"Button" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the two boys, Cass Martel,—the lame one, whose nose began quite seriously, as if it had every intention of being a nose, then changed abruptly into a button,—scraped the snow from the sewer grating with his cane, and swore savagely under his breath. But Quin shrugged his shoulders with ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... wore, and her nose was pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face. She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words "Votes for Women." Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the sufferer's bed, while Teddy Widgett, being something of an athlete, occupied the only bed-room chair—a decadent piece, essentially a tripod and largely a formality—and smoked cigarettes, and tried to conceal ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... of gold," he was saying, "if it did not glitter? Why should we care for a black sovereign any more than for a black sun at noon? A black button would do just as well. Don't you see that everything in this garden looks like a jewel? And will you kindly tell me what the deuce is the good of a jewel except that it looks like a jewel? Leave off buying and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... he had one, an' a pair o' galluses to each pair. I axed him one day when they was all spread out on his bed what on earth he had so many galluses for, an' Mostyn said—I give you my word I'm not jokin'—he said"— Webb laughed out impulsively—"he said it was to keep from botherin' to button 'em on ever' time he changed! He said"—the bachelor continued to laugh—"that he could just throw the galluses over his shoulders when he was in a hurry an' be done with the job. Do you know, folks, if I was as lazy as that I'd be afraid the Lord would cut ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... where, if you do, you know how to relieve it effectually; and let us bless the name and the labors and the genius of Thomas Guthrie! It is a sad thing to see the toys of such little children as I can think of. What curious things they are able to seek amusement in! I have known a brass button at the end of a string a much prized possession. I have seen a grave little boy standing by a broken chair in a bare garret, solemnly arranging and rearranging two pins upon the broken chair. A machine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... death. Arbor Vitae Unchanging friendship. Alyssum Worth beyond beauty. Anemone Your love changes. Azalea Pleasant recollections. Argeratum Worth beyond beauty. Balsam Impatience. Blue Bell Constancy. Balm Pleasantry. Bay-leaf I change but in death. Bachelor's Button Hope. Begonia Deformed. Bitter Sweet Truth. Buttercup Memories of childhood. Brier, Sweet Envy. Calla Feminine Modesty. Carnation Pride. Clematis Mental Excellence. Cypress Disappointment, Despair Crocus ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... as it may, I had but a doleful walk of it; moreover, I was fain to button up my coat and pull my collar close about my neck, by reason of the cutting wind which blew across from the German seas. Nor did I meet any adventure on the way, but in avoiding the turnpike at Broxall I was forced to leap a dyke in the dark, and missing the further bank by about ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... the night-clerk proffered no reply, but stretching out his hand to press an electric button, returned apathetically to the perusal of the Police Gazette. His summons was answered by the appearance of a man in shirt-sleeves, whose rumpled head indicated that he had recently risen from some kind of makeshift repose; ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Mr. Wade, he hung up the telephone, and pushed an electric button. A young man from an outer ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... of clothes until he or she has lost all semblance to that beautiful thing that an all-wise Providence has designed us to be. Man will wear under-clothes and outer clothes. He will devise an absurd bit of starch, button-holes and tails called a shirt, in which doubtless he will screw diamond-studs, and over which he will wear a resounding waistcoat embroidered with all sorts of wild-flowers in bloom. Then will come a stiff uncomfortable yoke for his neck, which ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... press either the button or the trigger it will mean the end of you, you dogs. Now, listen to me. At the foot of the stairs are two policemen and a couple of detectives. They were duped into coming here by the word that a sucker was to be fleeced in Broadso's rooms to- night. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... which could only impart pleasure for so brief a time, I have been answered, but not converted from my feeling of disapprobation and regret, that the gardeners profited by this wild extravagance. In New York I have known a guinea paid for a gentleman's button-hole rosebud, and three guineas for half a dozen sprays of lily of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... button your blouse up again," ordered Private Hyman. "You ain't called upon to fight that bully. Hooper, if you're spoiling for fight I'll do my best to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... question. "Oh! who is it?" she said softly, more to herself than to me. I twisted round on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out on us from among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in a beautiful fawn-coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a rose in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might have set the Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. Before I could get on my legs, he plumped down on the sand by the side of me, put his arm round my neck, foreign fashion, and gave me a hug that fairly ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... called for a reckoning for the wine, and throwing down the price of the additional bottle which he had himself introduced, rose as if to take leave of us. My companion made up to him, and taking him by the button, drew him aside into one of the windows. I could not help overhearing him pressing something—I supposed his company upon the journey, which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the pygmy or ground-rattlesnakes. They attain to a length of only about twenty inches, and present the general characteristics of the true rattlesnakes, with the exception that the rattle is small, consisting of but one single button at the end of the tail. These serpents are exceedingly vicious, and usually bite without warning. Contrary to the general opinion, however, the wounds they inflict are rarely, or never, followed by serious consequences in man. One species is southern. The other occurs ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... picturesque ditch and roadside, winterly delights, Sunday and week day alike. The tendency of human nature is to look on the bright side of things; and it is much more pleasant to go to the edge of a large swamp, lie down and bask in the summer's sun, making 'button-holes' of daisies, buttercups, and the like, and return home and extol the fine scenery and praise the richness of the land, than to take the spade, in shirt-sleeves and heavy boots, and drain the poisonous water ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... not pressed the button hard enough, I made a second attempt, but again there was ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... this series, called "Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle," there was told how he became possessed of the machine, after it had nearly killed Mr. Damon, who was learning to ride it. Mr. Damon, who had a habit of "blessing" everything from his collar button to his shoe laces, did not "bless" the motor-cycle after it tried to climb a tree with him; and he sold it to Tom very cheaply. Tom repaired it, invented some new attachments for it, and had a number of adventures on it. Not the least of these was trailing after a gang of scoundrels ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... does not know its hazards faro is a funereal game. The dealer slides one card and then a second from the box. The case-keeper moves a button or two on his rack. The dealer in the meantime is paying winners and collecting chips from losers, all with the utmost listlessness. In his high chair above them, all the lookout leans back with every external sign of world-weary indifference. And the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... the man before her, now little more than a shadow in the prevailing gloom, she waited for him to resume, and waited in vain. The minutes passed, the darkness became intolerable, and instinctively her hand crept towards the electric button beneath which she was sitting. But she failed to press it. A tale so dark called for an atmosphere of its own kind. She would cast no light upon it. Yet she shivered as the silence continued, and started ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... at his attire. His duck jacket had shrunk with constant wetting, and would not button across the old blue shirt, which fell apart at his bronzed neck. The sleeves had also drawn up from his wrists, and left the backs of his hands unduly prominent. His hands were scarred, and the fingers were bruised where the hammer-head had fallen ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... Whitney crossed the broad hall and, passing the Colonial staircase, entered the elevator. The automatic car carried her to the first bedroom floor but, changing her mind, she did not open the door; instead she pressed the electric button marked "Attic." Her slight feeling of irritation aroused by not being met downstairs by any member of her family was increased by stepping from the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Metal button, ploughed up on Quaker hill, Dutchess county, where a division of the American array encamped in the Revolution. It has the letters "U. S. A." raised on the surface. A number of other articles belonging to ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... little entrance adjoining, with its line-up of door bells, she pressed the button as directed. A clicking answered her ring, and she had to learn from a child who entered with a dangling pail of milk, that she was to speak upward through a ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... sudden, his arms seemed to begin to lift, and just when he was goin' to pull 'em down the van started as they had heard and seen it. After a while he got on to his knees and managed to wrench a corner; of the front curtain clear of the button and get his head out. And there was the van going helter-skelter, and feeling like Tam o'Shanter's mare (the old man said), and he on her barebacked. And there was no horses, but a cloud of dust—or a spook—on ahead, and the bare pole steering straight for it, just as the professor had said ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... him, which were in their hands, whereby he was mortally wounded, and of which wounds he died on the said hill, immediately or soon thereafter, where his dead body remained concealed for sometime, and was afterwards found, together with a hat, having a silver button on it, with the letters A. R. D. marked on it. LIKEAS, soon after the said Arthur Davies was murdered, each of the said two panels, being persons of bad fame and character, and who were habite and repute thieves, were, by the general ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... that led to Mana. The professor sat down opposite, facing the town, with his back to the country; but he seemed rather nervous about the evening air, for he shivered every now and then, and took care to button up his overcoat to the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... know this useful person; but should I see him, some morning, overlooking the workmen in the lawns, walks, copses, and parterres which adorn the grounds around the President's residence, considering the company into which we have introduced him, I should expect to see, at least, a small diplomatic button ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... romantic return to his mother was, however, much stressed, as in the Greig music. The sentiment that Peer "had women behind him and, therefore, could not perish" appealed strongly to the German mood, though the application of the button-moulder idea to the plight of Germany just now appeared to have been missed. Peer ought to have been a shining button on the vest of the Lord, but has missed his chance, and now is to be melted down with other buttons into something else—into a Polish button, a Czech button, an Alsatian button. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the acts of ascending and descending the stairs. His uniform was very simple. It consisted of one pair of breeches rolled up to the knees, with one patch on the "western hemisphere," one little shirt with one button at the top, one "gallus," and one invalid straw hat. His straw hat stood guard over his place on the bench, while he was delivering his great speech at the "exhibition." With great dignity and eclat, the old teacher advanced on the stage and introduced ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... glasses she seemed a speck, no larger than a shoe button, drifting aimlessly toward the south, but as the Southern Cross drew nearer to her she stood out in more detail. The watchers could then see that she was a large air craft for her type and carried two men, who were ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the face of the muzzle: but in built-up guns, there being generally no base-ring moulded, and the breech assuming various forms, the length is measured from the after-extreme of the breech, exclusive of any button or other adjunct. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... they not value fortune a button, and cared no more for the goods of this world than you or I do for hanging. And to show how much they defied that blind jilt, all of them wore, not in their hands like her, but at their waist, instead of beads, sharp razors, which they used to new-grind twice ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... friend S. knows better; but then you see she's had wit enough to obtain credit. When I draw a bill at three months, and get it done, I do the same thing. That's credit. Give me credit enough, and I don't care a brass button for capital. If I could have but one wish, I would never ask a fairy for a second or a third. Let me have but unreserved credit, and I'll beat any duke ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... resource left but to fight him; but for two CIVILISED nations to go to war for the settlement of a dispute is an unreasonable and childish and silly as it would be for two gentlemen, who should differ in opinion, to step into the middle of a peaceful drawing-room, button up their coats, turn up their wristbands, and proceed to batter each other's eyes and noses, regardless of ladies, children, and valuables. War would be a contemptible farce if it ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... discourse of Mr. Cringer, and, making up to me in the street, accosted me very civilly: this address I looked upon as no small honour, considering the figure he made, for he was dressed in a blue frock with a button, a green silk waistcoat, trimmed with gold, black velvet breeches, white silk stockings, silver buckles, a gold-laced hat, a spencer-wig, and a silver-hilted hanger, with a fine clouded can in his hand. "I perceive," says he, "you are but lately ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... dress properly that morning—and particularly hard to wash behind one's ears. Jehosophat put on one stocking inside out; Marmaduke his union suit outside in; and one of his shoes was button and the other lace. But they were all covered up, anyway, and Ole Northwind couldn't nip their flesh, and the Constable couldn't arrest them, so it was sufficient, ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... sitting when there was a knock, which Mr. Pyecroft answered. The cabinet-maker entered. He wore a slouching, ready-made suit and a celluloid collar with ready-made bow tie snapped by an elastic over his collar-button—the conventional garb of the artisan who aspires for the air of gentlemanliness while at work. His face, though fresh-shaven, was dark with the sub-cutaneous stubble of a heavy beard; his eyes were furtive, with that masked gleam of Olympian ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... When he took the field there was no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a habit. They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens Eirenicon said that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... that fine-looking old general in uniform, with the St. George's Cross at his button-hole—an order given only for bravery in the field. That is Prince Suvorof, a grandson of the famous general. He has filled high posts in the Administration without ever tarnishing his name by a dishonest or dishonourable action, and has spent a great part of his life at ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... two divisions of the Sixth Army Corps and routed them handsomely, making a connection with the cavalry. I am still pressing on with both cavalry and infantry. Up to the present time we have captured Generals Ewell, Kershaw, Button, Corse, DeBare, and Custis Lee, several thousand prisoners, fourteen pieces of artillery with caissons and a large number of wagons. If the thing is pressed I ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... with the reiteration of "Here's another for you! and here's another!" This lavishness served to stimulate cupidity, and every day the Bedawin brought in specimens from half a dozen different places. But the satisfaction was at its height when the crucible produced, after cupellation, a button of "silver" weighing some twenty grammes from the hundred grammes of what the grumbling Californian miners had called, in their wrath, "dashed black dust;"[EN109] and when a second experiment yielded twenty-eight grammes (each fifteen grains and a half) and ten centigrammes from 111 ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of Lyncolne clothe so fyne, With a gold button fastened neere his chynne; His autremete was edged with golden twynne, And his shoone pyke a loverds mighte have binne— Full well it shewn he thoughten coste no sinne; The trammels of the palfrye pleasde his sighte, For the horse-millanare ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... then the recollection of her business in Grellingham Place came back to her with a suddenly sobering effect and she hastened on her way up the street, pausing at last at No. 57. She mounted the steps reluctantly, and with a nervous, spasmodic intake of the breath pressed the bell-button. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... there. In the shadow, as he bent over his violin case, the younger man seemed tall and well-made; but when he stood up, though he was tall, his bent shoulders became apparent, and the light fell on a stern, pale face that seemed older than its thirty years. He began to button his cloak ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... and turn on the electric light. The stimulus that sets this series of acts going is the dim light; the first, inner response is a need for light. This need tends, by force of habit, to make me turn the button, but it does not make me execute this movement in the air. I only make this movement when the button is in reaching distance. My first {82} reaction, rising from my chair, is preparatory and brings the button close enough ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... whole of her rolling stock, the actual numbers in each compartment registered and reserved for the use of certain units of her troops. I tell you that from one end of the country to the other her state of military preparedness is amazing. She has but to press a button, and a million men have their rifles in their hands, their knapsacks on their backs, and each regiment knows exactly at which station and by what train to embark. She is making Zeppelins night and day, training her men till they drop with ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... radio station which logs between 55 and 65 on the dial and gives the radio a signal BARELY AUDIBLE in the speaker WITH the VOLUME control FULL ON. A small snap button cap is located in the end of the receiver case beside the antenna lead connection. Remove the snap button cap by prying with a small ...
— Delco Manuals: Radio Model 633, Delcotron Generator - Delco Radio Owner's Manual Model 633, Delcotron Generator Installation • Delco-Remy Division
... proclaim their independence by showing the least possible consideration for others; who laugh long and loud at their own wit; who wear a profusion of cheap finery, such as outlandish watch-chains hooked in the lowest button-hole of their vests, Brazilian diamonds in their shirt-bosoms, and big seal-rings on their little fingers; who use bad grammar and interlard their conversation with big oaths. In business correspondence Smith is addressed as ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... clothes and clumsy looking leather top boots of the German infantryman. The spiked pickelhauben was conspicuous by its absence and was, we well knew, a thing only of billets and of "swank" parades. In its place was the soft pancake trench cap with its small colored button in ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The regret on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was wearing in the button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... destructiveness, which we so falsely call "weapons of precision," but which are in fact so horribly unprecise that, once let loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed—the weak, the defenceless, the infirm—it has done—what? Singled out for destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?—you do not know. So with nations, when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes—horrible; ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... more simple," said Captain Nemo. And, pressing an electric button, he transmitted an ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... aluminium begins with almost explosive violence, so that great care must be taken in the experiment. The heat of this combustion starts the reaction in the chromium oxide mixture, and the oxide is reduced to metallic chromium. When the crucible has cooled a button of chromium will be found ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... engulfed now. I drew a deep breath and surrendered myself. The tall, energetic figure of Anna Mihailovna, the lady to whose practical business gifts and unlimited capacity for compelling her friends to surrender their last bow and button in her service we owed the existence of our Red Cross unit, was to be seen like a splendid flag waving its followers on to glory and devotion. We were devoted, all of us. Even I, whose second departure to the war this was, had after the feeblest resistance surrendered myself to the drama of the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... roofs of the warehouses the full moon so clearly illuminated the yard that we could see every button on our assailants' coats, and even the puffs of fat Nolenki's breath. He stood panting on the opposite wall of ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... a hundred of the workmen had already assembled, and as Howland and the superintendent came among them they fell back from around a big, flat boulder on which was stationed the electric battery. MacDonald's face was flushed and his eyes snapped like dragonflies as he pointed to a tiny button. ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... day of Mr. Farraday's expected call, and Miss Mason had hardly departed when the bell rang. Mary hastily put away her sewing and pressed the electric button which opened the downstairs door to visitors. She wished Stefan were back again to help her entertain the editor, and greeted him with apologies for her husband's absence. She was anxious that this man, whom she instinctively ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the active creatures, which, unfortunately for them, belonged to a rare species. Their antennae, which are club-shaped, terminated abruptly in a kind of button, and their elytra, which are a brilliant black, are crossed by a belt of yellow color. In vain I turned over the ground and the prey, but I could only ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... their tangled course of a hundred miles of deserted loveliness, and it was in the very heart of this delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for a summer holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands lay about us: from the mere round button of a rock that bore a single fir, to the mountainous stretch of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by precipitous cliffs; so close together often that a strip of water ran between no wider than a country lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretched ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... time one of them females come into my stall. The roan pony, wot's got sentimental thro' being everlasting driven in the governess-cart, sez she was a pretty young woman. I never noticed nothing 'bout 'er 'cept the pink rose in 'er button-'ole. I never 'eard tell of a farm 'and with a pink rose in 'is shirt before. Maybe such carryings on is all right for they grooms an' kerridge-'orses, but it ain't 'ardly decent for a respectable farm 'orse. So when this 'ere woman come along I up and 'as a grab at it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... of mild surprise (Which competition still defies) - Our celebrated "Sir!!!" Then all the crowd take down our looks In pocket memorandum books. To diagnose, Our modest pose The kodaks do their best: If evidence you would possess Of what is maiden bashfulness, You only need a button press - And WE do all ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... unfastened the button, and produced from inside her crimson robe, a crystal-like locket, set with pearls and gems, and with a brilliant golden fringe. Pao-y promptly received it from her, and upon minute examination, found that there were in fact four characters on each side; the eight characters on both sides ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... valued possessions of Mrs. Wilson were the rings, bracelets and baskets fashioned from buttons and fruit-seeds by her soldiers in hospital, tokens of their grateful remembrance of her. I showed her a little cross cut from a button in a prison and given to me by my uncle, Colonel Phillips, of the Confederate Army, who had been a captive on Johnson's Island. The prisoners used the cross to certify to the validity of secret messages. It was sent with the message and returned with the answer, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... paternal roof, or family—I who dropped upon earth like a ripe peach-blossom, and would have been crushed there, if my handsome and generous Charles de Poutet had not accidentally passed by while the wind was driving me along, and if he chivalrously had not picked me up and placed me in his button-hole. I never knew my family—I was an orphan since my earliest childhood. No, my friend, I have ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... trip," Jenkins said, pulling a switch on the wall and pushing a button on the back of the chair ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme
... had only their habit and competent diet, every order according to their prescribed rule; from which they were not to vary. Then for their tenants, their leases were almost as good to them as fee simple, and perchance might longer last in their families. Sir William Button (the father) hath often told me, that Alton farm had been held by his ancestors from the Abbey of Winchester, about four hundred years. The powers of Stanton Quintin held that farm of the Abbey of Cirencester in lease 300 ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... thy Master Dromio? Is he well? S.Dro. No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse then hell: A diuell in an euerlasting garment hath him; On whose hard heart is button'd vp with steele: A Feind, a Fairie, pittilesse and ruffe: A Wolfe, nay worse, a fellow all in buffe: A back friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that counterma[n]ds The passages of allies, creekes, and narrow lands: A hound that runs Counter, and yet draws drifoot well, One that before the Iudgme[n]t ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... about three-fourths of a mile southeast of Spring Hill. While in these woods, occurred a bit of exciting personal experience. A bullet, coming from the right, passed through my overcoat, buttoned up to my chin, in a way to take along the top button of my blouse underneath the coat. That big brass button struck me a stinging blow on the point of the left collar-bone, and, clasping both hands to the spot, I commenced feeling for the hole with my finger tips, fully convinced that ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... can't read and understand Jones's speech in Parliament, you may at any rate have mind enough to interest yourself with the fact that he never composed a word of it in his own room without a ring on his finger and a flower in his button-hole. It may also be agreeable to know that Walker the poet always takes a mutton-chop and two glasses of sherry at half-past one. 'Everybody's Business' did this for everybody to whom such excitement was agreeable. But in managing everybody's business in that fashion, let a writer ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... his condition? It is said, that he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he answer loudly, when spoken to by his master, with an air of self-consciousness? Then, must he be taken down a button-hole lower, by the lash, well laid on. Does he forget, and omit to pull off his hat, when approaching a white person? Then, he must, or may be, whipped for his bad manners. Does he ever venture to vindicate his conduct, when harshly and unjustly accused? ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... childhood of his son Thomas. He left a handsome estate of L9,000, and a widow not wholly inconsolable with her third portion and a not unduly deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman, Sir Thomas Button,—a knight so scantily and at the same time so variously described, as "a worthy person who had great places," and "a bad member" of "mutinous and unworthy carriage," that one is content to leave him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... him, he benevolently recognized him, and said, "Let me put you up to a wrinkle. When they ring you up sharp for chapel, don't you lose any time about your absolutions, - washing, you know; but just jump into a pair of bags and Wellingtons; clap a top-coat on you, and button it up to the chin, and there you are, ready dressed in the twinkling ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... interest. At once there was a scurry for luggage because the train must be held till it was off, and the guides ran forward to the baggage-car to help. I bundled the colonel down a sharp, short hill to the river, while smiling, observant Hurons, missing not a line of braid or a glitter of button, passed with bags and pacquetons as we descended. The blue and black and gold was loaded into a canoe with an Indian at bow and stern for the three-mile paddle to the club-house. He was already a schoolboy on a ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... much to see your Essay upon Entrails: is there any honorary token of silver gilt? any cups, or pounds sterling attached to the prize, besides glory? I expect to see you with a medal suspended from your button-hole, like a ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... red lamp, cautiously, on the other side of the street. Then some power forced me to cross the street and open a wicket. And in the red glow of the lamp I saw an ivory button which I pushed. I could plainly hear the result; it made me tremble. I had a narrow escape of running away. The door was flung wide, and a middle-aged woman appeared in the bright light of the interior of the house. She had a kind face. It is astounding, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... means capital of the Buriats, were two typical Mongols with pigtails and clad in skins. One of them was wearing an official tassel attached to his skin hood, but no official button to show his rank. To-day saw a flock of larks, a hawk and a magpie. From daylight till dark, during which time we travelled a distance of perhaps 300 miles, there was no vestige of either trees, shrubs, banks or hedges, and ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... going to kill and eat you, So undo the button of your chemie." When Bill received this information He used ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looked after the smiling fields of Maryland, touched and warmed by the Southern sun! And then the cold, the bitter cold of it all, the white winding sheet of the snow and the ice made us shiver and hug the fire of dry fence-rails and button our threadbare coats more tightly around us, while we looked in despair at the toes peeping through the ends of our boots. But the great General knew how to warm the blood in our veins and drive the despair from our hearts, when on that bitterly cold Christmas night he led us ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... had travelled much, but without any pleasure in movement: he might as well have stayed at home. Now, when he travels, it is for an end; it is delightful to witness the cheerful alertness with which he sets about it. He is going down the Rhine;—for its scenery? Pshaw! he never cared a button about scenery; but he has great hopes of the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;—to see the Pyramids? Stuff! the climate on the Nile is so good for the mucous membrane! Set him down at the dullest of dull places, and he himself is never dull. The duller the place ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... substitute something more real and genuine, instead of the many shams on which men have heretofore founded their claims to public regard; but it behooves civilians to consider their wretched prospects in the future, and assume the military button before ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... of Charles II., indeed, we may date the beginnings of modern English life. What we call "society" was forming, the town, the London world. "Coffee, which makes the politician wise," had just been introduced, and the ordinaries of Ben Jonson's time gave way to coffee-houses, like Will's and Button's, which became the head-quarters of literary and political gossip. The two great English parties, as we know them to-day, were organized: the words Whig and Tory date from this reign. French etiquette and fashions came in and French phrases of convenience—such as coup de grace, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... having pieces nailed on horizontally, from one to the other. Several slats on the cylinder are fastened together to make a door, and this is attached to the cylinder by hinges, and fastened with a button. ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... idea. The parts may be fine, but when I think of my unhappy portrait I tremble for the whole. He has communicated this striking idea under the pledge of solemn secrecy to fifty chosen spirits, to every one he has ever been able to button-hole for five minutes. I suppose he wants to get an order for it, and he is not to blame; for Heaven knows how he lives. I see by your blush," my hostess frankly continued, "that you have been honoured with his confidence. You needn't ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... with intense disgust while Tom was admiring Mrs. Pugh's famous book of devices from letters, translating the mottoes, and promising contributions, the offence was greatly increased by his coming up to her (and that too just as Harry was released by the button-holding Mr. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and with his one eye scanned Akaky Akakiyevich's whole uniform from the collar down to the cuffs, the back, the tails and the button-holes, all of which were well known to him, since they were his own handiwork. Such is the habit of tailors; it is the first thing they do on ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... been a little vague talk about politics, and someone had quoted a definition of a true Liberal as a man who, if he had only to press a button in a dark room to annihilate all cranks, faddists, political quacks, extremists, propagandists, and nostrum-mongers, would not dream of doing so, as a matter of conscience, on the ground that everyone ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ago.[43] He went to see them on board their transport before they disembarked, and when Lord Canning asked how he found them, replied that the only thing amiss was that they had become too fat on the voyage, and could not button their coats. But, indeed, all the troops of the China force have been landed in the highest possible condition of health and vigour. The 23rd, from its large proportion of young soldiers, is perhaps the one most likely ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... of ice-cream was passed, of which each took a spoonful and ate it. In the ice-cream had previously been hidden a dime, a ring, a thimble, a button, and a nutmeg. Whoever chanced to get the ring was destined to be married first. Whoever took the dime was destined to become very wealthy. The thimble denoted a thrifty housewife; the button, a life of single blessedness; and ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... listen to him energetically arguing with the Rev. Mr. Jeffries as to whether or no it would be proper, as had hitherto been the custom, to devote the proceeds of the harvest festival collection (1 pound 18s. 3d. and a brass button) to the county hospital, or whether it should be applied to the repair of the woodwork in the vestry, was under the circumstances most instructive. The Rev. Mr. Jeffries, who suffered severely from the condition of the vestry, at last gained his point by triumphantly ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... no time to lose," said Schlorge. He pressed Sara's shoe-button decidedly and she floated softly down upon the blue plush, like a milk-weed seed in the fall. And then Schlorge deftly took off her dimples—it felt very funny to have them removed with the forceps—and put them in the dimple-holder where they belonged. Then, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... while I button my gloves." Pryce was enchanted. As the party left the house, he and Constance walked on together, ahead of the others. She put on her most charming manners, and the young man was ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... composite squadron of artillery, horse-marines, and ambulance, could hardly pick his way through the heaps of rose leaves scattered before him by lily-white hands. But the scene was quickly changed, as if by enchantment. At a touch of the button by the viceroy's youngest child, an urchin of three, thousands of Boer prisoners, heavily laden with chains, brought forward tables groaning with every conceivable dainty. The heroes set to with famished ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... kick, in a kind of general way, under the table, when the movement became too obstreperous. "Can't ye be decent when white folks comes to see ye? Stop dat ar, now, will ye? Better mind yerselves, or I'll take ye down a button-hole lower, when Mas'r George ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... safety plug is then inserted in a box at the end of the west wall. The completion of the firing battery by the switch at the firing place is indicated by the flashing of a red light, after which all that is necessary to set off the charge is to press a button on the battery. An automatic recording device at the back of the mortar records the length of swing which, by a vernier, may be ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... was to "enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shakesperean quips and retorts." Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favorite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in "the highly novel and laughable Hippo Comedietta of The Tailor's Journey ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... you now?" Harrison wasn't fooling. I looked at Sol, on the seat next to me; I thought I had heard him snicker. He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me. I pushed the "talk" button and told Harrison where I was. It pleased him very much; I wasn't more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very clear that I was to get on over ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... horse's fodder, for there were sandwiches, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tinned meat, peas, corn, fruit, etc. Behind the saddle was rolled his blanket, inside his section of tent cover,—it takes six of them to make a real tent. They are arranged to button together. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... put his finger on the bell button Laura herself opened the door. She was radiant of face and exquisite in ball costume as she threw open the door and stood framed ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... intonation as "I have saved a shilling." He tries to turn his own heroism into a sort of superhuman thrift. He would thoroughly sympathise with that passage in his favourite dramatic author in which the Button Moulder tells Peer Gynt that there is a sort of cosmic housekeeping; that God Himself is very economical, "and that is why He is so ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Amer. Med. Review for April, Dr. JOHN ATLEE, of Lancaster, mentions that on Wednesday, Aug. 11th, he was consulted by a child ten years old, who had that morning, while running, put a button-mould into his mouth, which during respiration was drawn into the trachea. He complained of uneasiness in respiration, with a slight rattling, and pointed towards the upper part of the sternum, as the situation of the button. On coughing, a rattling was heard, and immediately ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... that most likely Nanny was right, so I looked down on the floor with the candle, and there I picked up a pensioner's button. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... his, his weel-shapit leg covered wi' the bonny 'rig-an'-fur' stockin' that I knitted mysel' frae the cast on o' the ower-fauld [over-fold] to the bonny white forefit that sets aff the blue sae weel. Walter Skirving could button his knee-breeks withoot bendin' his back—that nane could do but the king's son himsel'; an' sic a dancer as he was afore guid an' godly Maister Cauldsowans took hand o' him at the tent, wi' preachin' a sermon on booin' the knee to ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... him just as he was leaning against the trellis, as if he had been a tree or something solid and reliable of that sort. She laid her cheek, of a deeper colour than a sunburnt peach, against his white shirt. In a sort of parenthesis of thought she took a sudden, half-maternal interest in the middle button of his shirt, tested it, and found it more firmly fixed than she had supposed. Her dusky hair ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... ignorant." This is confirmed by another critic, who states that Dogget "could with the greatest exactness paint his face so as to represent the ages of seventy, eighty, and ninety, distinctly, which occasioned Sir Godfrey Kneller to tell him one day at Button's Coffee House, that 'he excelled him in painting, for that he could only paint from the originals before him, but that he (Dogget) could vary them at pleasure, and yet keep a close likeness.'" In the character of Moneytrap, the miser, in Vanbrugh's ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... and her father would get out the old set, made of button moulds, with the name printed on with ink, Lottie would think what a surprise there ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... unhappy and injured woman; but I am not the fool you take me to be. I am going to stay—see! (She flings the mantle on the round table; puts her bonnet on it, and sits down.) Now, Mrs. Tranfield: there is the bell: (pointing to the button beside the fireplace) why don't you ring? (Grace, looking attentively at Charteris, does not move.) Ha! ha! I ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... precisely funk. It is rather a desire to accelerate the flight of Time, and get to business quickly. All things come to him who waits, and among them is that unpleasant sensation of a cold hand upon the portion of the body which lies behind the third waistcoat button. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... button painted gray, set at the side of one of the stones of the wall, which looked unreal. She struck the stone with her knuckles and it gave out the sound of hollow wood, which was followed, as an echo, by a little laugh from Lanstron. Pressing the button, a panel door ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the Atlantic between Resolution Island on the north and the Button Islands on the south. From point to point, this end of the strait is forty-five miles wide. At the other end, the west side, between Digges' Island and Nottingham Island, is a distance of thirty-five miles. From east ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... man!" she exclaimed. "If he thought that I myself was a suitable wife for his serene highness, what had my great-grandmother to do with it? I wish he had asked me to marry him. I should like to have him know I never cared a button about him; and that, if I didn't care for him, I should consider it more shameful to sell myself for his diamonds, than it would have been to have been sold for a slave by papa's creditors when I couldn't help myself. I am ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... depression of the face and hands denotes sadness. Therefore, to denote the melancholy temperament of his sitter, Signac represented him as being hardly able to lift his hat to his head or the flower to his button-hole. The figure was painted, as usual, in dots of pure colour lifted from the palette with the point of the brush; the complementary colours in duplicate bands curled up the background. This was considered by the disciples to be an important innovation; and the effect, it ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... forces stood an almost unguessed figure. Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand the naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... I know you not (touches lower part of waistcoat); but, prithee, undo this button. I think I have jam in all my veins, and I would fain sleep. When I am gone, lay me in a plain white jelly-pot, with a parchment cover, and on the label write——but come nearer, I have a secret for your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... "2. But the button is too large and his efforts begin to exasperate him, with the result that his expression and movements become incongruous. We see, and ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... critical temper, and importance of home affairs prevalent in democratic countries make them at once slower, weaker, less apt to strike, and less prepared to strike than countries where bureaucratic brains subject to no real popular check devise world policies which can be thrust, prepared to the last button, on the world at a moment's notice. The free and critical spirit in America, France, and Britain has kept our democracies comparatively unprepared for anything ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... when they walked down to the club together. Dress makes so much difference to a man, and Arthur, spruce and debonair, with a gardenia in his button-hole, and every part of his attire almost "faultily faultless," according to the canons of London fashion, presented a very different appearance to the tragical-looking personage of half an hour ago. There was a slight air of subdued feverishness ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to button his frock-coat against the outer cold. If only to oust this 'Ophelia,' he must ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all (which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward after the same manner as the ears of Wheat ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Somebody pressed a wrong button on the new machine and some fifty thousand uncoded cards got ...
— New Apples in the Garden • Kris Ottman Neville
... way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat accentuating the curve of Aunt Eliza's back, while the skirt showed a persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last button of the horror and surveyed myself in the glass, I chuckled sardonically at the remembrance of heroines of fiction whose exquisite grace of outline refused to be concealed by the roughest of country garments. Certainly my grace did not survive the ordeal. What good ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the laughing side of you, this time," said his reverence, promptly, and took snuff. "Tut, tut, woman—down with your fists, button up your bodice, and take disappointment with a better grace. Come, no nonsense, or you'll start me asking what's become of the last man ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... his seat comfortably, buttoned another button at the neck of the coat, and then scrutinised the driver. "It's four years—four years in October since I last cast eyes on you, Lewie, my boy," he said. "I heard you were coming, so I refused a lift from Haystounslacks and the minister. Haystounslacks was driving from Gledsmuir, and unless ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. We found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. It was as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... jailer entered, "Ho, ho!" he said, "how did you come by that; it will just do for my button-hole." And he seized the water-lily and placed it in ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... do with this, Mabel?" asked the bewildered hunter, holding the simple trinket in his hand. "I have neither buckle nor button about me, for I wear nothing but leathern strings, and them of good deer-skins. It's pretty to the eye, but it is prettier far on the spot it came from than it can be ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... last—and it was in Barcelona, so late as 1803, that I last had the honour of conversing with him—a white rich stuff dress frock coat, of the cut and fashion of Louis XIV., which, being without any collar, had buttons and button-holes from the neck to the bottom of the skirt, and was padded and stiffened with buckram. The cuffs were very large, of a different colour, and turned up to the elbows. The whole was lined with white satin, which, from its being very much moth-eaten, appeared as if it had been ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... was wreathed with a spray of white marble ivory; the angel was a German female, with a very rounded leg emerging behind a kind of button; and there, at the foot of the cross, was the inscription, in ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the village school, all in their new clothes, and with a sprig of holly in their bosoms and button holes, walked from the church to the Grove; and there partook, as they had been invited to do, of beef and pudding, and good home-brewed beer. The young Mortimers waited upon them at dinner, and before they left the Lodge, presented them each with a plumb cake; and Mrs. Mortimer gave them each ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... broke into a sudden loud cackle of laughter. "Why! the feller tole me 'at this here Pigeon place was all three rings when it come t' history. Yessir! Tall, thin feller he was, in a three-button cutaway, English make, and kind of red-complected, with a sandy MUS- tache," pursued the pedestrian, apparently fearing his narrative might lack colour. "I met him right comin' out o' the Casino at Trouville, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... company, and, figuring impatiently, he pressed the button for Mrs. Wald, his secretary. She appeared at once and quietly, her notebook and pencil ready, took a place at his side. "Run this out, please, Mrs. Wald," and an involved financial transaction followed. What he wanted ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... for some days. Getting coached up in Parliamentary practice. Back to-night and made maiden speech. Quite delightful; button-holed House as it were; informed Members he was sent there with a mandate; incidentally mentioned that he was a Magistrate in several counties; waved his arm in defiance of School Board and sat down, after declaiming, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... nahikà ï was made by paring down a straight slender stick of aromatic sumac, about three feet long, to the general thickness of less than half an inch, but leaving a head or button at one end. A ring was fashioned from a transverse slice of some hollow or pithy plant, so that it would slide freely up and down the slender wand, but would nob pass over the head. Eagle down was secured to the wooden head and also to the ring. In the dance (paragraph 129) ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... harness the iron horse to the market wagon, who career their floating palaces up the opposing floods, line their coasts with flocks of white-winged schooners, and show their flags on every coast of earth, who invent and make everything that man will buy, from the brass button, dear to the barbarian, to the folio of the philosopher, erect churches in all their towns, and schools in every village, who make their blacksmiths more learned than the priests of Egypt, their Sabbath scholars wiser than ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... cluster in the middle of the road, the Paymaster with his black coat so tight upon his stomach it looked as if every brass button would burst with a crack like a gun; Rixa puffing and stretching himself; Major Dugald ducking his head and darting his glance about from side to side looking for the enemy; Mr. Spencer, tall, thin, with the new strapped breeches and a London hat, blowing ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... them to her. She pulls on one hastily and begins buttoning it with ostentatious unconcern]. Go further away from me, quick. [He walks doggedly away from her until the piano prevents his going farther]. If I button my glove, and you were to hum a ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... memory so tenacious that nothing could escape me, but this proved a great deal like my voluminous note-taking. It often crowded out some things of the most vital importance; besides, I often forgot my cues—just as one ties a string in his button-hole to keep from forgetting something and then forgets to look ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... thing from being tired and beaten, so the fallen pair were soon restored. The groom picked up his lady-love and bestowed a burning kiss on her panting mouth, (just to let her know there was no hard feeling,) and Judy, remembering she had in her shirtwaist in lieu of a missing button, a tiny enamelled American flag, went forward and pinned it on the lapel of the old man's coat, and making a ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... deep fireplace; and the tender joints of the enormous boeuf roti were ready to bear their share in the festivities almost as soon as the invited company. Separated with great cleavers, and laid into white button-wood trays hollowed out for the purpose, they were borne rapidly to the shady nook selected for the dining-place, followed by vast supplies of sweet potatoes, roasted in the ashes, and of rich, golden maize bread. A barrel of rare cider was broached; while good old-fashioned ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... commandant touched a button on his desk. Almost immediately footsteps were heard outside. Another white-gloved midshipman entered, raising his hand smartly to his cap in salute. This salute the ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Mimms, dialing the super's apartment again to check. "Hooking these up to a regular aerial is so much easier." The superintendent's set luckily had an outside antenna and by manipulating certain dials, the Destinyworker traced it out and up to the roof. Pressing a button marked TRACER LIGHT, she left the set in operation and made her way up to the top floor of the apartment house. Taking the fire exit to the roof, Mrs. Mimms found herself among a forest of TV aerials. However there was a small circle of light ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... said Gentle Annie, running her bejewelled hand over her face. "You'll be bankrupt before morning. But never mind, old gentleman,"—she deftly corrected the set of Mr. Crewe's coat, and fastened its top button—"you'll always find a friend and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Piutes are smart or bold enough to steal nowadays; their intercourse with the whites along the railroad has, in a measure, relieved them of those aboriginal traits of character that would incite them to steal a brass button off their pale-faced brother's coat, or screw a nut off his bicycle; but they have learned to beg; the noble Piute of to-day is an incorrigible mendicant. Gathering up my tools from among them, the monkey-wrench seems to have found favor in the eyes of a wrinkled-faced ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... drive on," growled Al, punching the starter button again. "This Frenchman from Cork would ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very dirty vessel full of merchandise, and with only three or four other passengers for our companions: among whom, the most remarkable was a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there to remind himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots in ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... before the wrongdoer that ancient evil. And no lapse of time makes it less dreadful when it is unveiled. The chance thrust of a boat-hook that gets tangled in the grey hairs of a corpse, brings it up grim to the surface. Press a button, by accident, upon a wall in some old castle, and a door flies open that leads away down into black depths. You and I have depths of that sort in our hearts. Then there are no more illusions about whose fault the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... relatives (myself included), take my word for it, the lawyers who are managing this case will not pay fifty pounds for you if they can possibly help it. Are you still persuaded that my needy pockets are gaping for the money? Very good. Button them up in spite of me with your own fair fingers. There is a train to London at nine forty-five to-night. Submit yourself to your friend's wishes and go back ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Whig," said he, "and so, of course, he's a Justice. The Squire's a Whig, and he's a Justice. Here am I, well-reputed in the faculty, and my wife coming of the Parker Putwells, one of the rare old county stocks—none of your newfangled button-men and turnip-growers —and I'm no Justice, because I'm a Church-and-King man of the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... answered, he sent his chair around with a push of his foot. He saw two men, but he did not recognize them at once. By and by his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Instantly he was on his feet, pressing the button connecting the wall-lights. There was no possible exit save by that door, and these two men stood between. To do McQuade justice, he was not a physical coward. His huge bulk and hardened muscles gave ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Mrs. Obed Nickerson came in, as did several other retired mariners and their better-halves. Obed brought his fiddle and sat in the corner and played the music for a Virginia reel, and Ralph laughed until he choked to see Captain Jerry—half of his shirt-collar torn loose from the button and flapping like a sail—convoy stout Mrs. Wingate from one end of the line to the other, throwing into the performance all the fancy "cuts" and "double-shuffles" he learned at the Thanksgiving balls of a good many years before. Captain Perez danced with Miss Patience, who assured ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... locked," Farland said, taking the automatic from his pocket. "You raise your voice, touch a button or make any move that I do not like, and I'll plug you and say afterward that I had placed you under arrest and had to shoot when you tried to escape. Answer my question, Lerton! You are at the end of your rope! Why did you kill Rufus Shepley and then try to hang the ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... cambric tie, hung spread out on a couple of chairs. Laurent washed, perfumed himself with a bottle of eau de Cologne, and then proceeded to carefully attire himself. He wished to look handsome. As he fastened his collar, a collar which was high and stiff, he experienced keen pain in the neck. The button escaped from his fingers. He lost patience. The starched linen seemed to cut into his flesh. Wishing to see what was the matter, he raised his chin, and perceived the bite Camille had given him looking quite red. The collar had slightly ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... in command of the Fifteenth Regiment at the disastrous battle of Ball's Bluff, where he was struck by a musket ball, which was intercepted by a metallic button which saved his life. His conduct on that day received high encomium from General McClellan. He was soon after appointed a Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and assigned to a brigade in Couch's Division of the Fourth ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the art indirectly by the whole style of the concert. The room is small, holding 1000 people. Every gentleman goes in full-dress, and the ladies in half-dress. Various members of the society are appointed managers, distinguished by a ribboned button-hole, and they provide seats for the audience. No bills are issued before the night, so there are only rumors of what the particular will be, with a quiet consciousness that the general will be fine. So we arrived on Saturday ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... gun was being loaded. From a shell which exploded a few yards in front I was struck on the breast by the butt-end, weighing not less than three pounds, and at the same time by a smaller piece on the thigh. After writhing for a time I was accompanied to our surgeon in the rear. The brass button on my jacket, which I still have as a memento, was cut almost in two and the shirt button underneath driven to the breast-bone, besides other smaller gashes. A large contusion was made by the blow ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... a new species to him, the office boy was not. He knew that youth down to the last button on his jacket. He knew, too, that an office boy often whiles away the monotonous hours by piecing together the president's secrets from the scraps in his waste-basket. So at the noon hour he slipped ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... button under that elaborate teakwood table. The musical gong they had heard before sounded again, and the prince's two Cossack ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... permanent record; while the German system, apart from its crude method of measuring time, was subject to the combined errors of four human 'microphones.' The British system requires only one forward observer, placed well ahead of the base, and all he has to do is to press a button and start the apparatus before the sound ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that we are not ouer-happy: [Sidenote: euer happy on] on Fortunes Cap, we are not the very Button. [Sidenote: Fortunes lap,] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... can never be trusted. Accidents happen so quickly that it is over before we know it and the terrible damage is done. Sometimes the trigger will catch on a coat button or a twig, and, bang! an unexpected discharge takes place and if you were careless just for an instant, it may cost some one his life. Especial care must be taken in loading and unloading a gun. It is at this time that a gun is most likely to ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... and you'd had to fight your way out as best you could. They'd tell you about it, their eyes gleaming, sometimes a slightest trickle of spittle at the sides of their mouths. They usually wanted an autograph, or a souvenir such as a uniform button. ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the beauty and fashion of Paris was promenading on Paix aux Panoramas street, I was stopped on the corner and button-holed by one of those gossiping friends whom fiendish chance always sends at the most trying moments in life in order to disgust us with friendship ... A dazzling form passed before me ... Irene alone possesses that graceful ease, that fairy-like step, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin |
