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Mat   Listen
verb
Mat  v. i.  To grow thick together; to become interwoven or felted together like a mat, as hair when wetted with a sticky substance; as, a long-haired cat whose fur is matted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mat" Quotes from Famous Books



... silly laugh and loud. Then she shambled before him to the sitting-room, and Billy, familiar enough with the apartment, noticed a bottle of gin in an unusual position upon the table. The liquor stood, with two glasses and a jug of water, between the Coomstock family Bible, on its green worsted mat, and a glass shade containing the stuffed carcass of a fox-terrier. The animal was moth-eaten and its eyes had fallen out. It could be considered in no sense decorative; but sentiment allowed the corpse this central position in a sorry scheme of adornment, for the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... near by, the great Shway Dagon Pagoda with its tall, gilded spire shining in the sun with a brilliancy that was dazzling. But soon they turned from gazing at the Mecca of the Burmese Buddhists to view the town, a big collection of bamboo and mat huts protected by forts with guns, which the people fondly believed would utterly destroy any foreign fleet which dared to ascend the river. Many trading vessels were riding at anchor off the city, and canoes of various sizes and design were passing to ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore

... didn't turn in till an unholy hour. He got up at seven from force of habit, fussed around a while, took some pictures of the neighborhood and developed them, but by that time the poor old door-mat couldn't keep his eyes open. Do you know he wept all the way home last night, telling me how ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... bed, so Zip told his friend to howl as if he was being killed, and the doctor would hear him and think it was his own dog, and come down to see what was the matter. The rat terrier howled lustily, while Zip dropped down on the door mat and groaned as loudly as he could. Rats barked, howled, and threw himself against the front door, making ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery

... arien, entreprise pour la rprssion d'une agression, conformment aux termes de ce Protocole, ainsi que la rparation de tous dommages subis par les personnes civiles ou militaires, et de tous dommages matriels occasionns par les oprations de part et d'autre, seront supports par l'Etat agresseur jusqu' l'extrme ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... torrents, with frequent thunderclaps, and we had to take refuge in their lodges. These were very small, being for temporary use, and we crowded the occupants much, among whom were several sick, on the damp ground, or with only a ragged mat between them and it. But they showed all the gentle courtesy which, marks their demeanor towards the stranger, who stands in any need; though it was obvious that the visit, which inconvenienced them, could only have been caused by the most impertinent curiosity, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... to the missus," resumed the hired retainer tranquilly, "I went into the kitchen ten minutes back. The cat was sitting on the mat." ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... un instrumento de los pticos. Taong malakas na walang galang; isang kagamitan ng mga manggamot sa mat. ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon

... Bulquize, Delvine, Devoll (Bilisht), Dibre (Peshkopi), Durres, Elbasan, Fier, Gjirokaster, Gramsh, Has (Krume), Kavaje, Kolonje (Erseke), Korce, Kruje, Kucove, Kukes, Lac, Lezhe, Librazhd, Lushnje, Malesia e Madhe (Koplik), Mallakaster (Ballsh), Mat (Burrel), Mirdite (Rreshen), Peqin, Permet, Pogradec, Puke, Sarande, Shkoder, Skrapar (Corovode), Tepelene, Tirane, Tropoje (Bajram Curri), Vlore note: administrative divisions have the same names as their administrative centers (exceptions have the administrative ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... is that strange mixture which makes, which does make which does not make a ripe juice, which does not make a mat. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... should be covered with a good quality of linoleum. A perforated rubber mat may be placed at the sink, although this is not necessary. In fact, it is a better plan for the woman in the kitchen, as indeed elsewhere, to get rubber heels for her shoes. The Arabs have a proverb that to him who is shod it is ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... first taken out of the graves, they have the appearance of unfinished statues; the position of the head, knees, and feet being alone recognisable. A strong net-work, composed of twisted straw or bast incloses a thick rush mat, in which the body is wrapped. These coverings being removed, there is found a broad, woollen bandage, passing round the body, and fastening the rushes or sticks which support it in a sitting position. Under this bandage is a red or party-colored ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... nations, quiet debating unsuspected of their masters; and they were growing in numbers and in an almost sinister determination every year. Of course there were plenty of hausfraus cowed to the door mat, and, like the proletariat, needing a war to wake them up; but there were several hundred thousand of ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... hinges!" Gray interrupted excitedly. "It slides to the right by means of some arrangement concealed under the mat." ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... to stick into at the best of times. I remember laughing and looking across the room at him. Well, I saw an expression in his eyes that settled it. He looked as if he could see me—just like I know I am—in the mornings when I first wake up—all frowsy and fuddled, with this little bit of a mat I've got, sticking out in tails, about as long as your hand, on the pillow. It takes a bit of courage for a man to even go and live with a woman after he's seen her like that. I assure you it didn't take me much courage to tell him I'd ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... home, that his father's religious ferocity is fuelled and fanned by these good people. One day, before Khalid was banished, Shakib tells us, one of them, Father Farouche by name, comes to pay a visit of courtesy, and finds Khalid sitting cross-legged on a mat writing a letter. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... me, and beckoned me to approach. I entered the small room, which had been fitted up by the poor girl with some taste; the furniture was better than any I had seen in a Spanish house before, and there was a mat on the floor, and some exquisite miniatures and small landscapes on the walls. It was her boudoir, opening apparently into a bedroom beyond. It was lighted by a large open unglazed window, with a row of wooden balustrades beyond it, forming part ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... front-door (with the thinnest, neatest latch-key in the Five Towns), he entered his home and stumbled slightly over a brush that was lying against the sunk door-mat. He gazed at that brush with resentment. It was a dilapidated hand-brush. The offensive object would have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house. But in the lobby of his house—the house which ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... what the boys could do, and I was never satisfied until I had accomplished it." This was the strongest assertion the little lady of the horse was moved to make while in conversation, and that the ring is more beautiful to work in than on a mat upon a stage, for it is in the ring that the horse is most at home, it is easier for him, and gives him greater muscular freedom, with the result naturally, that it is easier on the muscles of the human body while in action. I have never tired of this species of entertainment. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... sitting in the cabin, when a sudden explosion close to the windows startled us from our seats, and the consternation of a crowd of men who were on the bank, showed that some accident had happened. I immediately ran out, and found that the servants had laid all my rifles upon a mat upon the ground, and that one of the men had walked over the guns; his foot striking the hammer of one of the No. 10 Reilly rifles, had momentarily raised it from the nipple, and an instantaneous explosion was the consequence. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... seemed dark on account of the sudden contrast with the glare outside, but as soon as this first impression was overcome, it appeared moderately lighted. It was a chamber about fourteen feet long and ten feet wide, and its walls were whitewashed with burnt gypsum. Deer-hides and a mat plaited of yucca-leaves lay rolled up in one corner. A niche contained a small earthen bowl, painted white with black symbolic figures. A doorway to the right led into another compartment which seemed darker than the first. As soon as the boys entered the room, a woman ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... the door mat in the broiling sun; two cats, which looked as though they might be dead, were stretched out in front of the two windows, their eyes closed, their paws and tails stretched ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... exclaimed Abram, drawing back. But at a word from the mistress, they lifted the man and brought him in and laid him down on the braided woollen mat before the fire. Then for a moment there was silence, for he wore the dress of a British soldier, and his right arm was bandaged. He had fainted from loss of blood, apparently—perhaps from hunger. Basha loosened his coat at the throat, and tried to force a drop or two of "spirits" into ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... beyond the table Anne's very pale face. She laughed a little hysterically, out of the deep shadows between the gloomy mat walls. 'Ha! ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... was warm and smelt unaired. Two or three letters lay on the mat inside the door, a huge blue-bottle boomed at a ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... that I would not complain about Shock, when there was a loud thump of the knocker, and directly after I heard the door open, a heavy step in the passage, the door closed, and then the sound of old Brownsmith wiping his shoes on the big mat. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... bosom," says a black-eyed daughter, patting him gently upon the head, then looking in his face solicitously, as he turns his eyes upward, and for a few moments seems invoking the mercy of the Allwise. "Yes, father," she resumes, lightening up the mat of straw upon which he lays, "the world has been unkind to you, but you are passing from it to a better-you ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... his way. A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was passing slowly towards the bridge. In front of the brushwood piled on it two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... open, thanking God it was not the devil, and Evelyn dragged her trunk through the door, letting it drop upon the mat abruptly. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... case may he touch water. The host, on his side, and his servants, both male and female, must neither wash clothes nor bathe so long as the feast lasts, and they have all during its continuance to observe strict chastity. The doctor seats himself on a new mat in his bedroom, and before a small oil-lamp he murmurs, shortly before the feast takes place, the following prayer or incantation: "Grandfather and Grandmother Sroekoel" (the name seems to be taken at random; others are sometimes used), "return ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... came about that in a room of five white cots and three barred windows, with the aid of a practical nurse and a tiny gas stove on a tin mat, Lilly prepared her daughter for ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... voice at the yard door, and the next moment the colonel was stamping his feet on the hall mat, his first word to Chad an inquiry after my comfort, and his second an apology to me for what he called his brutal ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... that the hall was indeed simply full of animals. It seemed to me that almost every kind of creature from the countryside must be there: a pigeon, a white rat, an owl, a badger, a jackdaw—there was even a small pig, just in from the rainy garden, carefully wiping his feet on the mat while the light from the candle glistened on his ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... the temple. She ascended the three lower steps, and glancing beneath a porch she saw her lover, Shuntoku, lying there asleep, covered with a straw mat; and she ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... and filling the air with the harsh uproar of their voices; the delicate grass-blades were just thrusting their tips through the brown web of the old year's growth, and in sunny, close-trodden spots showing a mat of green, while the fleecy brown blossoms of the elm were tufting all the spray of the embowering trees. Here and there a village loiterer greeted her kindly. They all knew Miss Adele. "They will all know it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... a chest, a faded mat, And broken chairs a few, Were all we had to grace our flat In ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker

... from the heat of the sun," constructs a fireplace of three round stones, fashions and bakes a few earthenware pots. When her household labors are done, she gathers roots, locusts, etc., from the fields. On the march she frequently carries a child, a mat, an earthen pot, some ostrich eggshells, and "a few ragged skins bundled on her head or shoulder," while the man carries only his spear, bow, and quiver.[170] The conditions among the American Indians were practically ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... was with Smith in Virginia has left us this account of what took place when the Powhatan was crowned (p. 42): "In a fair plain field they made a fire before which (we were) sitting upon a mat (when) suddenly amongst the woods was heard ... a hideous noise and shouting. Then presently ... thirty young women came out of the woods ... their bodies painted some white, some red, some black, some particolor, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... morning for the doors to open he circumnavigated the block nine times—he counted them. Coming in on the last tack he sighted the portly form of the banker careening with dignified speed around the corner. Another instant he had crossed the mat and disappeared into his financial harbor. Mr. Strumley steered rapidly in ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... in Big Hair's lodge snapped and spit gleams of light on the old warrior as he lay back on his resting-mat. He was talking to his sacred symbols. "Though he sleeps very far off, though he sleeps even on the other side, a spirit is what I use to keep him. Make the bellies of animals full which would seek my son; make the wolf and the bear and the panther ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington

... whose lightest pat Seems to glorify the mat, Waving hair and picture hat, Grace the nymphs have taught her; Gown the pink of fit and style, Lips that ravish when they smile,— Like a vision, down the aisle ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... bare, with the exception of a mat laid before the door leading into another and larger room, before one of the windows of which a white curtain was gently blowing in the wind. A rough, uncovered table pushed against the wall, three or four chairs, and a hair-cloth settee completed ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... from the nude, Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts In baked earth, (broken, Providence be praised!) A wreck of tapestry proudly-purposed web When reds and blues were indeed red and blue, Now offer'd as a mat to save bare feet (Since carpets constitute a cruel cost). * * * * * Vulgarised Horace for the use of schools, 'The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody, Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death, and Life'— With this, one glance ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... am aware, been well-trodden ground for some years. No one, however, appears to notice the courier's little spaniel in the Archduke Rainier's hall, who has watched for his master's return from Russia more than a year without stirring from his mat, and whom the good-natured Viceroy feeds and protects without allowing him to be disturbed. I hope he will find a place in some future animal biography, for the credit of his species. As to the splendid Fete Dieu, which we just ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... ingeniously made and fastened on, and is a perfect security against wind and rain. The floor is of split cane, elevated a few feet from the earth, which secures ventilation and cleanliness. The windows and doors are of mat, strengthened with a frame of bamboo, and strongly fastened at the top. When open they are propped up with a bamboo, and form a shade. Of course, there are no chimneys. Cooking is done on a shallow box a yard ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper—such was the compromising name of the avenging boy—announced "Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... covered with grass mats; or, when favourable, they throw up loose stone walls like the dykes in Scotland. But on the sea-coast, wherever there are harbours for shipping, they build permanent villages on a very primitive scale. These are composed of square mat walls, supported by sticks, and all huddled together, and partitioned off for the accommodation of the various families, near which there are usually one or more square box-shaped stone buildings, the property of the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Z-twist cord with a medium-to-hard twist. Each single ply is Z-twisted in medium degree. Total size of this well-preserved fragment is about 50 cm. by 21 cm. The one selvage which has been preserved would indicate that the width of the mat at least was set when the worker began the ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey

... at the door, the sound of a letter falling on the mat, and Fanning the postman passed on. George leaned back quickly so that he might not see him. Mr Griffith fetched the letter, opened it with trembling hands.... He gave a little ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... father's arrows, 110 Sat and rested in the wigwam, Lingered long about the doorway, Looking back as he departed. She had heard her father praise him, Praise his courage and his wisdom; 115 Would he come again for arrows To the Falls of Minnehaha? On the mat her hands lay idle, And her eyes were very dreamy. Through their thoughts they heard a footstep, 120 Heard a rustling in the branches, And with glowing cheek and forehead, With the deer upon his shoulders, Suddenly from out the woodlands Hiawatha stood before them. ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... selected a fresh-water polype or a coral, the members of what naturalists term the sub-kingdom Caelenterata would have grouped themselves around my type; had a snail been chosen, the inhabitants of all univalve and bivalve, land and water, shells, the lamp shells, the squids, and the sea-mat would have gradually linked themselves on to it as members of the same sub-kingdom of Mollusca; and finally, starting from man, I should have been compelled to admit first, the ape, the rat, the horse, the dog, into the same class; and then the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... mat, of excelsior to fit in the space between the level of the excelsior and the inside of the cover. Cover the cushion with cheesecloth or denim ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... for hours, made a strong lather, and scrubbed us soundly with a wad of linden bast shredded into fibres. Her wad was of the choicest sort; not that which is sold in the popular markets, but that which is procured by stripping into rather coarse filaments the strands of an old mat-sack, such as is used for everything in Russia, from wrappers for sheet iron to bags for carrying a pound of cherries. After a final douche with boiling water, we mounted the high shelf, with its wooden pillow, and the artistic part of the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... his gun back into the holster, a rather thickly built man but well-knit and there was a soft spring in his slowest movements which suggested snake-like quickness. He was dark-eyed, and his hair was a mat of close black curls. The cattle-buyer nodded, to indicate the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... glad that you are come home. Is it possible you will not take the trouble to go! There are certain things required of you when you go: perhaps you are too lazy or too dirty in your habits, to like doing them! I have known some refuse to scrape their shoes, or rub them on the door-mat when they went in, and then complain loudly that they were refused admittance. A fine house would such make to their father, were they allowed to run in and out as they pleased! such a house, in fact, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... from me and naught remained to me either above me or below me, and I ceased to be master of aught. Then my condition waxed strait, and as nothing was left to me at home I sold the pots and pans until I lacked even a sleeping-mat, and I used to patch my skirt with my sleeve. And naught profited me, neither friend nor familiar nor lover, nor remained there any one of them to feed me with a loaf of bread; so my case became hard and the folk entreated me ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... child," she said, on the day following the Puppy Show that had coincided with Christian's eighth birthday, when, after a long search, she had discovered her youngest daughter, seated, tailor-wise, in one of the kennels, the centre of a mat of hounds. "This is not a not a place for you! You don't know what you may not bring back ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... quietly, "even if you don't express yourself well. You can put on your hat and take the children to the waterfall; it will do you all good, for it will be cool down there. I will go to the post, lock the side door, and put the key under the mat." ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... made a fire with dry cattle-dung, and spread a native mat on the ground, close to the smoke, upon which I could sleep if the mosquitoes would allow me. I lay as close to the smoke as possible, with a comfortable log of wood for a pillow, and pondered over the events of the day, feeling very thankful for the change of circumstances, and making plans ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... a mat-covered lean-to built against the mud-wall. There was no other protection for the prisoners from sunshine or rain than coarse worn matting spread upon sticks and laid against the walls. The enclosure was without any sanitary ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... German or Swiss—there for the language—came to the door in the coat he had not always got quite into, and then summoned from the depths below a landlord or landlady to be specific about times and terms, to show the rooms, and conceal the extras. The entry was oftenest dim and narrow, with a mat sunk into the floor at the threshold and worn to the quick by the cleansing of numberless feet; and an indescribable frowziness prevailed which imparted itself to the condition of widowhood dug up by the young foreigner from the basement. Sometimes there ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... with the rice, Disco gazed in silent wonder, and with intense pity, at the slave-girl, who sat a little to one side of her guardians on a mat, her small hands folded together resting on one knee, her head drooping, and her eyes cast down. The enthusiastic tar found it very difficult to restrain his feelings. He had heard, of course, more or less about African slavery from shipmates, but he had never read about it, and had never seriously ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... meditation, and has been absorbed in the four trances in succession. On rising from the fourth trance, which leads to the higher powers, he should consider the event which last took place, namely, his sitting down; next, the spreading of the mat; the entering of the room; the putting away of bowl and robe; his eating; his leaving the village; his going the rounds of the village for alms; his entering the village for alms; his departure from the monastery; his offering adoration ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... him say, "and I hope we shall be the best of neighbours;" and his face was flushed, and he looked very handsome; while, when they shook hands on the door-mat, I could see the bright-eyed thing smiling in his face and looking pleased; and that shaking of the hands took a deal longer than it ought, while she gave him a look that made me think if I'd had a daughter like that, she'd have had ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... wouldn't give him anything to complain of, not she!) She then put a few clothes in a bundle, and, tying on her shaker, prepared to walk to Pleasant River, twelve miles distant. As she locked the door and put the key in its accustomed place under the mat, a pleasant young man drove up and explained that he was the advance agent of the Sypher's Two-in-One Menagerie and Circus, soon to appear in that vicinity. He added that he should be glad to give her five tickets to the entertainment if she would allow him to ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the door on the astonished young man, but opened it again before Parker had moved from the mat outside. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... and 3/4 inch in diameter, and completely choking them up. It cost L300 a year to keep the Avon at Christchurch free from it. The sorrel (Rumex acetosella) covers hundreds of acres with a sheet of red. It forms a dense mat, exterminating other plants, and preventing cultivation. It can, however, be itself exterminated by sowing the ground with red clover, which will also vanquish the Polygonum aviculare. The most noxious weed in New Zealand appears, however, to be the Hypochaeris radicata, a ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... and resourcefulness. Hut and mat making. Knots. Fire lighting. Cooking. Boat management. Judging distances, heights and numbers. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... massive profusion all about them. Heavy tropical moss hung from the branches and trailed its green mat over the stones. Birds were beginning to sing, their notes breaking the silence of the place in sharp thrills. Then she studied her companion. Finally, ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... his mat, and I rose up and in reply said: "Before I dare talk to you about treaties, and lands, and your future for this life, and that of your children, I must ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... honey, and rarely I was able to shoot a few guinea-fowl. We reached a village one night following a day on which my wife had had violent convulsions. I laid her down on a litter within a hut, covered her with a Scotch plaid, and I fell upon my mat insensible, worn out with sorrow and fatigue. When I woke the next morning I found my wife breathing gently, the fever gone, the eyes calm. She was saved! The gratitude of that moment I will not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... was robbed of its power by that touch on the biceps. In the ninth round, three times inside a minute, King's right hooked its twisted arch to the jaw; and three times Sandel's body, heavy as it was, was levelled to the mat. Each time he took the nine seconds allowed him and rose to his feet, shaken and jarred, but still strong. He had lost much of his speed, and he wasted less effort. He was fighting grimly; but he continued to draw upon his chief asset, which was Youth. King's chief asset was experience. As his vitality ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... much more cheerful, my lady," Jane said, with grateful appreciation. "And the relief makes it like Paradise." She was leaving the room and stopped at the door. "There's not a person, black or white, can get across the door-mat, past mother and me, until his lordship comes," she allowed herself the privilege ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the lid fell off and there, lying on a mat of softest grass, was a tiny, new-born lamb. Ohs! and Ahs! and laughter greeted it, to which the small creature answered by another feeble "Ma-a-a!" then curled itself ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... banners, and the staffs holding the banners were, bound in white silk, with long streamers hanging down. Half enclosing the banners were fanlike screens. Along the walls also were flags with toothed edges. The figure was seated on a mat of fine bamboo in the midst of this strange scheme of decoration. Behind him, and drawn straight across the chamber, was a sheet of fine white cloth, embroidered with strange designs. He was clothed in a rich jacket of blue, and a pair of sandal-like shoes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... me, I guess. I did stay a little longer, but I knew! I knew I was through. I stayed another week, and then I went to the mat. ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... imported from Europe undergo in the West Indies. Dr. Nicholson of Antigua informs me that, after the third generation, the wool disappears from the whole body, except over the loins; and the animal then appears like a goat with a dirty door-mat on its back. A similar change is said to take place on the west coast of Africa. (3/92. See Report of the Directors of the Sierra Leone Company as quoted in White 'Gradation of Man' page 95. With respect to the change which sheep undergo in the West Indies see also ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... cozy toes and hands We were dreaming, just like you; Till we thought of palmy lands Coloured like a cockatoo; All in drowsy nursery nooks Near the clutching fire we sat, Searching quaint old story-books Piled upon the furry mat. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... or less serious mishap, reckless of life, unheedful alike of time and eternity, they made the smallest trifles and the biggest tragedies the subjects of chaff and badinage till the next diverting occurrence. But to the Cross Canon outfit Mat Barlow's love for Netty Nevins was so obviously a downright worship, an all-absorbing, dominating cult, that, in a way, and all unknown to her, she became the nearest thing to a religion the Cross Canonites ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... anxious to know positively, I went on, and when I reached it I saw that it was a young bird, nearly as big as a robin just out of the nest. Then I dropped all impedimenta, and gave myself unreservedly to the catching of that bird. He fled under the ferns, which were like a thick mat, and I stooped and parted them, he flying ever ahead till he reached the end and came out in sight. Then I pounced upon him, and had him in ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... over her shoulders she wore a tippet somewhat resembling a small poncho, which completely shrouded the upper part of her form. Having finished the labours of the day (for although of high rank, she was compelled, like others, to work for her support), she was seated on a mat, with a book open on her knees, from which she was endeavouring to read. Not having long been a convert, she had as yet made but little progress in her studies. She affectionately welcomed her niece and me as we took our seats near her. Lisele then eagerly poured forth what she ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston

... lighted from the back, where a glazed balcony overlooks the teeming canal. You wish to wipe your shoes. Well! do you see this pattern of a small area-railing cut in wood? That is our scraper and door-mat—all in one. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... white as snow, as was also his beard, which was so long as to cover his mouth, while it reached down to his feet. The nails of his hands and feet were grown to an immense length; a flat broad umbrella covered his head. He wore no clothes, but only a mat thrown round his body. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... years ago Rangoon consisted of a mere swamp, with a few mat huts mounted on wooden piles, and surrounded by a log stockade and fosse. Now it is a city of 200,000 inhabitants, the terminus of a railway, and almost rivals Bombay in beauty and extent. It possesses fine palaces, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... and begged to be allowed to go with her wherever she went—to let him work for her and the "little missee," as he used to in the old days before she went away. "He did not want any money—only let him have a little rice and curry, and a mat to sleep on, and he would serve her as ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... wherry below bridge, built sharp at both ends. She was deeper than a wherry, but not so broad, and so thin and light that when empty four men could launch her or haul her ashore on a sandy bay. She had a substantial mast and a mat sail, and good outriggers lashed very fast and firm on each side. Without them she would easily have been upset, and even with them, had not ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... to one of the cells, which he opened, and therein was a man lying on his straw mat, undressed, and to all appearance fast asleep. Gimblett ordered him to get up and dress himself. He did so, and came into the yard, where Gimblett inserted the iron-wood gag in his mouth. The sound produced by his breathing through it (which appeared to be done with great difficulty) ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... weight. If the prince came to visit him when he was ill, he had himself placed with his head to the east, and lay dressed in his court clothes with his girdle across them. When the prince sent him a present of cooked meat, he carefully adjusted his mat and just tasted the dishes; if the meat were uncooked, he offered it to the spirits of his ancestors, and any animal which was thus ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... mother who called the child "Mattie." But now there was only "father," and with him it was straight "Martha Matilda," spoken a little brusquely, but never unkindly. Oh, yes, up in the cottage, certain days, was Jerusha, who did the heavy work and then went home nights; with Jerusha it was plain "Mat." Then there was Miss Mary down at the school which Martha Matilda had attended at the time when loving mother-fingers "fixed her up like other girls," and Miss Mary, when speaking to the child "running wild upon the mountain side," always said "dear." But Martha Matilda had dropped out of the ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 50 For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... many miles round, whom he met, not only every market-day at every market-town in the county, but at their own houses, where a knife and fork were always at the service of the rich buyer. One of these was a certain Mat Riley, who, on small means, managed to live, and rear a son and three bouncing, good-looking girls, who helped to make butter, feed calves, and superintend the education of pigs; and on these active and comely lasses Mr. Flanagan often cast an ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... her at once to a neat little bed-room, and permitted Trot to lie on a mat close to ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... had passed in freezing vigil on the landing, before it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave the key of his rooms under the door-mat. She looked and found it there. For some minutes she could not decide to make use of it; at last she let herself in and left the door open that anyone who came might see she was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... vacuum. Samuel Marlowe was a susceptible young man, and for many a long month his heart had been lying empty, all swept and garnished, with "Welcome" on the mat. This girl seemed to rush in and fill it. She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was the third prettiest. He had an orderly mind, one capable of classifying and docketing girls. But ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... The table mat, the design of which is shown herewith, is to be made of leather. It may be made of Russian calf ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... loose wrapper, was to open the door and beckon the poor man within the shelter of the verandah. When once I had got him there I did not exactly know what to do with my guest, for neither fire nor food could be procured quite so early. He crouched like a stray dog down on the dripping mat outside the door, and murmured some unintelligible words. In this dilemma I hastened to wake up poor F——, who found it difficult to understand why I wanted him to get up at daylight during a "sou'-wester." But I entreated him to go to the hall ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... him, and after his departure had the appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no public character. By some mistake of the queen's orders the court of France had been disgusted, and Bolingbroke says in his letter, "Dear Mat,—Hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy fertile brain will furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen, who are not much better politicians than the ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... little while Uncle Wiggily found himself right inside the good giant's house. And oh! what a big place it was. Why, even the door mat was so big that it took the rabbit three hops to get to the top of it. And that front door! I wish you could have seen it! It was as large as one of your whole houses, and it was only a ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... for you, Mat,' said the stranger. 'Your sister Rose, that married my poor cousin Tim Mulloy, beyant the mountains, is dead, and I'm sint to bid ye ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... boast to treat their wives like slaves, and ruin their families. There's that wretch Harry Prettyman. See what he's come to! He doesn't get home now till two in the morning; and then in what a state! He begins quarrelling with the door-mat, that his poor wife may be afraid to speak to him. A mean wretch! But don't you think I'll be like Mrs. Prettyman. No: I wouldn't put up with it from the best man that ever trod. You'll not make me afraid to speak to you, however you ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... then roll him either in the rug, or in the carpet, or in the door-mat, or in any thick article of dress you may either have on, or have at hand—if it be woollen, so much the better; or, throw him down, and roll him over and over on the floor, as, by excluding the atmospheric air, the flame will ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... Bevis, whose favourite sleeping-place was the mat at his door, lying there as usual, but not asleep. Wide awake, as if on guard. And marvel of marvels! a dear little fair-haired boy fast, fast asleep, with his head on the dog, who was lying so as to make himself into as comfortable a ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... saw when he stood on the door-mat beside his captor merely added mystery to mystery. Just within the luxuriously furnished hall, where the light of the softly shaded hall lantern served to heighten the artistic effect of her red house-gown, stood a woman—a lady, and evidently the mistress of the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... pestilential, enviable staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door an empty, unwashed milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round, upon the door-mat; on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was at that moment climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's lodge or the entrance to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... almost lost in the vast solitude, still remain during the hour of rest, and are busy sweeping the floor with long palms made into a kind of broom. These are the poor students, whose only meal is of dry bread, and who at night stretch themselves to sleep on the same mat on which they have sat ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... and the material belief of things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the 289:27 material must be untrue. Life is not in matter. Therefore it cannot be said to pass out of mat- ter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and 289:30 all things spiritual are the real ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... mat under a glaring electric lamp. The wet streamed down him in rivulets; he was ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... with a thick mat of furs, the sides were lined with them, and others were hung across the entrance, so that the cold was effectually kept out. A large fire was kept burning in front of the tent, and from this, from time to time, red embers were taken out and placed in a cooking-pot inside. At ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... mat of plaited rush, and has four blankets. Every morning the mats are brushed and rolled up and the blankets folded, so that during the day there is a large clear space inside the building. The detention cells have the ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various

... was opened. Donal spent fully a minute rubbing his shoes on the mat, as diligently as if he had just come out of the cattle-yard, and then Gibbie led him in triumph up the stair to the drawing-room. Donal entered in that loose-jointed way which comes of the brains being as yet all in the head, and stood, resisting ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... proceed at all risks, and making them some presents. They requested the assistance of two guides, to put them in their way; which request the natives readily granted, returning for their presents a mat, which served them as a bed during the voyage. The next day, being the 10th of June, the two Miamis, their guides, embarked with them in sight of all the inhabitants of the village who looked with astonishment on the hardihood of seven Frenchmen in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... content, and that they could go back to their master, and tell him that in a month's time I would be ready and that he could come for me. This pleased my father, and although at night time I always slept between the two women, as is customary for a taupo, with a mat over me, and they lay on the outside, one on each side, yet in the day time I often met my lover in the ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... there was comfortable. It seemed to Lizzie that his bleared eyes should be washed; and she did this before she went through her kitchen into a shed-room where she slept. There she sat down in hurried and frowning preoccupation, resting her elbows on her knees and staring blankly at the braided mat on the floor. As she sat there her face reddened; and once she laughed, nervously. "An' me 'most fifty!" she ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... hoont aftaire ze cap'en," replied Jan, coming up close to us now. "He vas get troonk, and go mat again in ze valleys beyont ze sheep, and I vas run aftaire hims, as he vas run avays, and den he vas go out of zight in one big hole at ze top of ze hill. I vas vollow aftaire hims, but den I loose hims, and ze erdquake vas come and ze toonder and lightning, and I vas zee ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the primitive little houses upon their stilt-like posts, and the ladies had spent some time in watching a quaint little native mother making efforts to at once ply the queer sticks which helped her in a strange sort of mat-weaving, and keep an eye upon a preternaturally solemn-faced infant, who, despite his gravity, seemed capable of quite as much mischief as the average enfant terrible of civilization. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... ass! The first you know,' I says, 'they'll have your skin off an' layin' on the front piaz' for a door-mat.' ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller

... small scale. It has developed until we have nearly ninety men at work. Some of these are skilled workmen who are engaged in carpentry. The particular job they have now in hand is the making of benches for the Salvation Army. Others are engaged in mat-making, some are cobblers, others painters, and so forth. This trial effort has, so far, answered admirably. No one who is taken on comes for a permanency. So long as he is willing to work for his rations he is supplied with ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... she has a perfect housemaid, it is not unwise occasionally to make sure herself that every detail has been attended to; that in every bathroom there are plenty of bath towels, face towels, a freshly laundered wash rag, bath mat, a new cake of unscented bath soap in the bathtub soap rack, and a new cake of scented ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... neat little camp-beds within it, with their toes planted on the short dry grass. In the iron washhand stand were a shining white basin and a jug filled with clear water. There was a cake of remarkable pink soap with a strange and piercing scent; there was a "tooth glass"; there was a straw mat. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... said the seaman, walking smartly up to the chief, who was sitting on a mat inside his doorway, surrounded by a part of his harem and family, "you haven't forgotten ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke

... for Prometesky's cottage, a wonderful hermitage, as Dermot described it, almost entirely the work of the old man's ingenious hands. There he lived, like a philosopher of old, with the most sternly plain and scanty materials for comfort—a mat, a table, and a chair; but surrounded by beautiful artistic figures and intricate mathematical diagrams traced on his floor and wall, reams of essays and poems where he had tried to work out his thought; fragments of machines, the toys ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... journeyed, awkwardly enough, to the temporary cholera hospital; a handful of tents and grass huts on the outskirts of the station. Betwixt the clutches of cramp, and the abject humility of his kind, the coolie slithered from the seat on to the mat; and Lenox had some ado to prevent his falling headlong from the cart. But in due time he was handed over safely to a suave, coffee-coloured hospital assistant, and carried shrieking into a tent crammed with sights unfit to be told; ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... established in Japan eleven hundred and fifty years ago, as an Imperial Court festival only, in accordance with Chinese precedent. Subsequently the nobility and the military classes everywhere followed imperial example; and the custom of celebrating the Hoshi-mat-suri, or Star-Festival,—as it was popularly called,—spread gradually downwards, until at last the seventh day of the seventh month became, in the full sense of the term, a national holiday. But the fashion of its observance varied considerably at different ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... passed the two lines of fuse through the two holes, and into the other building, which was a drug store. In the other building I tied a loose knot in the ends of the fuse and left it lying on the floor behind the counter and covered with a door-mat. ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth



Words linked to "Mat" :   lusterlessness, twine, water mat, canvas, dull, flatness, mousepad, bath mat, matted, mat up, snarl, matting, pad, sports equipment, change, floor cover, distort, felt, wrestling mat, dullness, Sayeret Mat'kal, floor covering, place mat, ensnarl, matt, welcome mat, matt-up, Master of Arts in Teaching, matte, felt up, unsnarl, sea mat, mesh



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