"Cobweb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are in the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... have been half so pretty. But she had no veil, and I felt rather disappointed about that. Then there was a knock at the door and Mrs. Franklin came in, with her arms full of something all fine and misty like a lacy cobweb. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... goe with me, Ile giue thee Fairies to attend on thee; And they shall fetch thee Iewels from the deepe, And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleepe: And I will purge thy mortall grossenesse so, That thou shalt like an airie spirit go. Enter Pease-blossome, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseede, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and from thence into the uncleared forest, where a faint track wandered in and out among the great, tall, pillar-like trunks whose tops shut out the light of day, all but where at intervals what seemed to us like rays of golden dust, or there were silvery-looking lines of finest cobweb stretching from far on high, but which proved to be only delicate threads of sunshine which had pierced ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... streets. Every now and then she let drop another word or two on the subject of her fright; her poor disconnected brain seemed unable to grasp anything as a whole; something would float across it and be lost. Marie had grown apt at gathering together these cobweb strands, and disentangling them, but now even her ingenuity was at fault, and the number was the only point which stood out clearly from wavering words about a man and a box. She gathered at last that somewhere or other ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... look under that cobweb spread like a tent over the white clovers. A fairy would be very likely to creep in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a hole in the ground with his toe, and looked up, to see a lovely cobweb like a wheel, circle within circle, spun across a corner of the arch over the gate. Tiny drops glittered on every thread as the light shone through the gossamer curtain, and a soft breath of air made it tremble as if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and cloth began. Martha regarded it with appreciation unmarred by envy, as the artisan eye regards ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... weary of barking," answered Temperance, laying smooth a piece of cobweb lawn. "I think I'll bite, one of these days. Deary me, but there are widows of divers sorts! If ever there were what Paul calls 'a widow indeed,' it is my Lady Lettice; and she doesn't make a screen of it, as Faith ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... a little bridge spanning a chasm like a cobweb. A low parapet divided it from the awful gulf. On the other side the mountain lifted its jagged face, clammy with icicles, and far over all towered the sterile peaks, above the reach of clouds or lightnings, forever ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... At the first glimpse of her in her cobweb fineries, I was ill-bred enough to gape, whereat she ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... A cobweb world of thin, transparent shapes, Though limp as silk, the magic woof proves wrought Stronger than steel: no outlets, no escapes Ope to the struggling spirit, trapped and caught. Prisoned in walls of glass, She sees beyond them, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the first month's rent. Immediately he attempted to devise some means of raising the sum he needed, but before he had reached the very next corner the clear north wind had blown the trouble away like a cobweb. With all his strength and industry and determination, he was still a very young man, and perplexity had no hold upon him since passion had taken ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... from a lady, who had unmasked—because she would not be known!—Very pretty, indeed!—Oh! these slight cobweb airs of modesty! so easily seen through. Hence such advantages against us are taken by the men. She had looked out of her window, and seen no arms quartered with his own; for you know, my lady, I would never permit any to be procured for me: so, she doubted not, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of earth, if left alone, What sort of life wouldst thou have led? How oft, by methods all my own, I've chased the cobweb fancies from thy head! And but for me, to parts unknown Thou from this earth hadst long since fled. What dost thou here through cave and crevice groping? Why like a horned owl sit moping? And why from dripping stone, damp moss, and rotten wood Here, like a toad, suck in thy food? Delicious ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Comte and other one-eyed seers of modern France; his generalization, multitudinous and imposing, is often of the card-castle description, and tumbles at the touch of an inquisitive finger; and his cobweb logic, spun chiefly out of his wishes rather than his understanding, is indeed facile and ingenious, but of a strength to hold only flies. Such, at any rate, is the judgment passed upon him in the present paper; and if it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to its senses. The sun has begun to twinkle on the gilt cross of the Catholic chapel and make itself known to the doves in the stone belfry of the South Church. The patches of cobweb that here and there cling tremulously to the coarse grass of the inundated meadows have turned into silver nets, and the mill-pond—it will be steel-blue later—is as smooth and white as if it had been paved ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and an useful activity. Every exertion is encouraging, because to present amusement it joins the promise of some future good. The intervals of leisure are filled by the society of real friends, whose affections are not thinned to cobweb, by being spread over a thousand objects. This is the picture, in the light it is presented to my mind; now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall the next; or if not then, in a year or two more. You see I am determined not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... looking wide awake all in a minute as he said with a gesture, as if he brushed a cobweb off his face: "Now, see here, Cousin, I'm not good at mysteries and shall only blunder if you put me blindfold into any nice maneuver. Just tell me straight out what you want and I'll do it if I can. Play I'm Uncle and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... golden page, Most somberly musicked line; hold up these lanterns,— These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,— Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness; And you'll see—what? One hanging strand of cobweb, A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust ... Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you. Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magicians Against this baleful dusk, this wail of rain.... But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming, Arrowy ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... to see how John Dolittle with his fat heavy fingers undid that cobweb cord and unrolled the leaf, whole, without tearing it or hurting the precious beetle. The Jabizri he put back into the box. Then he spread the leaf out flat and ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... pink apple-tree, a mass of fragrant bloom, more beautiful than Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with snowy lawn innumerable pockets in a square basket that she held in her lap. The pockets were small, the needles were fine, the thread was a length of cobweb. Everything about the basket was small except the hopes that she was stitching into it; they were so great that her heart could scarcely hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere. The seeds were springing in the warm earth. The hens were clucking to their downy chicks ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... intent that she passed over the compliment with a gesture like that of brushing away a cobweb. Her eyes were like deep, clear wells ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... great and famous commander, that was wont to say a gentleman's honor should be de tela crassiore, of a good strong warp or web, that every little thing should not catch in it; when as now it seems they are but of cobweb-lawn or such light stuff, which certainly is weakness, and not true greatness of mind, but like a sick man's body, that is so tender that it feels everything. And so much in maintenance and demonstration of the wisdom and justice of the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... character with her wavy grace, and that sprinkled her with their fragrant yellow powder, the very breath of spring; and in one hand she had imprisoned a premature lace-winged fly, a fairy little savage, in its sheaths of cobweb and emerald, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... strong current of the tributary. A score or two of house-boats lay tied to the McKeesport shore or were bolstered high upon the beach; a fleet of Yough steamers had their noses to the wharf; a half-dozen fishermen were setting nets; and, high over all, with lofty spans of iron cobweb, several railway and wagon bridges spanned the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... first attempt to draw on his new trousers, to the astonishment of all his messmates, who had now gathered round him, found them separated in the middle of each of his legs. He might as well have attempted to clothe himself with cobweb continuations; they came to pieces almost with a shake. The waistcoat and coat were in the same predicament; they had not the principle of continuity in them. Everybody was lost in amazement, except Mr Pigtop, whose amazement, quite as great as ours, was lost in his still greater ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... could tell you of. When one walks on those grey roads at evening by the scented elder-bushes of the white cottages, watching the faint mountains gathering the clouds upon their heads, one all too readily discovers, beyond the thin cobweb veil of the senses, those creatures, the goblins, hurrying from the white square stone door to the north, or from the Heart Lake ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... which enveloped him from head to foot, he flopped about among the dead leaves on the bank of the stream, struggling and kicking like a fly in a cobweb. This he ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... he answered. "My mother is Ann Hawley, who lives by the mill, and does all the beautiful fine white washing for everybody hereabouts. Don't you know her? I suppose it's because you have just come. I believe my mother could wash a cobweb if she tried, and not tear it," and a glow of ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... apples. It is not desirable that women should be so large. Such women do not inspire a poet. Women should be little creatures that fear you. They should have thin plaintive voices, and in shrinking from you should be as slight to the touch as a cobweb. It is not possible to draw inspiration from a woman's beauty unless you comprehend how easy it ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... the Prince, clapping his hands. "Come here and let me decorate you, my friend." And as John bowed before him the Prince placed upon his bosom a beautiful star of diamonds that gleamed and sparkled like a cobweb full of dew. ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... of the hill the Cumberland, clear as when it descended from its mountains five hundred miles away, flowed between its high, straight walls of limestone, spanned by cobweb-like bridges, and bore on its untroubled breast a great fleet of high-chimneyed, white-sided transports, and black, sullen gunboats. Miles away to her left she saw the trains rushing into Nashville, unrolling as they came along black and white ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... is some pleasant shadow traced as on cobweb, to this effect. But of the Crown-Prince there is no forming the least conception from what he says:—this is mere cobweb with Nothing elaborately painted on it. Nor do the portraits of the others attract by their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... freely pervaded with pronounced white threads this is no sign that the spawn is bad. Bricks dried as hard as a board may be perfectly good; so, too, may be those that are comparatively soft. Mushroom spawn should have a decided smell of mushrooms, and whatever cobweb-like mold may be apparent should be of a fresh bluish white color, and the fine threads clear white. Prominent yellowish threads or veins are a sign that the mycelium had started to grow and been killed. Distinct white ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... and missed. Then he caught it and held on. He was holding firmly now with both hands. But how his arms ached! With his feet he began kicking for the ladder, which, swinging and bagging in the wind, seemed as elusive as a cobweb. At last, when strength was leaving him, he doubled up his knees and struck out with both feet. They fell upon something and stuck there. They had found a round of the ladder. Hugging the ropes, he panted for breath, then slowly worked himself to ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... the regular yellow devils who come and eat up London, first this part, and then that, then disgorge a little, choking it all up only to snap at it and swallow it down all bewildered a quarter of an hour after. This was a cobweb fog spun, as it might be, by some malignant central spider hidden darkly in his lair. The vapouring-like filmy threads twisted and twined their way all over London, and for four days and nights the town was a city of ghosts. Buildings loomed ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... with thick gnarled roots. At the base of one of the trees, Time or a lightning stroke has hollowed a sort of chamber. Rising slopes carpeted with heather. Rabbit holes. Mosses. Toadstools. Stretched between two ferns, a great cobweb, spangled with water-drops. At the rise of the curtain, RABBITS are discovered on every side among the underbrush, peacefully inhaling the evening air. A time of ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... leaning his inert weight on other men's shoulders, did remember in some mysterious fashion to return the books he borrowed, enriched often, as Lamb proudly records, with marginal notes which tripled their value. His conduct in this regard was all the more praiseworthy inasmuch as the cobweb statutes which define books as personal property have never met with literal acceptance. Lamb's theory that books belong with the highest propriety to those who understand them best (a theory often advanced in defence ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... for once I led my party into Pixley's camp, And he paroled me. I defended, too, The State of Oregon against the sharp And bloody tooth of the Australian sheep. But I've an aptitude exceeding neat For bloodless battles of diplomacy. My cobweb treaty of Exclusion once, Through which a hundred thousand coolies sailed, Was much admired, but most by Colonel Bee. Though born a tinker I'm a diplomat From old Missouri, and I—ha! ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... some twelve months of his ex-royal exile! The memories of all this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the castle were some of the darkest and narrowest streets of the city. One of these was Cobweb Corner; and here, in a small attic, dwelt a humpbacked, plain-visaged little man, who the whole day long loved to think about the king. He was called "Caspar the Cobbler, of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... two men brought the Emperor's new suit to the palace; they held up their arms as though they had something in their hands, and said, 'Here are your Majesty's knee-breeches; here is the coat, and here the mantle. The whole suit is as light as a cobweb; and when one is dressed, one would almost fancy one had nothing on: but that is just the beauty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing in taverns—a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good fellowship—who has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself—if there be any grovelling earth-born wretch of our species, a renegade to common sense, who would fain believe that the noble creature, man, is no better than a sort of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The framework, built of aluminium, consisted of sixteen hoops, connected by longitudinal pieces, and kept rigid by diagonal wire stays. Before it was covered it resembled a vast bird-cage, and looked as frail as a cobweb, but was stronger and stiffer than it looked. It was divided by aluminium bulkheads into seventeen compartments; of these all but the two end compartments contained separate balloons or gas-bags. Two or ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... A cobweb in the grass at his feet shone faintly afar—like Isabel's spangles, he thought. A soft-winged wayfarer of the night brushed lightly against his cheek in passing, and he laughed aloud, to think that a grey moth should ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... it is a thing to ask about. Ah! it is in vain, THING, that you thus are making your preparations; in vain that you are setting your trammels! The DEBT, the blessed debt, that best ally of the people, will break them all; will snap them, as the hornet does the cobweb; and even these very 'Semaphores' contribute towards the force of that ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... when he withdrew, that watcher would have discovered, on peeping through the key-hole of his door, that he was engaged in one of the oddest of occupations for such a man,—sweeping down from the ceiling, by means of a walking-cane, a long cobweb which lingered on high in the corner. Keeping it stretched upon the cane he gently opened the door, and set the candle in such a position on the mat that the light shone down the corridor. Thus guided by its rays he passed ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... yet,' said Mr Chester. 'Dear me! I hope the aged soul has not caught her foot in some unlucky cobweb by the way. She is there at ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... In a cobweb corner by a barrel, Blob crouched covetously; while beside the mattress-curtain sat the Parson in his shirt-sleeves, furbishing Polly, and pausing every now and then to spy out ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... sometimes come home slightly tipsy, but nothing more. This time, however, he had a black eye, just a friendly slap he had run up against in a playful moment. His curly hair, already streaked with grey, must have dusted a corner in some low wineshop, for a cobweb was hanging to one of his locks over the back of his neck. He was still as attractive as ever, though his features were rather drawn and aged, and his under jaw projected more; but he was always lively, as he would sometimes say, with a complexion ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... up in a corner, and rested her back against the wall. She clasped her small hands in front of her, and gazing dreamily up at an old beam across the room, on which hung many a cobweb, she began,— ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... Hermes, who, as all Olympus knew, was for ever at some piece of mischief, insisted on meddling with his father's work, and got leave to fashion the human ear out of a shell that he chanced to have by him, across which he stretched a fine cobweb that he stole from Arachne. But he hollowed and twisted the shell in such a fashion that it would turn back all sounds except very loud blasts that Falsehood should blow on a brazen horn, whilst the impenetrable web would keep out all such whispers as Truth could ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sails, And yield unto the weather of the tempest. You think your power's infinite as your malice, And would do all your anger prompts you to; But you must wait occasions, and obey them: Sail in an egg-shell, make a straw your mast, A cobweb all your cloth, and pass unseen, Till you have 'scaped the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... partition as he reluctantly splashes in his bath. Here, unless he mend his caution, I fear he will never learn to play the porpoise at the Zoo. Then there is a wee tapping at my door. It is a fairy sound as though Mustard-seed were in the hall. Or it might be Pease-blossom rousing up Cobweb in the play, to repel the red-hipped humble-bee. It is so slight a tapping that if I sleep with even one ear inside the covers I will ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... back in sharp angles. But Bevis knew very well what he meant when he wrote it all. Taking a stump of cedar pencil from his pocket, one end of it much gnawn, he added a few scrawls to the inscriptions, and then stood on the seat to look out of the round window, which was darkened by an old cobweb. ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... He wove it all that day in his web, and the next morning he brought her a long piece of the loveliest spider-lace as fine as a cobweb. Little Freckle Frog was very ...
— How Freckle Frog Made Herself Pretty • Charlotte B. Herr
... unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her liking and disliking, her love and hate, were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that seemed strong and durable enough, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... they expect to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff and shrouded as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck: don't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... departure, so that she can make out your bill—a very arduous, formidable undertaking. The bill is of prodigious dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless—it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... come and stay with us you shall not want for ease; We'll swing you on a cobweb between the forest trees; And twenty little singing-birds upon a flowering thorn Shall hush you every evening and wake you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... moment of passion thrown into relief after this exquisite fashion. Those two jaded Parisians are not intrinsically interesting: they begin to interest us only [215] when thrown into a choice situation. But to discriminate that moment, to make it appreciable by us, that we may "find" it, what a cobweb of allusions, what double and treble reflexions of the mind upon itself, what an artificial light is constructed and broken over the chosen situation; on how fine a needle's point that little world of passion ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Mamma Meadow-Lark again, and told her of his nice warm cozy little nest beneath the mushroom. "It is always nice and dry there," he said, "for the rain runs right off the mushroom and does not touch my little cobweb home!" ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... some altogether new means of transport are provided, the attempt to restrict the number of passengers which a car or trolley may carry is, I think, antisocial, and must prove futile. The force of public convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a cobweb. The trains and trolleys follow each other at the very briefest intervals; it does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between overcrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. Fancy ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... through it. The conservatory was in the shape of a half sphere, and entirely of glass. From its dome, more than a hundred feet above our heads, hung a globe of white fire that gave forth a soft clear light. Terminating, as it did, the long vista of arches with their transparent hangings of cobweb texture, it presented a picture of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... which he explains and defends the French Revolution which Burke had attacked and misunderstood, are only an illustration to his main argument. He expounds the right of revolution, and blows away the cobweb argument of legality by which his antagonist had sought to confine posterity within the settlement of 1688. Every age and generation must be free to act for itself. Man has no property in man, and the claim of one generation to ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... all the other noises of the night, and uniting in one mighty chorus in the marshes along the river. An owl was hooting from a distant tree, and the hum of innumerable insects sounded on every side. Here and there a glittering, dew-spangled cobweb stretched across our path, a barrier of silver, and required more than ordinary resolution to be brushed aside. As we turned nearer to the river, the ground grew softer and the underbrush more thick, and I knew that we had ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Mackerel and Herring. He lives on them, swallowing as many at each gulp as would fill several big baskets. The fishermen can spare him the fish. But it is another matter when he swims through valuable nets, tearing through them as if they were so much cobweb. ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... this silk off is a delicate piece of work. A single fiber is not much larger than the thread of a cobweb, and before the silk can be used, several threads must be united in one. First, the cocoon is soaked in warm water to loosen the gum that the worm used to stick its threads together. Ends of silk from half a dozen or more cocoons are brought together, run through a little hole in a guide, ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... that awful voice, with a cramp in my leg that I dared not stir to relieve, or a tickling in the small of my back from which there was no escape, or a cobweb on my face I had not the courage to brush away. I have felt sleep taking possession of me, yet daring neither to yawn, nor nod my head, nor wink my eyes. I have stared fixedly at the gas, or the old china ornament on the mantelpiece, till my eyes became watery with the effort and I ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... "tobacconists" with "feather-makers, cobweb-lawne-weavers, perfumers, young country gentlemen and fools," but he bears invaluable witness to the devotion of the fashionable men of the day to the "costlye ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... didn't seem to mind whether I was dressed in cobweb or sheet-iron; for he directed his looks and conversation so much to Lu, that Rose came and sat on a stool before me and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... between thumb and forefinger, shaking out the pink folds till the signature in violet ink flaunted before the violet eyes of its owner, then, crushing it as if it were a cobweb, she tossed it toward ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... said Quilp, making towards the door on tiptoe. 'Not a sound, not so much as a creaking board, or a stumble against a cobweb. Drowned, eh, Mrs ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... people, and town, and country, about this place, that quite fill up the eye and fancy. As to the fishing people (whose dress can have changed neither in colour nor in form for many many years), and their quarter of the town cobweb-hung with great brown nets across the narrow up-hill streets, they are as good as Naples, every bit." His description both of house and landlord, of which I tested the exactness when I visited him, was in the old pleasant vein; requiring no connection with ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... second story, and here the roaring of the mill took possession of all the shuddering air. Every massive joist half growing from dimness overhead was hung with ghostly shreds of cobweb; and on the grayish whiteness of the floor the children's naked soles cut ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... our New Oxford Streets, and our other new streets, never heeding, never asking, where the wretches whom we clear out, crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with all the plagues of Egypt tied up with bits of cobweb in kennels so near our homes, we timorously make our Nuisance Bills and Boards of Health, nonentities, and think to keep away the Wolves of Crime and Filth, by our electioneering ducking to little vestrymen and our gentlemanly handling of ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... now," as he took his dripping head out of the bowl of cold water, and felt refreshed by the scrub he gave himself; but somehow he did not feel right. His head burned, and he was glad to get out in the open air, in the hope that a little exercise would clear his brain and drive away the cobweb-like fancies which seemed ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... other words, we are at all times sustaining a load of between seventy and one hundred tons of it on our persons—yet we do not feel it! Softer than the finest down, more impalpable than the lightest gossamer, it leaves the cobweb undisturbed, and, at times, scarcely stirs the most delicate flower that feeds on the dew it supplies; yet it bears the fleets of nations on its wings round the world, and crushes the most refractory substances with its weight. It bends the rays of the sun from ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... cobweb where that big fly is buzzing loud enough to deafen me, and at those bits of fluff under the bed, and at that dust on the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... any display, if you wish to please me,' she said; and with a wave of her cobweb handkerchief she signified that the conference ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the cupboards, Nicky-Nan had discovered in the right-hand one that one or two boards of the flooring were loose. Lifting them cautiously he had peered into a sort of lazarette deep down in the wall, and had lowered a candle, the flame of which, catching hold of a mass of dried cobweb, had shot up and singed his eyebrows, for a moment threatening to set the house on fire. It had given him a scare, and he never ventured ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... know this sign, before Whom all devils tremble, and vanish! For thou art covered inches deep with the dust of tombs so old that they are forgotten utterly of us who tend the ashes of their descendants, and the cobweb that drapes thy body like a shawl so that I cannot tell for my life the fashion of thy garments, or if thou art young or old, maid or widow, has been a-thickening these hundred years ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... retreating towards the window by which it had entered. Wondering how far it would have moved before the sermon was over, and whether it would have shone so very bright if God had made no covenant with Abraham, she was earnestly watching it pass from spot to spot, and from cobweb to cobweb, as if already it fled before the coming darkness of the long winter night, when she caught a glimpse of a very peculiar countenance turned in the same direction—that is, not towards the minister, but towards this ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... upon the steps in helpless dismay, and tears began to drop from Eliza's eyes, when Mother Mayberry appeared upon the scene of action, stiff and rustling as to black silk gown, capped with a cobweb of lace over the water-waves and ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... matter of wages, the hand of the trade union is very generally evident, it is impossible to discuss the subject-matter of this chapter, until we have rid our minds of this quite baseless prepossession. To sweep away this cobweb, I urge the reader to recall here the general tenor of the analysis of the preceding chapters. Whether we were dealing with the price of an ordinary commodity, with joint products, land or capital, we came across relationships ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... restoring the candle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, shy-looking man of about thirty-five, with long, hay-colored beard and mustache, upon which the rain-drops stood in clusters, like the night-dew on patches of cobweb in a meadow. It was an honest face, with unworldly sort of blue eyes, that looked out from under the broad visor of the infantry cap. With a deferential glance towards us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, spread his blanket over it, and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... plant again in blossom in the aforesaid garden, raised from seeds which ripened there the preceding year, but unfortunately from the lateness of their flowering, and the very great injury the plants had sustained from the Cobweb Mite (Acarus teliarius) vulgarly called the red Spider, there seemed little prospect that the seed-vessels would ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... which a painter would excite, but it is likewise essential to our taste for another class of pleasures. Artists, who like Hogarth would please by humour, wit, and ridicule, must depend upon the imagination of the spectators to supply all the intermediate ideas which they would suggest. The cobweb over the poor box, one of the happiest strokes of satire that Hogarth ever invented, would probably say nothing to the inattentive eye, or the dull imagination. A young person must acquire the language, before he can understand ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... now." Again he paused, and this time it was his uncle's last conversation that recurred to his memory. It was most unwelcome. Brandon could see that he looked more than disturbed; he was also angry; and yet after awhile, both these feelings melted away, he was like a man who had walked up to a cobweb, that stretched itself before his face, but when he had put up his hand and cleared it off, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Draws words six syllables in length, With which, assisted with a frown By way of club, he knocks us down; Who 'bove the vulgar dares to rise, And sense of decency defies; For this same decency is made Only for bunglers in the trade, 680 And, like the cobweb laws, is still Broke through by great ones when they will)— Pomposo, with strong sense supplied, Supported, and confirm'd by Pride, His comrades' terrors to beguile 'Grinn'd horribly a ghastly smile:' Features so horrid, were it light, Would put the Devil himself to flight. Such were the three ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of nought," he bellowed, "no more, no more, for love's sake. I begin to see what men call red Beelzebub, and that's an end to all true fellowship. Whiffle your tufted bee's wing, Signior Cobweb, I beseech you—a little fiery devil with four eyes floats in my brain, and flame's a frisky bedfellow. Avaunt! avaunt ye! Would now my true friend Bottom the weaver were at my side. His was a courage to make princes great. Prithee, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... the white flimsy thing, she sprang out of bed, ran to the window which was open, slipped the screen, and flung it out; but a sudden gust of wind, though the night was calm, arose and it floated back in her face. She brushed it aside like a cobweb and she clutched at it. She was actually furious. It eluded her clutching fingers. Then she did not see it at all. She examined the floor, she lighted her lamp again and searched, but there was ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... was rather bold in entering the cobweb of the French spiders," said Gentz. "Still, it is not so dangerous as you believe, and you may be perfectly at ease so far as I am concerned. I am here with a charming lady friend, the Princess Bagration. I figured on her passport as her private secretary, and have a regular Russian ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... light-touched edges threw off a sea-green reflet; with no ornaments but the chtelaine at her side, with no adornment but her own silky hair in its own wayward arrangement. To all this there was just one addition. Hazel had taken the lace veil,exquisite in pattern, cobweb-like in texture, and laid it across her head like a Spanish mantilla, from whence it came down about her on all sides to the floor, leaving only the face and the front of the dress clear. One little ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... summoned, you would see there can be no excuse for violating the laws by which you are there to be tried. If you could justify yourself to the world, or to the women of whose folly you take advantage, by the fallacious arguments which you have so ready for that purpose, such cobweb sophistry cannot weaken the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi: "Who feels love in the breast, feels a spur in his limbs:" or its generous passion, Gli amici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo: "Friends tie their purse with a cobweb's thread." They characterised the universal lover by an elegant proverb—Appicare il Maio ad ogn' uscio: "To hang every door with May;" alluding to the bough which in the nights of May the country people are accustomed to plant ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and Douglas that I found not my hart mooved more than with a trumpet: and yet it is sung but by some blynd Crowder,[11] with no rougher voyce than rude stile! which beeing so evill apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivill age, what wolde it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindare!" [Footnote ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... after him, a new Generation sprung up in the World, well known by the Name of Monks and Friars, differing from the former in Religion, Garb, and a few other Circumstances, but in the main, the same individual Imposters; the same everlasting Cobweb-Spinners as to their nonsensical Controversies, the same abandon'd Rakehells as to their Morals; but as for the mysterious Arts of heaping up Wealth, and picking the Peoples Pockets, as much superior to their Predecessors the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry as an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a network of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb—more like a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly alive, he presented the image of repose midway ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... destiny That (as great states-men for their generall end In politique justice make poore men offend) Enforceth my offence to make it just. 65 What shall weak dames doe, when th' whole work of Nature Hath a strong finger in each one of us? Needs must that sweep away the silly cobweb Of our still-undone labours, that layes still Our powers to it, as to the line, the stone, 70 Not to the stone, the line should be oppos'd. We cannot keepe our constant course in vertue: What is alike at all parts? every day Differs from other, every ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... mind on the details of structure underneath. Line on line the delicate tracery of steel waiting for its concrete sheathing was silhouetted below him. The night wind rushed past and he braced himself automatically, noting at the same time how the vibration of the steel cobweb was like a marvelous faint tune. The wonder of conception and workmanship caught ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... by his most distinguished courtiers, came in person, and the rogues lifted their arms up in the air, just as if they held something, and said, "See! here are the trousers, here is the coat, here is the cloak," and so forth. "It is as light as a cobweb; one might imagine one had nothing on, but that is just ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... was the catbird on the hedge as we came down toward the station. She—we call her so, for there was unmistakable ladyhood in her delicately tailored trimness—she bickered at us in a cheerful way, on top of those bushes which were so loaded with the night's rainfall that they shone a blurred cobweb gray in the lifting light. Her eye was also dark and polished and lucid, like a bead of ink. It also had the same effect of tribulation on our spirit. Neither the catbird nor the frog, we said to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it without any ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... where the light was dim and the air was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent game of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there, it was damp; great clammy masses of cobweb hung from the joists and spanned the spaces between the piles. The place was haunted by strange and fearsome insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust down between the cracks in the worn floor. But ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... planks in the keen salt wind for half an hour, and he shadowed me unshrinkingly. With the worst will in the world I took him home, and all afternoon and all evening he stuck his shadowy head over my shoulder, and watched the pen as it spread its cobweb lines over the white desert of the paper. He waited behind my chair at dinner, and late at night, when the long day's work at last was over, he hung his intrusive head over my shoulder and stared into the moderate glass ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... answered the Farmer's wife, knitting calmly on. "Like a dwarf, you know, with a largish head for his body. Not taller than—why, my Bill, or your eldest boy, perhaps. And he was dressed in rags, with an old cloak on, and stamping with passion at a cobweb he couldn't get at with his broom. They've very uncertain tempers, they say. Tears one minute, and ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a glass of water, and lighted a cigarette. He shook himself into wakefulness, condemned himself for this debauch of weak-minded thinking, found the time to be three o'clock, and brushed the whole cobweb tangle from his mind. He knew that sudden warmth after cold will often induce sleep—a fact proved by incidents of his campaigns—so he trudged up and down and opened his window and let the cool breath of the night chill his forehead and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... had no one to leave them to when we died. There was some beautiful old china, and a lady bought the fan and handkerchief that my grandmother carried at her wedding. The handkerchief was worked at some convent in Italy and was fine as a cobweb. My mother used it, and then it was laid by for us. But we never needed it," and ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... with all the grandees of his court, came to the weavers; and the rogues raised their arms, as if in the act of holding something up, saying, "Here are your Majesty's trousers! Here is the scarf! Here is the mantle! The whole suit is as light as a cobweb; one might fancy one has nothing at all on, when dressed in it; that, however, is the great ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... space upon space of silence. They glow, they gloom, they shine. Bend after bend they reveal themselves, endlessly new in endlessly changing veils of colour. A swimming and jewelled blue predominates, as of sapphires being melted and spun into skeins of shifting cobweb. Bend after bend this trance of beauty and awe goes on, terrible as the Day of Judgment, sublime as the Psalms of David. Five thousand feet below the opens and barrens of Arizona, this canyon seems like an avenue conducting ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... The sense of unreality produced by that one word was so overwhelming that for a blissful moment the whole fabric of what I had been experiencing, the whole huge and oppressive and unescapable fact of the war, slipped away like a torn cobweb, and I seemed to see behind it the reassuring face of things as they used ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... of it—God bless him!—it is a subject for perpetual merriment to think of such a man's being taken for a true Huguenot and enmeshed, even for a while, in the nasty cobweb of Geneva. But in the last thing I shall quote, when he is Bacchic for the vine, you will ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... fact, it was in his pleasure-boat, which had got adrift, that I had made my fanciful and disastrous cruise. All this was simple, straightforward matter of fact, and threatened to demolish all the cobweb romance I had been spinning, when fortunately I again heard the tinkling of a harp. I raised myself in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Chief Justice, and seven judges at law. It was a pageant of colour, in the midst of which the woman on trial, in her careful toilette, consisting of a black stammel gown, a cypress chaperon or black crepe hood in the French fashion, relieved by touches of white in the cuffs and ruff of cobweb lawn, struck a funereal note. Preceded by the headsman carrying his axe with its edge turned away from her, she was conducted to the bar by the Lieutenant of the Tower. The indictment was read to her, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity,—all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb.[107] The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... which there was a pair of shining white satin boots, silken hose, and kid gloves, with a dainty handkerchief, fine and sheer as a cobweb. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... reading he folded the paper and looked dreamily at the cobweb in the corner. He wished to be understood as having no opinion whatever to express. Cranston sat in silence with lips compressed under his heavy moustache. Davies never moved. His blue eyes were fixed unflinchingly on the swarthy face of the veteran adjutant until the latter ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... and there stood the most lovely Christmas tree they had ever seen or imagined, all dazzling with silver; silver cones, silver fish, silver nuts and acorns, and red candles, and over all an exquisitely spun cobweb of frost. "That's my surprise for you all," said Hansi, who could hardly contain herself for joy. "I found the tree, and the dear, darling Heinzelmen brought it ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... from Liverpool. It was August—the height of the visiting season—and the deck of the steamer was full of tourists. Davy walked through the cobweb of feet and outstretched legs with the face of a man who thought he ought to speak to everybody. Fifty times in the first three hours he went forward to peer through the wind and the glaring sunshine for the first ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... in the vault, the yellow bills hanging from a cobweb of strings; why should they terrify her; what did they threaten? Dully, and from a distance, Monica heard ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... not even amuse her by his calf-like pursuit. All that was ruthless in her rose up and sneered at his weakness and his timid assurance, which had the same effect as one of those horrible streamers of cobweb that catch the face as one walks unwarily along a dusky lane. Only her native resoluteness enabled her to show Gaga a false patience. Only her insensitiveness made his constant caress endurable. Sally blinked sometimes at his grabbing sentimentality; but she already began to slip neatly ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... almost "stand alone." There were great flowers that looked as if they were embroidered on it, and now it had assumed an ivory tint. Two breadths had been taken out of the skirt, people were so slim at present. But the court train was left. The bertha, as we should call it now, was as a cobweb, and the lace from the puff sleeve falling over the arm ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... more like an iron cobweb than it did like anything else. The wheels of the forward trucks had not left the track, but the impact of the heavy locomotive with the bumper had been so great that the latter was torn from its foundations. A little ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... incessant roar, Dreamed calmly out their dangerous dream, Till wakened by the morning beam; When, dazzled by the eastern glow, Such startler cast his glance below, And saw unmeasured depth around, And heard unintermitted sound, And thought the battled fence so frail, It waved like cobweb in the gale; Amid his senses' giddy wheel, Did he not desperate impulse feel, Headlong to plunge himself below, And meet the worst his fears foreshow?— Thus Ellen, dizzy and astound, As sudden ruin yawned around, By crossing terrors wildly tossed, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... she exclaimed, in an injured tone. One eye was draped by a cobweb, gained by diving into the closet's extreme corner after a missing slipper, gone for some weeks; and in other ways Alexia's face presented a very unprepossessing appearance. "You said you'd help me with my room ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... the valley lands of the Dry Belt? Ever spend days and days in a swinging, swaying coach, behind a four-in-hand, when "Curly" or "Nicola Ned" held the ribbons, and tooled his knowing little leaders and wheelers down those horrifying mountain trails that wind like russet skeins of cobweb through the heights and depths of the Okanagan, the Nicola and the Similkameen countries? If so, you have listened to the call of the Skookum Chuck, as the Chinook speakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams that sing their way through ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... had imposed upon her soul fell away at that like bonds of cobweb. She laid her hand upon his wrists, tears stood in her ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... birth. To moralise this story, Virgil is the Apollo who has this dispensing power. His great judgment made the laws of poetry, but he never made himself a slave to them; chronology at best is but a cobweb law, and he broke through it with his weight. They who will imitate him wisely must choose, as he did, an obscure and a remote era, where they may invent at pleasure, and not be easily contradicted. Neither he nor the Romans had ever read the Bible, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... looked backwards: it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge, and except in the way of dialectic cobweb-spinning, its professors had nothing to do with novelties. Of the historical and physical (natural) sciences, of criticism and laboratory practice, it knew nothing. Oral teaching was of supreme importance on account of the cost ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... habits of a lifetime? Do you think that, left to yourself, you would ever have any inclination to break them? Certainly, left to yourselves, you will never have the power. These long indulged appetites of ours grow with indulgence; and that which first was light as a cobweb, and soft as a silken bracelet, becomes heavier and solider until it is an iron fetter upon the limb, which no man can break. There is nothing more awful in life than the influence of habit, so unthinkingly acquired, so inexorably certain, so ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... his service clothes he was surprised to feel a new vigor in his limbs and a new strength of purpose in his mind. His brain was clearer than it had been for a long time. The last cobweb was gone, and for the moment at least he was lifted out of himself as by a strong, invigorating drink. When he stood in his old boots and felt the familiar drag of his cartridge-belt, when he tested his free muscles, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... in a very large cobweb, I struggled through the State House, getting into all the wrong rooms and none of the right, till I turned desperate, and went into one, resolving not to come out till I'd made somebody hear and answer me. I suspect that ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... thought, Leonard smiled and said, "It would be a cruel kindness to the spider, if the gentlest band in the world tried to set its cobweb to rights." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare, At foe from head to foot in magic mail, And off it withered, cobweb armoury Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies And ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... it appears you're not afraid of me, then! Very well. I'll tell you. It is the best way out of the difficulty. But sit up against this barrel, and drink a little brandy. I've stopped the bleeding in your head with a black enough cobweb." ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... tell the usher to see that the fan-bearers and the other attendants, women and men, are in their places.—Here are the pearl and diamond necklaces for your throat and bosom. Take care of the robe. The transparent bombyx is as delicate as a cobweb, and if you tear it No, you must not refuse. We all know how it pleases him to see his goddess in divine majesty and beauty." Cleopatra, with glowing cheeks and throbbing heart, made no further objection to donning the superb festal robe, strewn with glimmering ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sound. I went away. My accursed Petersburg mood came back, and all my dreams were crushed and crumpled up like leaves by the heat. I felt I was alone again and there was no nearness between us. I was no more to her than that cobweb to that palm-tree, which hangs on it by chance and which will be torn off and carried away by the wind. I walked about the square where the band was playing, went into the Casino; there I looked at overdressed and heavily perfumed women, and every one of them glanced ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... woman clothed in a splendid trailing gown, trimmed with exquisite lace as fine as cobweb. This was the important Sorceress known as Glinda the Good, who had been of great assistance to both Ozma and Dorothy. There was no humbug about her magic, you may be sure, and Glinda was as kind as she was powerful. ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... to look about the office. It was as clean as blackened, splintered planks could be made; even the ceiling had been attacked and every trace of cobweb removed. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... was called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this cobweb science of ontology, which ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... had slain and devoured. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the ragged remnants of the cobweb. By this time the spider was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wit's end; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift |
