"Mantelshelf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ordinary, he inspected the guests through the chink at the hinges of the door before he would enter the room; and this, too, he did as though it had long been natural to him. He kept a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon the mantelshelf had somehow warned him into reticence, so that Mitchelbourne, had he not been addicted to his tobacco, would have learnt no more of the business and would have escaped the extraordinary peril which he was subsequently called ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... own expression—might make a little bit of fun. There was a mask half concealed behind a screen, which, if it did not provoke a start and a scream from some fair visitor, had attention drawn to it by the playful question, 'Who is that behind you?' There was a funny pair of spectacles on the mantelshelf, which Canon Wrottesley would playfully place upon his handsome nose, and to small visitors he would accompany the action by a frolicsome 'wowf-wowf.' He loved juvenile parties when he could wear a coloured paper cap on his head or ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... but he walked to the fireplace, set the candle down upon the dusty mantelshelf among the boxes and bottles, and, drawing forward a chair upon the other side of the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... no," she returned, and going to the mantelshelf, brought a box of matches, one of which she struck, holding it to the end of his cigar. When he had lighted it, he captured her wrist ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... the obscurity of a cabinet, nor contrive that some convenient accident should befall it, wisely preferring "to bear those ills she had than fly to others," etc. And so it still remains a permanent eyesore on her mantelshelf. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... to say, the walls had been decorated by Mr. Whistler, and there was not a piece of furniture in the room that had not belonged to this or that poet deceased. Priceless autograph portraits of all the leading actors and actresses littered the mantelshelf with a reckless prodigality; the two or three choice etchings were, of course, no less conspicuously inscribed to their illustrious confrere by the artists—naturally, the very latest hatched in Paris. There was hardly ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... had never seen before, except in the hands of the little Cupids in the pictures in the drawing-room. Mother Bunch had said that the little brown boys in India looked like the bronze Cupid who was on the mantelshelf, but this little boy was white, or rather sallow-faced, and well dressed too, in a tight, round, leather cap, and a dark blue kind of shaggy gown with hairy leggings; and what he was shooting at was some kind of wild-duck or goose, that came tumbling ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with an old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church candies of yellowish wax. He had thrust his chest out, supporting his shoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large patent-leather foot. As Archer ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... marked by a neatness of its appointments for which the gipsy appearance of Mrs. Duveen had not prepared them. There were several unframed drawings in pastel and water-colour, of birds and animals, upon the walls, and above the little mantelshelf hung a gleaming German helmet, surmounted by a golden eagle. On the mantelshelf itself were fuses, bombs and shell-cases, a china clock under a glass dome, and a cabinet photograph of a handsome man in the uniform of a sergeant of Irish Guards. Before the clock, and resting ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... marble mantelshelf as if it were winter and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in two armchairs that matched, one on each side of the center-table, stared ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... rather grimly, leaning his head on the mantelshelf, and looking into the fire, 'any other way I can only be an expense for years upon years, even if I did get ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and he advanced to shake hands as though she had just entered the room. Mrs. Jasher—knowing his ways—rose to extend her hand, and the two small, stout figures looked absurdly like a pair of chubby Dresden ornaments which had stepped from the mantelshelf. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... behind me and a woman entered, I jumped back almost into her arms. The coloured photograph, staring at me from the opposite wall above the mantelshelf, was a portrait—a portrait of the man I had seen on ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British lieutenants, mere lads, whose scarlet cloaks, exaggerated lace wrist ruffles, and brilliant ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... gotten together all the necessaries for comfort, we have taken nothing for adornment," said he, "and 'twere pity the prison were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from among these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his mantelshelf. Young as thou art, thou hast ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... to the Mont-de-Piete, and when she returned a half-hour later she laid a silver five-franc piece on the mantelshelf and placed the ticket with the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... that, if accused, I should not have moral strength to defend myself, for my weariness was so overwhelming that I did not suffer any longer. The only thing I had strength to do was to watch the swing of the pendulum of the timepiece on the mantelshelf, and to mark the movement of the hands. A quarter of an hour elapsed, half an hour, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... reaching the inn, Biggs told me that she was still at the house. An inquiry whether he had delivered my letter met with the amazing response that they had given him no letter, and when I rushed into the house to ask what had become of it, there it was, on the mantelshelf of the bar-parlour, just where I had left it. Never did a man meet with a worse blow. I knew then that Miss Dolly was done for, and I did not believe that the day could pass and keep the police from Lord ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... different aspect in the eyes of his maudlin brother. Looking round with those bewildered orbs, all this appeared luxury to the wanderer. Mentally he appraised the prints over the mantelshelf, and reckoned how much of his luxuries might be purchased out of them. That was all so much money wasted by the Croesus before him. What a mint of money the fellow must be making; and grudged a little comfort to his brother, his elder brother, the cleverest ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Upon the mantelshelf were many photographs, some of them snap-shots of her schoolfellows and souvenirs of holidays, the odds and ends of portraits and scenes ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... He looked at a timepiece on the mantelshelf, then turned again to his letters, pointing to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... was there, her room retained its normal, pleasant and dainty aspect. All Damaris' little personal effects and treasures adorning dressing and writing-tables, the photographs and ornaments upon the mantelshelf, her books, the prints and pictures upon the walls—even the white dimity curtains and covers, trellised with small faded pink and blue roses—seemed to smile upon her, kindly and confiding. They wanted to be nice, to console and encourage her—McCabe holding them in place and in active good-will ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the mantelshelf opposite struck three. I counted the strokes. I had been in that room nearly ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... but drank two cups of tea, smoking the while innumerable cigarettes. Miss Craven chatted easily until the tea table was taken away and Craven had withdrawn to his usual position on the hearthrug, lounging against the mantelshelf. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... was passed in council; at the end of which they stood beneath their lofty mantelshelf, each with a foot on a brazen fire-dog, and no ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... replied. "I was just trying the glasses." Then I put them down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... kept in the rack, barrels to the front, with dress hats on the shelf, and a mirror in the middle of the mantelshelf. Accoutrements and forage saps were hung on certain hooks, and clothing and other things allowable and necessary were always to be kept in an unvarying order on a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... the glass on the mantelshelf, but he continued to look at Mr. Newman, and presently he forgot the glass. Terror was the word, the terror of a man who finds—unawaited, ambushed in his being—depths and capacities unguessed and appalling. A blank, horror-ridden face fronted his own, till Mr. Newman put his hands before ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... besides the armchair, two other chairs, a piano, a three-legged table, and a cosy corner. Of the walls, one was occupied by the window, the other by a draped mantelshelf bristling with Cupids. Opposite the window was the door, and beside the door a bookcase, while over the piano there extended one of the masterpieces of Maud Goodman. It was an amorous and not unpleasant little hole when the curtains were drawn, and the lights turned on, and the gas-stove ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... was much better furnished than the average apartment of the neighbourhood. There were two sets of dishes where one would have been quite sufficient. On the mantelshelf and around the walls were various unnecessary ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... he cuts with it for his pains,' returned the Uncle. 'Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... said, with quiet amusement at his evident relief, and he got her a chair, the largest and most solid that the room offered, and planted himself opposite her, standing on the hearthrug, with one hand resting on the corner of the high mantelshelf, and the toe of a spurred riding-boot on the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... they mounted was shabby, but far from unattractive. The mantelshelf was brightened with flowers, a piano was squeezed into a corner, and Tricotrin had scarcely put aside his hat when he was greeted by the odour of coffee as excellent as was ever served in the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the window. Fired by my example, the good lady came up to help, and when I returned from a stroll she had garnished it. Two chairs, on which in my innocence I sat, were draped with antimacassars. Some portraits of drab people, stiffly posing, had been placed on the mantelshelf, and some dusty wool mats, set off with wax flowers, were lighting the chest of drawers to sudden beauty. In my then mood the false ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... and extinguished gas lamps. His companions in misfortune resumed a fragmentary disconnected conversation. They touched now on one aspect of the disaster and now on another, and there were intervals of silence. More or less empty cocoa cups were distributed over the table, mantelshelf and piano, and in the middle of the table was a tin of biscuits, into which Mr. Rumbold, sitting round-shoulderedly, dipped ever and again in an absent-minded way, and munched like a distant shooting of coals. It added to the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... uttered the word, Rufus Cameron picked up a sea shell lying on a mantelshelf, and ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the first thing," she declared, "I shall go in the side entry and take down the garden shears and cut the roses to put in the Dresden vases on the marble mantelshelf in the front room." ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... a pile of five or six nibbled-looking volumes in dingy covers resting upon one corner of the low mantelshelf. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china candle-sticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid—an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper—and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... apartment at the back of the house, furnished comfortably but in execrably bad taste. A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, the flue of which had been ingeniously diverted by Sin Sin Wa so that the smoke issued from a chimney of the adjoining premises. On the mantelshelf, which was garishly draped, were a number of photographs of Mrs. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... pictures and hangings; at Desmond's well-worn chair, and the table beside it with his pipe-rack, a photo of his father, and half a dozen favourite books; at the graceful outline of Evelyn's figure where she stood by the wide mantelshelf arranging roses in a silver bowl, her head tilted to one side, a shaft of sunlight from one of the slits of windows, fifteen feet up the wall, turning her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... within but what was shed by the fire and two tallow candles that gutter'd on the mantelshelf. The remaining candlesticks lay in a pool of wine on the floor, amid broken glasses, bottles, scattered coins, dice boxes and pewter pots. In the corner to my right cower'd a potboy, with tankard dangling in his hand, and the contents spilling into his shoes. His wide terrified eyes ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... little as ye don't know, it seems to me," said Mrs. Beale. "There, run along do. It's on top of the mantelshelf alongside the picture tea-tin. It's a red book. Don't go taking the 'Wesleyan Conference Reports' by mistake, the two is both together ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... coming to meet me at the little station at which I was to alight, and my heart beat very fast as I saw his handsome face, surmounted with a soft wide-awake, and which I knew by a photograph long since enshrined upon my mantelshelf, scanning the carriage windows as the train rolled up. He recognized me as infallibly as I had recognized him; he appeared to know by instinct how a young American of an aesthetic turn would look when much divided between eagerness ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... the lady's rescue, they found her in the empty parlour— alone, clutching at the mantelshelf with both hands, and preparing to emit another ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had presided over the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself. It was filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels. The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, and sinking herself into another, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... descry but dimly by the light of the smoking oil-lamp that sat on the mantelshelf above the stove, and which cast a ghastly light upon a row of empty bottles—the sole burden of the once spotless, but ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... and cold. One night, past midnight, when he sat writing and still had writing to do that must be done before he went to bed, he found himself out of coals. He had coals down- stairs, but had never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laundress, she lived among the coal-waggons and Thames watermen—for there were Thames watermen at that ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... chairs made, like the cupboard and table, of old carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel office-chair before the desk. The room looked costly but very bare. Almost the only portable objects were a great porcelain bowl of a wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar boxes on the mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... only the adventure of searching out the wounded that broke the monotony for the Belgian ambulance men. At first they were not hard to find—they were crowded upon the straw in cottage parlours, cleared of all but the cheap vases on the mantelshelf and family photographs tacked upon walls that had not been built for the bloody mess of tragedy which they now enclosed. On their bodies they bore the signs of the tremendous accuracy of the enemy's artillery, and by their number, increasing during the ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Verrochio on top of it, stands against the right wall. In the corner back of it are several columns with tall vases full of flowers. A fireplace occupies the foreground at the left. Above it is a large mirror. On the mantelshelf stands a French clock of simple design. A table surrounded by chairs is placed in front of the fireplace. Farther back along the same wall are shelves piled with sheet music, and above them engravings of Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, and ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... all suitable among the weapons,—I could hardly for such a purpose use the hatchet; the drawer in question was such a little one that to have done so would have been to shiver it to splinters. On the mantelshelf, in an open leather case, were a pair of revolvers. Statesmen, nowadays, sometimes stand in actual peril of their lives. It is possible that Mr Lessingham, conscious of continually threatened danger, carried them about with him as ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... he said, leaning upon the mantelshelf and looking down at the gas flames, "I've never thought that we should all have to live in this crowded house ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... glance he gave increased the sudden chill of his spirits. He saw Mr. Marrapit standing against the mantelshelf—dressing-gowned, hands behind back, face most intensely grim; his glance shifted and he froze, for it rested upon Mrs. Major—hidden by a table from the waist downwards, prim, bolt upright in a chair, face ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... slim, and burnished candlestick Of pewter. The old man lit each wick, And the room leapt more obviously Upon my mind, and I could see What the flickering fire had hid from me. Above the chimney's yawning throat, Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote, Was a mantelshelf of polished oak Blackened with the pungent smoke Of firelit nights; a Cromwell clock Of tarnished brass stood like a rock In the midst of a heaving, turbulent sea Of every sort of cutlery. There ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... gun when out of doors, mainly with the object of shooting any kingfisher he might chance to see, as the dead bird always formed an acceptable present to the cottager's wife, who would get it stuffed and keep it as an ornament on her parlour mantelshelf! ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the room, and from a cedar box on the mantelshelf drew out a small shining revolver. She ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... as she opened the tea-room door. She was hot and tired and hurried. The little clock on the mantelshelf said a quarter to twelve as she closed the door behind her and then she saw that there was a customer at a far table in the corner and realized how late she was. A short, fat little woman was sitting tensely on the edge of a chair, looking about her with quick, restless, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... at the brusqueness of his manner had I not caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf. Dusty and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every feature, I should scarcely have ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... me smoke, an' search a bit, An' ask Doreen wot 'as became uv it, An' turns the mantelshelf all upside-down, An' looks inside the teapot, with a frown; Then gives it up, an' owns I'd like a drink; When Missus Flood sez, "Bill, wot do ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... to go out to dinner, and as he stood in his cosy bachelor rooms—a pleasant, artistic little place with soft crimson carpet, big, comfortable, leather arm-chairs, and a profusion of photographs, mostly of the fair sex, decorating mantelshelf and walls—his brows were narrowed and he blew big clouds of cigarette smoke from ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... letter from the pocket of his doublet, and handed it to her. Then he took the lamp from the mantelshelf and held it ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... come back to its own beautiful colour," I had said, as I nodded to a little phial labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen" on her mantelshelf. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... there a Venetian mirror or an ivory statuette. The fire purred and crackled softly; there was no other sound. The tiny figure in the ebony chair was as motionless as one of the Indian idols that grinned at her from her mantelshelf. ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... and delicate Worcester china of the Doctor's tea equipage, and fell through the open French window into the Doctor's drawing-room. A wonderful room it was, as everything in the house was wonderful, a spacious, airy room, furnished in white and gold, with Dresden figures on the mantelshelf; Venetian mirrors, dainty water-colours sunk into the panels, cases of rare books (among them, as I remember, a set of the Cabinet des Fees, bound in rose-coloured morocco and stamped with the Royal arms of France), stands of music, and a priceless harpsichord inlaid with ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... sunk upon the hearth, crumbling in hearts of fire: on the outer edges the ashes grew grey. The candles of coarse mould, stuck in a rude sconce upon the wall above the mantelshelf, guttered to their end, set aslant by wafts of errant wind that came in through the half-open door and crevices of the window. It grew cold, and Montaiglon shook himself into wakefulness. He sat up in his chair and looked about him with some sense ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... belonged one to the other, they had killed a man, and played an atrocious comedy in order to be able to love in peace, and they sat there, one on either side of a mantelshelf, rigid, exhausted, their minds disturbed and their frames lifeless! Such a denouement appeared to them horribly and cruelly ridiculous. It was then that Laurent endeavoured to speak of love, to conjure up the remembrances of other days, appealing to ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... I was alone. I listened; the doors were being closed, I heard a carriage roll along the road; the flame of the two candles placed upon the mantelshelf quivered silently and were reflected in ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... baby grand whose top was pleasantly littered with photographs and bonbon dishes and flower vases; at the smart little fire snapping in the grate; at the cheerful reds and blues and ochres and sombre blues and purples and greens of the books in the open bookshelves; at the squat clock on the mantelshelf; at the gorgeous splashes of black and gold glimpsed through the many-paned window. "You've got everything you really want right here"—his gesture seemed, somehow, to include himself—"if you ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... his white iron bedstead, with the valley in the middle of the lumpy mattress and the darns in the rumpled pillowcases; at the dull photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more like home. It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart, and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was the fireplace, the lofty mantelshelf being surmounted by a circular mirror, so inclined as to reflect the landscape outside. Upon the panelled walls hung numerous specimens of the elegant industry of Bessie's predecessors—groups of flowers embroidered on tarnished ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... counsellor and confidante from his earliest years, and the little parlour, with its antiquated furniture and works of art-in wool, its haunting odour of pot-pourri emanating from the big china jar upon the mantelshelf, and its moist warm atmosphere dimly filtered through the drooping green and gold of the laburnum tree, whose leaves tapped incessantly against the lozenged panes of its barred windows, was almost as familiar in his memory in after years ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... and blind instinct got him on to the coach as the safest place. Harry Chatswood had stood with his long, gaunt figure hung by an elbow to the high mantelshelf, all the time, taking alternate gulps from his pint of coffee and puffs from his pipe, and very calmly ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... passages; finally into a large low matted chamber, with a row of little lattice windows. Comfort and simplicity were in all its arrangements; a little fire burning for her; Eleanor's trunks in a closet. When Mrs. Caxton had shewed her all that was necessary, she set down her candle on the low mantelshelf, and took Eleanor in her arms. Again those peculiar, gentle firm kisses fell upon her lips. But instead of "good ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... would not leave Henrietta who had to be cared for, perhaps protected; she would not persuade her who had to be happy, but she felt a sinking of the heart which was almost physical. She rested both hands on the mantelshelf and on them her weight. She felt as though she could not go on like this for ever. She, who apparently had no ties, was never free; she had the duties without the joys, and for these few minutes, before a knock came at the door, she allowed herself the relief of melancholy. She was incapable ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... be very depraved, Cissy," Vera would answer, indignantly, "but I have not yet sunk so low as to desire that every draper's assistant may have the privilege of buying my likeness for a shilling to stick up on his mantelshelf, with a tight-rope dancer on one side, and a burlesque ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... off the ugly, blue spectacles which he had adopted of late, and laid them upon the mantelshelf. He did not need them in the flickering firelight, which alone illumined the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... true. In the whirl of excitement, with late nights and later mornings, and never-ending frivolity, my very letters had lain on my mantelshelf unopened! ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... her hand. Then she opened that letter to Sir William Patterson, and added a postscript to it. "What I have since done will explain everything." That was all she added, and on the following morning, about noon, she put the letter on the mantelshelf. Late at night she took herself to bed, and was surprised to find that she slept. The key of the old desk was under her pillow, and she placed her hand on it the moment that she awoke. On leaving her own room she stood for a moment at her daughter's door. It might be, if she ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... own pipe from the mantelshelf and sat down opposite me. A moment later, two puffs of ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... made by someone accustomed to making accurate mechanical drawings. And now we will return to Mr. Barlow. He was out when I called, but I took the liberty of glancing round the office, and this is what I saw. On the mantelshelf was a twelve-inch flat boxwood rule, such as engineers use, a piece of soft, red rubber, and a stone bottle of Draper's dichroic ink. I obtained, by a simple ruse, a specimen of the office notepaper and the ink. We will examine it presently. I found that Mr. Barlow is a ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... the mantelshelf had given place to candelabra, no doubt to deprive me of the pleasure of filling them with flowers; I found them later in my own room. When my servant arrived I went out to give him some orders; he had brought me certain things I wished to place ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... returned to the parlour the barmaid had a smile for him; but he didn't take it. He went and stood before the fire, with his foot resting on the fender and his elbow on the mantelshelf, and looked blackly at a print against ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... for a legal separation, and I shall no doubt obtain this. Casimir made this frightful scene the evening before leaving for Paris. On his return here, he found the house empty, and me staying at Dutheil's, by permission of the President of La Chatre. He also found a summons awaiting him on the mantelshelf. He had to make the best of it, for he knew it was no use attempting to fight against the result of his own folly, and that, by holding out, the scandal would all fall on him. He made the following stipulations, promising to adhere to them. Duthell ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... In the face of abuse, in the face of reproach, she packed her leather trunk. All those little idols of sentiment, the clock that ticked on her mantelshelf, the pictures that hung on the walls; the books she had collected, even the copy of Browning that she did not understand—they all were stowed away into the leather trunk. She went out of the house, she went out of the home as a moth flies out of a darkened room, and you know that ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... gold bracelet. Her hair was twisted in glossy sunny waves behind her ear, as in some Greek statues; her blue eyes were bright and lustrous, and nothing was ever clearer and more delicate than the slight tinge of red on her cheeks. Lord Marchmont was standing leaning on the mantelshelf, apparently ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the room, who leaned carelessly against the mantelshelf, was taller and older; though he, too, was handsome, but with the somewhat cynical and unprepossessing handsomeness of a man of the world. His forehead was high; his lips were thin; his nose inclined toward the Roman pattern; his black moustache was carefully curled and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... it for a moment, and caught her breath to cry out after him as the door closed; but she heard his step on the stone pavement outside, the crunch of the gravel, and he was gone. Then she went and leaned her head against the curved mantelshelf and stared into the logs that ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... plain old kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the stools, and the closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and the clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment—poor man's patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, and Sunday ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out. Herd was standing there in the bright moonlight, bareheaded, with roughened hair. He came in, and seeming not to know quite where he went, took stand by the hearth, and putting up his dark hand, gripped the mantelshelf. Then, as if recollecting himself, he said: "Gude evenin', sir; beg pardon, M'm." No more for a full minute; but his hand, taking some little china thing, turned it over and over without ceasing, and down his broken face tears ran. Then, very suddenly, he said: "She's gone." And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... up again to full height, leaned his head back, and sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion. He folded up his specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore off the incomprehensible sketch he had made with his pencil while he was speaking, and put it by me on the mantelshelf. "You might like to keep it," he said pathetically; "it's a document, that is; it will be famous some day." He looked at it lovingly, almost as though he was going to take it back again: but ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... silver clock on the mantelshelf struck twelve, and then he placed a card in the book to mark the place, closed ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... crossing to the fireplace, but wheeled about sharply at the sound of my voice. 'Eh? An educated man, apparently!' Laying the pistol on the mantelshelf, he plucked a twisted spill of paper from a vase hard by, stooped, ignited it from the flame dancing in the sea-coals, and proceeded to light the candles in an old-fashioned girandole that overhung the fireplace. There were five candles, and he ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... broken by a horrifying shriek from the man whom my companion had addressed as Colquhoun, and whom I could only suppose to be the painter of the celebrated picture which rested upon the mantelshelf. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the marble mantelshelf ticked on; Susannah felt herself aware that the person of Smith's vision was withdrawing, repulsed. She almost cried aloud to the invisible, but checked the prayer, holding on, as it were, to her own sanity with both hands. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... which to answer her. He folded his arms across his chest and looked out vaguely into the slant of room beyond. The folding doors were open and on the sideboard he could see a basket full of peaches, at this season an extravagance denied his own table. On the mantelshelf to his right hand were some exquisite hot-house flowers, carelessly crushed into a cracked, cheap little vase, and a penny packet of stationery and a powder puff in a ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... the curtain, took down a candle from the mantelshelf, lit it and set it on the table; then, picking up the cork of an empty bottle, held it to the flame for two seconds or so and began to operate on ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on the wall yonder. On the mantelshelf stands a slate, with an ink-pot and a row of tattered books, and other tokens of industry. The schoolroom, beyond a doubt. Lady Noble has expressed a wish to see the children here, in their own haunt, and her hostess has led the way hither, somewhat flustered, gasping many apologies ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... set down his emptied liqueur glass on the mantelshelf, and nodded approvingly at Vandover; then he scribbled, "Out ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... smile for me again?" he asked her, after a long half-hour during which he had stood as still as stone, his arm along the pine mantelshelf, looking at her from the shelter ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... old war-time hardtackers, her poor husband lived on crackers, Bought at wholesale from a baker, eaten from the mantelshelf; If the men of Madagascar, And the natives of Alaska, Had enough to sate their hunger, let him look out for himself. And his coat had but one tail And he used a shingle nail To fasten up his galluses when he went out ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... leaning carelessly against the mantelshelf. But his narrowed eyes watched her vigilantly. "I didn't say I would let him go. What I said was that I'd give ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... early liquidation of small liabilities on the return of his ship to port; another would see about it next time Sunday come of a Friday, and so on. But only his Uncle Moses ever gave him an actual farthing, and Dave deposited it in a cat on the mantelshelf, who was hollow by nature, and provided by art with a slot in the dorsal vertebrae. It could be shook out if you wanted it, and Dave occasionally took it out of deposit in connection with a course of experiments he was interested in. He wished to determine how far he ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... way through a hall into a sitting-room and left me there. The place was a perfect museum of art treasures, old Dutch and Italian masters on the walls, some splendid Florentine chests, a fine old dresser loaded with ancient pewter. On a mantelshelf was an extraordinary collection of old keys, each with its label. "Key of the fortress of Spandau, 1715." "Key of the Postern Gate of the Pasha's Palace at Belgrade, 1810," "House Key from Nuremberg, 1567," were some ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his cousin, having-though the son of a military man-a contempt for the pomp and circumstance of war. He marvelled to see Jock affectionately hook up his sword over the photograph of Engelberg above his mantelshelf; and he hesitated to join the volunteers, as his aunt wished, by way of compelling variety and exercise. Jock, however, decided on so doing, that Sydney might own at least that he was ready for a call to arms for his country. He did not like to think ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... looked at his reflection in the glass above the mantelshelf. The pallor of his face surprised him, and the look of passionate ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... woman transformed—she was happy and looked it. The last few weeks she had seemed in every way the opposite of the woman we had known: cheerful, kind to neighbours in sickness and trouble, even generous; she made many small presents in the way of mantelshelf ornaments, pictures, and house-linen. But then it was Johnson who had to pay for ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... the Aubusson carpet, and on the fine Gobelin tapestry which covered the few chairs and the one luxurious couch that formed the useful furniture of the tiny apartment. Etageres of carved and gilded wood occupied each corner, and, together with the low mantelshelf (which was upheld by two dancing nymphs in Carrara marble), were crowded with costly trifles in Bohemian glass, Dresden and Sevres porcelain, gilded bronze, carved ivory and Parian ware. An easel, drawn toward the centre of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... in all his private ways. It was hung with little engravings after Morland and it had a shelf of books. But as it happened, Banghurst had left a rook rifle he sometimes played with on the top of the desk, and on the corner of the mantelshelf was a tin with three or four cartridges remaining in it. As Filmer went up and down that room wrestling with his intolerable dilemma he went first towards the neat little rifle athwart the blotting-pad and then towards the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells |
