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More "Sumptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in this gorgeous picture, we are too much distracted and entertained by such wealth to have time to dwell on the purity of the line arrangement at its base. And the rich fullness of line arrangement, although rather excessive, seen detached, is in keeping with the sumptuous luxuriance the Venetian loved so well to express. But for pure line beauty the greater restraint of the curves in Botticelli's picture is infinitely more satisfying, though here we have not anything like the same wealth and richness of natural appearance to engage our attention, ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... wide window-seat which gave on a western slope where the gold sun was speared by the tall black trees. But Folsom, to whom the architect gave a nervous cue, hurried to the sala da mangiare, and thrust back its sumptuous ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... seems to enjoy himself werry well, Mrs. Newt," said Mr. Van Boozenberg, as he observed that youth, in sumptuous array, dancing devotedly with ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... loveliness. In her bosom are one or two violets and a paper with Titianus written on it. The bit of music on the grass has Greek letters. Dancing figures are in the middle of the picture. The fauns stagger under the dark trees, carrying great sumptuous vases of agate and gold. Silenus is asleep on a sunny hill at a distance, and the white sails of the ship with Theseus gleam on the deep-blue sea. There is another called an Offering to Fecundity. It is a crowd ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... cherished in memory, was a ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, fastidiously cut to fit a stove-pipe. That he never possessed a stove-pipe had made this feature of the architecture not less sumptuous and engaging. He lived chiefly on salt pork and beans, cooked over ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of his principality. Such a nurse was provided for Charles. Rockers for his cradle were appointed, and many other officers of his household, all the arrangements being made in a very magnificent and sumptuous manner. It is the custom in England to pay fees to the servants by which a lady or gentleman is attended, even when a guest in private dwellings; and some idea may be formed of the scale on which the pageantry of this occasion was conducted, ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... that phrase sums up my London: the City of Homes. To lie down at night to sleep among six million homes, to know that all about you, in high garret or sumptuous bedchamber, six million people are sleeping, or suffering, or loving, is to me the most impressive event of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... yet standing in Cayro, which is a sumptuous thing, hauing a place to walke in of 56. mighty pillars, all gilt with gold, but I saw it not, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... various other occasions, and a ring, a brooch, and a pair of earrings were given her. Naturally she was the most adorned nurse in the Champs-Elysees, with superb cloaks and the richest of caps, trimmed with long ribbons which flared in the sunlight. Never did lady lead a life of more sumptuous idleness. There were also the presents which she extracted for her husband and her little girl at the village. Parcels were sent them by express train every week. And on the morning when news came that her own baby, carried back ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... relief is made of Pietra Serena, of a delicate bluish tint, very charming to work in, according to Cellini, though without the durability needed for statues placed out of doors.[53] It has been enriched with a most lavish hand and there is no part of the work without sumptuous decoration. The base, with the central wreath, is flanked by the Cavalcanti arms: above them rise two rectangular shafts enclosing the relief on either side. These columns are carved with a fretwork of leaves, and ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Richard of Bury is said to have been his tutor, and the early lessons of the author or instigator of the Philobiblon were never entirely lost by the prince who took Chaucer and Froissart into his service. More conspicuous was his love of art, his taste for sumptuous buildings and their magnificent embellishment, which left memorials in the stately castle of Windsor and its rich chapel of St. George, in St. Stephen's chapel at Westminster, and the Eastminster for Cistercian ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the neighbours coming in, listened with wonder to the account delivered by the soldiers of his military achievements and former magnificence. Then, obeying the command of the emperor, they clothed him in sumptuous apparel. On the fifteenth day they reached the imperial court, and the emperor, apprised of his coming, went out to meet him, and saluted him with great gladness. Eustacius told all that had befallen him. He was then invested with the command of the army, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... thought for him as any lover for his mistress; giving him his arm, telling him where to put his foot down so as to avoid the mud, warming the bed for him, lighting a fire in his room, making his supper ready. The next day, after he had done his best to fluster his son's wits over a sumptuous dinner, Jerome-Nicolas Sechard, after copious potations, began with a "Now for business," a remark so singularly misplaced between two hiccoughs, that David begged his parent to postpone serious matters until the morrow. But the old "bear" was by no means inclined to put off the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... witnessed such a brave display, the parade of floats upon the river, the fireworks, the tournaments, the dazzling costumes, the sumptuous banquet and the brilliant ball to conclude it all; and then that beautiful Italian name, "Mischianza," the title by which it should be ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... imperturbable, he delights in intruding among his creations; but you cannot see it. You suspect its presence, because he is a born mocker. But you remember that one of his most obvious idiosyncrasies is an inordinate love of all that is sumptuous, glittering, radiant, magnificent; and you incline to suspect that he keeps his sneering for the world of men, and admires his scenes and decorations too cordially to visit them with anything ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... are the mountains that overlook the Mediterranean; how intense was the heat as we wound our way along the galleries of rock cut to form a road; how excellent are the fruits, and how thick the mosquitoes at Nice; how sumptuous are the palaces, how narrow and dark the streets, and how pallid the dames of Genoa; and how beautiful we found our path among the trees overrun with vines as we approached southern Italy, are matters which I will take some other ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... cause the luggage of the guest to be whisked off to the most sumptuous room in the hotel. Seven cities of Greece disputed with one another the honor of having been the birthplace of Homer; more than seven waiters disputed with one another the honor of carrying Adrian Baker's valise. He was like a king ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... India. "Honestly," she said to me, "I was not pleased; such things did not appeal to me." But here, in a letter from Hyderabad, bidding one "share a March morning" with her, there is, at the mere contact of the sun, this outburst: "Come and share my exquisite March morning with me: this sumptuous blaze of gold and sapphire sky; these scarlet lilies that adorn the sunshine; the voluptuous scents of neem and champak and serisha that beat upon the languid air with their implacable sweetness; the thousand little gold and blue and silver breasted birds bursting with the shrill ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... the old woman shook her head and said: "Oh, ho! you dear children, who led you here? Just come in and stay with me, no ill shall befall you." She took them both by the hand and let them into the house, and laid a most sumptuous dinner before them—milk and sugared pancakes, with apples and nuts. After they had finished, two beautiful little white beds were prepared for them, and when Hansel and Grettel lay down in them they felt as if they had got ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... commanding at once within the scope of its vast prospect, picturesque views, and splendid monuments of the most important events in the history of man—the Capitol and the Campus Martius, the groves of the Quirinal and the cupola of St. Peter's, the ruined palaces of the Caesars, and sumptuous villas of the sons of the reigning church. Such was then, as now, the range of unrivalled objects which the Pincio commanded; but the noble terrace smoothed over its acclivities, which recalled the memory of Aurelian and the feast of Belisarius, presented ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... "to put their friendship to the proof, I one day took the cat by herself into my room, while I had the dog guarded in another apartment. I entertained the cat in a most sumptuous manner, wishing to see what sort of a meal she would ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... pompous funeral at St. Paul's in February, 1568/9, among long lists of unknown men and women, high and low, who had mourning given them, among bills for fees to officials, for undertakers' charges, for heraldic pageantry and ornamentation, for abundant supplies for the sumptuous funeral banquet, are put down lists of boys, from the chief London schools, St. Paul's, Westminster, and others, to whom two yards of cloth were to be given to make their gowns: and at the head of the six scholars named from Merchant Taylors' ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... with these requirements can be judged from the following description given by Professor Greaves in 1638:—"It is," he says, "a very stately piece of work, and not inferior, either in respect of the curiosity of art, or richness of materials, to the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings," and a little further on he says, "this gallery, or corridor, or whatever else I may call it, is built of white and polished marble (limestone), the which is very evenly cut in spacious ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... domes inwrought with fretted gold, The sumptuous pavements veins or pearl unfold, Arch piled on arch with columned pride ascend, Grove linked to grove ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... a sumptuous limbo, Like a happier version of the boy Drawn by Mr. BLACKWOOD in his Jimbo, I shall taste of bliss without alloy; Other minstrels may indulge in fighting, I myself cannot so far forget As to shun the raptures of inditing Occ. verse for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... The dinner was sumptuous. They toasted the Dragon's crest. Everybody knows that a closed goblet is a sign of sovereignty; so Prince Crucho and Princess Gudrune, his wife, drank out of goblets that were covered-over like ciboriums. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the same, plain gold epaulets, and a large star on the left breast, white waistcoat and breeches and white silk stockings, thin shoes and buckles. Eats but two meals in the day, breakfast and dinner, and these are sumptuous, fish, flesh, and fowl, wines, fruit, various French dishes &c. &c. He breakfasts about eleven and dines at six, is about half an hour at each, when he generally comes on deck or goes into the after-cabin to study. We do not know ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... tea walking about, examining Landry's sumptuous writing-table in the alcove and the Boucher drawing in red chalk over the mantel. "I don't see how you can stand this place without a heroine. It would give me a ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the above-mentioned joys. Heavenly food in its essence is nothing but love, wisdom, and use united together; that is, use effected by wisdom and derived from love; wherefore food for the body is given to every one in heaven according to the use which he performs; sumptuous food to those who perform eminent uses; moderate, but of an exquisite relish, to those who perform less eminent uses; and ordinary to such as live in the performance of ordinary uses; but none at all to ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Rome, in the reign of Tiberius, there were twelve elephant performers, six males and six females, clothed in fancy costume. After they had, at the command of their keeper, danced and performed a thousand curious antics, a most sumptuous feast was served up for their refreshment. The table was covered with all sorts of dainties, and golden goblets filled with the most precious wines; and beds covered with purple carpets were placed around for the animals to lie upon, after the manner of the Romans when feasting. On these carpets ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... scene. One was the absence of Miss Fanchon Bareaud, one the donors; another, that of Corporal Gray; a third was the excessive modesty of Major Vanrevel, although present at the time, refused to receive the ladies' sumptuous offering and insisted that Captain Marsh was the proper person to do the honors, to which the latter reluctantly, though gracefully consented. Also, we were sorry that the Major appeared in citizen's dress, as all were anxious to witness him in his uniform. However, in our humble judgment, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the sumptuous apartment that opened from the terrace, went to the televisor. He saw the face of Sears, the chief secretary of Fragoni, in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... man requires." On the other hand, it was furnished with the neatness and taste which belonged to his character, so that his most luxurious friends found something in the tiny rooms which made them discontented with their own sumptuous mansions. Even the attic, which had been converted into my bedroom, was the most perfect little bijou attic that could possibly be imagined. Beautiful and valuable knick-knacks filled every corner of every ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... almost eternal, and which, for their purposes, show a luxury of wealth and labor that our boasted locomotion cannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enter the palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses which modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern times can only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We have not surpassed it there. And we ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... seemed to have withdrawn from our neighbourhood, though several of the men who went to-day to visit the falls for the first time, mention that they are still abundant at that place. We contrived however to spread not a very sumptuous but a comfortable table in honour of the day, and in the evening gave the men a drink of spirits, which was the last of our stock. Some of them appeared sensible to the effects of even so small a quantity, and as is usual among them on all festivals, the fiddle was produced and a dance begun, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... except the Great Hall itself, this is the most remarkable part of the Tudor edifice that remains. According to an old engraving it was in this chamber that Cardinal Wolsey entertained the French ambassadors at the sumptuous banquet referred ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... for the priest of the diocese and ordered a number of masses. She did not take him with her when—her impatience leading her far ahead of events—she rushed from shop to shop looking for a cradle, and only put off buying one because she could find none in all Paris that was sumptuous ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... "beautiful fete," to quote one chronicler's words, "was held in honour of the auspicious event in the Sala Grande of the Schifanoia Villa." On this occasion a concert was given by a hundred trumpeters, pipers, and tambourine-players in the frescoed hall of this favourite summer palace, and a sumptuous banquet was prepared after the fashion of the times, with an immense number of confetti, representing lords and ladies, animals, trees, and castles, all made of gilt and coloured sugar, which our friend the diarist tells us were carried off or eaten ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... this world's grandeur and magnificence. Never has the saying of Ecclesiastes been more exactly verified: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!" We have before us the task of describing one of the most sumptuous courts that has ever existed, and of reviewing splendors all the more brilliant for their brevity. To this court of Napoleon and Josephine, to this majestic court, resplendent with glory, wealth, and fame, may well be ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... in man of surviving himself. Pyramids, mausoleums, monuments, epitaphs, all shew that he is willing to prolong his existence even beyond his decease. He, is not insensible to the judgment of posterity; it is for him the philosopher writes; it is to astonish him that the monarch erects sumptuous edifices, gorgeous palaces; it is his praises, it is his commendations, that the great man already hears echo in his ears; it is to him that the virtuous citizen appeals from unjust laws; from prejudiced contemporaries—happy chimera! generous illusion! ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Scotland was one of these monuments upon which were depicted war-like scenes, horses and their riders, warriors brandishing their weapons, and troops shouting for victory, while on the other side was a sumptuous cross, beneath which were two figures, the one ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... afterwards as Kaiser's Generalissimo, in 1542. He did no good upon the Turks, on that latter occasion; as indeed what good was to be done, in such a quagmire of futilities as Joachim's element there was? "Too sumptuous in his dinners, too much wine withal!" hint some calumniously. [Paulus Jovius, &c. See Pauli, iii. 70-73.] "Hector of Germany!" say others. He tried some small prefatory Siege or scalade of Pesth; could not do it; and came his ways home again, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead; In filling love's infinite store, A rose to the living is more, If graciously given before The hungering spirit is fled— A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... come suddenly upon the brink of a narrow ravine, sharply defined as if cut out with an axe, and packed to the brim with enchanting and voluptuous fertility. Or you will come upon mountains which sweep upward out of burning death into sumptuous life. When the monotony of life meets the monotony of death, Southern California becomes a land of contrasts; and ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... the Counts of Flanders very puissant lords. "Marguerite II., called the Black, Countess of Flanders and Hainault, from 1244 to 1280, was extremely rich," says a chronicler, "not only in lands, but in furniture, jewels, and money; and, as is not customary with women, she was right liberal and right sumptuous, not only in her largesses, but in her entertainments, and whole manner of living; insomuch that she kept up the state of queen rather than countess." Nearly all the Flemish towns were strongly organized communes, in which prosperity had won liberty, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... railroad bridge and presently to a mono-rail train standing in the track on its safety feet. It was a remarkably sumptuous train, the Last Word Trans-Continental Express, and the passengers were all playing cards or sleeping or preparing a picnic meal on a grassy slope near at hand. They ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... exploiter, the Corsican overdid the thing a bit—so the world arose and put him down; but safely dead, his shade can boast a grave so sumptuous that Englishmen in Paris refuse to look ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... pleasure, and out of the reach of pain, and remove you from all the noise and disquietude of business. The affairs of either war or peace shall have no power to disturb you. Your whole employment shall be to make your life easy, and to entertain every sense with its proper gratifications. Sumptuous tables, beds of roses, clouds of perfume, concerts of music, crowds of beauties, are all in readiness to receive you. Come along with me into this region of delights, this world of pleasure, and bid farewell for ever to care, to pain, to business." Hercules, hearing the lady talk after ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... well, but even as he admired her he wondered how another would look in the midst of this dusky red luxury; another with the ease and grace of Mrs. Markham herself, with the same air of perfect finish, but taller, of more sumptuous build and with a nobler face. She, too, would move with soundless steps over the dark red carpet, and were she sitting there before the fire, with the glow of the coals falling at her feet, the room would need no ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... idled away at the baths, which were the place for talk and gossip, and where there was a soft steamy air which was enough to take away all manhood and resolution. The ladies' dresses were exceedingly expensive and absurd, and the whole way of living quite as sumptuous and helpless as in the times of heathenism. Good people tried to live apart. More than ever became monks and hermits; and a number of ladies, who had been much struck with St. Jerome's teaching, made up a sort of society at Rome which busied itself ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and how vastly he has improved, since then. When a man informs us that he was a very silly fellow in the year 1851, it is assumed that he is not a very silly fellow in the year 1861. It is as when the merchant with ten thousand a year, sitting at his sumptuous table, and sipping his '41 claret, tells you how, when he came as a raw lad from the country, he used often to have to go without his dinner. He knows that the plate, the wine, the massively elegant apartment, the silent servants, so alert, yet so impassive, will appear to join in chorus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... races. At the same time they continue to persuade themselves and others that they are all much concerned about the welfare of these working classes, whom they have always trampled under their feet, and on Sundays, richly dressed, they drive in sumptuous carriages to the houses of God built in very mockery of Christianity, and there listen to men, trained to this work of deception, who in white neckties or in brocaded vestments, according to their denomination, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... that had fallen to Saloo's arrows were sufficient to serve them for a few days, and with the fine supply of lard obtained from the carcass of the pig, they could be cooked in the most sumptuous manner. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... now indeed risen to high estate. The king set him beside himself at table, showed him the deepest affection, and showered on him gifts and estates. His new wealth the free-handed soldier dispensed lavishly, giving numerous and sumptuous dinners, where, says ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... praetors, and proconsuls and propraetors, filled their treasuries, and fed their troops, and paid the artisans for fabricating their arms. With these avails they built the magnificent edifices of Rome, and adorned its environs with sumptuous villas. As they had the power and the arms in their hands, the peaceful and the industrious had no alternative but to submit. They went on as well as they could with their labors, bearing patiently every interruption, returning again to till their ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... observed that the chairs and tables had all been thrust against the wall as if to clear the floor for dancing. In the dining-room, the evidence of recent festivity was complete, for the table was covered with the remnants of a sumptuous repast. No words were needed to tell him that Olga Blomgren, the cook, had taken advantage of the foreknowledge of his absence to entertain a wide circle of friends; but here indeed was a mystery. Why had she not set everything in order and removed all traces ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of the young gentlemen, to dine with him. Such an invitation was like a royal command. Nettleship and I, with Dick Larcom, who had just joined the frigate, and who was a protege of the captain, were the favoured ones. The repast was sumptuous in my eyes, and unlike anything I had seen before. Lord Robert was all courtesy and kindness. He inquired of each of us what service we had seen, and particulars about ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... had not reached its day's end. The crack of long whips could be heard, flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise. Few of the houses were more than one story high, but they had a sumptuous spread, each in its own square of lawn, orchard, and garden. They were built of stone, or of timbers filled ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... avoid contagion or pollution, in time of pestilence, burnt the bodies of their friends.* And when they burnt not their dead bodies, yet sometimes used great burnings near and about them, deducible from the expressions concerning Jehoram, Zedechias, and the sumptuous pyre of Asa. And were so little averse from Pagan burning, that the Jews lamenting the death of Caesar their friend, and revenger on Pompey, frequented the place where his body was burnt for many nights together. And as they raised noble monuments ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... Universal Exposition, and not long before the Legislative Elections began, to bring up no fewer than some thirteen thousand of the mayors of France to Paris at the public expense. There they were entertained—still at the public expense—with a sumptuous hospitality, which proves that, however orthodox the Republican Atheism may be of M. Constans, the Minister of the Interior, he has not yet struck the blessed St. Julian out of his calendar, at least when he is spending the money of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the children of their nieces, being tended in their illnesses and having their wounds dressed by the slave women with whom they lived despite their vows of chastity. Renowned monarchs passing through Majorca would leave their sumptuous quarters in the Almudaina to visit the Febrers in their palace. Some members of this great family had been admirals in the king's armada; others governors of far distant lands; some slept the eternal sleep in the Cathedral of La Valette beside ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... are pursuing the people with torch and fear of sunstroke. The long silent halls of sumptuous hotels are all abuzz with excited arrivals. The crystalline surface of Winnipiseogee is shattered with the stroke of steamer, laden with excursionists. The antlers of Adirondack deer rattle under the shot of city sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps at the hook of adroit sportsmen ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... house the Seventh Day was a day of feasting, and after the church services all the connection went to the ancestral home to eat the most sumptuous dinner of the week. Against this infraction of the law which forbade on the Sabbath all work not of mercy or necessity, my mother set her face, and when this was done there was no long resistance possible and my father ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the tent was surrounded with silk hangings, and a Tartar liquor was served on the table, which possessed at least the intoxicating qualities of wine. The entertainment of the succeeding day was more sumptuous; the silk hangings of the second tent were embroidered in various figures; and the royal seat, the cups, and the vases, were of gold. A third pavilion was supported by columns of gilt wood; a bed of pure and massy gold was raised on four peacocks of the same metal: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... little delicacies their breadwinner could not afford to buy—all of this at the behest of two bespangled gentlemen, who even then were writing to their distant wives, enclosing substantial checks, and descanting eloquently upon the sumptuous fare ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... banners, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and contrasting the splendor of gold and purple and crimson with the cold gray fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this grand mausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder—his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous tomb—and the whole surrounded ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... fortress; and the intervening ground was raised so that the walls afforded a breastwork for the troops stationed there in times of assault. The fortress consisted of three towers, detached from one another. One was appropriated to the Inca, and was garnished with the sumptuous decorations befitting a royal residence, rather than a military post. The other two were held by the garrison, drawn from the Peruvian nobles, and commanded by an officer of the blood royal; for the position was of too great importance to be intrusted to inferior hands. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... porcelain, into the darkened bed-room at Lynbrook; but early rising and hard scrambling had whetted the appetites of the naturalists, and the nursery fare which Cicely spread before them seemed a sumptuous ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... at Col. Sellers's was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but it improved on acquaintance. That is to say, that what Washington regarded at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... on a neighbouring church had scarcely ceased striking three, when the servant announced that a carriage had called for Mr. Green. In less than half an hour he was seated in a most sumptuous barouche, drawn by two beautiful iron greys, and rolling along over a splendid gravel road completely shaded by large trees, which appeared to have been the accumulating growth of many centuries. The carriage soon stopped in front ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... Kings, Princes, and other great people, to try the tempers of their favourites rather severely. Even the little affair of the crimson cloak must have been anything but a pleasant one to a haughty man. Thomas a Becket knew better than any one in England what the King expected of him. In all his sumptuous life, he had never yet been in a position to disappoint the King. He could take up that proud stand now, as head of the Church; and he determined that it should be written in history, either that he subdued the King, or ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... for him. She was, as Gogyrvan had said, a remarkably handsome woman, sleek and sumptuous and crowned with a wealth of copper-colored hair. To-night she was at her best in a tunic of shimmering blue, with a surcote of gold embroidery, and with gold embroidered pendent sleeves that touched the floor. Thus she was ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the cottage and garden; the wagon stood outside the paling. Though the little kitchen was very much encumbered with furniture, they contrived to make a fire in it; and, having eaten a sumptuous dinner, they drank each other's health, using the new tumblers ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... "Not a very sumptuous dinner, I reckon; sawdust pudding, perhaps, with cold water sauce! When I work I want something to work on. Living on nothing would be hard on me." James indicated by this remark that he had no confidence ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the origin of the fire. Translated from the monkish Latin, he says 'On the first day of rogation-week, a devouring flame consumed our church of Gysburn, with many theological books and nine costly chalices, as well as vestments and sumptuous images; and because past events are serviceable as a guide to future inquiries, I have thought it desirable, in the present little treatise, to give an account of the catastrophe, that accidents of a similar nature may be avoided through this calamity allotted to us. On the day above ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... if possible, more sumptuous meals, and in greater variety than ever, and for a few days every thing went on well. At length, a servant placed a covered dish in the center of the table, remarking that he always had orders from his master, when that particular dish was placed ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... revenues all in sumptuous pride They spend that nought to learning they may spare; And the rich fee which Poets wont divide Now Parasites and ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... his extravagance and general worthlessness, took up his residence in Geneva, and, on his death, in 1873, bequeathed all his property, about four million dollars, to the city. The municipality was grateful enough to carry out in a very sumptuous manner the last wishes of its benefactor, who desired to be commemorated by a monument in the style of the later Scaliger tomb at Verona, and from the designs of Frauel was erected the hexagonal Gothic pavilion, surmounted ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... general councils, approved by parliament in the first year of the reign of Elizabeth. "The Church of England is really with us; we appeal to her own principles, and we shall not deviate from her, unless she deviates from herself." Yet his "Primitive Christianity" had all the sumptuous pomp of popery; his creeds and doxologies are printed in the red letter, and his liturgies in the black; his pulpit blazed in gold and velvet (Pope's "gilt tub"); while his "Primitive Eucharist" was ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... answer I looked at the sumptuous plate and furnishings, the profusion of the viands, and the number of the serving-men. Reading my ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... thus delighted Giving unto courtiers free, Costly robes and tinselry; And, as royal guests, invited Them to sumptuous halls of glee, Banqueting and minstrelsy, Bacchus ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the troopers awoke and set about preparing a meal as sumptuous as the limited larder permitted. Since Friday only odd nibbles of bully and biscuit had passed into ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... led through great herds of grazing buffaloes which supplied the hungry men with sumptuous fare, but most of the time they were forced to trust to the steadily diminishing stores of the provision wagons. This was especially the case when they left the grassy and flowery prairie and entered upon an arid plain, on which for months of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... formerly belonging to his empire, if captured by the Crusaders, be returned to him. But Alexius was a weak and deceitful prince, caring naught for anything save his own interest, as the Crusaders soon discovered. So it was without regret, in spite of his sumptuous entertainment of them, that Godfrey and the other leaders took leave of the Greek emperor and crossed the Bosphorus. This took some time, for the immense armies numbered one hundred thousand knights on horseback, clad in armor, five hundred thousand foot-soldiers, and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... implements, clothing and bedding for the men he had engaged, and I do not know what else. Everything was paid for. I could return the sum paid out the next day. Another man said he had already prepared a sumptuous apartment for me in the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... imagination with which the Chinese make such offerings. It is that the spirits of the dead consume the impalpable essence of the food, leaving behind its coarse material substance, wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out sumptuous feasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to satisfy their appetite, and then fall to themselves." [177] So in the Homeric sacrifice to the gods, after the deity has smelled the sweet savour and consumed the curling steam that rises ghost-like ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... this is but two-pence half-penny per meal! Think of this, ye pampered minions of wealth, who gorge turtle at a guinea a pound, who beastialize yourselves with wine at a shilling a glass, and who wantonly devour a guinea's worth of fruit after finishing a sumptuous dinner!—The guardians have judiciously annexed to the house an acre or two of ground for a garden, which is cultivated by the paupers, and supplies them with sufficient vegetables. This, though a faint approach to my plan, is yet sufficient ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... a fairyland—that sumptuous, but dreary bedroom. Everywhere were bits of dancing red and green, violet and orange, gold and blue. The wall, the floor, and the furniture, even to the bed itself, were aflame with shimmering bits ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... reaching the palace, was well received by the old king, holding an interview with him which extended so far into the night that it was too late to return to camp, and he was lodged in a sumptuous apartment of the Alhambra. In the morning he was approached by one of the Moorish courtiers, a man given to jest and satire, who invited him to take part in a ceremony in the palace mosque. This invitation, given in jest, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... sounded and our hosts led the way to another large room, and upon the tables was a sumptuous spread. Being young men we did full justice to it, and throughout the whole of tea time this same ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... idly scans, Baring their treasures to entice, Like fair and sumptuous courtesans, They stand for sale ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... with a vague and misty vision. Anon she distinguished something of the character of the apartment. In the recess of a large oriel window that looked upon the park, and of which the blinds were nearly drawn, was an old-fashioned yet sumptuous toilet-table of considerable size, arranged as if for use. Opposite this window, in a corresponding recess, was what might be deemed a bridal bed, its furniture being of white satin richly embroidered; ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... she lived and died and there she is buried. The legend states that Dona Jeronima was so fat that she had to turn sidewise to get into it. Her fame as an enchantress sprung from her custom of throwing into the river the silver dishes which she used in the sumptuous banquets that were attended by crowds of gentlemen. A net was spread under the water to hold the dishes and thus they were cleaned. It hasn't been twenty years since the river washed the very entrance of the cave, but it has gradually been receding, just as ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... courts, we trace the habits of caution and reserve that marked the men who led the parties of Uberti and Albizzi. The Sienese palaces are lighter and more elegant in style, as belonging to a people proverbially pleasure-loving; while a still more sumptuous and secure mode of life finds expression in the open loggie and spacious staircases of Venice. The graceful buildings which overhang the Grand Canal are exactly fitted for an oligarchy, sure of its ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Court, suspected and contemptible; you are Scarabee's that batten in her dung, and have no palats to taste her curious Viands; and like Owles, can only see her night deformities, but with the glorious splendor of her beauties, you are struck blind as Moles, that undermine the sumptuous Building that allow'd you shelter: you stick like running ulcers on her face, and taint the pureness of her native candor, and being bad Servants, cause your Masters goodness to be disputed of; you make the Court, that ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... her personal feelings, Laura had come to know very exactly, during the few months she had been at school, the views held by her companions on the subject of colour. No matter how sumptuous or how simple the material of which the dress was made, it must be dark, or of a delicate tint. Brilliancy was a sign of vulgarity, and put the wearer outside the better circles. Hence, at this critical juncture, when Laura was striving to ape her fellows ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... question him at once in order to ascertain how and whence he had obtained the golden nuggets. They almost fought for the privilege of taking him as an honored guest to their respective homes. The Indian was very non-committal as regarded his gold mine, but very willing to accept the sumptuous hospitality so freely rendered him. He was soon passed on from one disappointed Mexican to another, who in turn fared no better and invariably sped the parting guest to the door of his nearest neighbor. When the Indian had made the circuit ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... with hare, en civet, a dish of trout, and a bottle of the wine grown upon the sunny terrace above the houses, I had as good a meal as any hungry tramp has a right to expect. As for myself, I never expect anything so sumptuous, and in this way I let luck have a chance of giving me now and then a pleasant surprise. The trout in the Upper Tarn do not often reach a large size, because by growing they become too conspicuous in such clear water; but their flesh obtains that firmness which is the gift of mountain ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... constitution. Four hundred and fifty-two deputies were elected to cross the frozen Alps, in the month of December. The extraodinary watchfulness and foresight of the First Consul, had prepared every comfort for them on the way. In Lyons sumptuous preparations were made for their entertainment. Magnificent halls were decorated in the highest style of earthly splendor for the solemnities of the occasion. The army of Egypt, which had recently landed, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... rode rapidly back to Belair. The banquet was a sumptuous affair, and lasted, intermingled with dancing and singing, until midnight. The old people did not leave the table for fourteen hours. The grave-digger did the cooking, and did it very well. He was renowned ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... H.H. Garnet, editor of "The National Watchman," next spake, and with marked effect, followed by Messrs. Ward and Douglass; after which, the assemblage formed a procession, and marching to the Canandaigua Hotel, partook of a sumptuous dinner, provided by the proprietor of that house. At six P.M., they again assembled on the square, and were most eloquently addressed by both Ward and Garnet; at the close, they repaired to the ladies' fair, where they found everything in a condition which spake ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... luxurious dwelling, possessed of coffers filled with gold, relations, friends, clients, joyful around you, delicious viands and rich wines upon your sumptuous board, voluptuousness displayed in every apartment of your habitation—contemplate, for a moment, Agnes, your first love, with her son, your first and only child, walking through frost and snow to London, with a foreboding fear on the mother that, when arrived, they both may perish ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... with cowrie shells. The fourth was an impressive individual in middle life, hawkfaced, tall and spare, carrying himself with great dignity. He wore a number of anklets and armlets of polished wire, a broad beaded collar, heavy earrings, and a sumptuous robe of softened goatskins embroidered with beads and cowrie shells. As he strode his anklets clashed softly. His girt was free, and he walked with ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... night before, and would see on the morrow—the young men faultlessly appointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest glossy boots and white gloves—the elders portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy—the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink—the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in diamonds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the novels. They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and families—just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky's former acquaintances hated and envied her; the poor woman ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... midday meal on Christmas day—a sumptuous repast, for the due preparation of which Elsie had come to the Chilean cook's assistance in the matter of the plum-pudding—Suarez suddenly reported that a new column of smoke was rising from Guanaco Hill, a crag dominating the eastern side of the bay. The hill owed its name, he explained, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... me down to Roger's country place one day to meet him. I have forgotten the name of this large estate which was occupied by the Paris tenor, whose fame had been so celebrated up to that time; the chateau had once belonged to a marquis, and was built in a very sumptuous style and surrounded by extensive hunting-grounds. It was the desire to handle a gun and make use of these grounds (which he loved) that, only a short time before, had landed this charming singer in a terrible disaster which had shattered ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... means," and he made the habit of connoisseurship his hobby. He formed a small collection of pictures, selecting works with, as he believed, great care. The result could be seen long afterwards by those who visited him in his final affluence, for they hung round the rooms of the sumptuous flat in which he spent his old age and in which he died. His taste, as far as one remembers, was for the Italian masters of the decline, and whether he selected pictures with a good judgment must be left for others to decide. Probably he shared with Shelley a fondness for the Guercinos ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... sit down and wait for my return, I took the direction which the man and his wife had pursued, and found them already busily engaged in the wine-shop, where they had purchased what for them was a sumptuous entertainment. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... him almost like an equal—it is the honest truth; that is the sort of a man he was. They called him the Bastille sometimes, and sometimes they called him Hellfire, which was on account of his warm and sumptuous style in battle, and you know they wouldn't have given him pet names if they hadn't had a good deal ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... church had scarcely finished striking three when a servant announced to Jerome that a carriage had called for him. In a few minutes, he was seated in a sumptuous barouche, drawn by a pair of beautiful iron-grays, and rolling over a splendid gravel road entirely shaded by trees, which appeared to have been the accumulated growth of many centuries. The carriage soon stopped at a low villa, which was completely ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... now opened diplomatic relations with the Western kingdoms. The foreign ambassadors were received with great pomp in a sumptuous hall hung with tapestries and blazing with gold and silver. The Tsar, with crown and scepter, sat upon his throne, supported by the roaring lions, and carefully studied the new ambassador as he suavely asked him about his master. A police inspector from that moment never lost sight of him, making ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... tea room, among the dismal upturned chairs, his crassened fingers moved stiffly over the keys. He forgot everything else. Locked doors in his mind were swinging wide, revealing forgotten sumptuous halls of his imagination. The Queen of Sheba, grotesque as a satyr, white and flaming with worlds of desire, as the great implacable Aphrodite, stood with her hand on his shoulder sending shivers of warm sweetness rippling through his body, while ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Mid floating curls and sumptuous braids,— A crown of light that glorifies White brow and ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... admit there seemed to be 'too much Polydores.' We all had a happy reunion, and I devoted the forenoon to the entertainment of the famous family so I could be entitled to the afternoon off to spend with Beth. At noon we built a fire and cooked a sumptuous dinner. Beth baked up some things to keep them supplied a couple of days longer. After dinner I asked her to go for a row. She insisted on taking Diogenes along, and the others all followed us on a raft. So I decided to cut the water sports short, and Beth and I started for a walk in the ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... dishes and a decanter of wine. The dishes contained baked meats, frjoles stewed with peppers and onions, boiled eggs, and California flour baked into a kind of macaroni. These, together with the wine, made the most sumptuous meal we had eaten since we left Boston; and, compared with the fare we had lived upon for seven months, it was a regal banquet. After despatching it, we took out some money and asked him how much we were to pay. He shook his head, and crossed himself, saying that it was charity,— that the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... had fallen to Saloo's arrows were sufficient to serve them for a few days, and with the fine supply of lard obtained from the carcass of the pig, they could be cooked in the most sumptuous manner. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... is poetry? Is it a mosaic Of colored stones which curiously are wrought Into a pattern? Rather glass that's taught By patient labor any hue to take And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught, Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught With storied meaning for ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... the day, and Mrs. Rose invited a girl-cousin down for the afternoon; and to do honour to her, I imagine, she had provided a sumptuous tea, including shrimps and one of those wobbly white things that you get ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the peacock see:— Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he! Meridian sun-beams tempt him to unfold His radiant glories, azure, green, and gold: He treads as if, some solemn music near, His measured step were governed by his ear: And seems to say—Ye meaner fowl, give place, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... at least with the happy ones, if it seemed to me that they wished to do so, and were it not that they consider themselves the most happy of mortals. The mind which is capable of the very highest painting knows where the lives and pleasures of the pre-sumptuous lead them and what they are, and how they die nameless and without knowledge of the things which in the world are most worthy of being known and esteemed, and how we cannot even remember that such a man was born however much money he may have kept in his coffers. And thus he understands that ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... the coffin of their fiscal opponents. It is the glory of democracies that they may be misled but never driven. Here and there, like brave deeds in a dust-patterned world, flashed and glittered the sumptuous uniforms of representatives of the Austrian military caste. Also in evidence, at discreet intervals, were stray units of the Semetic tribe that nineteen centuries of European neglect had ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... idea of the state of my feelings as I trod the splendid apartments of this princely Hotel, surrounded by every luxury that wealth can procure, or taste suggest, you must imagine the condition of a man, who is regaled with a sumptuous banquet on the eve of his execution. The inevitable termination to all my present splendour, was never for a moment absent from my thoughts, and the secrecy with which I was obliged to conceal my feelings, formed one of the greatest sources of my misery. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... brought to submission. (Aloud) Philosopher, try to put on the air, the face, the costume of an employe of the lost goods bureau, and take back to the embassy the plate borrowed by Lafouraille. (To Fil-de-Soie) You, Fil-de-Soie, must prepare a sumptuous dinner, as Monsieur de Frescas is to entertain a few friends. You will afterwards dress yourself as a respectable man, and assume the air of a lawyer. You will go to number six, Rue Oblin, ring seven times at ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... up at my approach. I flashed my company identification and asked to speak to the manager. He went away, came back, and ushered me into an office which managed to be Spartan and sumptuous at the same time. The walls had been plastic-painted in textured brown, the iron floor had been lushly carpeted in gray, and the desk had been covered ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... I hope you are satisfied with me, or you would indeed be difficult to please. You recommend to me M. de Chanlay, and on your recommendation I make it a rose-water Bastille to him; sumptuous repasts, a charming governor. I let him pierce holes in your floors, and spoil your walls, all which will cost us a great deal to repair. Since his entrance, it is quite a fete. Dumesnil talks all day through his chimney, Mademoiselle de Launay fishes with a line ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... came in and announced that luncheon was on the table; the portieres were drawn aside; they passed into the farther end of the apartment, and sat down. The banquet was not a sumptuous one, and there were no flowers on the table; but it was everything that any human being could have done in fifteen minutes; and these were bachelors' rooms. Natalie took care to make a pretty speech in the hearing of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Detroit and Port Huron and Sarnia are big and sumptuous, and upon them one sits under awnings in midsummer, and if knowing, takes much delight in the wonderful scenery passed. The St. Clair River pours into St. Clair Lake, and Lake St. Clair is one of the great idling places of those ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind's eye he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... tingling blood—ye maidens, whom not splendour has yet spoiled, will ye not think of the poor?—will ye not shudder in your couches to think how rain, wind, and smoke dwell with the blanketless peasant?—will ye not turn from the sumptuous board to look at those hard-won meals of black and slimy roots on which man, woman, and child feed year after year?—will ye never try to banish wringing hunger and ghastly disease from the home of such piety and love?—will ye not give back its dance to the village—its ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... men's tables. He gave for toasts—Joseph Surface sentiments at dinner parties— 'The man that betrays' [something or other]—'the man that sneaks into' [other men's portfolios, perhaps]—'is'—ay, what is he? Why he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some such epitaph as this—'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a great knavery.' I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, the very able unmasker ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... head; or at least, if he makes use of them at all, it is only for his own pleasure; it is allowable for him to do nothing, for he has an income. He does not work, yet he lives well; he has everything in abundance; delicate dishes, sumptuous furniture, elegant equipages; nay, he even consumes, daily, things which the workers have been obliged to produce by the sweat of their brow, for these things do not make themselves; and, as far as he is concerned, he has had no hand in their production. It is ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... enough, being very bad imitations of the European garb; but all wore a dress of some sort or other. They seemed very glad to see us, and crowded round us as the teacher led the way to his dwelling, where we were entertained, in the most sumptuous manner, on baked pig and all the varieties of fruits and vegetables that the island produced. We were much annoyed, however, by the rats: they seemed to run about the house like domestic animals. As we sat at table, one of them ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... tributary. The city is beautiful, and stands in a fertile country which abounds in all things necessary for man. The king of this country is reckoned a Mameluke, and has 35,000 horse and foot in his service. His palace is a sumptuous edifice, containing numerous and splendid apartments, insomuch, that one has to pass through 44 several rooms in a continued suite before getting to the presence-chamber of the sultan, who lives with wonderful pomp and magnificence, even those who wait upon him having their shoes or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... summits of the trees filled up the horizon, there seemed to come an echo of flourishes blown by ivory trumpets, and mythological ballets, gathering together under the foliage princesses and nobles disguised as nymphs or fauns—an epoch of ingenuous science, of violent passions, and sumptuous art, when the ideal was to sweep away the world in a vision of the Hesperides, and when the mistresses of kings mingled their glory with the stars. There was a portrait of one of the most beautiful of these celebrated women in ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... upon the young girl and trailing the heavy, sumptuous folds of her dressing-gown along the carefully-washed pine-wood floor, she disappeared through the door, which was respectfully closed after her by the head lady's maid. The countess, an accomplished house-mistress, made a practice of paying a daily visit to this room, which ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... is more Than sumptuous wreaths to the dead; In filling love's infinite store, A rose to the living is more, If graciously given before The hungering spirit is fled,- A rose to the living is more Than sumptuous wreaths to ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the gay cloth and ornaments they were so fond of, and he recommended them in the meantime to make as large a collection of furs as they could, in order to be ready to trade when the white men returned. He then spread before them the most sumptuous feast the land could provide, including a large quantity of dairy produce, which the savages regarded as ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... a sarcophagus. On November 17th, 1827, in presence of the younger Goethe, Coudray and Riemer, the head was finally removed from the pedestal, and Professor Schroter reconstructed the entire skeleton in this new and more sumptuous abode, which we are told was seven feet in length, and bore at its upper ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... possessor, afford ample materials for entertaining discussion. In the meantime, the lowly cottage of the poor husbandman is passed by as scarcely deserving of notice. Yet, perchance, such a cottage may often contain a treasure of infinitely more value than the sumptuous palace of the rich man—even "the pearl of great price." If this be set in the heart of the poor cottager, it proves a gem of unspeakable worth, and will shine among the brightest ornaments of the Redeemer's crown, in that day when he maketh ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... cottage and garden; the wagon stood outside the paling. Though the little kitchen was very much encumbered with furniture, they contrived to make a fire in it; and, having eaten a sumptuous dinner, they drank each other's health, using the new tumblers to their ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... It was sumptuous: or rather such as gluttony delights in. The persons assembled, I am sorry to say it, were several of them gluttons; and encouraged and countenanced each other in the vice to which ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... origin of the fire. Translated from the monkish Latin, he says: 'On the first day of rogation-week, a devouring flame consumed our church of Gysburn, with many theological books and nine costly chalices, as well as vestments and sumptuous images; and because past events are serviceable as a guide to future inquiries, I have thought it desirable, in the present little treatise, to give an account of the catastrophe, that accidents of a similar nature may be avoided through this calamity allotted to us. On the day above mentioned, ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... work like an inspired woman; and at noon a sumptuous dinner "smoked upon the board;" the children were scrubbed till their faces shone; and the room was as fresh and neat as any apartment could be with the penetrating perfume of burnt flapjacks still pervading the air, and three dozen ruffled ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... undergoing rapid development.[66] The furnishings and decorations, as in the case of modern playhouses, seem to have been ornate. Thus T[homas] W[hite], in A Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse, on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577, exclaims: "Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality"; John Stockwood, in A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross, 1578, refers to it as "the gorgeous playing place erected in the Fields"; and Gabriel Harvey could think of no more ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... silence falls on the crowd sitting, or hanging around him, their dresses in curious contrast to his severe garment of camel's hair, their nervous dread in as great contrast to his incisive and searching eloquence. Here were the people clothed in soft raiment, and accustomed to sumptuous fare, bending as reeds before the gusts of wind sweeping fiercely across ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... there happened a pleasant day, They dressed themselves in a sumptuous way, And rode to the castle as proud and gay As silks and jewels could make them; And they were received in the finest style, And saw everything that was worth their while, In the halls of Blue Beard's grand old pile, Where he was so kind ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... or two before this pleasant event, which had set the whole town into a delightful turmoil of expectation and comment, a couple of families quietly moved into the two neat, but by no means sumptuous dwellings, lately built on the little knoll over against the broad end of the park, and facing it. You will remember that the school-house was at one side, the church near by, while the Social house fronted ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... morn. Yea, truly is it not a sweet surprise? For I myself unwillingly have worn My faded suit, as you, my child, have yours, And howsoever patient, Yniol his. Ah, dear, he took me from a goodly house, With store of rich apparel, sumptuous fare, And page, and maid, and squire, and seneschal, And pastime both of hawk and hound, and all That appertains to noble maintenance. Yea, and he brought me to a goodly house; But since our fortune swerved from sun to shade, And all through that young traitor, cruel need Constrained us, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Fairbanks, Mr. Trevor and some of their friends formed a party by themselves. It was a regular gala occasion. The first trip was a grand success. People along the line greeted the train with glad cheers, and, returning to headquarters, a sumptuous repast was spread for the guests of ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... 1568/9, among long lists of unknown men and women, high and low, who had mourning given them, among bills for fees to officials, for undertakers' charges, for heraldic pageantry and ornamentation, for abundant supplies for the sumptuous funeral banquet, are put down lists of boys, from the chief London schools, St. Paul's, Westminster, and others, to whom two yards of cloth were to be given to make their gowns: and at the head of the six scholars named from Merchant Taylors' is the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... I can recall that parting hour, and the deep impression it made on my mind. There, beneath that sumptuous canopy, lay the young, the beautiful—still beautiful in death, with Heaven's own smile lighted upon her pale serene face. God had set his holy seal upon her brow. The Merciful, who delighteth in mercy, had ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... last three or four days. Dined the day before yesterday with the Duc de Poix, and went to Hope's ball; his house is a sumptuous palace in miniature, all furnished and decorated with inconceivable luxury and recherche; one room hung with cachemires. Last night to a small ball at Court. Supper in the gallery de Diane—round tables, all the ladies supping first; the whole thing as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... with love and happiness a short time since, with a great cry flung herself down among the ferns, the sunlight gleaming on the jewels, the sumptuous morning dress, the crushed roses, and ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... rationalism, and that in a disparaging sense. Being full of that kindliness which should come at the end of everything, even of a book, I apologize to the rationalists even for calling them rationalists. There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them. Some, with a sumptuous literary turn, believe in the existence of the lady clothed with the sun. Some, with a more rustic, elvish instinct, like Mr. McCabe, believe merely in the impossible sun itself. Some hold the undemonstrable dogma of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... themselves to his method, I should put my finger upon those pathetic middle-aged persons, like Mr. Verver in "The Golden Bowl," or Mr. Longdon in "The Awkward Age," who, full of riches and sad experience, have retired completely from active life, only to exercise from the depths of their sumptuous houses and secluded gardens, a sort of fairy influence upon the fortunes of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... dependents of the house; for the arrival of a minstrel was one of those momentous occasions when the lord of the fee welcomed his retainers to his own board, and extended equal favor and protection to the highest and the lowest. Humbert's animation increased as the sumptuous meal progressed, while his naturally brilliant qualities, and a remarkable fund of wit and anecdote, so fascinated the baron that he was wholly absorbed in the charming Ailred. Gilbert sat silent and watchful, eating just enough to avoid observation. When the banquet ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... priests and Levites, whom he addresses quite paternally as his children (xxix. 11), a great feast of consecration of the temple, alleged to have been closed and wasted by Ahaz; thereupon in the second month to celebrate the passover in the most sumptuous manner; and finally, from the third to the seventh month to concern himself about the accurate rendering of their dues to the clergy. All is described in the accustomed style, in the course of three long chapters, which ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Louisiana welcomed him with an ovation of the most fervent enthusiasm. Thrilling eloquence from her most gifted sons, blessings, and smiles, and wreaths from her fairest daughters, overwhelming huzzas from her warm-hearted multitudes, triumphal arches, splendid processions, costly banners, sumptuous festivals, and, in short, every mode of testifying love and homage was employed; but modesty kept her wonted place in his heart, and counsels of peace were, as ever, on his tongue. His prowess in conflict was no more admirable than his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Temple Camp and president of the bank, sat at his sumptuous desk in his sumptuous office and motioned Tom to one of the big leather chairs, the luxuriousness of which disconcerted him almost as much as ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Duke of Mantua was ever angry in his life, he was angry when the curtain rose on the second act. There he was, pacing about a sumptuous apartment, fuming ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... to the furnishing householder through the middling critic, and really very good of their kind. In this way he received many large cheques from persons of wealth in England and America, out of which he built himself a sumptuous studio and an awkward house around it, and paid for the education of ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... one, Saint John the Baptist, whom the imager had made with such patent whites to his eyes, set in a bronzed complexion, that the effect was rather startling. A very small selection of primitive culinary utensils lay on a shelf close to the hearth. Much was not wanted, when the most sumptuous meal to be had was boiled ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... car receive; That, and whate'er our daughter asks, we give." Swift at the royal nod the attending train The car prepare, the mules incessant rein, The blooming virgin with despatchful cares Tunics, and stoles, and robes imperial, bears. The queen, assiduous to her train assigns The sumptuous viands, and the flavorous wines. The train prepare a cruse of curious mould, A cruse of fragrance, form'd of burnish'd gold; Odour divine! whose soft refreshing streams Sleek the smooth skin, and scent ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... hurriedly from work or prayer, looking with wonder at the apparition of an angel who has all the eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an urgent mission. The surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance like to think of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... dies uncropp'd; whilst he, admired, caress'd, Beloved, and everywhere a welcome guest, With brutes of rank and fortune plays the whore, For their unnatural lust a common sewer. Dine with Apicius—at his sumptuous board Find all, the world of dainties can afford— 350 And yet (so much distemper'd spirits pall The sickly appetite) amidst them all Apicius finds no joy, but, whilst he carves For every guest, the landlord sits ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... feeling a good deal relieved, for to tell the truth, her larder, as was often the case, was rather empty. "Dined at Mr. Douglass's! Of course, then, nothing which I could offer you could be acceptable, after one of his sumptuous meals. I suppose Nellie brought out all her mother's old silver, and made quite a display. It's a wonder to me how they hold their heads so high, and folks notice them as they do, for between you and me, I shouldn't be surprised to hear ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... kitchen—which the Lanes had attempted to furnish for the winter, so the rugs and chairs, tables and couch, of the little flat had been all that was necessary to make it habitable and pleasant. A brisk fire burned on the wide hearth, of itself a furnishing without which many a sumptuous room may seem cheerless and in-hospitable. The walls were covered with a quaint old paper of white, with gold stripes about which green ivy leaves wound conventionally. This might have given the room a cold aspect, but Sally had hung curtains of Turkey-red print ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... to the Journal by the English Monarch, which contains a description of the Queen Dowager's sumptuous entertainment during the period she remained at the Court of Edward, from the 22d of October to the 6th of November 1551.—(Tytler's Edward VI., &c., vol. ii. pp. 5, 6.) Bishop Lesley also takes notice of the "gret banqueting and honorabill pastyme maid for intertenement ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... trusty friends, and how in such cases fortune was harsh to helpless people and became a traitress, when he met the poor French knight, who appeared far worse off that he, who had good weapons, a fine horse, and a mansion where servants were then preparing a sumptuous supper. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the first few weeks in London in a whirl of excitement, living at sumptuous restaurants, and going to places of amusement every night, where Beth would sit entranced with music, singing, dancing, and acting, never taking her eyes from the stage, and yearning in her enthusiasm to do the same things herself—not doubting but that she could either, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... them follow this course, some instinctively and through lassitude, and others because the display they make adds to their authority. "Dragged along in Carriages with six horses, surrounded by guards, seated at sumptuous tables set for thirty persons, eating to the sound of music along with a Cortege of actors, courtesans and praetorians,"[32135] they impress the imagination with an idea of their omnipotence, and people bow all the lower because they make a grand show.—At ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... back as Chinn lodged himself behind a rock with his rifle ready. Tigers, he knew, were shy beasts, but one who had been long cattle-fed in this sumptuous ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... long in Straw Cottages among the Black Heathen, and used to sit on the Ground and eat our Meat on Leaves, now to sit on Chairs and eat out of China Dishes at a Table. Where were great Varieties, and a fair and sumptuous House inhabited by White and Christian People; we being then in such Habit and Guize, our Natural colour excepted, that we seemed not fit to eat with his ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... singular fact concerning the manners of one of the hymenoptera, a wasp, a Cerceris, in whose nest Dufour had found small coleoptera of the genus Buprestis, which, under all the appearances of death, retained intact for an incredible time their sumptuous costume, gleaming with gold, copper, and emerald, while the tissues remained perfectly fresh. In a word, the victims of Cerceris, far from being desiccated or putrefied, were found in a state of integrity which was ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... A sumptuous supper and worthy the mistress who planned it. At the head of the table sat Jackson; at the foot, the young statesman and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... said to be epoch-making in the way of combining utility with beautiful design to the highest degree. Those, however, who fancy that Messrs. Elkington's great and extending manufactory is kept going by designing and producing splendid vases, shields, cups, and sumptuous gold and silver services, are, of course, hugely mistaken. The ordinary spoons, forks, &c., that are to be seen—I won't say on every table, but on the tables of millions of people, are the staple productions of such firms as that of ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... is seen entering a sumptuous motor. Ferdinand falls to his knees, but she disregards him. As the motor moves away he prepares to strike himself on the back of the neck with his tomahawk, but when the fatal blow is about to fall Phyllis leans over the back of the car and blows him a kiss. Enlargement of Ferdinand's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... Ferrar's binding I never saw, but by those who have, it is said to have been magnificent. He and his family were once, if not twice, visited by Charles I., and they presented to that prince a most sumptuous Bible of their own binding; which Bible, a lady once told me, was in that collection gradually formed by George III. at Buckingham House, and finally presented to the nation by his son. I should fear it must be in ruins as a specimen of the Little Gidding ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... ornamented with their arms and banners. The seats reserved for the noble ladies and gentlemen who came to see the fight were hung with tapestry embroidered with gold and silver. Everyone was dressed in the most sumptuous manner: the minstrels and heralds were clothed in the costliest garments; the knights who were engaged in the sports and their horses were most gorgeously arrayed. The whole scene was one of great splendour and magnificence, ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... climaxed a vertical series of slightly less sumptuous chambers known collectively as the Perfidion Tower, and the Perfidion Tower stood with a score of balconied brothers on a blacktop island in the exact center of Kansas' largest golp course. A short distance from ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... man of sumptuous tastes, and yet he cared but little for mere wealth. What he had, he used to please or gratify or surprise the woman whom he loved. He built himself a great palace in St. Petersburg, usually known as the Taurian Palace, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... thing I did when I was alone in my cabin on the good ship, the "Merchant of London," was to open Margaret's box. It contained a full supply of books wherefrom to learn "the only language one can love in," and on the fly-leaf of a sumptuous "Dante" she had written, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... distributed to all the noble company. His host, somewhat abashed by the proceeding, having undertaken after the meal to reproach him a little, Francis explained that he had no right to forget, for a sumptuous feast, the bread of charity on which he was fed every day, and that he desired thus to show his brethren that the richest table is not worth so much to the poor in spirit as this table of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... of sober ease, They possessed little money, it is true, but the want of it did not appear to trouble them. Their houses were plain, their method of life simple, and clearly it had not entered their minds to covet any more sumptuous modes of life. All this is changed now. The daily press, which presents a thousand pictures of the bustling life of cities, goes everywhere, and has communicated a strange restlessness to the rural mind. Increased ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... in, and before it could be slammed against me I sprang into the chamber beyond. Although not yet dawn, the room was brilliantly lighted. Its sole occupant lay prone upon a low couch at the further side, apparently in sleep. From the hangings and sumptuous furniture of the room I judged it to be a living-room of some ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cannot be altogether silent about the splendid special train which the South African Government placed at our disposal from the time we left Capetown until we reached Johannesburg, which (taking evidence at the various places on the way) occupied several weeks. This sumptuous train consisted of dining car, sleeping cars and parlour car, was liberally staffed and provisioned; with a skilful chef, polite and attentive waiters and attendants. It was practically our hotel during those forty ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... dreams he saw a monarch Decked in sumptuous array, Seated on a throne of glory Bearing royal title, Day. Then some mighty power transcendent, Thrust him from his gorgeous throne, Turning all the realm to darkness, And the world was left alone. As the shades of gloom were spreading, ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... jammed as full as they can be of highly-draped boats, gayly-dressed women, and circus-costumed men, the whole scene gayer, brighter, more fantastic than any Venetian carnival since the days of the most sumptuous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... cathedral, for the sake of the materials. He was, however, soon overtaken by justice, for in the proclamation, October 8, 1549, against the Duke of Somerset, previously to his arrest, he is charged with "enriching himselfe," and building "sumptuous and faire houses," during "all times of the wars in France and Scotland, leaving the king's poore soldiers unpaid of their wages." After the attainder and execution of the Protector, on Tower Hill, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... Courtney, has fitted it up in the true Gallic taste, and every room has the air of being ornamented for a gala. The housekeeper did not let us see half the castle; she only took us to those rooms which the present lord has modernized and fitted up in the sumptuous French taste ; the old part of the castle she doubtless thought would disgrace him; forgetting or rather never knowing—that the old part alone was worth a traveller's curiosity, since the rest might be anticipated by a visit to any ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... elegance of a palace, it must not be supposed that there was naught but gross sensuality. Court intrigue and scandal there were in plenty, and there were many fair ladies in the royal household who were somewhat free in the bestowal of their favors, sumptuous banquets were spread, tournaments for trials of knightly skill were held with open lists for all who might appear, but in the centre of it all was the king, pleasure-loving, it is true, but still far more than that. He it was who said: ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Cambridge in 1634, along with Mr. Nicholas Ferrar's translation of "The Hygiasticon, or the right Course of preserving Health, by Leonard Lessius." To Mr. Herbert's Translation is annexed "A Paradox, translated out of Italian, That a more spare diet is better than a splendid or sumptuous." ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... it was safe to return to London—some time in the winter of 1667-68—a group of courtiers became interested in the two Frenchmen, and forgathered with them frequently at the Goldsmiths' hall, or at Whitehall, or over a sumptuous feast at the Tun tavern or the Sun coffee-house. John Portman, a goldsmith and alderman, is ordered to pay Radisson and Groseilliers L2 to L4 a month for maintenance from December 1667. When Portman is ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... agree with some of the party. Though it was acknowledged to be very tasty it only served to increase their appetite—a serious thing when there was nothing to satisfy it with! One man remarked in his diary: "We had a sumptuous meal to-day—nearly five ounces ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... question with befitting gravity, when a great thump against the door brought a host of fears upon me. But before I could stir the insecure handle gave way, and no one more formidable appeared than the landlady of the house, carrying before her a tray on which was set out a sumptuous tea, consisting of buttered crumpets and shrimps. She put it down on my dressing-table, and stood surveying it and us with an expression of benign exultation, until she had recovered ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... been waiting for us ever since the previous evening, we were told—some of them, indeed, coming from Vadsoe—and they had seized the opportunity to get up a subscription to provide a big drum for the town band, the "North Pole." And here we were entertained at a sumptuous banquet, with speeches, and champagne flowing in streams, ere we ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... happinesses of Freddy Leveson's maturer life. His link with them was Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, who, in spite of all Whiggish prejudices against the half-converted Tory, was one of Gladstone's most enthusiastic disciples. In "Cliveden's proud alcove," and in that sumptuous villa at Chiswick where Fox and Canning died, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were her constant guests; and there they formed their affectionate intimacy with Freddy Leveson. Every year, and more than once a year, they ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... continued, more especially the college of pontiffs, to exercise in the capital, and sometimes in the provinces, the rights of their ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction. Their robes of purple, chariotz of state, and sumptuous entertainments, attracted the admiration of the people; and they received, from the consecrated lands, and the public revenue, an ample stipend, which liberally supported the splendor of the priesthood, and all the expenses of the religious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... blue swallow-tail (PAPILIO ULYSSES) seems to have a fancy for yellow, for it pays frequent visits to the golden trumpets of the tecoma and the alamanda. The living gold of the flowers and the imperial blue of the insect form a sumptuous if everyday scene. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... by the girls. What would the expedition be worth if they did not carry their dinners with them in baskets? Anything out of a basket, and eaten in the open air, was worth twenty times as much as the most sumptuous meal in the house. So the baskets were packed up, while Mrs Bradshaw wailed over probable colds to be caught from sitting on the damp ground. Ruth and Leonard were to go; they four. Jemima had refused all invitations ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on, 'we returned to the hotel and partook of a sumptuous repast, under the able and genial chairmanship of our Mr. Morshed, who laid his projecks unreservedly before us. "In the first place," he says, opening out bicycle-maps, "my uncle, who, I regret to say, is a brigadier-general, has sold his alleged soul to Dicky Bridoon for a feathery ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Edward Bok's life, but the moment that still stands out preeminent is that when two colored head waiters at the dining-room entrance, whom he had so often watched, bowed low and escorted the party to their table. At last, he was in that sumptuous dining-hall. The entire room took on the picture of one great eye, and that eye centred on the party of three—as, in fact, it naturally would. But Edward felt that the eye was on him, wondering why ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... cheer, nor that bargain well made that was not stricken up with a cup of wine: and therefore she willed Ganymede to set out such cates as they had, and to draw out her bottle, charging the forester, as he had imagined his loves, so to conceit these cates to be a most sumptuous banquet, and to take a mazer[1] of wine and to drink to his Rosalynde; which Rosader did, and so they passed away the day in many pleasant devices. Till at last Aliena perceived time would tarry no man, and that the sun waxed ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Exhibition is to bring home to men's consciousness the community of all the inhabitants of the earth. The assembled peoples, wrote Thackeray, in his "May-day Ode," [Footnote: Published in the Times, April 30, 1851. The Exhibition was opened on May I.] See the sumptuous banquet set, The brotherhood of nations met ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... apartment where she was to pass the night. There lacked not, however, such amusement as the house of Baldringham could afford, to pass away the evening. Blessed by a grave old Saxon monk, the chaplain of the house, a sumptuous entertainment, which might have sufficed twenty hungry men, was served up before Ermengarde and her niece, whose sole assistants, beside the reverend man, were Berwine and Rose Flammock. Eveline was the less inclined to do justice ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... higher grade, say 50,000l. a year, to the payment of an income-tax of 1s. in the pound, we may remind them that they still retain 33,500l. a year, which is a very generous payment by labour to them for the privilege of seeing them exist in gorgeous splendour and sumptuous idleness."[458] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Cesare Manelli had hung up on him, Malone showed up in the stately and sumptuous suite that belonged, for a stiff fee every month, to the firm of Rodger, Willcoe, O'Vurr and Aoud. The girl at the desk was his old ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... taught of Hawaiian love and love- ways, erect, slender, dignified, between the two nobly proportioned women, an arm around each of their sumptuous waists, proceeded with them toward ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... Zita, clad in a sumptuous morning frock hardly befitting a secretary, was standing behind the portieres in the hall and listening intently to all she could hear within the dining-room. As she heard Balcom's footsteps she hurriedly turned and seemed to be going up the hall. He looked after ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... splendidly illuminated, presented to the eye a spectacle of the most imposing nature, heightened by the brilliant assemblage of elegantly dressed personages. The Ladies universally wore ostrich feathers, and the Gentlemen were attired in the most sumptuous dresses. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... style of dress is not suitable for an old lady. In conduct much the same rules apply. The dignity and gravity of a patriarch would not be becoming to a child; at a funeral lively, cheery sociability would not be decorous, while noisy hilarity would not be decent; sumptuous display would not be suitable for a poor person. Fit is a compendious term for whatever fits the person, time, place, occasion, etc.; as, a fit person; a fit abode; a fit place. Fitting, or befitting, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... is not very evident to me. It is too near his own comfortable mansion of Valleyfield to be useful as a residence, if indeed it could be formed into a comfortable modern house. But it is rather like a banqueting house. Well, he follows his own fancy. We had a sumptuous cold dinner. Adam grieves it was not hot, so little can war and want break a man to circumstances. We returned to Blair-Adam in the evening, through "the wind but and the rain." For June weather it is the most ungenial I have seen. The beauty of Culross consists in magnificent ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... imagination of vivid dreams, peopled with sumptuous hotels, with smart equipages, fetes, balls, rubies, gold and azure. This is what I have most surely gathered at this school and is ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... parchments, stained purple or violet, and inscribed with characters of gold; are too often beyond the reach of the amateur for whom we write. The MSS. which he can hope to acquire are neither very early nor very sumptuous, and, as a rule, MSS. of secular books are apt to be ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... obedient to their Superiors, Courteous to their Inferiors, full of all Civility to their Equals, Affable to Strangers, and most desirous by all fair and friendly Offices to win their Love. In their Apparel fine and modest, in their Furniture of their Houses sumptuous, and at their Tables neat, sober in Speech, Enemies of all ill Reports of others, and so tender of their own Reputation, that whosoever Slanders any one, and it reach the Parties Ear, the Slanderer certainly dies for it: Thrifty they are generally of their Money and Expence, and love no ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... to be directing their steps to enter. A man and woman come out of this house to receive them with open arms. The third division continues the History of St. Ursula. Her attire, sitting in a vessel by the side of her husband Gutherus, is sumptuous in the extreme. I would have given four ducats for a copy of it, but Mr. Lewis was otherwise engaged. A Pope and Cardinal are to the right of St. Ursula: the whole being in a perfect blaze of splendour. Below, they are dragging the female Saint and her virgin companions on shore, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... later that at first he had thought the lovely lady was a fairy princess; for Eve was quite sumptuous in her dinner gown of white and shining satin, with a fur-trimmed wrap of white and silver. She wore, also, a princess air of graciousness, quite different from the half appealing impertinence of her morning mood when she had knelt ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... robed in the royal ermine, and of a Republicanism which had grown robust and self-reliant, in the heads of Belcher and Bradstreet and Endicott and Winthrop. Around a long table were seated the Lieutenant-Governor and the members of the Council with the military officers,—the scrupulous and sumptuous costumes of civilians in authority, gold and silver lace, scarlet cloaks, and large wigs, mingled with the brilliant uniforms of the British army and navy. Into such imposing presence was now ushered the plainly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Our meal was sumptuous. Fish shot in the river by one of our escort on the way, a bowl of ground maize cooked in oil, raw ham, eggs, bread, cheese and onions, the whole washed down in draughts of fiery spirits. Not a feast, I grant ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... reasons best known to himself, had been trying to ingratiate himself in the neighborhood, but, although he seemed to have plenty of funds, the ranch and stock men did not take kindly to his advances. He posed as the agent of some Eastern capitalists, and he had opened an office which for sumptuous appointments had never been equaled in that part of the country; but he had not been able to buy or lease land at the prices he offered and his business apparently had not prospered. Then sheep had begun to appear in great flocks in various parts of the surrounding country ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... of the plain. As the day drew to its close, "the wearied huntsmen, with their fair attendants, returned, 'midst the sounds of martial music and the low whispered roundelays of the ladies, victorious to the castle." In the old baronial dining hall was spread a sumptuous and savoury feast, at which "venison and reeking game, rich smoked ham and savoury roe, flanked by the wild boar's head, and viands and pasties without name, blent profusely on the hospitable board, while jewelled and capacious goblets, filled ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... thus the universal road, and being moreover without bridges, must have swarmed with boats of all descriptions—the heavy bari of the merchant, the light papyrus or earthenware skiffs of the common people, and the sumptuous barge of Royalty, whose golden pavilion, masts, and rudder, fringed and embroidered sails, and sculptured prow, remind us of the galley of Cleopatra. The caravans of surrounding nations visited Egypt with their precious and fragrant merchandise to exchange for her corn and manufactures. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Sir Thomas Boleyn came a sumptuous litter covered with cloth of gold, drawn by four white palfreys caparisoned in white damask down to the ground, and each having a page in white and blue satin at its head. Over the litter was borne a canopy of cloth of gold supported by four gilt staves, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ... with drums, trumpets and a band of music, colors flying." The shipping in the harbor displayed "flags and banners while guns fired during the afternoon." A "very elegant entertainment was prepared at the Coffee House," where the new Lord Mayor and his entourage sat down to a sumptuous repast. This was followed by a ball given by the Scottish gentlemen "at which a numerous and brilliant company of ladies danced." Ceremonies ended with fireworks, bonfires, and "other demonstrations." Perhaps this enthusiasm may be somewhat explained by the fact that this ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... admitted to hospital. This one is more sumptuous but less satisfying than the casualty clearing station at Gezaincourt, whence the card was posted. There, in a small chateau converted into an R.A.M.C. half-way house, one was not over-anxious to be up and about, for that would ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... with their trumpets, while the Levites, and the sons of Asaph, stood and sung hymns to God, according as David first of all appointed them to bless God. Now the priests and Levites, and the elder part of the families, recollecting with themselves how much greater and more sumptuous the old temple had been, seeing that now made how much inferior it was, on account of their poverty, to that which had been built of old, considered with themselves how much their happy state was sunk below what it had been of old, as well as their temple. Hereupon ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... sumptuous could anybody wish for than to rest at last within the interior dimness of an ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... streets, on which only gold and silversmiths resided; imposing palaces towered in the suburbs, with doors and columns of pure turquoise; the windows were made of precious stones brilliantly polished. At the sumptuous feasts of the prince of the land, enchanting slaves served the most delicate dainties on golden dishes. There were mountains of opal rising above valleys reveling in jewels, with crystal streams, whose bottom consisted of pure ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... of flowering shrubs and truly hardy roses will, if properly planted, pruned, and fertilized, live for many years, certain varieties even outlasting more than one human generation, the modern hardy perennial and biennial of many species and sumptuous effects must be watched and treated with almost as much attention as the so-called bedding-plants demand in order to ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... discourse the bell rung to dinner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of had the pleasure of seeing the huge jack, he had caught, served up for the first dish in a most sumptuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it he gave us a long account how he had hooked it, played with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the bank, with several other particulars that lasted all the first course. A dish of wild-fowl that came afterwards furnished conversation ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... adjoining houses, and in the space of four years re-erected the theatre, upon an enlarged scale, so that it will contain more than 2000 people. In the centre building, towards the front, is an elegant assembly room, which is fitted up in a sumptuous style, and the two wings are occupied as a tavern, which, from the great author of the drama, is called the Shakespear. In the year 1807, it was made a royal theatre, and on that account the proprietors are entitled to let it for such ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... predecessors went far beyond them. The schools of mediaeval learning were filled with Arabian teachers. The heavens declare the glory of the Oriental astronomers, as Algorab and Aldebaran repeat their Arabic names to the students of the starry firmament. The sumptuous edifice erected by the Art of the nineteenth century, to hold the treasures of its Industry, could show nothing fairer than the court which copies the Moorish palace that crowns the summit of Granada. Yet this was the power which Charles ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Parisian papers, of becoming a person of some consequence in that society, the first of all societies, upon which the whole world has its eyes fixed as upon a beacon-light. Now that dream was fulfilled. He gazed at all those men around his table, at that sumptuous dessert, at that wainscoted dining-room, certainly as high as the church in his native village; he listened to the dull roar of Paris, rumbling and tramping beneath his windows, with the unspoken thought ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... magnificence, so far as extent of pile and amplitude of domain could satisfy the pride of ownership, or inspire the visitor with the respect due to wealth and power. An artist could have made nothing of it. The Sumptuous everywhere; the Picturesque nowhere. The house was built in the reign of George I., when first commenced that horror of the beautiful, as something in bad taste, which, agreeably to our natural love of progress, progressively advanced through the reigns of succeeding Georges. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quarters of the palace; and, pitching tents for the troops, rationed them with whatever they might require of meat and drink and other necessaries. On the fourth day he made ready for wayfare and got together sumptuous presents befitting his elder brother's majesty, and stablished his chief Wazir viceroy of the land during his absence. Then he caused his tents and camels and mules to be brought forth and encamped, with their bales and loads, attend ants and guards, within sight of the city, in readiness ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a neighbouring church had scarcely ceased striking three, when the servant announced that a carriage had called for Mr. Green. In less than half an hour he was seated in a most sumptuous barouche, drawn by two beautiful iron greys, and rolling along over a splendid gravel road completely shaded by large trees, which appeared to have been the accumulating growth of many centuries. The carriage soon stopped in front of ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... cathedral as they were just before the troublous times of the Civil War. He says: "As I found this Citty little and sweet, so I found her cheife and best structures correspondent to her smallnesse, which was neat and hansome, and neither great nor sumptuous. And first I'le begin with her cheife seat the Cathedrall, which was consecrated in Hen. the I. time; and though the same be but small and plaine, yet it is very lightsome and pleasant: her quire is neatly adorn'd with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... a restaurant close at hand and had a sumptuous lunch served them. Archibald, who had a weakness for punning, was in one of his gayest moods, and was not above being occasionally appreciated by the waiter. Morgan did his best to appear cheerful; he did not wish his father to suspect anything was amiss. He listened to a humourous ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... whom the long climb was arduous, delayed his mission to the roof, and that was why, several hours later, Sime was still alive to see another ship appear to the north. It was large, sumptuous, evidently a private yacht. Its course would bring it within a mile of the fortress, and with sudden wild hope Sime realized that if he were seen he might expect relief. He began to tug at his bonds. They were tough, but they would stretch a little. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... grandmother, had deeply pitied the grandfather, yielded to his wishes in this respect, though much against her secret inclination. She did not leave off her widow's mourning, but she modified it when she presided at the head of the Rockharrt table on those frequent occasions of the sumptuous and unrivaled dinners given by the Iron King to those whose fortunes he was making, with his ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... costly ornaments and rich jewels that were occupied in the same, for I have seen in procession about the hall forty-four rich copes of one settle worn, besides the candlesticks and other necessary ornaments to the furniture of the same." Such were the sumptuous surroundings in which "children of the chapel" were wont sometimes to ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... to have been omitted. In his first sentence, he makes an assertion which is by no means correct. He says, "We are at present as ignorant of Greece, as of the interior of Africa." Surely not quite so ignorant; or several of our Grecian Mungo Parks have travelled in vain, and some very sumptuous works have been published to no purpose! As we proceed, we find the author observing that "Athens is 'now' the most polished city of "Greece," when we believe it to be the most ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... to see her, and they all seemed too languid to talk. Sara heard them exchange a word occasionally, but for the most part they simply stood about, fanning themselves and coiling and uncoiling their springs. Never, however, had Sara seen such sumptuous costumes. Such court-trains, and velvet breeches, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... poetic feeling to analyze his various spell, and account for his unequalled fame; and though the round-cornered copies, with their diverting woodcuts, have not disappeared from the poor man's ingle, illustrated editions blaze from the shelves of every sumptuous library, new pictures, from its exhaustless themes, light up the walls of each annual exhibition; and amidst the graceful litter of the drawing-room table, you are sure to take up designs from the Pilgrim's Progress. So universal is the ascendancy ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... willing to give room to this description of Rubens's pictures and the effect they produced upon Motley, because there is a certain affinity between those sumptuous and glowing works of art and the prose pictures of the historian who so admired them. He was himself a colorist in language, and called up the image of a great personage or a splendid pageant of the past with the same affluence, the same rich vitality, that floods ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I had returned to Gorokhovaia Street darkness had fallen and the lamps had been lit. However, I did not linger long in that particular spot, for Gorokhovaia Street is too noisy a place. But what sumptuous shops and stores it contains! Everything sparkles and glitters, and the windows are full of nothing but bright colours and materials and hats of different shapes. One might think that they were decked merely for display; but no,—people ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Three Barbels was formerly at Tours, the best place in the town for sumptuous fare; and the landlord, reputed the best of cooks, went to prepare wedding breakfasts as far as Chatelherault, Loches, Vendome, and Blois. This said man, an old fox, perfect in his business, never lighted lamps in the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the gallery there was nothing for it but cold beef, cold ham, or an amalgamation carefully doled forth. Many a night, seated at the little table that still remains in this outer room, I have watched Wright prepare my sumptuous repast. He was even then short-sighted, and to this day I have vivid recollection of the concern with which I saw his nose approach to dangerous contiguity of the round of beef as he leaned over it to cut a slice with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
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