"Knot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charmed and patient Bess! She was so slight, yet round and supple—strong, too, with the strength of perfect health! The thick fluffed black hair was rolled away from her face and gathered into a low knot in the nape of her neck. Her dress cut low at the throat enhanced the white purity of her face and the slim round grace of her neck which showed to advantage against the ebony flank of the mother of many milky ways. Her ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... be speedy; a Priest shall be ready To tye the holy knot; this kiss I send him, Deliver ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... fairy story. You don't tell fairy stories at Christmas; they're for summer, when the windows are open and they can hide in the flowers and ride on the wind—the fairies, I mean—but this is Christmas." She twisted herself into a knot of quivering joy and hugged her arms with rapturous intensity. "It's all in my bones, and I'm nothing but shivers. Isn't it grand to have Christmas in your bones? Have you got it in yours?" She held Laine's face between ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... and Tom jumped out of the boat, holding me by the ears. The hounds were all on the beach, most of them lying down, for they were very tired, but the men were standing in a knot at a distance talking earnestly, Tom ran to the ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... he knew, as he proposed to have Ray bailed out instanter no matter what that young gentleman's wishes might be, and Blake, giving her his arm, escorted Mrs. Rallston through the bustling streets until they reached the jail. Even then there was a little knot of hangers-on watching with wolfish curiosity every comer. The officials touched their hats to Blake and his veiled companion, and looked admiringly at her tall, graceful form. Already something was beginning to whisper ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... Maguelonne is but one knot in the long thread of cordon littoral that reaches from Cette to Aigues Mortes, and it can be reached on foot by land from Palavas, but the simplest and shortest route is by boat in half an hour ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... out. When we had completed the circle of the cromlechs, we came suddenly upon him. More to our dismay than surprise he had become the centre of a little knot of excursionists, who were listening to him eagerly. As ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... light. Soon the heat became unbearable and I too tore off jersey and shirt. Liosha joined me and we worked together without speaking. Her long thick hair had come down and she had hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might tie a knot in a towel, and she had thrown off things like everybody else and only a flimsy cotton, sleeveless bodice, or whatever it's called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretence of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... they could not get lights. Added to this it was raining hard. The hotel apparently could not supply natives with food at such an hour, and it was necessary for them to go and look for it. This sad story greeted X. when his own dinner was done. But the kind President of the Landraad cut the knot of this dilemma and soon provided a caterer, protector, and guide ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... set, but not so acutely as in the Chinese and some other Mongols. Jaws frequently are prognathous, mouth large, with sometimes rather thick lips. Hair black, straight, and worn long, the hair of people who adopt the old style being caught up in a knot at the back. Some males cut the hair short with the exception of a single lock at the back, which is called u niuhtrong or u niuh-' iawbei (i.e. the grandmother's lock.) The forepart of the head is often shaven. It is quite the exception to see a beard, although the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... of cases, quite sufficient to insure good behavior; for the slaves were well aware of the difference between life in the well-managed establishments in Virginia and that in some of the other Southern States. Handing his horse to Dan, Vincent joined a knot of four or five of his acquaintances who had strolled ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... figures, each to its simple apex,—one little point containing the essence and secret of the whole. Once or twice in the course of a lifetime are a few men permitted to catch a glimpse of these awful Beginnings,—to touch for a minute the knot where all the tangled threads ravel themselves out smoothly. I had found such a place,—had had such an ineffable vision,—and, overwhelmed with tremendous awe, I sank on my knees, lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... he, haggard and hapless, on the leads of the tower, which were nought small; and there gathered together in a knot, and all gazing eagerly out over the lake, he found a dozen of men-at-arms and the castellan amongst them. They took no heed of him as he came up, though he stumbled as he crossed the threshold and came clattering over the lead floor, and he ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... through his eyes, Arrows which were her nailed-scratched bosom, her reddened sleep-denied eyes, her crimson lips from a bath of kisses, her hair disarranged with the flowers awry, and her girdle all loose and slipping. With hair knot loosened and stray locks waving, her cheeks perspiring, her glitter of lips impaired, And the necklace of pearls not appearing fair because of her jar-shaped breast being denuded, And her belt, her glittering girdle, dimmed in beauty, The happy ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... — Select three things you most wish to know; write them down with a new pen and red ink on a sheet of fine-wove paper, from which you must previously cut off all the corners and burn them. Fold the paper into a true-lover's knot, and wrap round it three hairs from your head. Place the paper under your pillow for three successive nights, and your curiosity to know the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... again—yes, there was a group beneath his window. "Faster! faster!" she cried frantically; "faster if you can." The door was at last reached; she sprang from the carriage and pressed through the little knot of people who were gathered on the pavement. Alas! her presentiments were correct. There, lying on the pavement, was the mangled form of her father, who had desperately sprung from the balcony above, to escape arrest from the man with the keen grey eyes, who, with ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... those which are growing all about upon the tree. If we do not watch the female when she settles to her young or eggs we may search in vain for this tiniest of homes, so closely does it resemble an ordinary knot on a branch. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... age The web of island parentage; Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance, For any festal circumstance: And fitly fashion oar and boat, A palace or an armour coat. None more availed than he to raise The strong, suffumigating blaze, Or knot the wizard leaf: none more, Upon the untrodden windward shore Of the isle, beside the beating main, To cure the sickly and constrain, With muttered words and waving rods, The gibbering and the whistling gods. But he, though thus with hand and head He ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... step, close to the black water, he passed the rope through the ring, and tied it deftly in a loose knot that any backward movement of the boat would tighten. She watched with profound attention his hands moving quickly in the faint light cast by ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... dark inn-yard, And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred; He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord's daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in bridging the gap? As yet there were no signs of light in the castle windows, except the lurid reflections of the northern sky. But in any event there was no time to spare. Renwick tied a large knot and a loop in the end of the rope and then carefully lowered it over the northern wall, measuring its length by his arms, as it went over. Fifty yards, sixty, seventy, eighty—when it stretched taut. Eighty yards! Sick with anxiety, he crawled upon his stomach to the edge of the precipice ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... work; also that marriage unites two into one human form, so that they are no longer two but one flesh. 3. That nuptials are the commencement of an entire separation of the love of the sex from conjugial love, which is effected while, by a full liberty of connection, the knot is tied by which the love of the one is devoted to the love of the other. 4. It appears as if nuptials were merely an interval between those two states, and thus that they are mere formalities which ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... soil are of the same hue, and the few clumps of cypresses add to the pallor of the scene with their dark funereal shafts. The only bit of color is where a cluster of low red-washed houses have found room for their scanty foundations on a knot of rock where several chasms converge. Where the sides of the chasms slope gently enough to admit of being terraced, vineyards are planted, which yield famous wines, the red Aleatico and the white Vino Santo, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... other furniture of the room was a chair with a broken back. On the floor lay the gipsy's wallet, and his abarcas, which he had taken off to avoid noise during his clandestine entrance into the house. The gipsy himself was busy tying slip-knot at the end of a stout rope about seven or eight yards long. Another piece of cord, of similar length and thickness, lay beside him, having much the appearance of a halter, owing to the noose already made at one of its extremities. The tiles and rafters covering the room were green with damp, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... gown, but with none of her old niceness of detail. She merely put it on. Her wet hair she twisted into a knot without glancing at the mirror. As she entered the parlor she staggered slightly. Talbot averted his eyes. He may have had similar cases, and, as a doctor, become hardened to all manifestations of human weakness, but this patient ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... untying the last knot. "Spit out what you're drivin' at," he cried bluntly; "this ain't no time for sideshow barkin'. The big show is about ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... excited when they showed her, with the Baby, gossiping among a knot of sage old matrons, and affecting to be wondrous old and matronly herself, and leaning in a staid, demure old way upon her husband's arm, attempting—she! such a bud of a little woman—to convey ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... one pump going every hour, he stuck to it for another seven hours, when the crew called out "she sucks!" i.e., the well is dry. This was gladsome news. It is gladsome even under favourable circumstances, but here were men who had stood almost continuously up to the waist in water; and sometimes a knot of a sea would smash right over them. Their sleeves were doubled up and they had neither boots nor stockings on. Their hands were cut and their arms and legs were red raw with friction and salt water boils. Let ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Henrietta, "I forgot the secret spring; the fourth plank of the flooring—press on the spot where you will observe a knot in the wood. Those are the instructions; press, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... proceeded the picture, was managed by a hidden operator, evidently from his voice, occasionally overheard, a mere boy; and an old man, like a broken-down clergyman, whose dirty white neckcloth seemed adjusted on a secret understanding of moral obliquity, its knot suggesting a gradual approach to the last position a knot on the neck can assume, kept walking up and down the parti-colored gloom, flaunting a pretense of lecture on the scenes presented. Whether he was a little drunk or greatly in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Pee-wee was all tangled up with the two big placards and the rope that had held them together, and the whole business, Pee-wee, placards, rope and all, looked like a double sailor's knot having an epileptic fit. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... I suppose?" retorted Hozier, for the now visible schooner had not attempted to change her course by half a point. She was now bowling along with every stitch set before a five-knot breeze from the east; the tilt of her sails was such that she practically presented only the outline of her spars when first sighted from the steamer; and her side lights probably had tallow ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... against it with ghostly face. She quickly stuffed the corner of her apron into her mouth to keep back the scream of agony that involuntarily rose to her lips. Her thin hands were tightly clinched and her body half drawn into a knot. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... curl. Altogether, I was rather proud of him. But the result of my crude attempt at surgery became manifest when I finally removed the splints. The limb had grown together, it is true, but it was dreadfully crooked, and a large knot appeared where the fracture had been. When he tried to walk, I discovered that this leg was a trifle shorter than its mate, and poor Fido limped a little, but I believe this only added ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... were you down to the pond this late for?" asked Bea, flitting about in her white dress, with the softest color in her cheeks, a knot of blush roses in her hair, and another ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... now up to you to cinch again, with your foot in the pack, as I did here just a little. That tightens all the slack clear to your corners. Now when your rope comes back to me for the last tightening I haul it hard as I can and tie off at my cinch-ring. I use a knot which I can jerk loose easily if I want to tighten or loosen the pack on the trail. So, there you are, all set." And Uncle Dick slapped old Billy on the hip as he stood groaning in great pretense of suffering, at which old Billy walked forward a few steps and stood ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... neutral-tinted spectacles, and the white canvas Spanish sand shoes of the modern Scotch missionary: but instead of a cheap tourist's suit from Glasgow, a grey flannel shirt with white collar, a green sailor knot tie with a cheap pin in it, he wears a suit of clean white linen, acceptable in color, if not in cut, ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... to hoping that once across the threshold of Courcelles he should find an expedient for unfastening this Gordian knot of his own tying. There are believers in the omnipotence of necessity who never turn back; the close presence of danger is an inspiration that calls out all their powers for victory. Gaston de Nueil was one ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... is begun at the inner side of the slit. Always place the knot on the outside of the garment a short distance to the right of the buttonhole, leaving a long stitch underneath which can be cut off when the buttonhole is finished. A buttonhole should be completed with one thread if possible as it is difficult to mend ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... hoar beaches and the kindled cliffs Of falling waters. These he waded through, Beholding, past the forests of the West, A break of light and homes of many men, And shining corn, and flowers, and fruits of flowers. Yea, seeing these, the facile-footed chief Grasped by the knot the huge Aeaean lance And fell upon the farmers; wherefore they Left hoe and plough, and crouched in heights remote, Companioned with the grey-winged fogs; but he Made waste their fields and throve upon their ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... of it," I replied, confidently. "They hurried the Islander down the river; and when both vessels are doing their best the Sylvania gains about a knot an hour on the Islander. I have tried this with her when she had a sailing-master on board who knew all about her, and had sailed her hundreds of miles. I don't believe Captain Blastblow can do any better with her than Captain Braceback; and I used ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... victory follow you, lad!" said the king's daughter. "I am safe for one night, but the beast will come again and again, until the other two heads come off it." He caught the beast's head, and he drew a knot through it, and he told her to bring it with her there to-morrow. She gave him a gold ring, and went home with the head on her shoulder, and the herd betook himself to the cows. But she had not ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... might be seen in old Mrs. Gadabout's sky-blue livery, with a tarnished, gold-laced hat, nodding over his nose; and on a third he would shine forth in Mrs. Major-General Flareup's cockaded one, with a worsted shoulder-knot, and a much over-daubed light drab livery coat, with crimson inexpressibles, so tight as to astonish a beholder how he ever got into them. Humiliation, however, has its limits as well as other things; ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... "soreheads" found themselves extremely uncomfortable. None of their fellow-students, among the boys, would notice them. Whenever some of the "soreheads" passed a knot of other boys, low-toned laughs followed. Even many of the girls, it proved, had taken ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... was raised in squatter country behind a barb-wire fence, who has to gentle his horses before he can sit up on one, who has hitched a gun on his belt because he thinks it's the thing to do, and has stowed it in a place where he'd have to tie himself in a knot—or undress—to reach it. And then you talk of pulling the Three Bar out of a hole! Why, there are twenty men within fifty miles of here that would kill you ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... essentials had been won, the old dividing lines began to melt away. All but a small knot of Tory irreconcilables now agreed that the majority must rule, and that this would neither smash the Empire nor make an end of order and justice in the province itself. But who were to unite to form that majority, and what was to be their platform? In ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... Tringa canutus, Brisson. French, "Becasseau canut," "Becasseau maubeche."—Common as the Knot is on the south and west coast of England during autumn and winter, it is by no means so common in the Channel Islands. I have never shot it there myself in any of my autumnal expeditions. Miss C.B. Carey records one, however, in the 'Zoologist' ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... honestly, in his shaggy rough male fashion, reverence and cling to the flower of souls he named as his wife. His piteous groans of self-accusation during the crisis haunted her, and made the conduct and nature of men a bewilderment to her still young understanding. Save for the knot of her sensations (hardly a mental memory, but a sullen knot) which she did not disentangle to charge him with his complicity in the blind rashness of her marriage, she might have felt sisterly, as warmly as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lose much pleasure from your ignorance of the rudiments of learning. Take my advice and study. It's not too late to begin. Nonsense! difficult! everything worth doing is difficult! There's pleasure in overcoming difficulties. Come, you have begun to teach me seamanship— to knot and splice—to reef and steer. I'll teach you to read, and then the way is open to you to teach yourself whatever you like. Navigation! certainly. Why, you would have been master of a vessel by this time if you had known that." In the interval of Newman's ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... overcoat was lined with astrakan, and this important fact was casually betrayed at the lapels and at the sleeves. He wore a black silk necktie, with a small pearl pin in the mathematical centre of the perfect rhomboid of the upper part of a sailor's knot. His gloves were of slate colour. The chief characteristic of his faintly striped trousers was the crease, which seemed more than mortal. His boots were of glace kid and as smooth as his cheeks. The cheeks ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... wireless began to crackle and splutter in an animated explanation of our unexpected appearance. Our hawsers had scarcely been made fast before a launch left the flag-ship and came plowing toward us, a knot of white-uniformed officers in the stern. From the blue rug with the Italian arms, which, as I could see through my glasses, was draped over the stern-sheets, I deduced that the commander of the flotilla ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Elizabeth Street. Its front was painted a dull red, and the narrow panes of glass in its windows, and the ostentatious affectation of red curtains and homely comfort, gave to it a spurious appearance of old English jollity. A knot of men round the door melted into air as Captain Frere approached, for it was now past eleven o'clock, and all persons found in the streets after eight could be compelled to "show their pass" or explain their business. The convict ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... is very seldom danced—quite a large number of couples are called, who form a ring around the room. The leader, taking the hand of one of the men, breaks the chain, and the couples are wound around until they come together in a knot, when the signal is given to them to waltz. The wheel figure is somewhat similar, and is quite ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... whiles the hert o' man may gang the wrang. gait by bein' ower wise in its ain conceit o' expeckin' ower little, jist as weel's in expeckin' ower muckle, an' sae I'm b'un' to tell ye, laird,'at yer expectations frae this knot o'metal,—for metal we maun alloo it to be, whatever else it be or bena—yer expectations, I say, are a'thegither wrang, for it's no more siller nor ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... island. After having passed the night in this condition, the bird flew away as soon as it was daylight, and carried me so high that I could not discern the earth; she afterward descended with so much rapidity that I lost my senses. But when I found myself on the ground, I speedily untied the knot, and had scarcely done so, when the roc, having taken up a serpent of a monstrous length in her bill, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... some other and newly-conceived thought in his mind. He looked two or three times shrewdly and furtively into the face of the young Marchese; and closely compressed his thin lips together, and drew into a knot the shaggy eye-brows over his clear and thoughtful eyes. Some notion had been suggested to his mind which very plainly he did ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... disenchantment was anything but glorious. Roughly seizing him, the two men forced him stiffly upright in the chair, drew his arms about the back of it, and there secured them, wrist to wrist, drawing the knot until Alex almost cried out in pain. Then, as tightly, they bound his ankles to the lower rungs, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... The severity which he had long dealt out toward all sorts of offenders made him the object of the deepest vengeance. In a lonely hollow of his woods, watching at midnight with two of his men, there came a sturdy knot of poachers. An affray ensued. The men perceived that their old enemy, Sir Roger, was there: and the blow of a hedge-stake stretched him on the earth. His keepers fled—and thus ignominiously terminated the long line of the Rockvilles. Sir Roger ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... through which he had passed as at something infinitely remote. He could not realize distinctly what had happened. He was only aware that everything was over, that with a few words he had broken his life into small pieces. Too impatient to unravel the tangled knot, he had cut it, and nothing ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... different experiences. From the time he could crawl he had struggled to accommodate himself to the great connection of things; even the life of the prison had not placed him outside it, but had only united him the more closely with the whole. He had no inclination to cut the knot, but demanded ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... so disgusted their Presbyterian confederates, that the latter seceded altogether from the confederacy. The doctrines taught by the party which remained became increasingly bold, and it was soon apparent that the league was a knot of conspirators, whose object was to transfer the property of the Protestant landlords of Ireland to the hands of their Roman Catholic tenants, the former having a sort of rentcharge upon their own land, which would in time have been also taken from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... think that could ever happen? I want her to live in town, you want her to stay at home. The arithmetical result would be that she remain at the railway station midway between train and home. This is a knot that ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... The knot was strongly tied, but Darsie's fingers were strong also and in a minute's time it was undone, and the corners of the handkerchief dropped on the grass to reveal an inner bag of thick grey linen tied ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Hal, and bent his bow, "Just watch this famous shot; See that old willow by the brook— I'll hit the middle knot." Swift flew the arrow through the air, Madge watched it eager-eyed; But, oh! for Harry's gallant vaunt, The ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... medicine man has been down among the spirits of the dead, and in proof of his assertions, a curiously shaped stone, or a knot of wood, is displayed, which has been given by the spirits and is endowed with all sorts of marvellous properties. I have in my possession a Dayong's whole outfit of charms which I bought from his relatives after his death; ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... then recent history of Asia, Marco is often inaccurate, e.g. in his account of the death of Chinghiz, in the list of his successors, and in his statement of the relation ship between notable members of that House.[13] But the most perplexing knot in the whole book lies in the interesting account which he gives of the Siege of Sayanfu or Siang-yang, during the subjugation of Southern China by Kublai. I have entered on this matter in the notes (vol. ii. p. 167), ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... dream. An old crone is selling roasted chestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsy soldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong side foremost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long curls and high caps, are talking eagerly in their own language, clutching the little bags they hide in the sleeves of their yellow Eastern gowns—the men who mourned for Caesar and for Augustus, whose descendants ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... hair. This is unusual and he finds a knot that is harder than any Gordian knot whatsoever. He smoothes and strokes his whiskers. He goes so far as to slap himself for dust. He puts a sprig of flowers—amazing!—in the front of his cloak. He practices a smile and gesture. He seems to speak. He claps ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to gather. Presently he recovered his breath. The blow had completely sobered and calmed him. He felt that he could face anything now. The jail was just across the street, so they walked, pursued by a knot ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... therefore fall down in convulsions when they are hunted—hence their name "eleend." Sailors are said to have purchased on the north-west coast of Norway for ten crowns and a pound of tobacco three knots of wind from the Lapps living there, who were all magicians; when the first knot was loosed, a gentle breeze arose, the second gave a strong gale, the third a storm, during which the vessel was in danger of being wrecked.[146]. Novaya Zemlya is stated to be inhabited by a peculiar tribe, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... she felt, dismiss Lousteau, who affected to be unable to look at her; she herself felt such pity as might cut every social Gordian knot. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... had resumed the conduct of affairs since the morning of the 27th—the Emperor William, itching to cut the knot, driven on by his Staff and his generals—to him and no other must we trace the responsibility for this insolent move which made war inevitable. "The heads of the army insisted," was all that Herr von Jagow ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... puffed out clouds of bluish smoke into the clear air of the hot May morning. Then he looked at the position of the sun and verified the fact that his nickel watch had stopped again. The shaky little house hung like a chance knot in an endless wire in the middle of the glittering double row of rails that stretched from east to west across the flowery prairie. It looked like a ridiculous freak in the midst of the wide desert, for nowhere, so far as the eye could reach, was it possible ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the shape of an hour-glass. Their hair is generally cut so as to leave a narrow band in front; this is brushed back, but often falls forward on the face or in front of the ears. Back of this the hair is kept well oiled and is combed straight to the back of the head, where it is tied in a knot. Into this knot is pushed a wooden comb decorated with incised lines filled with lime, or inlaid with beads. On festive occasions more elaborate combs, with plumes or other decorations attached, are worn. Aside from these ornaments ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... advantage, the worrier allows herself to get more and more oppressed by her anxieties,—as we have seen a child grow cross over a snarl of twine which, with very little patience, might be easily unravelled, but in which, in the child's nervous annoyance, every knot is pulled tighter. Perhaps we ought hardly to expect as much from the worried student as from the child, because the ideas of how to study arc so vague that they seldom bring a realization of the fact that there might be an improvement ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... impossible not to say something, Cecil laid himself out to be agreeable, and Miss Arminster, who was naturally aware of the awkwardness of his position, did her best to promote conversation, while Spotts almost immediately cut the Gordian knot by excusing himself on the plea ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... it. When the preliminary survey was being made, Nicholas learned that the officers intrusted with the task—and the Minister of Ways and Roads in the number—were being influenced more by personal than by technical considerations, and he determined to cut the Gordian knot in true Imperial style. When the Minister laid before him the map with the intention of explaining the proposed route, he took a ruler, drew a straight line from the one terminus to the other, and remarked in a tone that precluded all discussion, "You will construct the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... heights. Helene's breathing, so light and gentle, did not ruffle the chaste repose of her bosom. She was in a beauteous sleep, peaceful yet sound, her profile perfect, her nut-brown hair twisted into a knot, and her head leaning forward somewhat, as though she had fallen asleep while eagerly listening. At the farther end of the room the open door of an adjoining closet seemed but a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... every glimpse of Nature, if you would taste her beauties, even on canvas, with perfect relish and childish self-abandonment. How I loved and blessed those painters! how I thanked Creswick for every transparent shade-chequered pool; Fielding, for every rain-clad down; Cooper, for every knot of quiet cattle beneath the cool grey willows; Stanfield, for every snowy peak, and sheet of foam-fringed sapphire—each and every one of them a leaf out of the magic book which else was ever closed to me. Again, I say, how I loved and blest those painters! On the other hand, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... In heavy weather small bulk must always mean comparatively small speed. In a moderate sea, we are now told, the speed of the torpedo-boat falls from twenty knots to fifteen or less, and the seventeen to nineteen knot cruiser can either run away from the pursuing boats, or else hold them at a distance under fire of machine and heavy guns. These boats are sea-going, "and it is thought can keep the sea in all weathers; but to be on board a 110-foot ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... had to do, and I warn't goin' to take no chances of its not doin' it right. As to that boom, I want to tell ye that I picked that boom out o' about two hundred sticks in Tom Carlin's shipyard, in Stonington, and had it scraped and ironed just to please me. There ain't a rotten knot in it from butt to finish, and mighty few of any other kind. That stick's growed right—that's what's the matter with it; and it bellies out in the middle, just where ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said, "are spirits those I hear?" And he to me: "Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go unloosing." ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... herself from the vehicle unhurt; a group immediately formed round the cab, a knot of young thieves, almost young enough for infant schools, a dustman, a woman nearly naked and very drunk, and two unshorn ruffians with brutality stamped on every feature, with pipes in their mouths, and their hands in ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... hold two pieces of material together until a permanent stitch can be put in. It is done by taking long stitches (one-fourth inch) from right to left and parallel to the edges that are to be basted together. In starting, the thread is fastened with a knot; when completed, it is fastened by taking two or three stitches ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... be sure we did drink, for it had been months and months since we had had such water, pure, sweet, free from the terrible alkali and stagnant taste that had been in almost every drop we had seen. Rogers leveled his shot gun at some birds and killed a beautiful one with a top knot on his head, and colors bright all down his neck. It was a California quail. We said birds always lived where human beings did, and we had great hopes born to us of a better land. I told John that if the folks were only there now I could kill game ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... steady five-knot breeze was blowing, so that I was now not more than quarter of a mile from the reef. I was soon at the entrance; and as the schooner glided quickly through, I glanced affectionately at the huge breaker as if it had been the same one I had seen there when I bade adieu, as ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... table was a fine sword, with a red velvet scabbard, and a beautiful chased silver handle, with a blue ribbon for a sword-knot. "What is this?" says the Captain, going up to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... you! See, my mouth's the same way too. Feels like a knot. Gee, you cute little thing, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and in a number of civilized people the man possesses an unlimited right of rejection. The Hovas compare marriage to a loosely tied knot. Among the ancient Jews, Romans, Greeks and Germans, discontent of the husband was a sufficient reason for rejection. On the contrary, among a number of savage races (Westermark mentions about twenty-five) rejection and divorce are extremely rare ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... The grapes are not high enough in quality for a home vineyard, and, while they ship well, are hard to handle because of the large size and rigidity of the bunches. Another fault is that the vines are subject to root-knot. The chief asset of the variety is handsome appearance of fruit. This variety is remarkable for the number of second-crop bunches which it produces on the laterals. ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... knight like Bayard, Without reproach or fear; My light glove on his casque of steel, My love-knot on his spear! ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Roger Necton, the old vicar of Cranwell, he who had united Christopher and his wife Cicely in strange circumstances, and for that deed been obliged to fly for his life when the last Abbot of Blossholme burned Cranwell Towers, came to tie the knot before his great congregation. Notwithstanding that they were both of middle age, Emlyn in her grand gown and the brawny, red-haired Thomas in his yeoman's garb of green, such as he had worn when he wooed her many years before he put on the monk's russet robe, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... snake, to page 280, No. 18 current volume, for a reply, which you considered "sufficient." With your kind permission I would like to speak a few words about the "snakes" in question. When I resided in Pennsylvania, I, in company with many other lads, used to tie a bundle of horse hairs into a hard knot and then immerse them in the brook, when the water began to get warm, and in due time we would have just as many animals, with the power of locomotion and appearance of snakes, as there were hairs in the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... sich modeshty, youngster. Bear up and be a man. It'll soon be over. And if ye make a fuss," he added in a whisper, "I'll knock the head off ye. Do ye mind that?" Then, as if relating his experience to a large and sympathetic audience: "'Twas just that way I felt meself like, when the knot was tied. Wake in the knees sim'larly, and a faylin' like I was a cold dish-cloth wrung out. But Lord, he'll hold up his head agin, I'll ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... moment the distracted President and wild-eyed Gail pushed through the knot of children huddled about the fallen heroine, and demanded huskily, "How is she? Not dead? Thank ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... purposes. Those bejeweled fingers, tremulously eager to caress, surely were not those of a red-handed murderer! Yet if my wiles succeeded, those hands would wear manacles, those fingers convulsively clutch at vacancy, and that musical voice choke with tense strain of the hangman's knot. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... the knot of midshipmen, and he glanced at them inquiringly, as though to see whether these young men intended to ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... truce to your doubts! no one clothed in flesh is permitted to untie that knot, and therefore a thousand fools will hang, drown, and destroy themselves. Do not, O Faustus, forget the end which we proposed to ourselves at our first interview. I promised to show thee men in their nakedness, in order to cure thee of the prejudices thou hadst imbibed from thy books, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... and greater care is observed as to the scenic arrangements, so that it is no longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take place on the street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat flat and insipid ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... little slipper, while another was lying in lazy contemplation, still as death, on the damp, warm floor. Six Armenians were standing together, singing a saucy love-song in their native language with clear-toned voices, and a little knot of fair-haired Persians were slandering Nitetis so fearfully, that a by-stander would have fancied our beautiful Egyptian was some awful monster, like those ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hundred dollars, drawn to his own order and signed by him with the firm's name, and in response to my inquiry as to the meaning of it, he told me it was a little matter he was putting through by a friend for his own accommodation, I cut the knot and insisted on a ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... with her eyes, then with her throat, then with her whole body, shaking her head and rocking herself backwards and forwards. She laughed till her hair came down, and he took it and smoothed it into two sleek straight bands, and tied them in a loose knot under her chin. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... "beautiful Demonstration" of his penmanship which he left behind him was a most intricate piece of what was known as "fine knotting" or "knot work." It was written in "all the known hands of Great Britain." This work occupied every moment of what Abiah Holbrook called his "spare time" for seven years. It was valued at L100. It was bequeathed to Harvard College, unless his wife should need the money which could be ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow |
