"Drape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... external world: and through this we discern, as in a glass darkly, that which we have arranged to see. We see it in the way in which our neighbours see it; sometimes through a pink veil, sometimes through a grey. Religion, indigestion, priggishness, or discontent may drape the panes. The prismatic colours of a fashionable school of art may stain them. Inevitably, too, we see the narrow world our windows show us, not "in itself," but in relation to our own needs, moods, and preferences; which exercise a selective ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... satisfied him that they were not in the room, and, pausing only to drape himself in the counterpane, he made his way into the next. He passed on to the others, and then, with a growing sense of alarm, stole softly downstairs and making his way to the shop continued the search. With the shutters ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... strange imaginings in you," said Wanda, and simultaneously she began to drape her magnificent fur-cloak coquettishly about her, so that the dark shining sable played beautifully around her bust and arms. "Well, how do you feel now, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... of thy beloved in the blue-green of Egypt's river, so that the coolness and fairness may give delight to thee! Drape the satin veil of deepest blue about the red glory of thy love's hair, and bind a band of gold, set deep is sapphires, above the twin pools of heaven, which are her eyes. Set turquoise, threaded with finest gold, a-swing in the rose-leaf of her ears, to fall ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... as on us, and while you rejoice and become intoxicated, the philosophic spirit is weeping over you and prepares your epitaph. This pale and bleeding, wounded thing that is called France, holds still in its tense hands, a fold of the starry mantle of the future, and you drape yourself in a soiled flag, which will be your winding sheet. Past grandeurs have no longer a place to take in the history of men. It is all over with kings who exploit the peoples; it is all over with exploited peoples who have ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... its mighty growth and final triumph, was described in words of ravishing eloquence, and depicted in pictures which seemed drawn, now from the purest heights of ideality, and now from the depths of the pit. The poet had done wisely to drape his characters with the veil of an oriental legend, for under this covering he might express sentiments and present scenes, which otherwise would scarcely have been forgiven, and he did this now with a boldness which threw glowing sparks into the souls of those who heard him, and held them enthralled ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... with his left hand, his right hand being occupied with the crutch on which he leans. He speaks rapidly and affectedly; he is one of those people who have a high-sounding phrase ready for every occasion in life, who remain untouched by simple beauty, and who drape themselves majestically in extraordinary sentiments, exalted passions and exceptional sufferings. To produce an effect is their delight; they have an almost insensate fondness for romantic provincial ladies. When old age approaches they become either peaceful landed-gentry ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... modesty of some New York policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than oral testimony." He adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to such an extent in a Massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper was obliged to drape a small, but innocent, statuette displayed in his window." (Irving Rosse, Virginia Medical Monthly, October, 1892.) I am told that popular feeling in South Africa would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the Art Collections of Cape Town. Even in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... you all. You ought to know. As far as work went, I did very well. I loved to handle and drape beautiful stuffs—I enjoy color—and it pleased me to fit the pretty girls and fine ladies who came to our show-rooms. It was even a satisfaction to make the plain ones look better. I should have made friends ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... which are heard in every part of the city. Those swarthy faces, those vestments formed of a few pieces of red or violet stuff whose deep colours attract the eye, even those very rags in which this artistic people drape themselves with grace, give to the populace a picturesque appearance, whilst in other countries they exhibit nothing but the miseries of civilization. A certain taste for finery and decoration is often found in Naples accompanied with ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... under the great pines, or wind through pathless thickets and native parks of evergreen, feasting my very soul on their eternal freshness and glory! How I have loved to see 'Black Hawk' crush with his feet, and sink up to his fetlocks, in the tender and fairy-like mosses that drape the mountains! How I have delighted to weave the trailing evergreens into wreaths, trellises, and bowers in front of my white tent! And, alas! with hushed and solemn pride, I have planted the holly and the pine on the graves of my dead comrades, hoping they might live in all their wondrous beauty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... How different from the original relation of Kemble, Kean, or Siddons to the Shaksperian drama! Then the manner in which she prepared herself for artistic triumph is equally suggestive of the artificial and the conventional: 'Elle se drape,' we are told, 'avec un art merveilleux; au theatre elle fait preuve d'etudes intelligentes de la statuaire antique.' It was in the external form rather than by sympathetic emotion that she wooed the tragic muse. Veron ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... where fathers fell over them in the dark. In the teeth of sinful oratory, the daughters went on embroidering: they embroidered daisies and sunflowers and sumac and cat-tails and owls and peacock feathers upon "throws" which they had the courage to drape upon horsehair sofas; they painted owls and daisies and sunflowers and sumac and cat-tails and peacock feathers upon tambourines. They hung Chinese umbrellas of paper to the chandeliers; they nailed paper fans to the walls. They "studied" painting ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... no pose about this town, no mise-en-scene, no stage-setting. No heroic gesture. No theatricals, in short, no lies. There is to be found no shred of that vainglorious cloak which humans will deftly drape about their shoulders whenever they happen to be aware of the camera. There is no "registering" ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... you may want me in a hurry," he said. "I have observed with regret that you have no telephone in this room, but we can get on without one. My mirror reflects your window, you know," he added a little self-consciously. "If you need me, hang up this scarf. Just drape it over this big window-catch. If I ever see it, I'll come prancing across the square like a knight to ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... sometimes move me, and I would feel—excuse the conceit of youth—as if I too could have been a great female Tragedian, had Fate not otherwise disposed of me. In such moments I would seize the blade of the paper-knife, and use the blood of the beet-root, drape myself in the classical folds of the bed-sheet, and go for the Tyrant, hissing fearful hexameters of scorn and vituperation into his ears, and usually winding up with a pose so magnificently triumphant that it would bring down any house ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... on it the whole year round; otherwise early October strips its shores of their few inhabitants, and thereafter, for seven months, it is rarely accessible except on snowshoes. It never freezes. In the dense forests which bound it, and drape two-thirds of its gaunt sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, wolves, elk, deer, chipmunks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, and snakes. On its margin I found an irregular wooden inn, with a lumber-wagon at the door, on which was the carcass of a large grizzly bear, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Penny assured him, grimly. "A simile as out-of-date as my clothes are going to be if I don't get some new ones soon. Not that the crowd minds what I wear," she added loyally. "I could dress up in a window drape—" ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the night the shuttle of superstitious talk went backward and forward and wove a still more marvellous garment of fancy to drape the reputation of elephant and man. The godship that the common belief had long endowed Badshah with was being transferred to his master; and a mere Indian Army Major was transformed into a mysterious ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... eve of Ste.-Clotilde's day, she went out, leaving every opportunity for the grand plot to mature. Had she not absented herself in like manner the year before at the same date—thus enabling an upholsterer to drape artistically her little salon with beautiful thick silk tapestries which had just been imported from the East? Her idea was that this year she might find a certain lacquered screen which she coveted. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... let's go down," cried Milly. "By this time Therese is certain to be in mother's room, in hysterics and nothing else! We'll make her stop and drape herself in a ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... predecessors." Even in Latin the task was difficult. In English it is impossible. There are subjects that permit of a hint, particularly if it be masked to the teeth, but there are others that no art can drape. "The inexpressible does not exist," Gautier remarked, when he finished a notorious romance, nor does it; but even his pen would have balked had he ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... noble and dignified behavior, and compelled the gentleman, both in his ordinary bearing and in exceptional moments to observe external propriety. No doubt this classical garment, like the language of Attic society, served to drape much that was foul and malicious; but it was also the adequate expression of all that is noblest and most refined. But politically and nationally it was of supreme importance, serving as an ideal home for the educated classes in all the States ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the room. Then the "shadow-makers" take up their places on low stools behind the sheet. There must be only one lamp in the room, which should be placed about six or seven feet behind the "shadow-makers." Then the "shadow-makers" drape themselves with shawls, or anything handy, and take their places so that their shadows are thrown upon the sheet. They must, of course, try to disguise themselves, so that the "shadow-seekers" may not be able to guess their identity. ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... to get this pot of tulips—parrot tulips—yellow and scarlet, you know, to harmonize with a Chinese screen in a little picture I am painting. Then I had to go into 'Burnet's,' for 'Liberty's' is too far away, for some blue stuff of the right shade which I could drape into a frock for the little ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... in a nutshell. Nothing is changed. I have tried to believe otherwise, but the truth is stronger than my will. My opinion of you is a naked, uncompromising fact I cannot drape it or adorn it, or even throw around it a mist of charity. It is unalterably there, and in any future intercourse with you, such intercourse as we have had in the past, I should only dash myself forever ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... Our pity goes out not to "the ordinary intelligence," but to the cloudy dweller in Patmos. Mystic obscurity is used more frequently as a cloak for muddle-headed thinking than as a robe with which to drape sublimity of thought. Hence, if people do not understand the preacher, blame not the people, but let the ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... bless the women and their perfect thirty-sixes! Waists we clasped a-waltzing they some other way now drape. Disregarding fashion so that every Yank may fix his Breathing tube at "Gas—alert!" and thus ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... you find yourself in great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the earth. I have a small bicycle lamp, and it is a perpetual joy to me to carry it into these weird solitudes, and to see the wonderful silver and black effect when I throw its light upon the stalactites which drape the lofty roofs. Shut off the lamp, and you are in the blackest darkness. Turn it on, and it is a scene from ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the left, three hooks; then to the centre; then back four—under the arm and down the middle again. That chiffon comes over like a drape." ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... what EMILY meant. She'd like to enamel 'em all in Art shades and drape Liberty scarves round 'em, like terra-cotta ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... garment rudely made of sacks Hangs from their loins; bright blankets drape their backs; About their necks are twisted tangled strings Of gaudy beads, while tinkling wire and rings Of yellow brass on wrists and fingers glow. Thus, to assuage the anger of the foe The cunning Indians decked the captive pair Who in one ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that dishonest seems, This wicked, that absurd he deems, All are constrained and fetters bear, Antiquity no pleasure gave, The moderns of the ancients rave— Books he abandoned like the fair, His book-shelf instantly doth drape With taffety ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... From one point of view the post-mortem revelations of great men's friends, which kindle her ire, perform a public good, even if at the expense of a private wrong. The attempt to apotheosise human nature, to invest our kindred clay with theatrical glamour and to drape it from the property-room, this mythical creation of "a magnified non-natural man," what is it all but the perpetuation of the false psychology of the past? There is no durable good in this childish ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... tan coat the effect is startling. The custom of wearing such a band as emblem of mourning for a fellow member in a lodge, or any organization, whether worn by man or woman, is more honored in the breach than the observance. Better drape the departed member's seat in black, or hang crepe on the charter than ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... San Miniato, with its grove of cypresses, is farther off to the south. There is no end of beauty and interest, and the view becomes ideal and poetic the moment the sun begins its decline; for then the rose and purple mists drape the hills, and mountains—the common earth—turn to amethysts, topazes, and sapphires, and words can never convey an idea of the opaline heavens, which seem to have illimitable abysses of a penetrable substance, made up ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... saving what's left of her sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are the regular costumes for Shakespeare's plays, all jeweled and spangled and brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in the borders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest your cheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the other plays we favor; Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Shaw's Back to Methuselah and Hilliard's adaptation of Heinlein's Children of Methuselah, the Capek ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... marble-painted walls! and on the first landing there is a large cheaply coloured window. The drawing-room is a double room, not divided by curtains but by stiff folding-doors. The furniture is in red, and the heavy curtains that drape the windows fall from gilt cornices. In the middle of the floor there is a settee (probably a reminiscence of the Shelbourne Hotel); and on either side of the fireplace there are sofas, and about the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... dim torch to light my way. 'Tis true men hate thee, Death, and yet I think Thou wilt be kinder to me than my lover, And so dispatch the messengers at once, Harry the lazy steeds of lingering day, And let the night, thy sister, come instead, And drape the world in mourning; let the owl, Who is thy minister, scream from his tower And wake the toad with hooting, and the bat, That is the slave of dim Persephone, Wheel through the sombre air on wandering wing! Tear up the shrieking mandrakes from the earth And bid them make us music, and tell ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself —every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship. One of those soft Japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame was out of adjustment. He noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it to suit him. Then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand, and said: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... consideration of form in costume, the lecturer urged that the proper function of dress was to drape the human figure without disguising or burlesquing it. An illustration of Miss Mary Anderson, attired in a Greek dress as Parthenia, was exhibited, and the lecturer observed that while the dress once worn by Greek women was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... is black and volcanic-looking below, jutting into the sea in naked lava promontories, which nature has done nothing to drape. Concerning a river of specially black lava, which runs into the sea to the south of this house, the following legend ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... sheer away He cut them all, and went down to the hidden heart of the man, and He allocated and ranged them according to that. Christian men and women, do you try to do the same thing, and to get rid of all these superficial veils and curtains with which we drape ourselves and attitudinise in the world, and to see men as Christ saw them, both in regard to your judgment of them, and in regard to your judgment of yourselves? 'I am a scholar and a wise man; a great thinker; a rich merchant; a man of rising importance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... is done, a cause is lost; But Pickett's men heed not the din Of ragged columns battle tost; For fame enshrouds them on the field, And pierced, Virginia, is thy shield. But stars and bars Shall drape thy scars; No cause is lost till ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... patrons were pledged, should never adorn a slave! Rather I hail thee, Parnes—trust to thy wild waste tract! Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave No deity deigns to drape with verdure? At least I can breathe, 55 Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... festivity, its volatile and almost too vital atmosphere, and, above all, its glowing and over-odorous gardens and flowerbeds, its overcrowded and grimly Dionysian Promenade, its murmurous and alluring restaurants on steep little boulevards—it was all a blind, Durkin argued with himself, to drape and smother the cynical misery of the place. Underneath all its flaunting and waving softnesses life ran grim and hard—as grim and hard as the solid rock that lay so close beneath its jonquils and violets and its masking verdure of mimosa ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the past I see her as of old, Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold; Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume, As of a moonlit primrose brimmed with rain, Breathes from her presence, drowsing ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... of memory into something overwhelming, and he was glad starved vanity might once more be fed. She seemed to him a most piteous spectacle, youth and power in ruins, and age too poor to nourish even a vine to drape ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... taken in part payment of a debt by Montague's father, but, as it portrayed a nude woman, the old Puritan had employed a Melkbridge carpenter to conceal that portion of the figure which the artist had omitted to drape. Montague would have had the shutters removed, but had been prevailed upon by his wife to allow them to remain until Victoria was married, an event which, at present, she had no justification ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... thick and warm but light, six feet long and four feet wide. It was embroidered around the edges with another cloth in darker blue, and the body of it bore many warlike or hunting designs worked skillfully in thread. If the weather were cold Tayoga would drape the blanket about his body much like a Roman toga, and if he lay in the forest at night he would sleep in it. Now he raked dead leaves together, spread the blanket on them, lay on one half of it and used the other ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... in her best dress of brown silk, with her high brown boots well polished, and her small brown hat, made by herself, with a band of crushed burnt orange poppies around the crown, safely anchored and softened by a messaline drape; with her hair drawn over the tops of her ears, and a smart fawn summer coat, with buttons which showed a spot of red like a pigeon-blood ruby. Pearl looked at ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... populated by those celluloid seals and swans and ducks that are now so common. Paper fish appear below the surface and may be peered at by the curious. But on this occasion we have nothing of the kind, nor have we made use of a green-colored tablecloth we sometimes use to drape our hills. Of course, a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects. But the incorporation must be witty, or you may soon convert the whole thing into an ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... convincing facts in arguments that there is a revival in the gentle art of needlecraft is that it has become the fashion to drape our windows, cover our furniture, and panel our walls with printed copies of the Old Jacobean needlework. Many people, knowing nothing whatever about the history of needlework, wonder where the designs for the printed linens which ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... would think, but birth and death we particularly cover and hide, concealing from our friends with conventional phrases, lying about to our children. Over the strong ever-lasting life-processes, we spin veil on veil; drape and smother them till they become sufficiently remote and symbolic ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... is sometimes urged, is used to cloak what is hollow, unmeaning and false, yet may it not also drape gracefully what is ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... men and gods, as a rule, are lacking in originality. The heavy robes which drape them from head to foot give them the appearance of cylinders tied in at the centre and slightly flattened towards the top. The head surmounting this shapeless bundle is the only life-like part, and even the lower half of this is rendered heavy by the hair and beard, whose tightly ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Inlaid tables and Japanese cabinets are littered with priceless porcelain and cloisonne, old silver, and diamond-set miniatures; the low divans are heaped with cushions of deep-tinted satin and gold; heavy violet plush curtains drape the windows; while huge palms, hothouse plants, and bunches of sweet-smelling Russian violets occupy every available nook and corner. The pinewood fire flashes fitfully on a masterpiece of Vereschagin's, which stands on an easel by the hearth, and the massive gold "ikon," [A] encrusted ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... all Angelica's, I knew, but still Evadne was an accomplice, and they neither of them spared me in those days. They would rob my hot-houses of the best fruits and flowers, disarrange my books, turn pictures they did not like with their faces to the wall, drape my statues fantastically, criticise what they called my absurd bachelor habits, and give me good advice on the subject of marriage; Lady Adeline sitting by meanwhile, aiding and abetting them with smiles, although protesting ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ply their silent work elsewhere. The same serenity reigns when all at once the soil yields up a newly wrought creation. Softly the ocean of grass, moss, and flowers rolls surge upon surge across the earth. Curtains of foliage drape the bare branches. Great trees make ready in their sturdy hearts to receive again birds which occupy their spacious chambers to the south and west. Nay, there is no place so lowly that it may not lodge some happy creature. The meadow brook undoes its icy fetters with rippling notes, gurgles, and ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... classes of the men of Mexico dress in cotton, but they wear blankets of all the colors of the rainbow about their shoulders, and they drape these around themselves in a way that adds dignity and grace to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... look at it rapturously. It had been a straight, long gown, and all Phyllis had needed to do was to drape it with the net ripped from the other dress and shorten and cut it into fashionableness. It was charming—springlike and becoming, and, best of ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... for stars. No. I should go bankrupt. Why? Beauty alone is my star. Upon it I drape the mantle ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... of course, is a mere idle compliment. Let me tell you two things, Luis mio: this morning I invited the Russians to dance to-night, and told Padre Abella to ask all our neighbors of the Mission besides; and Rafaella Sal helped me to drape every one of those flags. When I told her you might tear them down, she vowed that if you did she would dance all night ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... both countries. The next day we drove down to see Glastonbury cathedral. England is full of these beautiful ruins, covered with flowers and ivy, but the saddest spectacles, with all this fading glory, are the men, women and children whose nakedness neither man nor nature seeks to drape. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... right off, with his hand out. But it's a social error. Bixby blocks him off graceful. He's in full command, Bixby is. With a one-finger gesture he signals the nurse to drape her rug over the chair. Then he nods to the doctor and the valet to go ahead. They ease Runyon into his seat. Bixby motions 'em to wrap up his knees. By an eyelid flutter he shows the other nurse where to ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... town adorns herself and attires herself like a bride for her wedding; the dark facades of marble and granite disappear beneath hangings of silk and festoons of flowers; the wealthy display their dazzling luxury, the poor drape themselves proudly in their rags. Everything is light, harmony, and perfume; the sound is like the hum of an immense hive, interrupted by a thousandfold outcry of joy impossible to describe. The bells repeat their sonorous sequences in every key; the arcades echo afar with the triumphal ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... you sit tells a great deal about your nature. One of the first secrets it betrays is whether you are by nature graceful or ungainly. The person who sits gracefully, who seems to drape himself becomingly upon a chair and to arise from it with ease ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... harlequin's jacket could not look queerer) by the happy-go-lucky practicalness of the eighteenth century and the Revolution, reduced them thoroughly to rags; and with these rags of Renaissance civilization, Italy may still be seen to drape herself. Not perhaps in the great centres, where the garments of modern civilization, economical, unpicturesque, intended to be worn but a short time, have been imported from other countries; but ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... I commented drily, as I essayed a moment to drape my shoulders with the new sable cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to put aside. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... lower part of the trunks is branchless; stems rise up like tall pillars in long colonnades. But this does not mean that they are bare. Climbing ferns, lichens, pendant grasses, air-plants, and orchids drape the columns. Tough lianas swing in air: coiling roots overspread the ground. Bushes, shrubs, reeds and ferns of every size and height combine to make a woven thicket, filling up and even choking the spaces between trunk and trunk. Supple, snaky vines writhe amid the foliage, and bind ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Prince Consort about the statue, he was rather puzzled what he should do about measuring the face, which he always did for portrait sculpture with a pair of compasses. All these difficulties were at last smoothed over; and Gibson was also permitted to drape the queen's statue in Greek costume, for in his artistic conscientiousness he absolutely refused to degrade sculpture by representing women in the fashionable gown of the day, or men in ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... weather a perfect sun-trap between its two hills. The river runs softly hidden amongst willows, and the dust rises in light clouds with scarce a breath of air. Yet glimpses of cool beautiful green within gates and over stone walls refresh the eyes; vines drape the placid rustic nook that calls itself the library; every other window in the streets is a garland or a posy, and through the doors ajar show vistas of oleanders, magnolias, pomegranates flowering in olive-wood tubs, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... with it, absorbing its message of beauty, and when he tired of it, replacing it with another. I wonder if he had the right way, and we, with so many objects to hang on our walls, place on our shelves, drape on our chairs, and spread on our floors, have mistaken our course and placed our hearts upon the multiplicity rather than the quality ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... are many effects in Whitman which are, I believe, inconsistent with the poetical law. Not to multiply instances, his grotesque word-inventions—"Me imperturbe!" "No dainty dolce affettuoso I," "the drape of the day"—his use of Greek and Latin and French terms, not correctly used and not even rightly spelt, his endless iterations, lists, catalogues, categories, things not clearly visualised or even remotely perceived, but swept relentlessly in, like the debris of some store-room, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been placed on the marble slab in front of one of the long mirrors. Then they went into the small room which was to be the oratory. The only furniture it contained was the square table which they had brought there the evening before. Abby got the muslin, and began to drape the table to resemble an altar; Larry looking on admiringly, volunteering a suggestion now and then. She succeeded pretty well. Larry praised her efforts; he was prouder than ever of his sister,—although, as he remarked, "the corners ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... disappointment. Any whom she treats thus, called her, of course, fitful and changeable, whereas it was in truth the unchangeableness of her ideal and her faithfulness to it that exposed her to blame. She was so true, so much in earnest, and, although gentle, had so little softness to drape the sterner outlines of her character that she was looked upon with dislike by not a few ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... parenthesis. Brown was the man Preferred of all others to carry her fan, Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle May demand of the lover she wants to treat well. Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown— Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown, Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop— Should appear ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... so much concession to the unusual weather as to drape his red handkerchief over his head and place his Panama hat on top of it; but he still wore the thick pilot suit, buttoned up tightly, and stepped out smartly, as though he were a salamander impervious to heat. With his long arms swinging by his side, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... old wives, with dreary joy, Your gray-head hints of ill; And, over sick-beds whispering low, Your prophecies fulfil. Some home amid yon birchen trees Shall drape its door with woe; And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... needlework. They are all "trimmings," in the sense of being decorative edges to more solid materials. They are not available as coverings for warmth or decency; but they serve to give the grace of mystery to the object they drape or veil. They soften the outlines and the colours beneath them, while they permit them to peep through their meshes. They are hardly to be included in what is called high art, having more affinity with grace, refinement ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... been penetrated, withdraws it, folding it into its shell, and closes its door against expected attack. It may feebly fall off the rock, and simulating a dead and empty shell, lie motionless until danger is past. Then again it will drape itself in its garment of invisibility and slide cautiously along in search of its prey. Under the loose rocks and detached lumps of coral for one live there will be scores of dead shells. The whole field is ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... duck canvas. There may be used instead or in addition to the act curtain, what is known as a tableau curtain, that works in a traveler above, which can be drawn straight off stage, both ways, parting in the middle, or be pulled to a drape at each side. This is always made of material and sometimes painted in aniline dye; if painted in water color ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... away Into Flanders by England, sooth to say. And all her woolle was draped for to sell In the Townes of Poperinge and of Bell: Which my Lord of Glocester with ire For her falshed set vpon a fire. And yet they of Bell and Poperinge Could neuer drape her wool for any thing, But if they had English woll withall. Our goodly wooll which is so generall Needefull to them in Spaine and Scotland als, And other costes, this sentence is nnot false: Yee worthy Marchants I doe it vpon yow, I haue this learned ye wot well where ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... regarded Daniel Boone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and always had their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many's the time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young Chi Yi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-faced vests. And there were the Shi Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and the Fli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... death. Therefore, we have a difficulty to contend with in the wearing of black, which is of itself, to begin with, negatory of our professed belief in the resurrection. We confess the logic of despair when we drape ourselves in its gloomy folds. The dress which we should wear, one would think, might be blue, the color of the sky, or white, in token of light which ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... in this same letter that the poet mentions those three great points which I have already laid before you: the fallen obelisk for him to sit on, the white mantle to drape him, and the ruined temples for him to look at. 'It will form a beautiful piece, but,' he sadly calculates, 'it will be rather too big for our northern habitations.' Courage! There will be plenty of room for it in the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... thing that while most organised religions seem to drape about and conceal and smother the statement of the true God, the honest Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is constantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be interesting here to call a witness or ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... east or west, or whichever way it was, was a tall building with glowing bulbs looped like the strings of evergreen she had helped to drape the home church with at Christmas-time. Here it was Christmas every day—all holidays ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Tone managed to keep one state ahead of his reputation. Thus he avoided the iron impedimenta which the laws of the land drape around the ankles and feet that stray from the straight and narrow trail—around wrists and hands whose idleness affords the devil welcome opportunity to function as a ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... and odd air of strangeness seemed to drape his unlighted house as he stood looking up in a kind of furtive communion with its windows. It affected him with that discomforting air of extreme and meaningless novelty that things very familiar ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... holes all round the rim from lobe to top; each hole contains a massive ring almost large and heavy enough for a bracelet, the weight of which pulls the ear all out of shape. Simple yet gaudy costumes prevail-garments of red, yellow, blue, green, olive, and white, with gold tinsel, drape the graceful forms of the dusky Sikh or Jatni belles; and not a whit less picturesque and parti-colored are the costumes of their husbands, brothers, and fathers-fine fellows mostly, tall, straight, military-looking men, with handsome faces ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... glanced down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that drape of net. . ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... beaten. And perhaps it is right in that quality. The victories are not, perhaps, so barren as it may appear from a purely strategical, utilitarian point of view. Mr. Henry James seems to hold that belief. Nobody has rendered better, perhaps, the tenacity of temper, or known how to drape the robe of spiritual honour about the drooping form of a victor in a barren strife. And the honour is always well won; for the struggles Mr. Henry James chronicles with such subtle and direct insight are, though only personal contests, desperate in their silence, none the less heroic ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... skin like blue pencilling; their hair is light and short; their heads, small and round, rest squarely upon necks columnar as the trunks of trees. Woollen tunics, open at the breast, sleeveless and loosely girt, drape their bodies, leaving bare arms and legs of such development that they at once suggest the arena; and when thereto we add their careless, confident, insolent manner, we cease to wonder that the people give them way, and stop after they have passed to look at them again. They are gladiators—wrestlers, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... in water if it is to make bone. Righteousness, on the other hand, is apt to become stern, and needs the softening of goodness to make it human and attractive. The rock is grim when it is bare; it wants verdure to drape it if it is to be lovely. Truth needs kindliness and righteousness, and they need truth. For there are men who pride themselves on 'speaking out,' and take rudeness and want of regard for other people's sensitive feelings to be sincerity. And, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... that is my tree; I want it to drape that bare knoll. The roots will run below the bed of the race. The boys can get plenty ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... remoteness in his books. Only when buried in the deep world of ancient story or when ranging through the widest field of time did he become most himself. Then he invited no comparisons with familiar actualities and could assemble the most magnificent glories according to his whims and could drape them in the most gorgeous stuffs. What especially touched his imagination was the spectacle of imperial Rome as interpreted to him by French decadence: that lust for power and sensation, those incredible temples, palaces, feasts, revelries, ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... chair upon a platform, up-stage, centre, with two or three steps surrounding it on three sides. Drape this ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... female reticules— And nothing found—some business must be done. By Jove—I'd rather turn Lascar at once: Allow the walnut's devastating juice To track its inky course along my cheek, And stain my British brow with Indian brown. Or, failing that, I'd rather drape myself In cheap white cotton, or gay colored chintz— Hang roung my ear the massive curtain-ring— With strings of bold, effective glassy beads Circle my neck—and play the Brahmin Priest, To win the sympathy of passing crowds, And melt the silver in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... foot, You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn a slave! Rather I hail thee, Parnes,—trust to thy wild waste tract! Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave No deity deigns to drape with verdure?—at least I can breathe, Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the mute!" Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. Right! ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... household words among us—Irving, Cooper, Longfellow—have they not found in the rich store of Indian poetry the source of their choicest thought? Nay, I will go farther, because it may be said that the a poet would be prone to drape with poetry every subject on which his fancy lighted, as the sun turns to gold and crimson the dullest and the dreariest clouds: but Search the books of travel amongst remote Indian tribes, from Columbus to Catlin, from Charlevoix to Carver, from Bonneville to Pallisser the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... mallets and chisels; you will be bowed over your work, with eyes and thoughts bent earthwards, abject as abject can be, with never a free and manly upward look or aspiration; all your care will be to proportion and fairly drape your works; to proportioning and adorning yourself you will give little heed enough, making yourself of less ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata |
