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Marbles   Listen
noun
marbles  n.  A children's game played with marbles (3), little balls made of a hard substance (as glass).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Marbles" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Playing marbles, you chump; an' here goes for his agate," replied the man with the Sharps, firing again. "There! Gee!" he exclaimed, as a bullet hummed in through the window he had quitted for the moment, and thudded into the wall, making the dry adobe fly. It had missed him by only a few ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... old chapel near Freeman's house at the entrance to the Gorbio valley is now entirely submerged under a shining new villa, with Pavilion annexed; over which, in all the pride of oak and chestnut and divers coloured marbles, I was shown this morning by the obliging proprietor. The Prince's Palace itself is rehabilitated, and shines afar with white window-curtains from the midst of a garden, all trim borders and greenhouses and carefully kept walks. On the other side, the villas are more ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... whole earth is a big bundle of them. They are not only in graveyards, where "mossy marbles rest"; they are strewn, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown," over the whole surface of the globe, and lie embosomed in the gulfs of the great, restless ocean. Who knows what untamed savage rests beneath us here? Don't start, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... denying her nothing which his limited means allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly assured that he was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no faith in him, she ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... wagered a quantity of marbles that no girl, not even Gwen Harcourt, would dare to float in the rough ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks

... phases. We see a mild form of it in the tom-boy who abandons her dolls and female companions for the marbles and masculine sports of her boy acquaintances. In the loud-talking, long-stepping, slang-using young woman we see another form; while the square-shouldered, stolid, cold, unemotional, unfeminine android (for she has the normal ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... at Nicaea, the very city afterwards profaned by the palace of the Sultan. It abounded in the gifts of nature, for food, utility, or ornament; its rivers ran with gold, its mountains yielded the most costly marbles; it had mines of copper, and especially of iron; its plains were fruitful in all kinds of grain, in broad pastures and luxuriant woods, while its hills were favourable to the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... of cards, Mermaidens' tails, cool swards, Dawn dews and starlit seas, White marbles, whiter words - To live, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... a cemetery into a field for the display of splendid marbles, is certainly not consonant with good taste. It is calculated that in forty years not less than one hundred millions of francs have been spent in the erection of monuments in Pere la Chaise, the number of tombs already amounting to ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... such a method. In fact it is just as much a "jump" to a straight line if you have a billion steps as it is at the very outset to pass from the two sides to the diagonal. It would be just as absurd to say we might go on dropping marbles into a basket until they become sovereigns as to say we can increase the number of our steps until they become a straight line. There is the whole thing ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... rousing himself. "Nobody would know which was which. I should catch myself learning the Latin accidence, or playing at marbles. I should never know my own identity, and Mrs. Primmins would ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... up into pieces about the size of marbles, having been dried and conveyed to the stock-house, the surplusage was automatically carried out from the other end of the stock-house by conveyors, to pass through the next process, by which it was ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... emissaries appear to have been much struck by the magnificence of his palaces, then in all the splendor of novelty, and gleaming with marbles brought from Volubilis and Sale. Windus extols in particular the sunken gardens of cypress, pomegranate and orange trees, some of them laid out seventy feet below the level of the palace-courts; the exquisite plaster fretwork; the miles of tessellated walls and pavement made ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... instantly dropping his own wrongs. "But the glass bottles have glass marbles in them, which you can use; and so it's better to have them, because it doesn't matter so much about ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... individuality in the decoration of the Parthenon, and was perfectly conscious of the difference between Phidias and his pupils. Even now, if one takes the pains to think of it, the difference between such works as the so-called "Genius" of the Vatican and the Athenian marbles, or between the Niobe group at Florence and the Venus torso at Naples, for example, seems markedly individual enough, though the element of style is still to our eyes the most prominent quality in each. Indeed, if one really reflects upon the subject, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold—TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... Italy, among all those souvenirs and those marbles, so much admired, I made strange reflections. I said to myself that, after all, these princesses and goddesses of the ancient world, who drove shepherds and kings mad, for whose sake wars broke out and sacrileges were committed, were persons pretty much after my own ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... which I thought worth Examination was, Whether the motion of all kind of Springs, might not be reduced to the Principle whereby the included heterogeneous fluid seems to be moved; or to that whereby two Solids, as Marbles, or the like, are thrust and kept together ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... new-built walls Clothed like the dawn in orange, gold and red. Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love Under the wreaths that crowned each royal head. Life was made greater by their sweetheart prayers. Passion was turned to civic strength that day— Piling the marbles, making fairer domes With zeal that else had burned bright youth away. I have seen priestesses of life go by Gliding in samite through the incense-sea— Innocent children marching with them there, Singing in flowered robes, "THE EARTH IS FREE": While on the ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... indeed a magnificent sight, to stand on the fore-part of the vessel and watch her breasting the waves. The mass of water rolled from her bows as white as milk, studded with those innumerable sparkles of blue light. The nebulosity instantly separated into small masses, curdled like clouds of marbles, leaving the water between of its own clear blackness; the clouds soon subsided, but the sparks remained. Sometimes one of these points, of greater size and brilliancy than the rest, suddenly burst into a small cloud of superior whiteness to the mass, and be then ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the candle flashed in a thousand crystals; swelled, till the walls fell silently apart, and showed that all this time I had been sitting ignorant of, but yet within a grand and stately hall, whose polished sides bore speaking canvas and noble marbles; swept up and around, till every stately niche, and every tapestried corner, and every lofty dome rang gently back in mellow music—all for ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... in children who live among children. She has as far outgrown jumping-ropes as you have tops and kites, and has no more relish for fairy tales than your reverence has for base-ball, or my Bishop here for marbles. Suppose last October I had sprinkled a paper of lettuce-seed in the open border of the garden, and on the same day you had sown a lot of lettuce in the hot-beds against the brick wall, where all the sunshine falls: ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... de days when as a youngin' [HW correction: youngun'] I played marbles an' hide an' seek. Dar wuzn't many games den, case nobody ain't had no time fer 'em. De grown folkses had dances an' sometimes co'n shuckin's, an' de little niggers patted dere feets at de dances an' dey he'p ter shuck ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... there behind the information counter would drive them mad. If some one—any one—would only come and speak to them! That is why one of them is over in the corner chewing up time-tables into small balls and playing marbles with them. He has gone mad from loneliness. The other clerk, the one who is looking at the tip of his nose and mumbling Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, has only a few more minutes before he ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... these marbles," said Mabel. "They're my little brother's. He gave me his bag to hold when he went off to play tops with some of the boys. I'll let Margy and Mun Bun take the marbles ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope

... shalt tread upon the lion and adder." This high temple of the Adriatic is vast and curious, but wanting in effect, owing to the low roof and the gloomy light. The Levant was searched for columns and marbles to decorate it; acres of gold-leaf have been expended in gilding it; and every corner is stuck full of allegorical devices, some of which are so very ingenious, that they have not yet been read. The priests wore a style of dress admirably befitting the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... its most intense heat, a warning whistle was heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only in the narrow white breechcloth and moccasins, and daubed with white earth until they seemed a group of living marbles, came bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves and slowly moving around the fire. As they advanced in single file they threw their bodies into divers attitudes—some graceful, some strained and difficult, some menacing. Now they faced the east, now the south, ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... stately colonnades of foreign marbles, no tesselated pavement to the vestibule, no glowing frescoes on the walls, no long lines of exterior windows, glittering with the new luxury of glass. All was decorous, it is true; but all, at the same time, was stern, and grave, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... says Mr. William, "do you think my uncle takes any notice of such a dull rogue as you are?" Mr. William goes on, "He is the most stupid of all my mother's children; he knows nothing of his book; when he should mind that, he is hiding or hoarding his taws and marbles, or laying up farthings. His way of thinking is, four-and-twenty farthings make sixpence, and two sixpences a shilling; two shillings and sixpence half a crown, and two half crowns five shillings. So within these two months the close ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... where segregated along the stratification planes, permits easy splitting of the rock under weathering. Likewise the mica often weathers more quickly than the surrounding minerals, giving a pitted appearance; in marbles and limestones its irregular occurrence may spoil the appearance. Flint or chert in abundance is deleterious to limestones and marbles, because, being more resistant, it stands out in relief on the weathered surface, interferes with smooth cutting and polishing, and often causes the rock ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... Quirinal I went, through the Forum, to the Capitol. There was nothing to be seen except the magnificent calm emperor, the tamers of horses, the fountain, the trophies, the lions, as usual; among the marbles, for living figures, a few dirty, bold women, and Murillo boys in the sun just as usual. I passed into the Corso; there were men in the liberty cap,—of course the lowest and vilest had been the first to assume it; all the horrible beggars persecuting ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... street. The table's lessened numbers bring No warm discussion's changeful ring, Of hard-won goal, or slashing play, Or colours blue, or brown, or gray. The chairs stand round like rows of pins; No hoops entrap unwary shins; No marbles—boyhood's gems—roll loose; And stilts may rust for want of use; No book-bags lie upon the stairs; Nor nails inflict three-cornered tears. Mamma may lay her needle down, And take her time to go up town; Albeit, returning she ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... and he shot downward in a long, leafy curve to the levels again. There were still, hot hollows surrounded by wet rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy scents of the night flowers and the bloom along the creeper buds; dark avenues where the moonlight lay in belts as regular as checkered marbles in a church aisle; thickets where the wet young growth stood breast-high about him and threw its arms round his waist; and hilltops crowned with broken rock, where he leaped from stone to stone above the lairs of the frightened little foxes. He would hear, very faint and far off, the chug-drug ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... willow whistle! He must know the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by a crowd of spectators, some admiring, some skeptical, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... marvellous beauty of certain statues, and by the judgment of him who made the statue of sculpture of gold and that of painting of silver, and placed the first on the right and the second on the left. Nor do they even refrain from quoting the difficulties experienced before the materials, such as the marbles and the metals, can be got into subjection, and their value, in contrast to the ease of obtaining the panels, the canvases, and the colours, for the smallest prices and in every place; and further, the extreme and grievous ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... paved with coloured tesserae and marbles, in a series of five steps, the uppermost of which forms the predella, or footpace, to the altar. The latter is of oak, and was presented by Miss Overbury, sister-in-law to the Rev. W. Panckridge, Rector of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... of these people lived in stately villas adorned with pavements of different-colored marbles and beautifully painted walls. These country houses, often as large as palaces, were warmed in winter, like our modern dwellings, with currents of heated air. In summer they opened on terraces ornamented with vases and statuary, and on spacious ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... his belly facing, comes. On Luni's mountains 'midst the marbles white, Where delves Carrara's hind, who wons beneath, A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars And main-sea wide ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... wafted through the immensity of immortality. I will commune with my boyish days—I will live in the past only. Memory shall perform the Medean process, shall renovate me to youth. I will again return to marbles and an untroubled breast—to hoop and high ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... Vedian mansion had kept, by family tradition, a sort of affectation of old-fashioned plainness. It was indeed lined with expensive marbles, but it was far soberer in coloring, far simpler in every detail, than most atriums of similar houses. Instead of striving for an effect of opulent gorgeousness by every device of material, color and decoration, the heads of the Vedian ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which some deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown up into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep out of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply "for keeps;" the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty crowds, had speculative eyes, that measured their oats at night with a "you-don't-cheat-me" look. Even the churches had not the grave repose of the old brown house ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... since breakfast time, although they had been traced to the Capitol, where they had been seen sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives, and later treated to lunch in the restaurant of Congress by a gentleman whom the boys always amused, then they had been seen playing marbles with some of the pages in the Capitol, but now where were they? The messenger who was well acquainted with the truants, seemed more amused than alarmed over their disappearance, and soon carried back a note to Mrs. Lincoln accepting the invitation for Budd and Hally, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... the same evanescent frescoes, under foot the same scagliola volutes, unrolled themselves interminably. Ebony cabinets, with inlay of precious marbles in cunning perspective, alternated down the room with the tarnished efflorescence of gilt consoles supporting Chinese monsters; and from the chimney-panel a gentleman in the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... coiled the pump tube and stowed it away in the tool box, opened the gas tank, and looked in—and right there he did something else; something that would have spelled disaster if either of them had seen him do it. He spilled a handful of little round white objects like marbles into the tank before he screwed on the cap, and from his pocket he pulled a little paper box, crushed it in his hand, and threw it as far as he could into the bushes. Then, whistling just above his breath, which was a habit with Bud when his work was going along pleasantly, he scraped the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... groves and hillsides to sanctity. Beautiful hillsides, rippling down to the sea-coasts; and plains, nestling among the mountain slopes, littered with remnants of vast temples of superb pagan workmanship and with priceless pre-historic remains: wonderful, ancient marbles, time-mellowed and crumbling, inwrought rather with barbaric symbols of splendor than with the tender ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... wanted her tea, but could never resist a last look at the Elgin Marbles. She looked at them sideways, waving her hand and muttering a word or two of salutation which made Jacob and the other man turn round. She smiled at them amiably. It all came into her philosophy— that colour is sound, or perhaps it has something to do ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... down to his plans, and at once orders begin to fly across ocean to this port and that for the rarest marbles—rosso antico from Mount Taenarus, verde antico from Thessally; with green Carystian, likewise shipped from Corinth; Carrara, Veronese Orange, Spanish broccatello, Derbyshire alabaster, black granite from Vyell's Cornish estate, red and purple porphyries from ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the future purposes of the building. The rotunda-walls are themselves castellated, the towers being interplaced with windows of Saracenic arched form. The beton pavement of the corridors and balcony is made of annular fragments, facets upward, of black, red, white and slate-colored marbles, feldspar and other stones. It is as hard as natural rock and as smooth as half-polished marble. A tessellated fret pattern is made along the borders of the corridor floor, consisting of triple rows of smooth cubes of marble inserted in the cement. The square balusters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... Napoleon or Tennyson or even Shakespeare,—doing the simple manual part of lifting the blocks of metal and attending to the machinery, older men, these;—and the Editor, who naturally must have been very clever, had a round moon face, tiny baby nose, two marbles stuffed in for eyes and the ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... d'Alberta's gallery of art and wonderful collection of curiosities and bronzes, he acquired his life-long taste for such things. Aix was indeed a place full of collections,—of antiquities, of cameos, of marbles, etc. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... was immediately sent; and here, among other competitors was the Squire's eldest son, Hector Mowbray. He was two years older than I, and in the high exercise of that power to which he was the redoubted heir. To insult the boys, seize their marbles, split their tops, cuff them if they muttered, kick them if they complained to the master, get them flogged if they kicked and cuffed in return, and tyrannize over them to the very stretch of his invention, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... undertaken with the praiseworthy and disinterested object of teaching the Old World "how to do it," and is built and furnished regardless of expense. The couloirs are wide, lofty, richly carpeted; the walls of them encrusted with pale highly polished marbles, pilasters of which, with heavily gilded capitals, flank vast panels of looking-glass. The moulded ceilings are studded with electric lights, the glare of which is agreeably softened by pineapple-shaped globes of crystal glass. The scheme of colour, ranging from imperial purple through ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... me for a while, Mary'll look after him. And I'll play marbles with him. Got any white alleys? Gimme six, and I'll give you ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... presented. In the heavy odor of tobacco and various liquors that filled the rooms, the furniture, the wainscotings, the decorations seemed faded yet still new. Stains on the crumpled satin, ashes soiling the beautiful marbles, marks of boots on the carpet reminded him of a huge first-class railway carriage, bearing the marks of the indolence, impatience and ennui of a long journey, with the destructive contempt of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. Amid ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... his high chair, arrested and held Stephen's attention. Very pallid, with the pallor not of flesh but of an ivory image, with hair as thin and white as the hair of an old man, and eyes that were as opaque as blue marbles, the baby sat there, with its look of stoical philosophy and superhuman experience. And this look said as plainly as if the tiny mute lips had opened and spoken aloud: "I am tired before I begin. I am old before I begin. I am ending ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... much would be left if he got this, that, or the other article, which he was longing to buy for father or mother. I proved to him most invaluable, by helping him to think of certain small sixpenny and fourpenny articles that would be pretty to give to sisters, making out with marbles for Tom and Ned, and a very valiant-looking sugar horse for Ally. Miss Emma had the usual resource of young ladies, flosses, worsted, and knitting, and crochet needles, and busy fingers, and she was giving private lessons daily to Eliza, to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... summer-day's tramp in the wilderness after flowers and birds-nests—the flowers to tear to pieces, and the birds-nests to set up in the school for other boys to have a shy at. By to-morrow, they will be asunder for months—he at school afar off, and they at leap-frog or marbles. And after a few years, they will be forgotten by him, and he remembered by them—such being the difference in their early education—as the boy they were allowed to associate with, and to fleece at pleasure when he was nobody ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... seven-octave piano, and about as thick as such a piano is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is only a year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting Christian rubbish like ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar and see the costly marbles that once adorned the inner Temple was annulled. The designs wrought upon these fragments are all quaint and peculiar, and so the charm of novelty is added to the deep interest they naturally inspire. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... together, that he did not seem to prize much any mere possession. He looked pleased with a new suit of clothes, but if any one remarked on his care of them, he would answer, "I mustn't spoil what's papa and mamma's!" He made no hoard of any kind. He did once hoard marbles till he had about a hundred; then it was discovered that they were for a certain boy in the village who was counted half-witted—as indeed was Clare himself by many. When he learned that the boy had first been accused of ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... correcting manuscripts, and settling points of erudition; or by the opened cabinet of the antiquary, deciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining medals. In the galleries of the curious in art, among their marbles, their pictures, and their prints, PEIRESC has often revealed to the artist some secret in his own art. In the museum of the naturalist, or the garden of the botanist, there was no rarity of nature on which he had not something ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... the centre of art and learning, adorns our collection with Athens, the Acropolis and Parthenon, the latter almost completely and shamefully bereft of those famous marbles, chiseled by Phidias nearly five ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp

... in which burned a wick that was nourished by mutton fat. Asad, waiting to learn who came, halted at the foot of the white glistening steps, whilst from doors and lattices of the palace flooded light to suffuse the courtyard and set the marbles shimmering. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... words themselves call up all kinds of enchanting pictures. Sunny Italy is the natural home of beautiful voices: they are her birthright. Her blue sky, flowers and olive trees—her old palaces, hoary with age and romantic story, her fountains and marbles, her wonderful treasures of art, set her in a world apart, in the popular mind. Everything coming from Italy has the right to be romantic and artistic. If it happens to be a voice, it should of necessity be beautiful in quality, rich, smooth, and ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... leave one with the sense that some demon of unrest has driven painters and sculptors and plasterers, night and day, to adorn the city at a stroke; at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck it with marbles, and to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweet growth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... do, as Young America should, their share. And the sayings of street urchins endure with singular tenacity. Like their sports, which follow laws of their own, uninfluenced by meteorological considerations, tending to the sedentary games of marbles in the cold, chilly spring, and bursting into base-and foot-ball in the midsummer solstice, strict tradition hands down from boy to boy the well-worn talk. There are still "busters," as in our young days, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... Lumachella marbles is the bianca antica, the Marmor Megarense of the ancients, composed of shells so small as to be scarcely discernible, and so closely compacted that the substance takes a good polish. The well-known ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... happy, began giving out the toys, diving with both hands at once into the baskets which the fairy father held. Trumpets, bags of marbles, tops and furry animals for the boys, according to their age; (oh, Rosemary was a good judge, and never hesitated once!) Dolls for the girls, dolls by the dozen, dolls by the legion; and sweets ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... lov'd marbles and kite, And spin-top, and nine-pins, and ball; But this I declare with delight, His book he ...
— Phebe, The Blackberry Girl • Edward Livermore

... Jack Nory Told me a story How he tried Cock-horse to ride, Sword and scabbard by his side, Saddle, leaden spurs and switches, His pocket tight With cents all bright, Marbles, tops, puzzles, props, Now he's put in ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous

... slowly at first, but had increased her speed as she proceeded, and now she was walking so swiftly that I could scarcely keep pace with her. I saw white marbles gleaming among the trees at the top of a hill, and knew that we were approaching the graveyard. It was a dreary-looking place—a disgrace to the village. The stone wall was in a dilapidated condition, and in some places there were gaps in it. The graves were overgrown with rank weeds, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the process of enamelling by oil varnishes, and the directions referring to the polishing will be found of value for the "polishing up" on painted imitations of woods or marbles. There is another process whereby an enamel can be produced upon furniture at a much cheaper rate than the preceding, and one too, perhaps, in which a polisher may feel more "at home." The work should first have a coating of size and ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... Pirouette, where a man had died. For quite a month women stopped short on the footway to look at Lisa between the saveloys and bladders in the window. Her white and pink flesh excited as much admiration as the marbles. She seemed to be the soul, the living light, the healthy, sturdy idol of the pork trade; and thenceforth one and all baptised her "Lisa ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... parrot had been a girl she had often heard of this wonderful arch and the precious stones and marbles that had been let into it. It sounded as if it would be a very hard thing to get them away from the building of which they formed a part, but all had gone well with her so far, and at any rate she ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... all right," she said, "barring the big marbles in my slippers." Then she turned to Dalton. "Now what's it all about? Is it ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... laws, it should not. When I take up my pen to write to you, I am thinking more of a white-moustached old Yankee at an hotel than about the things I have seen within the same 24 hours: the frescoes of Santa Croce, the illuminations of St. Marco; the white marbles of the tower of Giotto; the very Madonnas of Raphael, the very David of Michael Angelo. Throughout this tour, in pursuance of our theory of travelling, we have avoided the guide: he is the death-knell ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... with the Missouri Compromise and lay a-dying amid the echoes of Manila and El Caney: stirring times for living, times dark to look back upon, darker to look forward to. The black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles seventy years ago saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world. The slave-ship still groaned across the Atlantic, faint cries burdened the Southern breeze, and the great black father whispered mad tales ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... to play marbles, but sinful to play dominoes. Wherein, pray? They can learn to gamble with one as well as with the other. It is sinful to play billiards, but highly graceful and innocent to play croquet. But why? Really, when it comes to a comparison, the first is infinitely the more beautiful and ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... here, and on her right, on another pinnacle, is a charming angel, upon whom a lion fondlingly climbs. Between and on each side are holy men within canopies, and beneath is much delicate work in sculpture. Below are porphyry insets and veined marbles, and on the parapet two griffins, one apparently destroying a child and one a lamb. The porphyry stone on the ground at the corner on our left is the Pietra del Bando, from which the laws of the Republic were read to the people. Thomas Coryat, the traveller, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... no silver—, precious stones, sandalwood, marbles such as had never been seen by any eye before, all fashioned into a wondrous style of architecture peculiarly unique, yet withal holding a perfect harmony—such is (not a description, for a description, in detail would baffle the clearest mind and cleverest pen)—a ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... opportunities in life. I have heard him end a story with these words: "That was in my golden days, when I used finger-glasses." Situation after situation failed him; then followed the depression of trade, and for months he had hung round with other idlers, playing marbles all day in the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... must think of all things that may happen. So you will wear your ordinary clothes. You have one day, two days, three, if necessary, to find the British headquarters. No more. These papers are written on the thinnest of paper. It is so thin that the messages are contained in these marbles that I give ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston

... Latin. The Bishop's scholarship was as good as his taste in marbles. The Elucescebat ("he was illustrious") of l. 99 Browning called "dog-latin" and he called "Ulpian, the golden jurist, a copper latinist." (See letter to D. G. Rossetti. Quoted by A. J. George, Select ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... seen her face; for she lived apart with the maidens who waited on her, in a lofty tower which her father had built specially for her. It was really a noble palace, with ten great rooms, one over the other. The first room was paved with porphyry and lined with slabs of coloured marbles, and the roof was of gold: and it was a kind of chapel for Aseneth. It had golden and silver images of all the gods of Egypt, and Aseneth worshipped them and burnt incense to them every day. The second chamber was Aseneth's own. In it were all ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James

... each of these is for, just by looking at it. The nose and the ears are open and hollow because air must pass into them in order to bring us odors or sounds; while the eyes are solid, somewhat like big glass marbles, to receive light—because light can go right through anything that is transparent. Eyes, ears, and nose all began on the surface, and sank gradually into the head, so as to be surrounded and protected, leaving just opening enough at the surface to allow smells, light-rays, and ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... There was no distinct Judaic or Christian type used in the very early art. The painters took their models directly from the Roman frescos and marbles. It was the classic figure and the classic costume, and those who produced the painting of the early period were the degenerate painters of the classic world. The figure was rather short and squat, coarse in the joints, hands, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... the model boy of Bungfield. While his idle school-mates were flying kites and playing marbles, the prudent Joseph was trading Sunday-school tickets for strawberries and eggs, which he converted into currency of the republic. As he grew up, and his old school-mates purchased cravats and hair-oil at Squire Tackey's ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... not understand all this, and he took it into his head that Tom was drowned. When they looked into the empty pockets of his shell, and found no jewels there, nor money—nothing but three marbles, and a brass button with a string to it—then Sir John did something as like crying as ever he did in his life, and blamed himself more bitterly than he need have done. So he cried, and the groom-boy cried, and the huntsman cried, and the dame cried, and the little ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... in my writing desk in a very secret drawer; a soul-cheering effusion, but not particularly agreeable to the physical humanity. This I intend to bequeath to the British museum, where it will be in future ages as great a treat to the antiquary as the Elgin marbles. What a doleful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the two pieces put up side by side, so that the pattern on one is reversed on the other. Certain kinds of marble contain fossils or remains of coral and other animals that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. In some marbles there are so many that the stone seems to be almost made of them. When a slab is cut and polished, the fossils are of course cut into; but even then we can sometimes see their shape. One of the most common is the crinoid. This was really an animal, but it looked ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... considered. I don't suppose, for a single instant, that he really prefers to be left alone, with his infant son, mind you, howling at the present moment because his nurse won't let him swallow the glass marbles, and you can picture to yourself—if you want to make yourself thoroughly unhappy—your Robert sitting, melancholy throughout the long evening, alone, desolate, creeping to bed somewhere about ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... pounds a week. But the time came when the sculptor had no more work for Rodney, and one day he told him that he would not require him that week, there was no work for him, nor was there the next week or the next, and Rodney kicked his heels and pondered Elgin marbles for a month. Then he got a letter from the sculptor saying he had some work for him to do; and it was a good job of work, and Rodney remained with Garvier for two months, knowing very well that his three pounds ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... retired to their rock-pile and talked over their bitter disappointment, Ralph and the other boys absorbed in a game of marbles near them. 'Lias had gone proudly into the schoolroom to show himself to ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... The "Xanthian Marbles," and "Washington Allston," are very pleasing papers. The most interesting part, however, are the sentences copied from Mr. Allston. These have his chaste, superior tone. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... by Debure in 1789. It would be difficult to imagine a more comprehensive and complete collection of its size. He had also a rich collection of drawings by the best masters, fine pictures of which he was a connoisseur, bronzes, marbles, porcelains and a natural history cabinet, so in vogue in those days, containing some very valuable specimens. He was one of the most learned men of his day in natural science, especially chemistry and mineralogy, and to his translations from the best ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... haricots through a wire sieve until the requisite quantity of pulp is obtained, add the bread crumbs, potato, salt and shalot, which must be very finely minced, stir in half a beaten egg, shape into little balls the size of marbles, roll them in the other half of egg and the bread crumbs, and fry in boiling ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... vestibule hung with curtains of azure brocade, purfled with red gold, and Abu Mohammed Lazybones bade one of his servants carry Masrur to the private Hammam. Now this bath was in the house and Masrur found its walls and floors of rare and precious marbles, wrought with gold and silver, and its waters mingled with rose-water. Then the servants served Masrur and his company with the perfection of service; and, on their going forth of the Hammam, clad them in robes of honour, brocade-work interwoven with gold. And after leaving the bath ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... the rest. Some of the houses were greater and some smaller, but all of them were rich in carvings and pictures and lovely decorations, and the effect was as if the richest materials had been employed, marbles and beautiful sculptured stone, and wood of beautiful tints, though the little Pilgrim knew that these were not like the marble and stone she had once known, but heavenly representatives of them, ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... moneyed value, and think it shameful that I despoiled her of her jewels. But such things did not count with my mother and me. I kept the Duchess—nothing else." He smiled sombrely as he pulled out his watch. It was the little silver one he had used when we played marbles together. "We paid fifty cents on the dollar," he said presently, "and by and by shall manage something of a dividend at the bank. It will give me plenty to do for years yet," he added with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... procured ready formed from nature; but, as they have all, especially the three first, great tendency to combination, they are never found pure. Lime is usually saturated with carbonic acid in the state of chalk, calcarious spars, most of the marbles, &c.; sometimes with sulphuric acid, as in gypsum and plaster stones; at other times with fluoric acid forming vitreous or fluor spars; and, lastly, it is found in the waters of the sea, and of saline springs, combined with muriatic acid. Of all the salifiable bases it is the most universally spread ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... simple enough trick, no doubt, to the initiated; but the old conjurer's arm is bared, and the tin is, as far as I can discover, but an ordinary vessel, and the trick is performed without any cover, table, or cloth. After this he expectorates a number of glass marbles, and ends with a couple of solid iron jingal balls that he can scarce get out of his mouth. There is no mistake about their being of solid iron, and the old conjurer opens his mouth and lets me see them emerging from his throat. From what I see him do as the final act, and which there is no ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... when Peter arrived at any of these places he found them prepossessed by Germans gabbling out of Baedekers. The Sistine Chapel made the back of his neck ache and he came no nearer than seven tourists to the noble quietude of the Vatican can marbles. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... lessons. By far the most important portion of what one calls education, I owe to him; yet he never preached, or prosed, or played the pedagogue. He talked a great deal, not to us, but with us; we began to have conversation while we were still playing marbles and dolls. I remember hours of discussion with him on some subject so large that the littleness of his interlocutor must have tried him sorely. Time and eternity, theology and science, literature and art, invention and discovery came each in its turn; and, while I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... in his chair with the profound satisfaction of a man who has not grown weary of an acquired possession. This huge salon with its blackened pictures, cold marbles, and large, severe-looking bookcases, presented a sober bourgeois harmony that pleased him. It was like the salon of a well-to-do notary, with its tall windows overlooking the courtyard, already full ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... Well, one evening I was playing marbles out in front of our house when a chap we knew gave me his pipe to mind while he went into a church-meeting. The little church was opposite—a 'chapel' they ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... doors, and endless yards of carpet. The interior, as I remember it, did not differ from that of many old country houses. There were one or two great rooms, a multitude of family portraits, and landscapes, marbles and coins brought from Italy by a traveled and dilettante ancestor. It was a great rendezvous for numerous Buller relations. It was, as was the parsonage also, a nest of old domestics, all born in the parish, and it included among its other inmates a ghost, who was called "the Countess," ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... easy to show in a very striking manner the paramount influence of the condition of the solid surface. I have here a number of similar marbles; this set has been well polished by rubbing with wash leather. I drop them one by one through a space of about 1 foot into this deep, wide, cylindrical glass vessel, lighted up by a lamp placed behind it. You see each marble enters ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington

... the gloomy aisles alone, (Sad luxury to vulgar minds unknown) Along the walls where speaking marbles show What worthies form the hallowed mould below; Proud names, who once the reins of empire held; In arms who triumphed, or ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... you do, Mr. Slick? When did you come?' 'Why I came—' he is turned round, and shoved out o' hearin.' 'Xanthian marbles at the British Museum are quite wonderful; got into his throat, the doctor turned him upside down, stood him on his head, and out it came—his own tunnel was too small.' 'Oh, Sir, you are cuttin' me.' 'Me, Miss! Where had I the pleasure of seein' you before, I never cut a lady in my life, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... day, she found awaiting her the Dean of the Court, an official of great importance to whom the settlement of questions pertinent to rank was confided. The state barge of fifteen oars in which he arrived was moored to the marbles of the quay in front of her palace, a handsomely ornamented vessel scarcely needing its richly liveried rowers to draw about it the curious and idle of the town in staring groups. At sight of it, the Princess knew there was a message for her ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... Mr. Dick's life; they were far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became known to every boy in the school; and though he never took an active part in any game but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our sports as anyone among us. How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare and hounds, have I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheering the whole field on to action, and waving his hat above his grey head, oblivious ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... stocking leaned against the bed in expectant attitudes. A picture-book with a pink Bengal tiger and a green bear on the cover peeped over the pillow, and the bedposts and rail were festooned with candy and marbles in bags. An express-wagon with a high seat was stabled in the gangway. It carried a load of fir branches that left no doubt from whose livery it hailed. The last touch was supplied by Savoy in the shape of a monkey on a yellow stick, that ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... that year and 1840 Mr. Hamilton resided here at various periods, having occasionally let it. He made a considerable addition to the house by building a spacious room as a wing on the east side, in the walls of which casts from the frieze and metopes of the Elgin marbles ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... whose name I never heard. There is your toasted or Welsh cheese, and your cheese of Pont-l'eveque, and your white cheese of Brie, which is a chalky sort of cheese. And there is your cheese of Neufchatel, and there is your Gorgonzola cheese, which is mottled all over like some marbles, or like that Mediterranean soap which is made of wood-ash and of olive oil. There is your Gloucester cheese called the Double Gloucester, and I have read in a book of Dunlop cheese, which is made in Ayrshire: they could tell ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... turned out in the field, and get two or three together on his back, and the little rogue, enjoying the fun, would gallop off for fifty yards, and then turn round, or stop short and shoot them on to the turf, and then graze quietly on till he felt another load; others played at peg-top or marbles, while a few of the bigger ones stood up for a bout at wrestling. Tom at first only looked on at this pastime, but it had peculiar attractions for him, and he could not long keep out of it. Elbow and collar wrestling, as practised in the western counties, was, next ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... and very clean and dressed. We had all looked out everything we thought anyone could want to buy, and that we could spare, and some things we could not, and most of these were on Oswald's table—among others, several boxes of games we had never cared about; some bags of marbles, which nobody plays now; a lot of old books; a pair of braces with wool-work on them, that an aunt once made for Oswald, and, of course, he couldn't wear them; some bags of odd buttons for people who like sewing these things on; a lot of foreign stamps, gardening tools, Dicky's engine, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... surrounded with luxury, beauty, and refinement. Travellers who have thrown the veil of romance and enchantment about the Southern home, with a great house embowered in magnolia trees, its rooms stored with art treasures, its walls lined with marbles and bronzes, and its banqueting room at night crowded with beautiful women and handsome men—these travellers speak of what was as a matter of fact exceptional. We must remember that these men represented a small aristocracy; that their ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... this very moment with strings and marbles and a nation in his pocket, a system of railroads—a boy with a national cure for tuberculosis, with sun-engines for everybody—there is a boy with cathedrals in him too, no doubt or some boy like young Pinchot, with mountainsful ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... we found it fitted up in a manner which corresponded in many points to that usual in great houses in England. The suites of rooms are very numerous, but they are mostly of small dimensions. Every apartment is provided with a musical clock. The marbles, carpets, china, and glass lustres, are generally the production of Wurtemberg. Many of these productions display much taste, and seem to ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. The young and giddy-pated the chorus master has no use for. The sober, honest, industrious lady or gentleman, with a knowledge of music ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... the Eginetan marbles of French art; from them all modern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularly interesting; as naif as the smile on the faces of the Greek warriors, but no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothic ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... her alone in a marble-paved chamber in the Palace, the walls adorned with carvings of flowers and birds, minutely worked, the ceiling with arabesques formed of thin strips of painted wood, the air cooled by a fantastic fountain playing into a pool lined with black and white marbles and red tiling. Lattice-work windows gave on the central courtyard, and were supplemented by decorative windows of stained glass, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Exhibition? Fame indeed Change the subject. Nothing so good as flounders. Ho! is that your cab? Superb! Car fit for the 'Grecian youth of talents rare,' in Mr. Enfield's 'Speaker;' horse that seems conjured out of the Elgin Marbles. Is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that. I'll tell you, Chicken Little, I believe he'd like a nice strong bag for his marbles—it won't be long till marble time now. But, perhaps, we can ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... had erected a great wall, enclosing the summit of the hill, with towers two hundred feet high at the corners, and in the space thus gained had built a grand palace, with rows of columns of a single stone apiece, halls lined with many-coloured marbles, magnificent baths, and all the details of Roman luxury, not omitting huge cisterns, barracks, and store-houses, with everything needed in case of a siege. From the windows there was a magnificent view of the Dead Sea, the whole course of the Jordan, Jerusalem, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... victory, but in order of battle, and with the array of an army. Choice plants or flowers about the impluvia and xysti, for ornament or refreshment, myrtles, oranges, pomegranates, the rose and the carnation, have disappeared. They dim the bright marbles of the walls and the gilding of the ceilings. They enter the triclinium in the midst of the banquet; they crawl over the viands and spoil what they do not devour. Unrelaxed by success and by enjoyment, onward they go; a secret mysterious ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... cried Sergius Thord—"The building which is called the Sanctuary of God, stands open—why do you not all enter there? Within are precious marbles, priceless pictures, jewels and relics—and a great altar raised up by the gifts of wicked dead kings, who by money sought to atone for their sins to the people. There are priests who fast and pray in public, and gratify all the lusts of appetite in private. There are poor and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... in the dusty distance. Under the flaming yellow roof of the Palace is a frail and frightened little six-year-old boy—the ruler of millions—who, if he knew and could, would gladly exchange his priceless crown for freedom and a bag of marbles. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... More than your marbles hard I love the tender slate, Than Tiber more the Loire, and France than Rome, Mine own dear hills than Palatinus' state, More than the salt sea breeze ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... whom his country owes so much for the elucidation of its characteristics, tells humorously of the elder of a kirk having found a little boy and his sister playing marbles on Sunday, and put his reproof not at all in judicious form by exclaiming—"Boy, do you know where children go who play marbles on the Sabbath-day?" Not in judicious form, truly, for the boy replied, "Ay, they gang doun to the field by the water below the brig." "No," roared out the elder, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... of art, and of the curiosities, Mr. Hope, of Amsterdam, the father of the gentlemen who have since become so well known in London for their taste in the arts, and their superb collections of pictures and marbles, arrived in Rome. Mr. West being introduced to him, accompanied him to Cardinal Albani, to whom he had letters of introduction, and witnessed a proof of the peculiar skill of his Eminence. The Cardinal requested Mr. Hope to come near him, and according to ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt

... "How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts?" Maggie's heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was "no good" playing with her at those games, she ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... undoubtedly. His steward acts for him, and so do clerks for a great merchant. A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs[1015]. A Judge may play a little at cards for his amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or at chuck-farthing in the Piazza. No, Sir; there is no profession to which a man gives a very great proportion of his time. It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... designed to display a considerable quantity of her figure, was surrounded by a party which attracted many glasses. Alice Palgrave was there, pretty and scrupulously neat, even perhaps a little prim, her pearls as big as marbles. Mrs. Alan Hosack made a most effective picture with her black hair and white skin in a geranium-colored frock—a Van Beers study to the life. Mrs. Noel d'Oyly lent an air of opulence to the box, being one of those lovely but all too ample women who, while compelling admiration, dispel ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... to know the pathway all round the ramparts, and the six equestrian statues that were there guarding Merimna still. These statues were not like other statues, they were so cunningly wrought of many-coloured marbles that none might be quite sure until very close that they were not living men. There was a horse of dappled marble, the horse of Akanax. The horse of Rollory was of alabaster, pure white, his armour was wrought out of a stone that shone, and his horseman's cloak ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... together. Marjorie had no silly, sentimental ideas in her curly brown head about boys. From early childhood she had been allowed to play with them. She was fond of their games and had always evinced far more interest in marbles, tops and even baseball than she had in dolls. Still, at sixteen, she was not a hoyden nor a tomboy, but a merry, light-hearted girl with a strong, healthy body and a feeling of comradeship toward boys in general which was to carry her ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... worse fared the fortunes of war with the patriots north of Montreal. Their defense and defeat were almost pitiable in childish ignorance of what war might mean. Boys' marbles had been gathered together for bullets. Scythes were carried as swords, and old flintlocks that had not seen service for twenty years were taken down from the chimney places. With their bonnets blue hanging down their ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... Canadian Boundary Commission of 1817, and on the Commission of National Defence of 1859, was prominent in the Ordnance Survey, and successively Commanding R.E. in Malta and Scotland. He was Engineer to Sir C. Fellows' Expedition, which gave the nation the Lycian Marbles, and while Commanding R.E. in Edinburgh, was largely instrumental in rescuing St. Margaret's Chapel in the Castle from desecration and oblivion. He was a thorough Scot, and never willingly tolerated the designation ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Deacon Hoskins was takin' forty winks as ushul, when the clatter made by th' ould Mennear's eye makes 'n set up, wide-awake an' starin'. This time, jedgin' by the noise, he tuk a consait that the boys had been a-playin' marbles sure 'nuff; so he takes two at haphazard, knacks their heads togither, an' then looks about. Fust thing he sees es th' eye lying out 'pon the aisle an' lookin' for all the world like ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... ways had as much to be proud of as a people as the Jews. Their sculptors had carved the most beautiful marbles in the world. Their poets had composed the most beautiful poems. Their philosophers were wiser than those of any other nation. Moreover, many of these Greeks who came into Palestine and other countries ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... little word which now appears for the first time. 'He shall bear much fruit.' We are not to be content with a little fruit; a poor shrivelled bunch of grapes that are more like marbles than grapes, here and there, upon the half-nourished stem. The abiding in Him will produce a character rich in manifold graces. 'A little fruit' is not contemplated by Christ at all. God forbid that I should say that there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... looks at my marbles, and says, 'Is that all you've got? I have five times as many as that,—splendid ones, too. They'd ...
— The Nursery, August 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... of the past has one chief object; namely, to train them to understand the works of the masters in order that they may discriminate between what is beautiful and what is meretricious in the art of the present day; to learn the lessons of art from the monoliths of Egypt, the tawny marbles of ancient Greece, the balanced thrusts of the Gothic cathedral, the gracious and reverent harmonies of the primitives, the delicate handicrafts of the Orient, the splendors of the Renaissance, the vibrant colors of the latest phase of impressionism, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... remarked, peering over the edge of a basket full of what looked like enormous stone cannon-balls of various colors; "for mastodons, I should say, only I don't know as they ever play marbles,—grocery shop, full of dear little drawers with real knobs on 'em,—'pothecary's shop with true pill-boxes," she went on, examining one delightful thing after another; "and here's a farm out of a box, and all the same funny old things—trees with green shavings on them and fences with feet ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... sensibility, I cannot say. Thinking he was a gardener, we asked our Dragoman to ask him some simple question but he could not, or did not, obtain any information. The creature was like the figures of Faunus or Vertumnus, or one of those half-deities or quarter-deities that one sees among the marbles in public collections. "Graeco-Roman School, of the late Antonine Period; probably representing a Rural Deity, or God of Spring or Agriculture in the Latin mythology." Certainly the more decadent side of late Greek or Roman ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... but he had still some sense left him, and he walked up and down in front of this house, as if to take care of it. In the middle of the street some boys were very busy at a game, carts and lorries passing over them occasionally. They came to the pavement to play marbles, and then Tommy noticed that one of them wore what was probably a glengarry bonnet. Could he ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... that," said the son, "as my success at the word competitions has more than provided for the contingency." And young Bansted Downs drew from his pocket a large bag filled with a mixture of sovereigns, marbles, and peppermint-drops. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... loose, slate loose; bee in one's bonnet, rats in the upper story. dotage &c (imbecility) 499. V. be insane &c adj.. become insane &c adj.; lose one's senses, lose one's reason, lose one's faculties, lose one's wits; go mad, run mad, lose one's marbles [Coll.], go crazy, go bonkers [Coll.], flip one's wig [Coll.], flip one's lid [Coll.], flip out [Coll.], flip one's bush [Coll.]. rave, dote, ramble, wander; drivel &c (be imbecile) 499; have a screw loose &c n., have a devil; avoir le diable au corps [Fr.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... part they were successful, and if in particular instances objection may be taken, it would be hyper-criticism to detract from their value. Wherever possible, the stone was taken from the quarries used by the first builders. The Purbeck marbles especially had severely suffered, and the mouldings and bases ruthlessly destroyed for the better accommodation of the wainscoting to the stalls; moreover, the differences in the nature of the stone were rendered null by a hideous yellow wash with which they had been lavishly besprinkled. During ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw



Words linked to "Marbles" :   child's game, wits, intelligence



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