"Bolster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... games had been played, and two of them were won by the Navy. Next would come Stanford College, a hard lot to beat. The Navy tried to bolster up its own hopes; a loss to Stanford would mean the majority of games lost out of the ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... the pillows are much rumpled, are they not? But look under the bolster—it is all smooth, and you find none of those wrinkles which are made by the weight of the head and the moving about of the arms. That's not all; look at the bed from the middle to the foot. The sheets being laid carefully, the upper and under lie close together everywhere. Slip your hand ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... building, he set us about fetching heaps of dry leaves to spread behind the stocks for a couch. A trunk of a small cocoa-nut tree was then placed for a bolster—rather a hard one, but the natives are used to it. For a pillow, they use a little billet of wood, scooped out, and standing on four short legs—a sort ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Mott. You needn't be alarmed. I'm not going to bite a hole in the ship and scuttle her. Moreover, I am a very meek and lowly individual on board this ship. There's a lot of difference between being in supreme command with all kinds of authority to bolster you up and being a rat in a trap as I am now. Up in Copperhead Camp I was a nabob, here I'm a nobody. Up there I was the absolute boss of five or six hundred men,—I won't say I could boss the women,—and I made 'em all walk chalk without ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... first link in the long chain of crimes and misfortunes which the human race has endured since its birth. The delusion of prescription is the fatal charm thrown over the intellect, the death sentence breathed into the conscience, to arrest man's progress towards truth, and bolster up the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... little cheering, In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! Where may she wander now, whither betake her From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What if in wild amazement and affright, Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp Of savage hunger, or of savage heat! ELD. BRO. Peace, brother: ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... by Germans about England have often been to me. It is true, however, that tall people do find the old-fashioned German bedsteads short; and it is true that the big square downy pillows are supported by a wedge-shaped bolster called a Keilkissen. But the Plumeau is what the German loves, and the Briton hates above all things: the mountain of down or feathers that tumbles off on cold nights and stays on on hot ones. You hate it all the year round, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... tired, so we turned in early. W Unfortunately, our rooms were immediately over the billiard room, where a bibulous and cosmopolitan lot were earnestly endeavouring to bolster up by further proof the fiction that a white man cannot retain his health in the tropics. The process was pretty rackety, and while it could not keep us awake, it prevented us from falling thoroughly asleep. At length, and suddenly, the props of noise fell away from me, and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... enough interested in her case to have her removed to a nunnery near where he lived, and there he often called upon her. He read to her from his own writings, instead of analyzing hers, which proves priests to be simply men at the last. Bossuet needed the feminine mind to bolster his own, but Madame and he did not mix. In her autobiography she hesitates about actually condemning Bossuet, but describes him as short and fat, so it looks as if she were human, too, since what repelled her were his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... If a great old family can only bolster up its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what I did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less to bolster up my former boasting—or what into boasting ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... paillasse is placed over it, then the feather-bed, so that it literally requires a ladder to ascend to the top of this mountain of bedding, and then it is difficult to crawl into it. There were a bolster and two pillows covered with velvet, which, with the sheets, were all trimmed with a kind of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... her mother near Oxford: he sent for her after some time, and I think his servant was evilly entreated,"—such are Aubrey's brief notes of the facts; after which come his own reflections on the rupture: "Two opinions do not well on the same bolster;" and "What man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the enemy party?" Finally Wood, in his Fasti, does little more than repeat Aubrey: "Though he sent divers pressing invitations, yet he could not prevail upon her ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... being conscious of it, believing himself far from sleep, and convinced that he required no effort to keep awake, he suddenly slept. When he awoke a ray of pale sunlight filled the room, and leaning her elbow on the bolster, Phillis was watching him. He made a brusque movement, throwing himself backward. "What is the matter?" he cried. "What have I said?" Instantly his face paled, his lips quivered; he felt his heart beat tumultuously and his throat pressed by painful ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... humanity. We must want the wants of all men. We must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness. Here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. The rich are lonely. We are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the Superior when the great mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger numbers for every human height of attainment. To be sure, there are differences between men and groups and there will ever be, but they will be differences of beauty ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... build up his own fortune nowadays. Shirt-sleeves rolled up lead on to best broad cloth; and he who is not ashamed of the apron will soon be able to do without it. "Diligence is the mother of good luck," as Poor Richard says; but "idleness is the devil's bolster," John Ploughman says. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... along the very low large window, with two rugs and cushions, and a holdall for a bolster, is as comfortable as any bed, and you don't miss sheets after a day or two. There is one bathroom for 120 or more people, but I get a cold bath every morning early. S—— gets our early morning tea, and M. sweeps our room, and I wash up and roll up the beds. We are still away from our boxes, ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... thin, and with a total absence of hair, which was emphasised in the most lurid and ghastly fashion. With a snakelike movement, the evil thing slithered out of the wardrobe, and, gliding past Letty, approached the bed. Letty was obliged to follow every proceeding. She saw the thing deftly snatch the bolster from under the sleeping head; noted the gleam of hellish satisfaction in its eyes as it pressed the bolster down; and watched the murdered creature's contortions grow fainter, and fainter, until they finally ceased. The eyes then left the room; and from ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... killed and which to be delivered to Lu-don. Pan-sat, knowing himself all the details of the plannings of Lu-don, had made the quite natural error of assuming that the ocher was perfectly aware that only by publicly sacrificing the false Dor-ul-Otho could the high priest at A-lur bolster his waning power and that the assassination of Mo-sar, the pretender, would remove from Lu-don's camp the only obstacle to his combining the offices of high priest and king. The high priest at ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... grease; it is put into a skin bag or tin can whilst warm and soft. The grease ought not to be very warm, when poured on the dry meat. Wild berries are sometimes added. The skin bags for the pemmican should be shaped like pillow (not bolster) cases, for the convenience of packing on horseback. The pemmican is chopped out with an ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... uttering a peculiar growling sound, and, to the astonishment of mother and son, he caught up the pillow and gave Vince a bang with it which knocked him back on the bolster. "Cold pudding!" he cried. "Here! try a shoe-sole to-morrow night, and see if you can digest that. Come to bed, my dear. Look here, Vince: tell Mr Deane to give you some lessons in natural history, and then you'll learn that you are not ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... It was disheartening to find his old publishers dubious about undertaking the republication, and for a time the work went hard. "I am growing a sad laggard in literature," he wrote to his nephew, "and need some one to bolster me up occasionally. I am too ready to do anything else rather than write." For more than a year his time was largely devoted to overseeing an enlargement of the cottage, and a renovation of the grounds, at Sunnyside. At last he got it all into satisfactory order. "My own place has never been ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... box, whose brilliant colors and blazing jewels fascinated her very soul; but where could she securely hide it from her husband's search? At that moment it was with the watch and the diamond ring under the bolster of her bed. But there it was in danger of being discovered, should a search ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... all over. I took the bolster and pillow and put them under the covers, to look as like me as I could, and I put the old sheepskin coat at the top of all; and as you come into the room any one would have thought it was me lying there with ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... savage, I swore till she begged me not to make a noise, and saying, "Well,—well,—well,—so you shall,—hold your tongue (to the girl), he won't hurt you,—look his cock is not big." She pulled the girl on to the edge of the bed again, and brought her cunt up to the proper level with the bolster and pillows. Then said the woman, "Let me hold your cock, you must not put it far in, she is so young." I promised I would only sheath the tip; but she declared I should not unless she held it. "Wrap your handkerchief round ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of birth controllers is that a high birth-rate, by intensifying the struggle for existence, increases poverty. In order to bolster up this contention, Malthusians quote three arguments concerning (a) famines, (b) abundance, and (c) wages, and each of these ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... was too pure to permit him to consider miracles otherwise than as an entirely exceptional means of relieving the sufferings of men. Not once do we see him resorting to miracle to prove his apostolate or to bolster up his ideas. His tact taught him that souls are worthy of being won by better means. This almost complete absence of the marvellous[10] is by so much the more remarkable that it is in absolute contradiction with the tendencies ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... "but doesn't it hurt your knuckles? I should have something softer put up for me if I were you; your bolster, with a velvet cap on it, or a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of themselves. Many of the articles of furniture left them had been disposed of to supply the calls of urgent want. In the room was an old four post bedstead, with curtains almost worn out, one mattrass with two small pillows, a bolster that was almost flat, three old blankets and cotton sheets, of coarse description, three rush-bottom chairs, an old claw table, a chest of draws, with a few battered band-boxes on the top of it, a miserable bit of carpet ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... ez he gen'ly does—an' I'm 'feered he's a-gittin' it now." An', sir, with that, she thess gathered up her apron an' mopped her face in it an' give way. An' ez for me, I didn't seem to have no mo' backbone down my spinal colume 'n a feather bolster has, ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... of horsehair sofas and chairs. These displeased Frank, but some handsome china—an entire tea service in Crown Derby—reconciled him to the room. In the bedroom they found a huge four-poster of old time, with a lengthy bolster and imposing pillows, and they were shown into another and a similar room. One looked out on the green, the other on the fields that lay between the green and ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... them from the pharmacy, or castor oil from the medicine room. I had to sit beside their beds when they heard the truth; I had to see the women crumple up and go limp; I had to tell the blind child's father that he did it, to bolster up the weak girl, to rebuild the wife's broken ideals, to suppress the rowdy and the roysterer, to hear the vows of the boy who was paying for his first mistake, and listen to the stories of the pimp and the seducer. What made syphilis terrible to the many really fine and upright ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... the door, and saw a bare feather-bed and bolster, the usual materiel in an unoccupied college chamber. "Seeing's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... merry bowl Again shall bolster up my soul Against itself. What, good man, hold! Canst tell me where red wine is sold? Nay, just beyond yon peach-tree? There? Good luck be ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... he said, "you've braced me up wonderfully. I feel more like a man and less like a feather-bolster than I did when I came in. I wonder if you couldn't—" He hesitated and pressed her fingers persuasively. "Couldn't you manage to drop a hint to Molly about appearances being deceptive, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Mr. Head's hotel, the Mansion House, where we were welcomed by the worthy host in person; although he had not bed-rooms for us that night, for we were three in company. We were, however, soon furnished with a most excellent supper; and after, two of us got, not "three chairs and a bolster," but a couple of camp bedsteads with good mattresses, and sheets white as snow. Our senior companion, Mr. P——, was provided with a bed-chamber; and what could the heart of weary traveller ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... money enough," he was accustomed to say, when the adventurous petitioned him to bolster new projects for swift returns, "all in gilt-edged securities. That's why I don't propose to lay awake an hour in my life, muddling over stocks. Why, it's destruction, man! it's death. It eats up your tissues faster than old age." The ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... it invented to prove a theory—much like the stuff they put between the covers of school history books—so Ali Baba's lecture, although gorgeous fiction in its way, hardly enriched knowledge. Not that he was free from the latterday craving for accuracy whenever it might serve to bolster up the rest of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... the inn-keeper's daughter, and this is my sister." There was another girl beside her, whom I had not seen, as her head was under the bolster. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Dodd" found his employer an exact man—one who required service by the card. This the young man could not, or rather would not render. He blundered in his work on more than one occasion, and resorted to tricks to bolster up his carelessness or inefficiency. The result was that after a few weeks' service he was discharged. He was chagrined, mortified, angry. But he "cheeked it through," as the young men of his class would say. It is bad ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... mother of the little fellow who occupied the wide bed. He lay there in lugubrious state, the rosy face stained with much crying, just showing above the edge of the counterpane; his tangle of yellow curls crushed upon the bolster. Below these was a white mound, stretched along the middle of the bed, just the length of Robby, aged seven and a half, the youngling of the Wilcox family. Two big blue eyes, glazed with tears, wandered from one to another ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... I slipped under the bolster of the bed the purse with the fifty pieces of gold I had brought with me, and took leave of the lady, who asked me when I would see her again. "Madam," said I, "I give you my promise to return this night." She seemed to be transported with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... shock), the earth had a shivering fit between one and two; but so slight that, if no more had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again—on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell; my servant came in, frightened out of his senses: in an instant we heard all the windows ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... they might well provoke a smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling. The last of the charges was the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others. The mere specification of the articles must have been sufficient to show that the doom of the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... always carried to inordinate lengths. Having abandoned the mediaeval concept of woman as temptress the men of the Nordic race have revived the correlative mediaeval concept of woman as angel and to bolster up that character they have create for her a vast and growing mass of immunities culminating of late years in the astounding doctrine that, under the contract of marriage, all the duties lie upon the man and all the privileges appertain to the woman. In part this ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... and dawdle all day," exclaimed Deppingham. "We must be moving about—arrange our batteries, and all that, don't you know. Get out a skirmish line, nominate our spies, bolster up our defences, set a watch, court-martial the prisoners, and look into the commissariat. We've got to stave these devils off for two or three weeks, at least, and we'll have to look sharp. Browne, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... in this matter only that maritime affairs in the East took a turn contrary to Nelson's wishes. Since he had persuaded himself that to bolster up the corrupt and tottering throne of Naples was the most important of his functions, he had become desirous that the isolation and blockade of the French army in Egypt,—a factor so decisive by its numbers, its brilliant ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... burbled downstairs, "a word from Mother Kohler herself, about the brand new special B-Complex Irradiated Bolster you can get ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... bed three pairs of sheets, three pairs of pillow cases, three bolster cases, one or two pairs of blankets, two ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... good armful of the rushes wherewith the floor was covered, and spreading them under the table, crept in upon them in my clothes, and keeping on my hat, laid my head upon one end of the table's frame, instead of a bolster. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... The chief provisions are: 'For the avoiding of the great deceipt used and practised in stuffing of feather-beds, bolsters, pillows, mattresses, cushions, and quilts—be it enacted, that no person or persons whatsoever shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer to be sold) any feather-bed, bolster, or pillow, except the same be stuffed with dry-pulled feathers, or clean down only, without mixing of scalded feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... cot were some very wide windows, and three windows were filled with galleons of cloud—fat, bolster, swelling vessels, white, save where, in their curving sails, they had caught a faint radiance from the hidden sun. In fine procession, against the blue, they passed along. Very faint and muffled there ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... spoke he looked up. Her eyes were certainly extraordinary. Could she be laughing at him? The prospect of a new building had been, it was true, a joke for many years and evidently she put no more confidence in the statement than he did himself. "Of course, you are aware," he continued to bolster his assertion, "that the road has been bought by an immensely ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... my mind." Jack complied, and Sedgwick read it carefully through. The statement of the mine, the description of its development, and of the value of the ore, had been prepared by an expert so eminent that he could not afford to sell his name to bolster up a fraud. ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... but sat there silent, with clasped hands. The bitterness of disappointment wore away slowly, and as the uneventful hours left them in the same helpless condition, they fell again into fitful conversation, merely to thus bolster up courage, and lead their minds to other thoughts. It was maddening to sit there motionless and stare off across the desolate water, seeing nothing but those white-crested surges sweeping constantly toward them, and to feel the continuous ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... Fairyland," by Edith R. Bolster, is a delightful little allegory. A child falls asleep and dreams that she has a number of adventures in a wood, where she meets various people personifying the moral qualities, like bad temper, unkindness, and envy, and learns a good lesson from them to tell her mother ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... not—unless, of course, he neglects an important piece of proof through gross carelessness. All he has to do is to solve a problem and to place his answer before a magistrate, and then a judge and jury to decide whether he's right or wrong. No one but a fool would attempt to bolster up a wrong answer. In this case, too, you must remember that there are finger-prints. They cannot lie. If we get the right man—Grell or any one else—there will be ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I daresay she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes' meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again! No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... political and commercial drain on the country year by year, the political, it is asserted, amounting to L30,000,000 and the commercial to L40,000,000. These figures have been placed even higher by those who wish to blacken the Indian Administration in order to bolster up a malicious agitation against this country. I think it is incumbent upon the representative of the Indian Government in this House to deal with the statement. I may at once say that it has no foundation in fact. (Hear, hear.) Its origin is to be found, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... bolster, uphold, sustain; maintain, keep, provide for; verify, substantiate, ratify, corroborate, confirm; vindicate, defend, maintain; second, back, aid. Antonyms: desert, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... however, removed sooner than anyone had anticipated. The next trip that the captain made was for his hammock (he always slept in one), which was a long unwieldy bundle, like a gigantic bolster. He carried it into the parlour on his shoulder, and ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... to shake it off. He also tried to bolster himself up by thinking he might perhaps be able to assist his mother to come out from her narrowness, and discover too how warm and glorious the sun shone outside, where people loved and helped each other. Then he rejected ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... formidable strength, though in particular places the Tory party is entirely crushed; the sooner it is so altogether the better, for no good can be expected from it, and it would be far better to erect a Conservative party upon a new and broader basis than to try and bolster up this worn-out, prejudiced, obstinate faction. But the times are difficult and men are wanting; the middle classes are pressing on, and there are men enough there of fortune, energy, activity, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... militant. In looks he was a cross between a grenadier and a Trappist. But there was more soldier than monk in his nature. He was over six feet high, thin as a bolster, and straight as a long-leaf pine. His anatomy was strongly conspicuous. He was the boniest of men. There were as many angles as inches in the lines of his face. His hair disdained the persuasions of comb or brush, and rose in tangled masses above a head that would have driven ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the guts, that she began to roar loud enough to be heard all over the house. Adams then, seizing her by the hair (for her double-clout had fallen off in the scuffle), pinned her head down to the bolster, and then both called for lights together. The Lady Booby, who was as wakeful as any of her guests, had been alarmed from the beginning; and, being a woman of a bold spirit, she slipt on a nightgown, petticoat, and slippers, and taking a candle, which always burnt in her chamber, in her hand, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... of its covering, shook bolster and pillows; turned over the mattress, and beat it vigorously; then put on fresh sheets, and adjusted ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... me on the head!" cried Tim. "Quick, quick! I've got you in my hands!" He flew headlong over the sofa where Maria sat clutching the bolster to prevent being blown on ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... one's limbs and a change of posture, and also so as to form a comfortable sloping back inside in the cabin, while it supports a large soft pillow, the whole being used as a sofa to recline on while reading or writing, or finally being converted into a bolster by lowering it when the crew is piped to bed for the night, or at least such hours of it as the tide and wind ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... fashion then he tried to bolster up his slipping courage, as he fell in behind the two men, and marched out of the shanty prison. Larry trotted along in the rear; for Phil purposely refrained from slipping his arm in that of his chum; wishing to make it appear that Larry at least ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... incipient madness and fever—tearing everything to pieces that came in his way—or he would weep and moan, declaring that no one loved him, that he was a burden to his wife. One evening when his wife and daughter came in he was not in his bed; in his place lay the bolster carefully tucked in. They found him at last crouched on the floor under the bed, with his teeth chattering with cold and fear. He told them he had been ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... to my arms—"Dear Lady Clapperclaw," says she, "it's not for ME; I ask it for my blessed Blanche! a young creature in her first season, and not at your ball! My tender child will pine and die of vexation. I don't want to come. I will stay at home to nurse Sir Alured in the gout. Mrs. Bolster is going, I know; ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stood here like they is now, fer a hundred years. I reckon we kin keep 'em that-away fer a spell longer." But it was evident that Samson was arguing against his own belief; that he was trying to bolster up his resolution and impeached loyalty, and that at heart he was sick to be up and going to a world which did not despise "eddication." After a little, he waved his ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... early this month, was a desperate attempt to bolster the morale of the German people. The Russians were not fooled by this. They went ahead with their own plans for attack—plans which coordinate with the whole United Nations' ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... there now appeared, amid palms and chrysanthemums, a long, rotund man like a bolster. He held a paper in his hand and wore a platform smile. His attitude was that of one who hesitated to demand silence from so well-bred a throng. His high, narrow forehead shone in the light of the candelabra. This was Lord Ferriby—a man ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... down in bed, for, at her own request, the bolster had been taken away. Her head was only just raised up on the pillow. By the light of the one candle he could see her slender form outlined under the bed-clothes. Her eyes were closed, her features pinched and worn. There was something almost ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... Napoleon was deaf. His instincts and his experience of the Kings prevented him yielding on any important point. He determined to carry on the war from the Tagus to the Vistula, to bolster up Joseph in Spain, to keep his garrisons fast rooted in every fortress as far east as Danzig. Russia and Prussia, he said, had more need of peace than France. If he began by giving up towns, they would demand kingdoms, whereas by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... swear away an innocent man's liberty, but more than once he had had to stand for a frame-up against a guilty one. According to his cop-psychology, if his side partner saw something it was practically the same as if he had seen it himself. That phantasmagorical scintilla of evidence needed to bolster up a weak or doubtful case could always be counted on if Delany was the officer who had made the arrest. None of his cases were ever thrown out of court for lack of evidence, but then, Delany never arrested anybody ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... other persons of note, the king of Navarre,[360] the Archbishop of Lyons, the Ladies de Retz, de Lignerolles, and de Sauve, two of whom have since confirmed this conversation. As she was hastening to bid them good night, she threw herself with a start upon her bolster, put her hands before her face, and crying out violently, she called to her assistance those who were present, wishing to show them, at the foot of the bed, the Cardinal (de Lorraine), who extended his hand towards her; she cried out several times, 'M. the Cardinal, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... relief were sympathy for Mike, gratitude to him for having given himself up so promptly, and a curiously dazed sensation, as if somebody had been hitting him on the head with a bolster. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the Czech Republic, using successful stabilization policies to bolster its claims to full membership in the western economic community, has reduced inflation to 10%, kept unemployment at 3%, balanced the budget, run trade surpluses, and reoriented exports to the EU since the breakup of the Czechoslovak federation on 1 January ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... same,—but between their nationality. First, then, was social estrangement, next legal difference, and last of all political disagreement and strife. In order to oppress the weak, and justify the unchristian distinction between God's creatures, the persons who would bolster themselves into respectability must have the aid of law. Luther could march fearlessly to the Diet of Worms if every tile on the houses were a devil; but Macbeth was conquered by the remembrance of the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... very fine wire to open the seal of the will. La Cibot, meanwhile, looking under the pillow, found the handkerchief with the key of the bureau knotted to one corner; and this so much the more easily because Pons purposely left the end hanging over the bolster, and lay with his face ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the arrangements of Nature, its power of combining in the most secret recesses, and that it must be for some purpose of beneficence that such operations existed. After breakfast, we got into the cart of the inn, which had a seat swung into it, upon which a bolster was put, in honour, I presume, of the Poet Laureate. In this we jogged on to Seathwaite, getting out to ascend a craggy eminence on the right, which Mrs. Wordsworth admired: the view from it is very striking. You see from it all the peculiarities ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... fire, ignoring his very existence. He sustained the slight with an admirable cheerfulness, and babbled and sputtered and flounced about with his hands. He grew pinker in the generous firelight, and he looked very fat as he sat in a heap on the floor. He seemed to have threads tightly tied about his bolster-shaped limbs in places where elder people prefer joints—in his ankles and wrists and elbows—for his arms were bare, and although his frock of pink calico hung decorously high on one shoulder, it drooped quite off from the other, showing a ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... you could leave something in your bed that looked vaguely like you in the dark? A bolster with a pyjama-coat round it, and one arm outside the blanket, and a pair of socks or something for the head. You know the kind of thing. I think it would please him to feel that you ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... on a palliasse of straw, with a pillow consisting of a thin bolster propped on his outer clothes. Three very yellow blankets made up the tally of comfort. And the whole was spread out on the floor of a room in which four other men ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... time have had my good things. Hence my frame is brittle—yours strong as brass. I never knew any ailment you had. You can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all hours. Well, I don't want to moralise. I only wish to say that if you are enclined to a game at Doubly Dumby, I would try and bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or so. My days are tedious, but less so and less painful than my nights. May you never know the pain and difficulty I have in writing so much. Mary, who is most kind, joins in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... majority of five, both sides bringing down the sick and the dying without remorse. A close division and parties nicely balanced, extinguish all feelings of humanity. The best speeches were Charles Buller's, Sheil's, Follett's, Peel's, and John Russell's. It is supposed this will bolster them up for the Session, but something ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... justified, more or less, on the principle laid down by Pitt, that the income tax should be held in reserve as a war tax only, or on the ground that it was equally wasteful and mischievous to keep up so large a peace-establishment, especially if it might be used to bolster up despotism abroad. It was also unfortunate that Castlereagh, ignoring the heroic efforts made by the people of England for more than twenty years, should have deprecated "an ignorant impatience to be relieved from the pressure of taxation". Still, it is remarkable that ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... bolster their courage by saying ostentatiously, "I don't care what folks say," but their very vehemence shows that they DO care a very great deal. We boys all remember how we used to whistle when we passed a graveyard after dark to show we "weren't afraid"; and how hard it was to keep our ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... me them lines when I wasn't more'n eleven, and I've never forgot 'em. Next you spreads the sheet just so, and you must be careful not to leave any creases in it. Then you beat up the bolster and pillow, and lay them like that," suiting the action to the words. "Then comes the top sheet, and the blankets. You must tuck each one in at the bottom first, and then at the sides, and leave the top end loose, so that when you've got the blankets spread, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... little trick that would displease him? Some word would be wrongly spoken, some garment would be ill-folded, some awkward movement would tell the tale,—and then he would feel that he had done wrong to marry the Quaker's daughter. All the virtues under the sun cannot bolster up love so as to stand the battery of one touch of disgust. Tell my father that, and tell him that I have done well. Then you can tell him also, that, if God shall so choose it, I shall live a strong old maid for many years, to think night and day ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... twice a year, or oftener if there be a change of servants; into each of whose care the articles are to be entrusted, with a list, the same as is done with plate. Tickets of parchment with the family name, numbered, and specifying what bed it belongs to, should be sewed on each feather bed, bolster, pillow, and blanket. Knives, forks, and house cloths are often deficient: these accidents might be obviated, if an article at the head of every list required the former to be produced whole or broken, and the marked part of the linen, though all the others should be worn out. Glass is another article ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... told next morning the decision of Chief Justice Bolster to try each prisoner separately and in closed court, they all protested against such proceedings. But guards took the women by force to a private room. "The Matron, who was terrified," said Miss Morey, "shouted to the guards, 'You ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... verses aloud from the first lines till the music and rhythm suffused his mind, turning it to quiet indulgence; then copied them painfully to feel them the better by seeing them; then lay back on his bolster. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... it man be that he had an equally accurate knowledge of the state of my father's health. That would account for what Cumming says as to his offer to bolster up the bank for a time, and for a retraction of that offer within a few days after ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... reins are commonly composed of narrow slips of untanned calf or sheep-skin, plaited together, and ornamented with silver buckles. The saddle is short and narrow, and exceedingly awkward to riders unaccustomed to it. The front bolster is four or five inches high, and inclines backward; the hind one is lower, and is curved forward in the form of a half-moon; the intervening space just affording sufficient room for the thighs of the rider, who, in a saddle of this construction, is ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... been surprised, if she had found herself floating away to have a real, close-hand look at the Southern Cross. She had no idea what was going on in Louis's mind. No kindly angel whispered to her that she should go in, now, for "swounds and vapours," and thus bolster up the protectiveness that had come to birth within him that night. She knew nothing of "swounds and vapours." The rather hard women on Lashnagar were never ill and weak until they were ready to drop into death. Aunt Janet had never been weak save ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was safe, the sorrow of other homes, devastated and mourning, weighed heavily upon Mary Ballard, and she needed to listen to the stirring editorials of the Tribune, which Bertrand read with dramatic intensity, to bolster up her faith in the rightness of this war between men who ought to be brothers in their hopes and ambitions for the national life ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... taken a fancy to him, and she was an unreasonably motherly mother. People who are unreasonably motherly like by impulse wholly very often, and hate by impulse. Their mind has no why or wherefore with which to bolster up their heart. She went slowly towards the cottage to dress for dinner, and all the time that she was walking, she continued, rather ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to-night, and I'm going to do the talking for them. Sarah, sensibly enough, wants to get it over before dinner, so I've promised to come over right after lunch and sit on your porch so I'll be here no matter how early Hugh gets home. You and I have to bolster up the weak ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Jacques Ferrand was dressed in black trousers and vest; one of the sleeves of his shirt was turned back, and a ligature around his attenuated arm announced that he had just been bled. Polidori was standing near the bed, with one hand on the bolster, and appeared to regard the features of ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... sweeter and better flavoured than the former, but it is accused of being unwholesome. The people drink palm-wine at different hours of the day, according to taste. The beverage is mild as milk in the morning; after noon it becomes heady, and rough as the sourest cider. The useful palm bears a huge bolster-like roll of fruit, which should be tried for oil: Cameron brought home a fine specimen for Kew. Here the land is evidently most fertile, and will form good farms for the Company. Leaving Arabo, we forded the double stream called the Bila, which runs a few ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... great dormitory was wretched in the extreme. A glance into the interior of two or three of the cells deepened this impression. In each was a small wooden bedstead about a foot and a half high, with nothing upon it but a very thin paillasse, a black blanket (the colour of the wool), and a little bolster. Upon a nail hung a small cat-o'-nine-tails of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... violently, some without complaint pursue; most men would altogether dismiss, and forget him. He is but a child, no older than the sea, no stranger than the mountains, pure and cold as the water-springs. Yet to the bolster of fever his vision flits; and pain drags a heavy net to snare him; and silence is his echoing gallery; and the gold of Sleep his final veil. They shall play on; and see, lady, flame has left the clouds; ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... admiration—see them together, one's a mast, and the other all hulk—she's a dome and he's built like a glass-house—when they part, you wonder to see the steeple separate from the chancel, and were they to embrace, he must hang round her neck like a skein of thread on a lace-maker's bolster—to sing her praise you should choose a rondeau, and to celebrate him ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the Government had asked him to make it. Then he made his statement. "Perhaps," he said, "no falser accusation than this had ever been brought forward against a minister of the Crown, for it specially charged his noble friend with resorting to the employment of unconstitutional practices to bolster up his parliamentary support, whereas it was known by everybody that there would have been no matter for accusation at all had not the Duke of his own motion abandoned a recognised privilege, because, in his opinion, the exercise of that privilege ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... continue its economic reforms to help the Philippines match the pace of development in the newly industrialized countries of East Asia. The strategy includes improving infrastructure, overhauling the tax system to bolster government revenues, furthering deregulation and privatization of the economy, and increasing trade integration with the region. Prospects for 2002 depend heavily on the economic performance of two major trading partners, the ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... the children, as they did themselves about eatin'. We all had the same kind of food. All had plenty of clothes but only one pair of shoes a year. People went barefooted a lot then more than they do now. We had good places to sleep, straw mattresses and chickenfeather beds and feather bolsters. A bolster reached clear across the head of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... principles of spiritual art, as he hoisted them one by one, as you might say, out of the depths of his moral consciousness. His benignant and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense of suffocating beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst of the matter was that the good gentleman's placid vanity had an integument whose toughness no sarcastic shaft could pierce. Roderick admitted that in thinking over the tribulations of struggling genius, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Hafbur, "And whatten a bed for me?" "O thou shalt sleep in the bower aloft, And blue shall thy bolster be." ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... said definitively that the great rebellion was over. On the other hand, there were not wanting some foreigners who would have liked to see the Manchus overthrown, and who severely blamed the British Government for helping to bolster up a dynasty already in the last stage of decay; for it seems to be an indubitable fact that but for British intervention, the rebellion would ultimately have ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... a false reverence that fears to speak plainly of God. It seeks by holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully thought-out phrase, to bolster up God's side. True love has two marked traits: it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should be known; and it is always reverential. It can't be otherwise. The bluntest words ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... every day more Burgundian. In the latter days of May. 1418, a plot was contrived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in the quarter of St. Germain des Pros, stole the keys from under the bolster of his father's bed; a troop of Burgundian men-at-arms came in, and they were immediately joined by a troop of Parisians. They spread over the city, shouting, "Our Lady of peace! Hurrah for the king! Hurrah for Burgundy! Let all who wish for peace take arms and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... clear, but there were even more facts to bolster it. Why had he been tested, for instance, after he had been made a demi-God? In spite of what Vulcan had said, was he slated for further honors if he passed the new tests? He was sure that Vulcan had been telling the truth as far ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... poems were about the crystal snow, and the ocean blue, and sweet spring, and fleecy clouds; when I tried to drag in a moral it kicked so that the music of my lines went out in a groan. So I had a sweet revenge when Lizzie, one day, volunteered to bolster up the eloquence of Mr. Jones, the principal, who was lecturing the class for bad behavior, by comparing the bad boy in the schoolroom to the rotten apple that spoils the barrelful. The groans, coughs, a-hem's, feet shufflings, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... will also be careful to sew up any stitch that gives way the moment it is discovered. The bedclothes are laid on, beginning with an under blanket and sheet, which are tucked under the mattress at the bottom. The bolster is then beaten and shaken, and put on, the top of the sheet rolled round it, and the sheet tucked in all round. The pillows and other bedclothes follow, and the counterpane over all, which should fall in graceful folds, and at equal ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts. Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific hypothesis), is something ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Sanuto's is the motive with which Giovio attempts to bolster up the accusation which he reports: "He [Cesare] poisoned him because he [Giovanni] favoured ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... on, and Castell, who was very weary, sank back upon the bolster and began to doze, when suddenly the chair that was set upon the trap-door fell over with a great clatter, and he sprang up, asking ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... without airing, turn the clothes half way down, and leave them for several hours. Some persons have cheap calico covers, to spread over beds, while the room is swept, this is a good plan, on account of the dust. Bolster and pillow tucks wear better, if you have a check case basted on, this should be changed, washed and starched occasionally. It is a good plan also to have check covers for matresses and feather beds, ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... him". This strange article of the treaty shows us, on the one hand, how thoroughly fictitious and illegitimate was this Theodoric's claim to kinship; since assuredly neither Alaric, nor Ataulfus, nor Theudemir, nor any of the genuine kings of the Goths, ever needed to bolster up their authority over their subjects by any such figment of an Imperial concession; and on the other hand, as it coincides in date with the time of Theudemir's and his Theodoric's entrance into the Empire, it shows us the distracting influences to which the large number of Gothic settlers ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... To bolster up his case, Maeterlinck urges that "the capacity for folly so great in itself argues intelligence," which amounts to saying that the more fool you ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... for a minute in his arms, her head bent down, and her face hidden, while he looked not so much at her as above her. His eyes wandered over the mass of her dark-brown wavy hair that Mrs Flint said was not wavy by nature, but crimped to make her look like a Blandamer, and so bolster up her father's nonsensical pretensions. His eyes took full account of that wave and the silken fineness of her dark-brown hair, and then looked vaguely out beyond till they fell on the great flower-picture that hung on ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... you must not laugh at them. I once had a picture book, in which a Persian or Indian prince (for he wore a turban) sat with his feet under him on a silk cushion, and at his back there was a great red silk bolster, which could be seen bulging out to the right and left of him, and the wall behind the Indian prince bristled with swords and daggers and panther skins and shields and long Turkish guns. And see, it looks just like that here in your house, and if you will cross your legs and sit down on them the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... between the two flaps permitted a fall view of the interior. A number of large boxes and articles of household use filled up the bed of the waggon. Over these had been thrown some coarse garments, and pieces of bed-clothing—blankets, counterpanes, and a bolster or two. Near the forward end, a chest of large dimensions stood higher than the rest; and upon the lid of this a piece of tallow-candle was burning, in the neck of an old bottle! Between the flame of the candle and my eyes a figure intervened, shadowing the rearward part of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... (double) Oak bureau, oak washstand 2 mattresses, 2 feather beds, 1 bolster 2 pillows, madras spread 1 box cot, 1 mattress, straw pillow 2 chairs, 2 towel racks Bureau cover, pen cushion, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
