... columns of rosso antico, fourteen feet high, which are the largest in Rome, although the quality of the marble is much injured by its lighter colour, and by a white streak which runs up each shaft nearly from top to bottom. In the sixth room of the Casino of the Villa Borghese the jambs of the mantelpiece are composed of rosso antico in the form of caryatides supporting a broad frieze of the same ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... in the park a grey mist was hanging about in the hollows and over the tree-tops, and something of its damp chilliness seemed to have found its way into the apartment. Paul, who had been leaning heavily upon the mantelpiece, with his head buried in his hands, looked up and shivered. Then he glanced quickly across towards the opposite easy-chair. Father Adrian was still there, and at Paul's movement he ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in his restless walk and leaned against the stone mantelpiece. He squared himself as if this was his last stand. He looked desperate, but on the moment showed an absence of his usual nervous excitement. "Sampson, that may well be true," he said. "No doubt all you say is true. But ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... Graham gravely, "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. She ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Queen to sleep in. It came from Edinburgh, and is made mostly of materials which can be produced in Scotland. And in this direction, we can see a set of beautiful mantelpieces and fenders, from Sheffield, all decorated in the most elegant manner. The first mantelpiece we must look at is made of cast-iron; the mouldings of the cornice are richly ornamented, and supported by little pillars covered with graceful wreaths of oak-leaves, while the freize is adorned with a cluster of rich fruit. ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... fire in an English grate; Razumov had never before seen such a fire; and the silence of the room was like the silence of the grave; perfect, measureless, for even the clock on the mantelpiece made no sound. Filling a corner, on a black pedestal, stood a quarter-life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an adolescent figure, running. The ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... was over, and Reuben had settled to his pipe, with the old hound at his feet, Molly took down a bunch of keys from a nail in the wall, and lit a lantern with a taper which she selected from a china vase on the mantelpiece. Once outside she walked a little ahead of Gay and the yellow blaze of the lantern flitted like a luminous bird over the flagged walk bordered by gooseberry bushes. Between the stones, which were hollowed by the tread ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... 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, at any ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... beneath a shadowy blue sailor-hat, a smile coming out, something within her was playing, sweetly insistent to be heard. Philomela, at the first sound of her nightingale self, must have stood thus, trembling with melody. Opposite her, above the crowded mantelpiece and surmounted by a raffia wreath, the enlarged-crayon gaze of her deceased maternal grandparent, abetted by a horrible device of photography, followed her, his eyes focusing the entire room at a glance. Impervious to that scrutiny, Miss Coblenz moved a tiptoe ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... second." This, then, is the time at which the watch must have stopped. Guy Boothby, in the opening sentence of his Across the World for a Wife, says, "It was a cold, dreary winter's afternoon, and by the time the hands of the clock on my mantelpiece joined forces and stood at twenty minutes past four, my chambers were well-nigh as dark as midnight." It is evident that the author here made a slip, for, as we have seen above, he is 1 min. 491/11 sec. out ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... about her at the gilt-framed glass over the mantelpiece, the table, the five chairs (including one arm), the sofa and the chiffonnier, which was pretty well all the furniture that the room contained. The remains of a fire untidied the grate; the flimsiest curtains were hung before the windows. The landlady ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... very ancient and chivalric house of that name, whose celebrated estate was in Warwickshire, England; and, in proof of this, my Lady Choicewest invariably points to a sad daub, illustrative of some incomprehensible object, suspended over the antique mantelpiece. With methodical grace, and dignity which frowns with superlative contempt upon every thing very vulgar—for she says "she sublimely detests them very low creatures what are never brought up to manners at the north, and are worse than haystacks ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... rising to his feet and standing with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, gazing down at her. "But then you are wonderful, aren't you, Maggie? You know ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Upon the mantelpiece, under the Colonel's portrait, stood a china cup, by which the widow set great store, as her father had always been accustomed to drink from it. George suddenly took it, and a strange smile passed over ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a large picture (attributed to Giulio Romano, the only painter Shakespeare mentions in his plays). In the foreground is St. Dunstan, in rich robes and crozier in hand, while behind, the saint takes the Devil by the nose, much to the approval of flocks of angels above. The great white marble mantelpiece came from Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos; and the two large terminal busts are attributed to Roubiliac. The sumptuous drawing-room, adorned with crimson satin, white and gold, has immense mirrors, and a stucco ceiling, wrought with fruit, flowers, birds, and animals, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 all to do ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... were filled with works on War, from Csar's Commentaries down to Louis Napoleon on Rifled Cannon. In one corner stood a suit of armor; in another a stand of firearms; between them a star of bayonets. On the mantelpiece I perceived a model of a small field-piece in brass and oak, and, what interested me more, a cigarbox. I raised the lid; the box was half full of highly creditable-looking cigars. My soul expanded with the thought of a probable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... turning his hat about in his hands, his velvety eyes fixed on Lady O'Gara, where she stood leaning by the mantelpiece, her face turned away, one slender foot resting on the marble kerb. If Sir Felix had been aware of the expression of the eyes he might have been startled, but even the pince-nez were not ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... a member of some heavenly brotherhood that spends its existence praying for the expiation of the wickedness wrought by men. The composer was standing near the fireplace; without it snowed, desperately snowed. He was not alone. Half sitting, half reclining on a chair, his feet on the mantelpiece, was a man, spare and sinewy as an Indian. Long, coarse, brown hair hung mane-like upon his shoulders. His lithe, powerful fingers almost seemed to crush the short white Irish clay pipe from which he occasionally took a whiff. It was Liszt, Franz Liszt, Liszt Ferencz—don't forget the accompanying ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... a bit on the mantelpiece," replied the man angrily; "I saw it when I came in. Go and feel for it—hunt about! Do not keep me lying here in the dark—the least you can do is to make me as ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... that he had no money, sir. He discovered that he had left it, together with his ticket of invitation, on the mantelpiece of his bedchamber in the house of his uncle, where he was residing. Bidding the cabman to wait, accordingly, he rang the door-bell, and when the butler appeared, requested him to pay the cab, adding that ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... and 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 floor, completing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pleased that Mrs. Wrangham and yourself have been gratified by these breathings of simple nature. You mention Butler, Montagu's friend; not Tom Butler, but the conveyancer: when I was in town in spring, he happened to see the volumes lying on Montagu's mantelpiece, and to glance his eye upon the very poem of 'The Daffodils.' 'Aye,' says he, 'a fine morsel this for the Reviewers.' When this was told me (for I was not present) I observed that there were 'two lines' in that little poem which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine-tenths of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... her drive shortly after the Ogden disaster and had instantly proceeded to the boarding-house, had been shown into the parlour. Jimmy found her staring in a rapt way at a statuette of the Infant Samuel which stood near a bowl of wax fruit on the mantelpiece. She was feeling aggrieved with Fate and extremely angry with Jerry Mitchell, and she turned at the sound of the opening door with a militant expression in her eyes, which changed to one of astonishment on perceiving who it was that had ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... stood ready with their violins, while Lieutenant Bleibtreu, the violoncello pressed between the knees, occupied the rear. The auditors, at least the majority of them, were comfortably ensconced in chairs or sofas, near the mantelpiece, and around a table on which a small battery of beer mugs, steins, and tankards ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... this there was silence in the stuffy little room, and for some minutes after. Then he stepped to the mantelpiece for the match-box and candle. A small ormolu clock ticked there, and while he groped for the matches he put out a hand to stop the noise, which had suddenly grown intolerable. He desisted, remembering that he did not know how the clock worked—that Mrs. Wilcox, who wound ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... devotion to the diplomatists, but, like the Socialist hero of old on the barricade, by the vision of "human solidarity." And if he purchases victory for that holy cause with his blood, I submit that we cannot decently allow the Foreign Office to hang up his martyr's palm over the War Office Mantelpiece. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... earl as he sat was the family escutcheon emblazoned above the mantelpiece. A child might read the simplicity of its proud significance—an ox rampant quartered in a field of gules with a pike dexter and a dog intermittent in a plain parallelogram right centre, with the motto, "Hic, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... deliberate, imperturbable tone a clock upon the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour, and the laugh snapped off short. The next moment the man had Lyveden's arm ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... it neat. They shall not say I did not leave it neat," he said. Even the little bags of seeds on the mantelpiece he put in rows and dusted. Then he undressed and got into bed. Under his pillow was a little storybook. He drew it forth. To the old German a story was no story. Its events were as real and as important to himself as the matters ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... he said to me, quite fiercely. He even managed not to laugh (though he did gulp) when we discovered on the mantelpiece a photograph of Joey in ordinary clothes, the garments he wore before he became a clown. You can't think how absurd he looked in them. But David ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... 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 ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... dining-hall. At one end was a broad fireplace, and mantelpiece supported by richly carved figures, also taken from the stern-gallery of a Spanish bark. Above it appeared the model of the Golden Lion, the captain's own ship. The walls were adorned with breastplates and morions, swords and matchlocks, huge pistols, ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... him, and got himself locked up, and I was told to call the next day at the Police Court in Blackman Street and explain matters, and bring my witnesses. I did so, and brought a neighbour or two who had seen the clock upon my mantelpiece at Streatham, and I clinched the argument with Mrs. Kibbey, who shed copious tears during the evidence, till the magistrate asked her sharply what she was snivelling at, when she fainted dead away under the reproof, and had to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 'em on the mantelpiece an' by the kitchen sink, Until Ma says: "Now, children, stop, an' give me time to think Just when it was I used 'em last an' just exactly where. Yes, now I know—the dining room. I'm sure you'll find 'em there." We even look behind the clock, we busy boys an' lasses, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... long, when a brick fell out of the mantelpiece near the jailer's bed and the furniture about the room began to dance a jig. Mrs. Jailer screamed and the children began to cry in terror. The door creaked and pushed off its hinges, falling with a slam-bang. The jailer jumped and landed in the middle of the ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... schoolroom my two brothers were playing chess, but had not yet started quarrelling, and in a corner my little sister was patiently beating a doll. There was a fire in the grate, but it was one of those sombre, smoky fires in which it is impossible to take any interest. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked very slowly, and I realised that an eternity of these long seconds separated me from dinner-time. I thought I would like to ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... carpet and curtains redipped, so that they really looked almost new, and the one mattress on the bed "made over"; she had brought up the armchair, and she had gathered the cherry-blossoms, which stood on the mantelpiece shining against the darkness of the walls. She had also hung above it a photograph of Watts "Love and Death." Nora looked at the picture and the flowers with a throb of pleasure. Alice never ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cried out. With a great effort of the will she tried to hide from these agonies of the imagination, and again she would approach those happy confines of sleep, which are the only refuge to the lacerated heart; and then the weapon of time on the mantelpiece would clash on the shield of the past, and she was wide awake again. At last, in desperation, she got out of bed, hurried to the fireplace, caught the little sharp-tongued recorder in a nervous grasp, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... This afternoon three individuals called on me. One of them gave 6l., 3 collars, and 2 veils, and brought likewise 3 gold rings. Another of them gave me 2s. 6d. After they had left I found in my room on the mantelpiece in a paper 2 sovereigns for my own personal expenses, and in three papers 3 sovereigns for the three Orphan-Houses, and also a ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... hesitate at nothing; he knew they had a poison like sugar to the taste and to the smell, impossible to discover in food—a poison that would kill slowly or quickly as the poisoner willed and would leave no trace behind; he knew the secret of the poisoned key that lay always on the pope's mantelpiece, so that when His Holiness wished to destroy some one of his intimates, he bade him open a certain cupboard: on the handle of the key there was a little spike, and as the lock of the cupboard turned stiffly the hand would naturally press, the lock would yield, and nothing would have ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 Grand Canon, by an American Artist,' that they hang over the ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... to the Caucasian in his coloring and manner of style. His hair was opalescent and his conversation fragmentary. His eyes were the same blue shade as the china dog's on the right-hand corner of your Aunt Ellen's mantelpiece. He took things as they came, and I never felt any hostility against him. I let him live, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... his guitar is like 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 is a failure—Celanire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... handkerchief. "But I've quite recovered now—really. Come and tell me about everything. Did Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance afterwards? And, oh, I forgot! There's a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It was delivered by hand while we ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... had a round table and two low chairs. There were yellow flags in a jar on the mantelpiece; a photograph of his mother; cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials; notes and pipes; on the table lay paper ruled with a red margin—an essay, no doubt—"Does History consist of the Biographies of Great Men?" There were books enough; very few French ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... an evening it would have been had Mr. Strachey invited them to 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. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... he raised himself from the mantelpiece against which he was leaning. Never had he thought so brilliantly, and he regretted that no magical stenographer should be there to register his thoughts as they passed. But they were gone.... Resuming his position ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... clock with the blue mandarin on the mantelpiece struck half past two. He must be going. He threw a last look round the room as though he were desperately committing everything to memory—the shabby, comfortable chairs, the Landseer "Dignity and Impudence," the warm, blue carpet, the round silver biscuit-tin ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... merit close attention. He stalked into the room, leaned his long rifle against the mantelpiece and spread out his hands to the fire. He was clad from head to foot in fringed and beaded buckskin, which showed evidence of a long and arduous tramp. It was torn and wet and covered with mud. He was a magnificently made man, six feet in height, and stood straight as an ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... before bedtime, I strolled into the coffee room. The English look of every one, and everything around, had still its charm for me; and I contemplated, with no small admiration, that air of neatness and propriety so observant from the bright-faced clock that ticked unwearily upon the mantelpiece, to the trim waiter himself, with noiseless step and a mixed look of vigilance and vacancy. The perfect stillness struck me, save when a deep voice called for "another brandy-and-water," and some more modestly-toned request would utter a desire for "more cream." The attention of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... not been trouble of some kind in his zenana, and nowhere else. But this is beside the story. The facts of the case are these: Pack called on Churton next day when Churton was out, left his card, and STOLE the Bisara of Pooree from its place under the clock on the mantelpiece! Stole it like the thief he was by nature. Three days later, all Simla was electrified by the news that Miss Hollis had accepted Pack—the shrivelled rat, Pack! Do you desire clearer evidence than this? The Bisara of Pooree ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... deep on the table before him, Robert Turold plunged into the history of his life's task. The long hand of the mantelpiece clock slipped with a stealthy movement past the twelve as he commenced, as though determined not to be taken by surprise, but ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... On the mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a large dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair a la Voltaire, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... was impossible, that nothing of what she dreamed of could happen, and she would sink back in her chair and think. After a moment or two she would rise and walk, slowly and uncertainly, to the fireplace, toy with the coffee-pot on the mantelpiece, and at last decide to take it: she would learn what the rest of her life was to be. Her good fortune, her ill fortune, everything that was to happen to her was there, in that fortune-telling device of the woman of the people, on the plate on which she was about to pour the coffee-grounds. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... that betokened unaccustomed haste. The hosts were hurriedly dressing. The baroness, who was chilled, sneezed constantly. Julien paced up and down. Jeanne, despondent, sat beside her mother. The baron leaned against the marble mantelpiece with his head ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... mantelpiece struck half-past twelve before he had finished his lecture, which Mrs. Dashwood followed with the keenest interest, and when at last they got up, the brave little mother clung to him for a moment, very near ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... known of the scandal but did not wish to speak of it to anyone, that the story was an odious falsehood, one of those shameful lies which people of their world ought neither to listen to nor repeat. He appeared greatly wrought up over the matter, as he stood leaning against the mantelpiece and speaking with the excited manner of a man disposed to make a personal question of the ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... both with the Kildare and Wicklow hunts; and rode on his grey horse Endymion that famous match against Captain Punter, which is still remembered by lovers of the sport, and of which I caused a splendid picture to be made and hung over my dining-hall mantelpiece at Castle Lyndon. A year afterwards he had the honour of riding that very horse Endymion before his late Majesty King George II. at New-market, and won the plate there and the attention of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and pay it back some way or other before it was called for. I tried to put it out o' my head, but the thought kept comin' back; and when I went down into the sittin'-room to get Jacob's cyarpetbag to carry a few things in, I happened to look up at the mantelpiece and saw the brass candlesticks with prisms all 'round 'em that used to belong to my mother; and all at once I seemed to see jest what the Lord intended for ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... down to divert her mind from trouble by Patience. As if to reward her for her stubborn fortitude, the malignity of the cards relented, and she brought out an intricate matter three times running. The clock on her mantelpiece chiming a quarter to eight, surprised her with the lateness of the hour, and recalled to her with a stab of pain that it was dinner-time at Mr. Wyse's, and at this moment some seven pairs of eager feet were approaching the door. Well, she was dining at a quarter to eight, too; Janet ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... window and the shutter, a very large, and consequently very demonstrative, specimen of dialectical granite. He preserved it carefully, and mounted it on a handsome pedestal, inscribed with "The power of public opinion." He placed it on the middle of his library mantelpiece, and the daily contemplation of it cured him of his passion for Reform. During the rest of his life he never talked, as he had used to do, of "the people": he always said "the rabble," and delighted in quoting every passage of Hudibras in which the rabble-rout is treated as he had come ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... and leaned against the mantelpiece in the pose of easy familiarity which he had maintained during the first ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... been looking dully into the dim mirror over the mantelpiece. She turned half round to her ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... corner of the mantelpiece a woman choked suddenly and felt for her handkerchief. Behind her two men turned sharply and walked toward the window; but the little old man and the little old woman did not notice it. They had forgotten everything but the enchanting array of ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... she was obliged to prepare the umbrella so that the disaster might be complete, and the reason of it quite evident. She took a match from the mantelpiece, and between the ribs she burnt a hole as big as the palm of her hand; then she delicately rolled it up, fastened it with the elastic band, put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quickly towards the Rue de Rivoli, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Matty had to clear her voice once or twice before she could 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
... Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... of the complete restoration of his sympathy, the miller asked me if I was fond of hunting, took down from a hook over his mantelpiece a long, rusty tube, that made me think of Leather Stocking's rifle, and laid it into my hands, while boasting of the murderous qualities of that instrument. I acknowledged his kindness with an outward appearance of lively satisfaction, ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... for the fact that, while designed on current European models, they are proportioned in size to the Imperial dignity, so that a Dutch "grandfather" becomes a wardrobe, and the box-clock of the European mantelpiece a cupboard that has to be set on the floor. At the end of this avenue of time-pieces a European double-bed with a bright silk quilt covered with Nottingham lace stood majestically on ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... back to the window. Her supper of bread and milk was half finished, her hat lay upon the table. A book was upon her lap as though she had started to read only to find it slip through her fingers. He stood with his elbow upon the mantelpiece, looking down at her. Her eyelashes, long and silky, were more beautiful than ever now that her eyes were closed. Her complexion, pale though she was, seemed more the creamy pallor of some southern race than the whiteness of ill-health. The bodice of her dress ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forty-eight hours two events—seemingly nowise related or bearing one upon the other—occurred. An ornately framed photograph lately bestowed as a gift and treasured as a trophy of sentimental value mysteriously vanished from the mantelpiece of the front room of Ophelia Stubblefield's pa's house; and Jefferson Poindexter, carrying a new and very shiny suitcase, unostentatiously left town late at night on ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 on to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... panelled and furnished with the plainest wood. His bed was in the alcove at the back; the only ornament was the portrait of his wife, a dark, Italian-looking woman, which hung surrounded by guns, pistols, and swords, over the low stone mantelpiece. It was just midnight, but Monsieur Joseph was not in bed. He looked a quaint figure, in a dressing-gown and a tasselled night-cap, and he sat at the table writing a long letter. He started when Riette touched the door, and Angelot saw that his hand moved mechanically ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... "this will be a small room, and over the mantelpiece is a little round picture of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... cup and saucer which had been bought for herself at Beacon Hill Fair half a century ago. She wiped the glass dome that covered the basket of artificial fruit, she screwed up the "banner-screen" that projected from the mantelpiece, she straightened out the bead mat on which the stereoscope stood, and at last surveyed the room with an expression of complete ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Methought perchance a 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
... springs on each side and one in the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring, pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with inquiry in ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... hither and thither, removing trays, pulling chairs into place, fussing and pattering about, until a maid came in noiselessly, bearing a lamp. She pulled down the shades, drew the sad-coloured curtains, went to the mantelpiece and peered at the clock, then brought a wineglass and a spoon to Siward, and measured the dose in silence. He swallowed it, shrugged, permitted her to change the position of his chair and footstool, and nodded thanks ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... down to the library. As she kept the lock well oiled she entered noiselessly, and then locking the door behind her lighted a candle and commenced her search. On the fifth night she was rewarded by finding that the center of what looked like a solidly carved flower in the ornamentation of the mantelpiece gave way under the pressure of her finger, and at the same moment she heard a slight click. Beyond this nothing was apparent; and after trying everything within reach she came to the conclusion that it needed a second spring to be touched to ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... at the climax of his fame, when he had won a sure immortality; simple and childlike, and with a child's unshamed acceptance of any money one might leave behind on the mantelpiece. He seems to have made very little by his verses. He spoke English quite well, having probably acquired it when teaching French; and he was perhaps more proud of it than of his poems. Mr. Moore says he wished to translate Tennyson. He read aloud a poem he had just written in celebration ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... what, such being the case, she should do with it: should she put it quite away—where it wouldn't be there to offend? On this Miss Overmore again cast about; after which she said unexpectedly: "Put it on the schoolroom mantelpiece." ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... and the old gentleman determined to get the start of us by sounding his greeting to the family before we were out of our rooms. Then came a race for the chimney corner; all the stockings came down quicker than they had gone up. What could not be contained in them was disposed upon the mantelpiece, or elsewhere. I remember that I once received an autograph letter from Santa Claus, full of good counsels; and our colored cook told me that she awoke in the night and, peeping into the kitchen, actually saw the veritable old visitor ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... his arms she steadied herself with a hand on the mantelpiece, the room blurred, no breath left her for speech. For a moment the place was noiseless save for the small, friendly sounds of the fire. Then she asked the woman's ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... rising and going to the mantelpiece, "you may be interested to have a look at the so-called 'waeful dagger.' Young Jarnock was kind enough to present it to me, as a little memento ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... chin and lips (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
... him, then quietly slips away by the door under the staircase. BILL turns to speak to her, and sees that she has gone. He walks up to the fireplace, and grips the mantelpiece. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they had a poison like sugar to the taste and to the smell, impossible to discover in food—a poison that would kill slowly or quickly as the poisoner willed and would leave no trace behind; he knew the secret of the poisoned key that lay always on the pope's mantelpiece, so that when His Holiness wished to destroy some one of his intimates, he bade him open a certain cupboard: on the handle of the key there was a little spike, and as the lock of the cupboard turned stiffly the hand would naturally press, the lock would yield, and nothing would have come of it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lively, impatient tune, then strode towards the fireplace and rang the bell; then stared again at the parson; and that gentleman having courteously laid down the newspaper, the traveller seized it, threw himself into a chair, flung one of his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the mantelpiece, and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on its hind-legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering parson expected every moment to see him come down on the back ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it!" he added, his face brightening. "There's a shell in Mr. Scraper's parlour, on the mantelpiece, and sometimes when he goes to sleep I can get it for a minute, and hold it to my ear, and then I hear the sound, the sound ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... mostly of materials which can be produced in Scotland. And in this direction, we can see a set of beautiful mantelpieces and fenders, from Sheffield, all decorated in the most elegant manner. The first mantelpiece we must look at is made of cast-iron; the mouldings of the cornice are richly ornamented, and supported by little pillars covered with graceful wreaths of oak-leaves, while the freize is adorned with a cluster of rich fruit. The next mantelpiece is painted white and ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... century 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 was "an ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the conversational tone of one who but passed ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... quiet, for the doctor's assistant who had brought him back to life, and who lay upon a couch at the further end of the room, slept the sleep of youth and complete exhaustion. Only an eight-day clock on the mantelpiece ticked in that solemn and aggressive way which clocks affect in the stillness. Geoffrey strained his eyes to make out the time, and finally discovered that it wanted a few minutes to six o'clock. Then he fell ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... said Patty, "but I think the falcon would be a regular nuisance while I was housekeeping, so I'd put him in the basket, and set it up on the mantelpiece, and keep my ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... was hidden in the carving of the mantelpiece, but she found it at last and gave it a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... act of lifting a chop from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantelpiece, ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of 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 and ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... on, I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed, but exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy. I was composed enough to perceive after some considerable time the match-box lying there on the mantelpiece right under my nose. And all this was beautifully and safely usual. Before I had thrown down the match my landlady's daughter appeared with her calm, pale face and an inquisitive look, in the doorway. Of late it was the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... 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 lounge chair watching ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... that never fades has been the dream of poets from Milton's day; but seeing one, who loves it? Our amaranth has the aspect of an artificial flower—stiff, dry, soulless, quite in keeping with the decorations on the average farmhouse mantelpiece. Here it forms the most uncheering of winter bouquets, or a wreath about flowers made from the lifeless hair of ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... vesture, of her glittering earrings, and her massive brooch, as it was the secret of the transformation of the Belcovitch workshop (and living room) into a hall of dazzling light. Four separate gaunt bare arms of iron gas-pipe lifted hymeneal torches. The labels from reels of cotton, pasted above the mantelpiece as indexes of work done, alone betrayed the past and future of the room. At a long narrow table, covered with a white table-cloth spread with rum, gin, biscuits and fruit, and decorated with two wax candles in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Beautiful. And the Useful. I found you had no soul. But you were honest, and I liked you. I went so far as to take my meals with your family. I made myself at home in your back parlor. But the vase has been shattered (I do not refer to that on the mantelpiece), and though the scent of the roses may cling to it still, it can be pieced together—nevermore." He shook his hair sadly and shambled out of the shop. Crowl would have gone after him, but Mrs. Crowl was still calling, and ladies ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... dressing-table and ample washing conveniences on each side. A large grate filled with turf, and all ready for lighting, with a peat basket lined with tin, and also filled with the same fuel, reminded us strongly that we were in Ireland. Large wax candles were on the mantelpiece, and every convenience necessary to ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Kimpsey noticed by the numbers labelled on their backs, were mostly from the circulating library—"David Grieve," "Cometh up as a Flower," "The Earthly Paradise," Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," Marie Corelli's "Romance of Two Worlds." The mantelpiece was arranged in geometrical disorder, but it had a gilt clock under a glass shade precisely in the middle. When the gilt clock indicated, in a mincing way, that Miss Kimpsey had been kept waiting fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bell came in. She had ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... cigarettes must be here," said Tussie, going over to the mantelpiece and throwing a look of eager interest ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... courts of the building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and comfortable, with a brisk fire on the hearth, a little tea-table laid out, and over the mantelpiece a drawing of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... bed she wrote to Owen explaining the whole matter. It was too late in the evening for the postman's visit, and she placed the letter on the mantelpiece to send it ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... grave-yard; and behind for many miles nothing but sombre moors climbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning and wuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the angles of the house; and crossing the threshold, I know by instinct that this mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the bare room to the left. I know also to whom those four suppressed voices will belong that greet me while yet my hand is on the latch. Four children are within—three girls and a boy—and they are disputing over a box of wooden soldiers. The eldest girl, a plain child with reddish-brown ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fell off the mantelpiece, the canisters fell off the shelf; the kettle fell off the hob. Tommy Brock put his foot in a ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... 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
... really civilised, we are impatient of irrelevance even in 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 ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... in an armchair, and Adams stood before her with his back to the mantelpiece and his ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were in. You even liked Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and that the ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... undecorated, but the idea of austerity was banished by a temperature so nearly tropical. There were rows of books on white shelves, a pale Donatello cast on the wall, and two fine bronze vases filled with roses on the mantelpiece. Over the roses hung a portrait in oils, very sleek and very accurate, of a commanding old gentleman in uniform, painted by a well-known German painter, and all about the room were photographs of young women, most of them young mothers, with smooth heads and ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 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 and original higgledy-piggledyness! ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... berries over the pictures, and the mantelpiece, too, was covered with it. Between the masses of green and the red berries stood the solid, old-fashioned, gilt frames of long ago, the photographs in them becoming yellow with age. Hildeguard turned to them from the portraits on the walls. ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... is to be made out of it as possible. Like the elephants, 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 ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of regimentals, worn threadbare by the brush, was carefully hung up in the state bedchamber, and regularly aired the first fair day of every month, and his cocked hat and trusty sword were suspended in grim repose over the parlor mantelpiece, forming supporters to a full-length portrait of the renowned admiral Van Tromp. In his domestic empire he maintained strict discipline, and a well organized despotic government; but though his own will ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and Henry VIII. After that I gave the man 2s. for his trouble, and went back again. In our going, my landlord carried us through a very old hospital or almshouse, where forty poor people was maintained; a very old foundation; and over the chimney in the mantelpiece was an inscription in brass: "Orate pre anima Thomae Bird," &c.; and the poor box also was on the same chimney-piece, with an iron door and locks to it, into which I put 6d. They brought me a draft of their drink in a brown bowl, tipt with silver, which I drank off, and at the bottom was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... screams from Val and Fergus, a buffeting of paws, a couple of wild bounds, first on a chair-back, then on the mantelpiece, where, between the bronze candlestick and the vase, the Persian philosopher stood hissing and swearing, while Kunz ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... completed the tale of furniture. The general impression was one of fulness; the low ceiling, and the immense harvest of overblown blue roses which climbed luxuriantly up the walls, intensified this effect. The mantelpiece was crammed with brass ornaments, and there were two complete sets of brass fire-irons in the brass fender. Above the mantelpiece a looking-glass, in a wan frame of bird's-eye maple, with ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... and leaned his forehead against the high mantelpiece. I looked out of the window. Anne remained hidden in the corner of the settle. We all, no doubt, had the same feeling that this love-affair was showing itself as something too splendid to be interfered with. Whether or not it ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... decently but not richly furnished room, belonging to MARGARET. Table, small writing-desk, chairs, a cupboard, two windows up stage, doors right and left. At rise of curtain, CLEMENT is discovered leaning against mantelpiece, in a very elegant dark gray morning suit, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. MARGARET stands by window, then walks up and down, finally comes behind CLEMENT and runs her hands through his hair. She seems rather restless. CLEMENT goes ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... uglier every minute, and the elder daily became more stupid. Either she answered nothing at all when spoken to, or replied with some idiotic remark. At the same time she was so awkward that she could not set four china vases on the mantelpiece without breaking one of them, nor drink a glass of water without spilling half ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... thy grave tick tock I heard in my childhood days, In the solemn night, when the fire burned bright, And the lamp cast feeble rays; When grandmother close by the mantelpiece, Sat dozing or knitting, or carding fleece, Or watching the dying blaze; When mother was young and her beautiful hair Had never a silver thread; When her life was fair as her love was rare, In the years that ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... 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
... wines, and served by a French chef. The surprise and 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. Truly ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... library they had not penetrated. The old bookshelves remained untouched; the old books, in their musty brown calf bindings, were undesecrated by profaning hands. All sorts of quaint chairs and bureaus, gathered together out of every other room in the house, had congregated here. The space over the mantelpiece was adorned by a splendid portrait by Vandyke, flanked irreverently on either side by a series of old sporting prints, representing the whole beginning, continuation, and end of a steeple-chase course, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... of Good Friday. Within the modest parlour of No. 13 Primrose Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red neck-tie, stood admiring himself in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece. Such a state of things anywhere else would have had no significance whatever; but circumstances proverbially alter cases. At 13 Primrose Terrace it approached the ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... mysteries by which she finds herself surrounded! No sooner had I entered this battlemented mansion than a cold chill struck through me, as with a sense of some brooding terror. All, indeed, was elegance, all splendour! The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... corner; her mother's apron on the floor in the middle of the room; the breakfast dishes not yet washed; the stove all spattered with grease from the pork gravy; the hearth thickly covered with ashes; the paper window-curtain hanging by one tack; and on the mantelpiece, behind the stove, such an array of half-eaten apples, matches, forks, sticky spoons, broken teacups, and dirty candlesticks, as would have frightened any one less used to it than was Kitty. As she looked around her, a ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... Fontainebleau, that his Majesty had eaten nothing since morning. The Emperor was exceedingly fatigued; I had opportunity to mark this each time his door was opened. He was seated on a chair in front of the fire, with his feet on the mantelpiece. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... grandfather and great great aunts, Supported on the mantelpiece An Invitation to the Dance. . . . . . . I shall not want Honour in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... a round table and two low chairs. There were yellow flags in a jar on the mantelpiece; a photograph of his mother; cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials; notes and pipes; on the table lay paper ruled with a red margin—an essay, no doubt—"Does History consist of the Biographies of Great Men?" There were books enough; very few French books; ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 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 to ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, right in front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... left-hand brass, seven inches; carved-wood—Italian—five and three quarter inches each; old glass on mantelpiece—seven inches. And below this, dated the third: Last night, between midnight and daylight, the candle in the glass holder on the right side of the mantel was burned ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 274 (the ends of the fireplace) the two wing walls of it are built up inside the cabin to support a plank for a mantelpiece. Another plank C, D is nailed under the mantelpiece against the log before the stone work is built up. This is only for the purpose of giving a finish to your mantelpiece. The hearth in Fig. 274 is made of odd bits of flat stones laid in cement, ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... precious watch stood on the mantelpiece in the blue bedroom, on the watch-stand which was another of Esther's treasures. Lydia had given it to her on one of her birthdays; it was made of white wood, and had a little view on it of Blackpool, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... connection with his family, and more especially with Pixie, but after one brief reference the subject had been buried, though Pixie herself was frequently mentioned. There was a portrait of her on Pat's mantelpiece to which Stephen's eyes often strayed during his visits to the flat. Truth to tell it was not a flattering portrait. Pixie was unfortunate so far as photography was concerned, since all her bad points were reproduced and her charm disappeared. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... many pictures, some of them of funny little stiff boys in blue coats with brass buttons, and some of them of little girls with mob-caps and mittens, and these little boys and girls were all either dead now, or elderly men and women, for they were the great-aunts and uncles; and over the mantelpiece hung a picture of a lovely old lady, with bright, soft brown hair and smiling eyes and lips, that looked as if they were just going to speak to the two strange little children who had come for their ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... widow came out, followed by Don. Mrs. Duveen's eyes were red, but she had recovered her composure, and now held in her hand the silver cigarette case from the mantelpiece. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... there, and kept out of sight in an old coffin when they are not wanted. Others vote for getting up sixpenny sweepstakes, and raffling for them with dice—the winner of each to stand a pot out of his gains, and add to the goodly array of empty pewters which already grace the mantelpiece in bright order, with the exception of two irregulars, one of which Mr. Rapp has squeezed flat to show the power of his hand; and in the bottom of the other Mr. Manhug has bored a foramen with a red-hot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... agitated by an ever-increasing impatience. At every instant she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece of her room; an Empire clock of gilded bronze, representing Love leaning against ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and went to the mantelpiece and took one book from the heap of books there. She opened it and glanced abstractedly through the leaves as they flittered ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that, though his rooms might be small, there was about them a delicate touch which made up for much, that everything breathed of refinement from the photographs and silver toddy-spoon upon the mantelpiece to Rossetti's poems and "Marius the Epicurean," which covered negligently a stain on the green tablecloth? And these kindly ladies came in riant mood, well knowing all his little anxieties and preparations, yet showing they knew none ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the room. It was a tiny sitting room, one of the inexpensive rooms in the hotel. There was a bit of fire in the grate, and standing by the mantelpiece was, a big old man with close-cropped hair and a pale, unhealthy face. It was the type of face that one associates with tribal races in Southeastern Europe. He was dressed in a uniform that fitted closely to his figure. It was a uniform ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... too, which had seen more than one tragic happening, as its almost unparalleled isolation proclaimed. So much Mr. Van Broecklyn had told her; but she was warned to be careful in traversing it and not upon any pretext to swerve aside from the right-hand wall till she came to a huge mantelpiece. This passed, and a sharp corner turned, she ought to see somewhere in the dim spaces before her a streak of vivid light shining through the crack at the bottom of the blocked-up door. The paper should be ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 floriated ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... and stood beneath the great carved mantelpiece. Over his head, hewn out of the solid oak, black with age and coloured with that deep richness which is to-day as a lost art, were blazoned the arms of one of Europe's noblest families. He, Nicholas of Reist, its sole male representative, stood deep in thought, his dark young face furrowed ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... be dropping him. That's not the way to put it. He drops himself—automatically." The clock on the mantelpiece ticked a few times before he added, "I can't go ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... head, gave back 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 ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... said anything that required an answer. Presently he released her hand, after patting it, and moved restlessly in his chair; then he looked at his watch, and compared it curiously with the clock on the mantelpiece. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... room to the glowing fire and the black marble mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and haughty—the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and knows that ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... truth is, I've made Warden bring me here, Sterling, for a bit of business. I had an emotional moment yesterday and went off my head a bit. I stand by what I said as to keeping quiet, but—well, I'm like any other old maid who hates dust on her mantelpiece—I'm fidgety not to make some sort of a bluff at putting this ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... appearance of washed-out brick and well-ripened wood, there was comfort and cleanliness and quiet. The front room, with its stiff cane rocker and chairs, its round table and well-adorned mantelpiece, its cretonne-covered lounge and tapestry carpet, was not a bad sample at all, of a drawing-room ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of the six sausages had been recovered; but the sixth was not retrieved until the next morning when, in dusting, Mrs. Tims discovered it on the mantelpiece. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... small but very select circle), descended from the very ancient and chivalric house of that name, whose celebrated estate was in Warwickshire, England; and, in proof of this, my Lady Choicewest invariably points to a sad daub, illustrative of some incomprehensible object, suspended over the antique mantelpiece. With methodical grace, and dignity which frowns with superlative contempt upon every thing very vulgar—for she says "she sublimely detests them very low creatures what are never brought up to manners at the north, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... head very high, adjusted in silence, the two China mandarins on the mantelpiece—first, one very carefully, then the other. And there was a pause, during which one of the lap-dogs screamed; and the monkey, who had boxed his ears, jumped, with a ringing of his chain, chattering, on the back of the arm-chair in which the grim suitor sat. Mr. Dangerfield would have given the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... into the private office. At ten minutes past, Mr. Murphy's respectful tap was heard. "Don't, Eddie," said Mrs. MacMahon in a queer, flurried voice. "Come in," said her husband. Nora was examining some judicial cartoons pinned over the mantelpiece. Mr. Murphy opened the door a few inches, slid through the aperture, and was at once caught and held by his employer's eye, which, like a hand, guided him to the table with his notebook. Under the almost physical pressure of that authoritative glare he did not dare to look who was in the room, but ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... her and couldn't say a word. He noticed that the room 'ad been altered, and that there was a big photygraph of her stuck up on the mantelpiece. He sat there fidgeting with 'is feet—until the 'ousekeeper looked at them—and then 'e got ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... aprons and snowy Dutch 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 Street ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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
... it to Mrs. Burrell in the afternoon, for the morning was his time for study and writing. But he found it impossible to think of his sermon. That sovereign on the mantelpiece was in all his thoughts. His back was to it, and yet he saw the dull shining disc. In spite of his reason and his faith, in spite of a very strong will and of a practiced command over himself, he felt the presence of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and a rosewood piano against the wall opposite. A fender of shining brass with brazen furniture, a bright, copper kettle for boiling water in, and an iron pot for cooking potatoes and meat; there was to be a life-sized picture of Mary over the mantelpiece and a picture of her mother near the window in a golden frame, also a picture of a Newfoundland dog lying in a barrel and a little wee terrier crawling up to make friends with him, and a picture of a battle between ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the broad hearth, and that, with the tallow candles on the mantelpiece, made quite an illumination in the room, and enabled the boys, who were mostly on one side of the room, to see the girls, who were on the other, quite plainly. How sweet and demure the girls looked, to be sure! Every boy was thinking ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... boy. They took their places at the table, and dinner was eaten by the light of the lamp. But after dinner, when Julia had tucked Anna into bed, she came back and put out the lamp. She lighted two candles on the mantelpiece that sent a brave flicker over the dull walls and up ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... he 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 and awoke her husband to partake of the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... time-honoured tradition of the family, it was served at the early hour of seven o'clock in the big dining-room, an ancient chamber panelled with oak to the ceiling, with a carved buffet, an open fireplace, Jacobean mantelpiece, and old family portraits on the walls. There were sconces on the walls, and a crystal chandelier for wax candles was suspended from the centre of the ceiling above the table. The chandelier was never lit, as the moat-house was illuminated by electric light, but ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... prickling with a premonition of danger, Dundee crossed the room to the shelf, but his hand did not reach out for the red book, which might have been expected to solve one problem, at least. "Why the shelf?" he asked himself again. Why not the desk top, or the mantelpiece, or the smoking table beside ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... heavily leaded, stained-glass window. The floor was likewise black, polished with age and the labour of generations. A deeply sunken nail-studded door led into a low-ceiled library, containing a finely carved frieze and cornice, and an oak mantelpiece, which John Crewys earnestly desired to examine more closely; the shield-of-arms above it bore the figures of 1603, but the hall itself ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... of attendance on my clients are from eleven to one." The clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter-past one as he spoke. "I hope you don't bring me bad news?" he said, very earnestly. "When I called on Mrs. Zant this morning, I heard that she had gone out for a walk. Is it indiscreet to ask how ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... largest in Rome, although the quality of the marble is much injured by its lighter colour, and by a white streak which runs up each shaft nearly from top to bottom. In the sixth room of the Casino of the Villa Borghese the jambs of the mantelpiece are composed of rosso antico in the form of caryatides supporting a broad frieze of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... 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 ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... flesh until her mental exaltation reached the rushing of delirium. Then his evening manners fascinated her, and, as he leaned back smoking in the dining-room arm-chair, his patent-leather shoes propped up against the mantelpiece, he showed her glimpses of a wider world than she knew of—and the girl's eyes softened as she listened to his accounts of the great life he had led, the county-houses he had visited, and the legendary runs he had held his own in. She sympathized with ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... moment's silence. Furley glanced at the little clock upon the mantelpiece. It was five and ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the mantelpiece, and brought one to her brother. "Is this it?" He nodded. She ran for the light, and ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... conducted me contained no furniture except a large deal table and some chairs; also a cupboard, a long mantelpiece, and some shelves against the walls. On every available place were pipes, pouches, revolvers, cartridge-boxes, and empty bottles. On the table were tumblers, cups, a sugar-basin, a monstrous tin teapot, and a demijohn, which I soon ascertained was ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... fourteen years. The cottage floor was hard, dried mud. There was a wide, open fireplace. Several holes made in the wall by displacing of bricks here and there contained my father's old pipes. A few ornaments, yellow with the smoke of years, adorned the mantelpiece. At the front window sat my father, and around him his shoemaking tools. Beside the window hung a large cage, made by his own hands, and in which singing thrushes had succeeded one another for twenty years. The walls ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to the last departing guest, the old man and his son were left alone together in the deserted drawing-room. Philip was seated by a table, his face buried in his hand, whilst his father was standing by the dying fire, tapping his eye-glass nervously on the mantelpiece. It was he who broke the somewhat ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... leaped and crackled in the wide chimney, and leaning forward to rest her turbaned head against the mantelpiece, while she spread her hands toward the blaze, stood ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to an envelope on the mantelpiece. She crossed the hall without eagerness, and picked ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... GAUDENS, - This is to tell you that the medallion has been at last triumphantly transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-room mantelpiece. It is considered by everybody a first-rate but flattering portrait. We have it in a very good light, which brings out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great advantage. As for my own opinion, I believe it to be a speaking likeness, and not flattered at all; possibly a little ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The younger visibly grew uglier and uglier, and the elder became every day more and more stupid: she either made no answer at all to what was asked her, or said something very silly. She was with all this so unhandy that she could not place four pieces of china upon the mantelpiece without breaking one of them, nor drink a glass of water without spilling half of ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... Cathedral of the Virgin of the Pillar, immediately behind his house, had struck the half hour. It was more than thirty minutes since the ferry-boat had sidled across the river, and Mon glanced at the clock on his mantelpiece. He expected, it would seem, a sequel to the arrival which had been ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... to the mantelpiece, and stood there in the attitude which for generations has been sacred to the elderly Briton, feet well apart, hands clasped beneath his coat-tails. His stare raked Lord Dreever ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Nothing to equal it has been met with in Munich. It might almost be an Aladdin's palace! The walls of her bed-chamber are hung with guipure and costly satin. The furniture is of Louis XV era, and the mantelpiece is of valuable Sevres porcelain. The garden is filled with rare flowers, and the carriages and horses in the stables are the wonder and ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... close upon three o'clock a.m., my uncle forgetting all about bed in his anxiety to hear full particulars of my doings since I had last parted from him. At length, however, he glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece, and at once pulled me ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... which the sisters now found themselves was the most spacious in the house, and was indeed of considerable dimensions. It contained in front one large window, jutting from the wall. Opposite was an antique and high mantelpiece of black oak. The rest of the room was walled from the floor to the roof with books; volumes of all languages, and it might even be said, without much exaggeration, upon all sciences, were strewed around, on the chairs, the tables, or the floor. By the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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