"Ornamental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since, some workmen making excavations observed the opening of a covered way which they followed for some distance, expecting to find treasure. They had not gone far, when they were surprised by suddenly entering vast chambers, covered with the remains of columns, vases, and ornamental architecture: instead of continuing their search, they were seized with a panic, and fled from the spot without attempting to penetrate further. If more valorous seekers were to prosecute the adventure, at the spot where they left ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... James's Street, from Whitehall and Westminster; sightseers from the country and gorgeous alderwomic dowagers from Cheapside. From the days of Elizabeth till the middle, indeed till the close, of the eighteenth century the ornamental grounds of the four great Inns were places of fashionable promenade, where the rank and talent and beauty of the town assembled for display and exercise, even as in our own time they assemble (less universally) in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... his Criticks, than on Himself: who, as he wrote without a Rule, was himself a Rule to succeeding Ages. Who as much deserves that Commendation which Alcibiades gave to Socrates, when he compar'd him to the Statues of the Sileni, which to look upon, had nothing beautiful and ornamental; but open them, and there you might discover the Images of all the ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... papers. Sheets of paper coloured or covered with gold or silver leaf, and embossed with various patterns, are used for covering books, and for many ornamental purposes. The figures upon these are produced by the same process, that of passing the sheets of paper ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... griefs. He had just wound up his confidential discourse by speaking to me of a joiner's business which he had hoped to buy, and work to good account with Robert's help. The present owner had made a fortune by it, and, after thirty years of business, he was thinking of retiring to one of the ornamental cottages in the outskirts of the city, a usual retreat for the frugal and successful workingman. Michael had not indeed the two thousand francs which must be paid down; but perhaps he could have persuaded Master Benoit to wait. Robert's presence would have been a security for him, for the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... marked Everton's ancient boundaries. There was one, I recollect, in the West Derby-road, near the Zoological Gardens. I often wonder if this relic of the past has been preserved. A branch of the Pool ran up the westward and formed an ornamental water in the grounds that skirted the Pool, a rustic bridge being thrown over it. The cottage at one corner of the Pool is the ancient pinfold, and the rent of it was paid to the lord of the manor. The view from this part of Everton was very fine before houses began to spring up in its vicinity. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... with winding walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, in the well-known English style, improvements also of John Effingham; for, while the climate and forests of America offer so many inducements to encourage landscape gardening, it is the branch of art that, of all the other ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this country. It is true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector to perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very extensive, varied, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... often catch a look of wondering speculation in his eye when it turns upon me. It is all because I will not let him lay out flower-beds in the usual way, and make the bit of ground in front of the house really neat and ornamental. At first he put it down to meanness, but he knows by now that that cannot be the explanation. That I really prefer a garden so poor and plain that every cottager would be ashamed of it, he cannot bring ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... fled, showed him in a plain a vast army he had collected to make war with the Romans; the men were adorned with gold and silver, there were chariots with scythes, elephants with towers, cavalry shining with ornamental bits and housings. Then turning to Hannibal, he asked him if he thought they would be enough for the Romans. The Carthaginian, smiling at the weakness and cowardice of the gaudily accoutred host, replied, "Certainly, I think they will be enough ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... you see that thing all of a trimble over there, a sort of pale ornamental cooriosity? That's called a blue-mange. It's made of isinglass and milk and rice flour. It's not for ornament, but to be eaten, by such as is invited. There they come! You cut away. If you was a few years older, we might have invited you. But there ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... fell as falls an ash Which on some mountain visible afar, Hewn from its bottom by the woodman's axe, 220 With all its tender foliage meets the ground So Imbrius fell; loud rang his armor bright With ornamental brass, and Teucer flew To seize his arms, whom hasting to the spoil Hector with his resplendent spear assail'd; 225 He, marking opposite its rapid flight, Declined it narrowly and it pierced the breast, As ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... don't like advertising for servants, and Mr. Cleon is at a loss where to find a fellow that can wait at table and has some manners about him. You see sir, the country louts about here are neither useful nor ornamental in a gentleman's house. Now, sir, it struck me that among your friends you might perhaps know some gentleman who would be glad to recommend a respectable man for such a place. Must have a good character ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... were taken out by Lord Dundonald:—1851. "Improvements in the construction and manufacture of sewers, drains, waterways, pipes, reservoirs, and receptacles for liquids or solids, and for the making of columns, pillars, capitals, pedestals, bases, and other useful and ornamental objects, from a substance never heretofore employed for such manufactures."—1852. "Improvements in coating and insulating wire."—1852. "Improving bituminous substances, thereby rendering them available for purposes to which they never heretofore ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... intelligence only emphasized the lowness of that kind. His eyes, close together and small, advertised cruelty and craftiness. A gee-string and a cartridge-belt were all the clothes he wore. The carved pearl-shell ornament that hung from nose to chin and impeded speech was purely ornamental, as were the holes in his ears mere utilities for carrying pipe and tobacco. His broken-fanged teeth were stained black by betel- nut, the juice of which he ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... point of design, appear quite independent of the other ornamental work in the two ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 05, May 1895 - Two Florentine Pavements • Various
... "anderoon," or harem, of a prince in Ispahan: "A large courtyard some thirty yards by ten in extent. All down the centre is the 'hauz,' or tank—a raised piece of ornamental water, the surface of which is about two feet above the ground. The edges are formed of huge blocks of well-wrought stone, so accurately levelled that the 'hauz' overflows all round its brink, making a pleasant ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... viewed the "castle" and the "palatial grounds" (the Millsburgh Clarion, in a special Sunday article for which Adam paid, so described the place) through a strong, ornamental iron fence, with a more than ornamental gate guarded by massive stone columns. Only when the visiting strangers were of sufficient importance in the owner's eyes were they permitted to pass the conspicuous PRIVATE ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... was the men who struggled the hardest against their fate. Up to this century, the male had always been the ornamental member of a family. Cæsar, we read, coveted a laurel crown principally because it would help to conceal his baldness. The wigs of the Grand Monarque are historical. It is characteristic of the time that the latter’s attempts at rejuvenation should have been taken as a ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... infirmly. Panel, in Scots law, the accused person in a criminal action, the prisoner. Peel, fortified watch-tower. Plew-stilts, plough-handles. Policy, ornamental grounds of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as they are not wanted, they look right elegant in those blue jackets," Miss Adams observed. "But if there was any trouble, I guess we would wish they were less ornamental and a ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... offers to view the celebrated Isle of Pheasants, a little bushy strip of earth adorned with a decayed commemorative monument, on which, in the seventeenth century, the affairs of Louis XIV. and his brother monarch were discussed in ornamental conference; at Fuentarabia (glorious name), a mouldering relic of Spanish stateliness; at Hondaye, at Irun, at Renteria, and finally at San Sebastian. At all of these wayside towns the houses show marks of Alphonsist bullets (the region was strongly Carlist); but to be riddled and battered seems ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... music. But the most beautiful monuments rose on the rock of the Acropolis as on a gigantic pedestal. There were two temples of which the principal, the Parthenon, was dedicated to Athena, protecting goddess of the city; a colossal statue of bronze which represented Athena; and a staircase of ornamental character leading up to the Propylaea. Athens was from this time the most beautiful of the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... and band-boxes between the drivers' legs and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and hackney-coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles—the former wondering how people can prefer 'them wild beast cariwans of homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter,' and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of 'them crazy cabs, when they can have a 'spectable 'ackney ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... emerald, and the red gravel around the statesman's statue glistening. The automobile quickly swung into a street that skirted the Park,—if street it might be called, for it was more like a generous private driveway,—flanked on the right by fences of ornamental ironwork and high shrubbery that concealed the fore yards of dominating private residences which might: without great exaggeration, have been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pile rose conspicuous like a cathedral. Behind, as we continued to skirt the park wall, I began to make out a straggling town of offices which became conjoined to the rear with those of the home farm. On the left was an ornamental water sailed in by many swans. On the right extended a flower garden, laid in the old manner, and at this season of the year as brilliant as stained glass. The front of the house presented a facade of more than sixty windows, surmounted by a formal pediment and raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... colleagues were as ignorant of constitutional history as the sovereign himself? But some knew—some must know! And the King, who but a few hours before had believed himself the most helpless of emblems, a mere ornamental topknot to the constitutional edifice, now found himself armed with weapons of far-reaching precision that would enable him to carry war into the enemy's country. Metaphorically he clapped his wings and crowed. Yes, it was as though that weathercock, to which hitherto he had likened himself, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... said both at once. They pressed forward to the foremost boiler-deck guards, among the many sitters and standers who were trying to determine, by the ornamental form of the stranger's chimney-tops or the peculiar note of her scape-pipes, before her name might show out on paddle-box or pilot-house, whether she was the Chancellor, the Aleck Scott, the Belle Key, or the Magnolia. To be either ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... about the time he was emerging from knickerbockers, he had been madly in love with this golden-haired, hazel-eyed cousin of his, and the lady, who had the advantage of him in years, being unresponsive, he had haunted a very large and very deep ornamental pond in his grandmother's park for several weeks with considerable persistency. Had the disease attacked him in summer it is quite probable that this story would never have been written, for his nature ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... shelves—and where can you find any furniture to match a well-filled bookcase?—were well chosen and well bound. The pictures on the walls were all works of art and most tastefully hung. The knickknacks scattered about the room were ornamental as well as useful. Even the collie dog which lay luxuriously on the hearthrug with one eye half open was as beautiful as he ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... leap into prominence aroused curiosity among the wives and families of the latter, and he became the recipient of some social attentions. He accepted every invitation, and so well did he carry himself in company, so ornamental and engaging was he as a dinner guest, that he was soon in great demand. He possessed accomplishments, too, that increased the respect of his masculine acquaintances. For instance, he displayed a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... equal to anything like exact knowledge of the intellectual pursuits of the many studious foreign youth of all ages and sexes whom one meets in Rome. As I say, our acquaintance with Italian is far less useful, however ornamental, than it used to be. The Romans are so quick that they understand you when they speak no English, and take your meaning before you can formulate it in their own tongue. A classically languaged friend of mine, who was hard ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... railway-siding, which is bad enough, or to a promising growth of trees, which is worse. From the road these trees look like the beginning of a primeval jungle sweeping on to far horizons. Plunge into that timber growth and in five minutes you emerge on a sewered road with concrete sidewalks and ornamental lamp posts and a crew of Italian labourers drinking beer in the shadow of a steam-roller. It is a gash of civilisation across the face of the wilderness, and, like most deformities, it is displeasing to the eye. Walking under such conditions is not stimulative. I miss the sense of ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Jack Ballard exactly defined sophistication, root and branch. But his sophistries were always colorful and ornamental and ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... why they did not haul off all this timber, and he said there was no place to haul it to, nor any way to haul it, nor anybody to do the hauling; that fuel was cheap, and the few inhabitants had plenty nearer home; and besides, that it was most ornamental and useful where it was—it afforded exercise to the bodily and spiritual muscles of any anglers from the city who might come that way like me. "You forget the characteristics of this region, which are its advantages in my view. You can get turnpike roads, and teams, and sawmills, nearer ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Eudora's age, and a widowed sister, Mrs. Sophia Willing, who was much older. The Lancaster house was also a colonial mansion, much after the fashion of Eudora's, but it showed signs of continued opulence. Eudora's, behind her trees and leafing vines, was gray for lack of paint. Some of the colonial ornamental details about porches and roof were sloughing off or had already disappeared. The Lancaster house gleamed behind its grove of evergreen trees as white and perfect as in its youth. The windows showed rich slants of draperies behind their ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... royal closet, at the palace of Hampton Court, stood King William III. leaning against a gilt railing, placed round some ornamental objects, near one of the windows. The famous Lord Keeper Somers stood beside him, while, at a little distance behind appeared Keppel, Lord Albemarle, and before him, a tall, fine-looking man, somewhat past the middle age, slight, but dignified in his person, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... had hitherto been walking,) and cantered up the steep hill before me. When I reached the top, I found myself upon a broad table land, encircled by old and well-grown timber, and at a distance, most tastefully half concealed by ornamental planting, I could catch some glimpse of Callonby. Before, however, I had time to look about me, I heard the tramp of horses' feet behind, and in another moment two ladies dashed up the steep behind, and came towards me, at a smart gallop, followed by a groom, who, neither himself nor his horse, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... stood within the circle of a wall, whose outlines undulated with the unevenness of the soil. A zigzag road, cutting through the rocks, joined the city to the fortress, the walls of which were about one hundred and twenty cubits high, having numerous angles and ornamental towers that stood out like jewels in this crown ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... Persia to make beautiful things for them. M. Lefebure tells us of Persian embroidery penetrating as far as Andalusia; and Almeria, like Palermo, had its Hotel des Tiraz, which rivalled the Hotel des Tiraz at Bagdad, tiraz being the generic name for ornamental tissues and costumes made with them. Spangles (those pretty little discs of gold, silver, or polished steel, used in certain embroidery for dainty glinting effects) were a Saracenic invention; and Arabic letters ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... shingled tower of Hohen-Cremmen, whose weather vane glistened in the sunshine, having only recently been regilded. The front of the house, the wing, and the churchyard wall formed, so to speak, a horseshoe, inclosing a small ornamental garden, at the open side of which was seen a pond, with a small footbridge and a tied-up boat. Close by was a swing, with its crossboard hanging from two ropes at either end, and its frame posts beginning to lean to one side. Between the pond and the circular ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to the ornamental character of Burgundian Gothic contrasting with the severity of the communal period. Luxury rather than strength is aimed at by the architects of the hotels de ville and other well-known monuments of the period, such as the Hotel Gruuthuse and the Chapelle du ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... residence of Rudolph Spreckels, the wealthy financier, the lawn was riven from end to end in great gashes, while the ornamental Italian rail leading to the imposing entrance was a battered heap. But the family, with a philosophy notable for the occasion, calmly set up housekeeping on the sidewalk, the women seated in armchairs taken from the mansion and wrapped in rugs and coverlets, the silver breakfast ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... every thing ornamental, first revived in Italy, is well known; but I was never aware till now, though we talk of Italian book-keeping, that the little cant words employed in compting-houses, took their original from the Lombard language, unless perhaps that ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... quickly realised that he had been brought up to a state of things which did not exist. He was like a sailor who has put out to sea in an ornamental boat, and finds that his sail is useless, the ropes not made to work, and the rudder immovable. The long, buoyant wind of the world blew away like thistle-down the conventions which had seemed so secure a foundation. But he discovered ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Sir James Thornhill in some allegorical design, (doubtless commemorative of Marlborough's victories,) the purport of which I did not take the trouble to make out,—contenting myself with the general effect, which was most splendidly and effectively ornamental. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... and light literature, and elegant embellishments of useful and ornamental art, Godey's Lady's Book takes the lead of all works of its class. We have seen nothing in it offensive to the most fastidious taste."—Church Quarterly Review and ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... puzzled for a minute, and then the direction of their glances, and their remarks explained it all. At the rear of the lower part of the cavalry jacket, about where the upper ornamental buttons are on the tail of a frock coat, are two funny tabs, about the size of small pin-cushions. They are fastened by the edge, and stick out straight behind. Their use is to support the heavy belt in the rear, as the buttons do in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... been prepared for the scene of beauty and grandeur which met their sight as they entered Port Jackson, the harbour of Sydney, with its lofty and picturesque shores, every available spot occupied by some ornamental villa or building of greater pretension, numerous romantic inlets and indentations running up towards the north; while the city itself appeared extending far away inland with its broad, well-built streets, its numberless churches, colleges, public schools, hospitals, ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... there were more rooms than could be arranged around one court; and in such cases there were two, and sometimes three courts. In one case, the third court was a garden, with a beautiful portico formed of ornamental columns all around it. Beneath this portico the ladies of the house, in rainy weather, could walk at their ease, and see the flowers growing in the garden, just as well as if the ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... his country, he would roast one half of them and boil the other. But as Soto sent another kind message to him, he consented to visit Soto accompanied by five hundred warriors gaily adorned after their fashion, and was received with much civility and presented with such ornamental trinkets as pleased him much. He was greatly astonished at the appearance of the Spanish troops, and asked pardon for his rude and threatening expressions, promising to make amends by his future good conduct. This cacique, named Vitacucho, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... sound the note of restitution.[401] Growing bolder, the Lower House of Convocation presented the bishops immediately after with a series of remarkable requests. The pope, in the terms on which he was reinstated, was but an ornamental unreality; and the practical English clergy desired substantial restorations which their eyes could see and their hands ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... human soul without education like marble in a quarry which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher sketches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs throughout ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Lichfield, and his inscription over the door may still be deciphered, "ORATE PRO ANIMA CLEMENTIS ABBAT." The schoolhouse is of timber, and has been little altered, except that the front is spoiled by the substitution of brick for wood and plaster; the ornamental battlement on the porch ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. The affair—I mean the affair of life—couldn't, no doubt, have been different for me; for it's at the best a tin mould, either fluted and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one's consciousness is poured—so that one 'takes' the form as the great cook says, and is more or less compactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can. Still, one ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... these folds of fine linen hid a heart set on things higher than this world and its vanities. Nor do the objects of daily use found in the tombs suggest any austerity in the Egyptian character. There is no reflection of the Underworld to be looked for in the ornamental bronze mirrors, nor smell of death in the frail perfume pots. Religious abstraction is not to be sought in lotus-formed drinking-cups, and mortification of the body is certainly not practised on golden chairs and soft cushions. These were the objects buried in the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... could not decorate their shops and counters; they could decorate only where they lived in peace and rest—where they existed to be happy. There ornament would find use, and there their "doing" would be permanent. In other cases they wasted their money if they attempted to make utilitarian work ornamental. He might be wrong in that principle, but he had always asserted it, and had seen no reason in recent works for any modification of it. He thanked the meeting sincerely for the honor they had conferred upon him by their invitation to address them that evening, and ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... what was the difference between a crozier and a pastoral staff. The crozier (Crocia, Mediaeval Latin), Fr. Crosse, Ital. Rocco Pastorale, German. Bischofstab, is the ornamental staff used by archbishops and legates, and derives its name from the cross which surmounts it. A crozier behind a pall is borne on the primatial arms of Canterbury. The use of the crozier can only be traced back to the 12th century. Cavendish mentions "two ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... is not to be trusted as a permanent preservative. Mr. English, of Epping, by an ingenious method of his own, preserves a great number of the fleshy species in their natural position, and although valueless for an herbarium, they are not only very ornamental, but useful, if space can be devoted ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... the show-places of the Wheatley Hills section. The house itself is a pretentious structure of brick and terra-cotta, crowning a hill. A formal and a sunken garden—the latter with a pergola and a Temple of Venus—grassy terraces, rows and clumps of ornamental trees and dwarfed shrubs, dazzling patches of flowers and empty green lawns, evidence the skill of a highly paid landscape-artist; while stables, greenhouses, a natatorium, tennis and squash courts in the background, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of the same day Evariste set out to see the citoyen Jean Blaise, printseller, as well as dealer in ornamental boxes, fancy goods and games of all sorts, in the Rue Honore, opposite the Oratoire and near the office of the Messageries, at the sign of the Amour peintre. The shop was on the ground floor of a house sixty years old, and opened on the street by a vaulted arch the keystone of which bore ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... these Towers the Crown-Prince has his Library: a beautiful apartment; nothing wanting to it that the arts could furnish, "ceiling done by Pesne" with allegorical geniuses and what not,—looks out on mere sky, mere earth and water in an ornamental state: silent as in Elysium. It is there we are to fancy the Correspondence written, the Poetries and literary industries going on. There, or stepping down for a turn in the open air, or sauntering meditatively under the Colonnade with its statues and vases (where weather is no object), ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homes down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers, arsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party put also some ragged flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both, annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call "knowing what to do with their money;" ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... parent. He merely stipulated that, since his business affairs prevented an indefinite stay in Lichfield, Colonel Musgrave should presently remove to New York City, where the older man held ready for him a purely ornamental and remunerative position with the Insurance Company of which Roger ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to her mostly through her breathing; it was short and very fast, but she was as cool of the flesh as the fresh linen she donned. That was part of the clean young wonder of her. Her vitality flowed and showered back upon itself, like the ornamental waters of a fountain. She awoke like a rose with the dew on. Even Albert Penny, rubbing the grit out of his eyes, had marveled at the matinal ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... smooth as those of a fortification, and covered with a thick, even sward. There was no perceptible current and the water was all muddy; but the scenery in its precincts was still verdant and picturesque, grassy flats with ornamental trees succeeding each other at every ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... seances for the entertainment of all the German princes and princelets staying at the Hotel des Reservoirs. Most of these highnesses and mightinesses formed part of what the Germans themselves sarcastically called their "Ornamental Staff," and as Moltke seldom allowed them any real share in the military operations, they doubtless found in Home's performances some relief from the taedium vitae which overtook them during their long wait for the capitulation ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... assurance, that the Huns depopulated the provinces of the Empire, by the murder of Roman subjects whom they led away into captivity. In the hands of a wise legislator, such an industrious colony might have contributed to diffuse through the deserts of Scythia the rudiments of the useful and ornamental arts; but these captives, who had been taken in war, were accidentally dispersed among the hordes that obeyed the empire of Attila. The estimate of their respective value was formed by the simple judgment of unenlightened and unprejudiced Barbarians. Perhaps they might not understand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... him when he went—whither he is about to go in a very few pages—and brought back with him to this country. A florid apparel becomes some men, as simple raiment suits others, and Clive in his youth was of the ornamental class of mankind—a customer to tailors, a wearer of handsome rings, shirt-studs, mustachios, long hair, and the like; nor could he help, in his costume or his nature, being picturesque and generous and splendid. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... footnotes; at the bottom of the pages of the books they have they see a fringe of notes; they think themselves bound to fringe their own books in the same way, but their notes are adventitious and purely ornamental; they do not serve either to exhibit the proof or to enable the reader to verify the statements. All these methods are inadmissible, and ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... we entered the house, a small streamlet glided away, grapes, oranges and limes were clustering together on its borders, and under the shade of two large myrtle bushes, a marble scat with an ornamental wooden back was placed, on which we were told, the lord passed many of his evenings and nights till twelve o'clock, reading, writing, and talking to himself. "I suppose," said the old man, "praying" for he ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... ornamental waters with ice, and gave opportunity for the healthy and exhilarating exercises proper to the season. Those who ventured before the ice was well formed ran considerable risks, and many persons were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fact that she was bred to be an ornamental rather than what is called a useful member of society. This is all very well so long as fortune favors those who are chosen to be the ornamental personages; but if the golden tide recedes and leaves them stranded, they are more to be pitied ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Ornamental Bric-a-Brac—If a valuable flower vase leaks, take some melted paraffin, such as is used over jelly-jars, and pour it into the vase and let it harden over the spot where the leak occurs. It will not ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... sweetly in hoops. And yet the Splurges had but few visitors; the young women of the neighborhood, when they called there, left always an essential part of their true selves behind them as they entered, and an ornamental part of their reputations when they took their departure; nor were the young men partial to the name,—for Josephine bored them, and Adelaide taunted them, and Madeline snubbed them, and Mrs. Marmaduke pumped them, and the combined family confounded them. Only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Linen Store and say "Please give me three pillow-cases." The Clean Linen Store either says "Why?" (a question which, under the circumstances, is flatly unanswerable), or else tells you, in language both firm and ornamental, that you have already had them: your ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... demoralisation on their part I conducted my examination of the ground with the utmost circumspection; for I knew not at what moment a volley might rattle out at me from one or another of the large clumps of ornamental shrubs that were scattered about here and there upon the lawns, or the still larger masses of bamboo, palmetto, and other wild vegetation that at one particular spot was still allowed to flourish almost within musket-shot of the house; but nothing happened, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... educating her children, and partly in the hope of obtaining from the government a considerable sum of money for which it stood indebted to her father, at the time of his decease, for various useful and ornamental works, principally in the neighbourhood of Aranjuez. The justness of her claim was at once acknowledged; but, alas! no money was forthcoming, the royal treasury being empty. Her hopes of earthly happiness were now concentrated in her children. The two youngest ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... merely a chalcedony, stained in the forming with an infusion of green earth, as the colored waters in the apothecary's window are stained by the infusions, vegetable and mineral, from which they derive their ornamental character. The red mottlings which so heighten the beauty of the stone occur in comparatively few of the specimens of Scuir More. They are minute jasperous formations, independent of the inclosing mass; and, from their resemblance to streaks and spots ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... invested the town have not taken over the administration, but appear to be confining themselves to requisitioning provisions and supplies, of which they are in need. The Berlin papers made a great hurrah about the capture of the citadel, which is a purely ornamental old fort without military importance. From what they tell me, I judge that you could back an American army mule up against it and have him kick it down without the expense of bombarding it. It sounds well in ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... character submissive, honest and grateful; conduct very regular; has always distinguished himself by his application to mathematics; understands history and geography tolerably well; is indifferently skilled in merely ornamental studies and in Latin, in which he has only finished his fourth course; would make an excellent sailor; deserves to be passed on to the school ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... calm; the wheel must be placed sufficiently exposed to receive the full wind force, either on a tower or on a high hill, and usually this is not the best place to find water. Besides, a windmill tower, at least the modern one, is not an ornamental feature in the landscape. It is expensive when built sufficiently strong to withstand severe winter gales. During the hot months of the year, when the farmer, the gardener, and the coachman require most water, the wind is apt to fail ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... degree to which this system of advertising has since been carried has rendered it a bore and a nuisance. The usual result of almost any great and original achievement is, the production of a shoal of brainless imitators, who are "neither useful nor ornamental." ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... comes in alone. The door is near the corner; and as he appears in the doorway, he has the fireplace on the nearest wall to his right, and the grand piano along the opposite wall to his left. Near the fireplace a small ornamental table has on it a hand mirror, a fan, a pair of long white gloves, and a little white woollen cloud to wrap a woman's head in. On the other side of the room, near the piano, is a broad, square, softly up-holstered stool. The room is furnished in the most approved ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... carriages were all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the seaside, some to the drives in the park, and all with the delightful consciousness that speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possessions of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach; the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of your wheels; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves; the stalking gamekeepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest—there was something ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... stiff, ornamental, and childishly antithetical style of his day and nation, he welded the flimsy elements of the French language into instruments of strength akin to his own conceptions, and wrought out of them a style for himself in which a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a little yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of quite another description than the ornamental one in the front street. Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither in crowds from the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... pirarucu or anatto, of vast size, with its ornamental coat of mail, and broad large scales margined with bright red, peoples the waters in immense numbers. It is most frequently caught by the native fishermen; and when salted, forms the staple food of all classes on the banks of the Lower Amazon. It swims at great speed, and attains the length ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... which have survived. The tools and weapons which were made of the metal show an average alloy of about ten per cent. of tin. For beaten work, copper in an almost pure state appears to have been used. Gold was in extensive use for the best class of ornamental work, and the Vaphio cups, which are now held to have been imported to Laconia from Crete, are evidence of the marvellous skill which the Minoan goldsmiths had attained; while the necklaces and other articles of ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... and vulgarly, I haven't any use for Doris Hayward at all. Ethel I admire tremendously, though I don't think she likes me; and Basil is a saint straight out of heaven, suffering martyrdom for no conceivable reason, but Doris is like a useless ornamental china shepherdess, which ought to be put on a hight shelf where it can't get itself nor any one else into trouble. I'm really dreadfully afraid if I had to spend a whole evening alone with her, I should drop her and break her to relieve ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "goody," for there were none of her letters among this set; but a whole collection of the rector's, to whom the Latin in his boy's letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse. I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an ornamental language, but not very useful, I think—at least to judge from the bits I remember out of the rector's letters. One was, "You have not got that town in your map of Ireland; but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, as the Proverbia say." Presently it became very evident ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... examined twice a week by the Rev. Mr. Harrison, will have also the privileges of attending the lectures of Mr. Hallowell on Astronomy and Chemistry. And in addition to all the ordinary branches of a solid education, they are prepared to teach and do teach, the more ornamental ones of ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... the better for our fun. She'll have some one to help her. Miss Almira can turn to and do up the pies and things, and make herself useful as well as ornamental." ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of a row of pillars engaged half-way up in a wall divided into panels in such a manner as to form around the house a shelter closed to the sun and the gaze of the outer world. All these buildings, enlivened by ornamental paintings,—for the capitals, the shafts, the cornices, and the panels were coloured,—produced ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... on each side of her head, and, for greater security, tied with a broad black ribbon. A stiff white collar was fastened by a slab of pebble rimmed in silver, which proudly imagined itself to be an ornamental brooch. There was not a single feminine curve in her body; stiff and square she stood, like a sentinel on guard, her lips pressed into a thin line; in her eyes a ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... especial meeting they intended to draw up a petition to the school trustees, humbly praying that a fence be put around the school grounds; and a plan was also to be discussed for planting a few ornamental trees by the church, if the funds of the society would permit of it . . . for, as Anne said, there was no use in starting another subscription as long as the hall remained blue. The members were assembled in the Andrews' parlor and Jane was already on her feet to move the appointment ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... them with a boat, but were dismayed at finding that these birds were neither mallards, nor porchards, nor any known form of British duck; their colouring, too, seemed strangely brilliant. Then they remembered the neighbouring Zoo, with its ornamental ponds covered with rare imported and exotic waterfowl, and they realised what they had done. It is quite possible that they had killed some unique specimens, imported at fabulous cost from Central Africa, or from the heart of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... a little ornamental writing-desk that stood in the corner of the room, and took a pencil and a sheet of note paper and wrote these ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... assumed a regularity and uniformity greater than any street in North Adelaide. Hindley and Rundle streets, indeed, would do no discredit to any secondary town in England. Every shop and store that is now built is of a substantial and ornamental character, and those general improvements are being made which are the best proofs ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... the outsider that the coveted office of the President of the Royal Academy of Arts is, in a way, an ornamental one,—some such golden sinecure as that of the old High Chamberlains. Nothing could be more mistaken. "Not everybody," wrote the late Mr. Underhill, who for some time, as private secretary to Sir Frederic Leighton, had special opportunities ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... farm-houses, or even semi-genteel villas, no sooner does a man fix on a nice situation—a rising knoll beside a river—a gentle slope—or beautiful level green—no sooner does he rear a modest, or perhaps an ornamental, mansion on the site, than his next care is to plant as thick round it as the trees will stand. Elms, poplars, oaks, and larches, in a few years block up the view; and arbutus, rododendrons, and enormous Portugal laurels, stand as an impenetrable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... enter on the war with sin in your soul, in your senses and in your members, with powder and shot for one engagement only. When you enlist here, lay well to heart that it is for life. There is no discharge in this war. There are no ornamental old pensioners here. It is a warfare for eternal life, and nothing will end it but the end of your evil days ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... is not necessary that the lady should lay aside the employment in which she may be engaged, particularly if it consists of light or ornamental needle-work. Politeness, however, requires that music, drawing, or any occupation which would completely engross the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... her son's, and the first pull of the bell was not answered, her anxiety rose to distraction. The little mansion showed no sign of life from the ground to the ornamental roof-ridge, and, in spite of its much-admired style, had to her eyes a sinister appearance, as also had the adjoining lodging-house, not less architecturally admirable, but showing bills all along the high mullioned windows of its ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... order of learning should be first, what is necessary; second, what is useful, and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... But it imposes a universal close-shave (like that which is found so hygienic during a curative detention at Dartmoor) on all who are registered only with a barber who charges threepence. Thus, while the ornamental classes can continue to ornament the street with Piccadilly weepers or chin-beards if they choose, the working classes demonstrate the care with which the State protects them by going about in a fresher, cooler, and cleaner ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... popular books for young people. Each book is well printed from large type on good paper, frontispiece in colors, profusely illustrated, and bound in cloth, with ornamental covers in three colors, making a series of most interesting books for ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... edifices were large and commodious, containing several rooms. Their articles of household furniture were convenient, and some of them quite elegant. The dresses, especially those of the females, were artistic and often highly ornamental. Very beautiful shawls and mantillas were manufactured by them. Their finest fabrics were woven by the hand from the fibrous bark of the mulberry-tree and hemp, which grew wild and in abundance. The natives had acquired the art of rich coloring, and the garments thus ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... reasoning without using as a help here and there some shreds of scientific military theory. The smallest of these fragments, consisting in mere scientific words and metaphors, are often nothing more than ornamental flourishes of critical narration. Now it is in the nature of things that all technical and scientific expressions which belong to a system lose their propriety, if they ever had any, as soon as they are distorted, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... than a rag,—on careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangely ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moved from its former position above the Suspension Bridge, was motionless now above Niagara city, shadowing all that district about the power-house which had been the scene of the land fight. The monster had an air of quiet and assured predominance, and from its stern it trailed, serene and ornamental, a long streaming flag, the red, black, and yellow of the great alliance, the Sunrise and the Dragon. Beyond, to the east, at a much higher level, hung a second consort, and Bert, presently gathering courage, wriggled out and craned his neck to find another ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... ordinary intercourse of life. That religion having little hold on the minds of people by external ceremonies and extraordinary observances, or separate habits of living, the clergy make up the deficiency by cultivating their minds with all kinds of ornamental learning, which the liberal provision made in England and Ireland for the parochial clergy, (to say nothing of the ample Church preferments, with little or no duties annexed,) and the comparative lightness of parochial ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Ornamental stove plants—such as Brugmansias, Centradenias, Clerodendrons, Eranthemums, Euphorbias, Geissomerias, Gesneras, Justicias, Poinsettias, &c., to be supplied with clear liquid manure, and to have their rambling shoots stopped. Many of the free-growing plants will require shifting ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... skin, polished like ivory, takes on a warm and subtle glow. From his shoulders there hangs behind him, to his heels, something that might be a cloak, except that it does not cloak him. It does not envelop him; rather does it stand behind him in ornamental background, with a certain sculptural effect. And it is white, a wondrous gleaming white, against which the whiteness of his skin seems rosy. Starting from his shoulders, it goes out and up in gentle undulation to either side, and then descends ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... so glad I can be useful again, as well as ornamental," he grinned, presenting to her with a flourish ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the reader the expletives with which he adorned his conversation, nor do I intend to do so, for though he, like others who indulge in the habit of swearing, may have thought it was both ornamental and emphatic, I don't think so. Besides, I have hopes that these pages may be read by the young, and I do not wish to give, even in the conversations which I may transcribe, anything that is profane or impure; for if I did I might inoculate their young minds with an evil virus, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... scarcely possible to determine when buttons, which are both useful and ornamental, were first made. In the paintings of the fourteenth century they frequently appear on the garments of both sexes, but in many instances they are drawn without button-holes, and are placed in such situations ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... bareness of the walk relieved by a pretty trellis-work, up which hops and other creeping plants are climbing; to our right is a cottage-wing, which is the principal's residence, and to our left the entrance hall, with an ornamental belfry over it; a little further to our left is another small stone building—the dairy. We enter the hall, and, having written our names in the Visitors' book, we ascend the oak staircase and visit the school-room. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... their days except to kill bears and birds, I say they're stifled by wealth: and he at least would have made an Admiral of mark, or a General: not of much value, but useful in case of need. But he, like a pretty woman, was under no obligation to contribute more than an ornamental person to the common good. As to that, we count him by tens of thousands now, and his footmen and maids by hundreds of thousands. The rich love the nation through their possessions; otherwise they have no country. If they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... editor are due to Messrs. Macmillan and Bowes for the use of two devices; to the Clarendon Press for the three pages of specimens of the types given to the University of Oxford by Fell and Junius; to the Chiswick Press for the examples of the devices and ornamental initials which the second Whittingham reintroduced, and for the type-facsimiles of the title-page of the book with which he revived the use of old-faced letters; to Messrs. Macmillan for the specimen of the Macmillan Greek type, and to the Trustees of Mr. William ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... this country are never clad in garments of that description; so far my own observation enables me to speak with certainty. But it is equally sure that they were never the property of the general lately in command at Antwerp. Generals, when they are in full dress, wear ornamental lace upon their—their regimentals; and when—" So much she said, and something more, which it may be unnecessary that I should repeat; but such were her eloquence and logic that no doubt would have been ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... head of the lake, at some distance from us, we discovered the burial-place of the MacGregors, and did not view it without some interest, with its ornamental balls on the four corners of the wall, which, I daresay, have been often looked at with elevation of heart by our honest friend of Loch Ketterine. The lake is divided right across by a narrow slip of flat land, making a small lake at the head of the large one. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Towns. Hence some fifteen thousand pounds were spent in refurbishing Sneyd Hall, which lies on the edge of the Five Towns, and the Earl and Countess passed four months of the year there. Hence the Earl, a mild, retiring man, when invited by the Town Council to be the ornamental Mayor of Bursley, accepted the invitation. Hence the Mayor and Mayoress gave an immense afternoon reception to practically the entire roll of burgesses. And hence, a little later, the Mayoress let it be ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... serious, though with a jocose dialect commonly, having a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther's Books he called his SEELENSCHATZ (Soul's-treasure): Luther and the Bible were his chief reading. Fond of profane learning too, and of the useful or ornamental Arts; given to music, and "would himself sing aloud" when he had a melodious leisure-hour. Excellent old gentleman: he died, rather suddenly, but with much nobleness, 3d January, 1571; age sixty-six. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... dining-room away from the sea commands as fine a view as that of the sea itself. It is closed in behind by two day-rooms, from the windows of which can be seen the entrance to the villa from the road and another garden as rich as the first one but not so ornamental. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... plots Are now resorts of vicious ease, Were then laid out in little lots, With useful beans and early peas: Each merely ornamental sod They dug with spades and hoed with hoes: The wilderness in every quad Was made to blossom as ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... is intended to supply the place of a man's right leg and spur; it should therefore, however ornamental and thin, be stiff and real. Messrs. Callow, of Park Lane, make some very pretty ones, pink, green and amber, from the skin of the hippopotamus, light but severe. A loop to hang it from the wrist may be made ornamental in colours and gold, and ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... Jupiter. Judith and Holofernes, St. Sebastian, The Murder of Abel, David and Goliath, The Martyrdom of St. Laurence, are some of the rest, all of which, it is perhaps needless to note, belong to those "dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental," against which we have already heard the painter inveigh. Upon the ceiling, with a nice sense of decorative fitness, is Pharaoh in the Red Sea. From a sconce at the side, a Gorgon surveys the ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... all its rare and costly furniture, cabinets, candelabra, plate, china, and glass, and nothing of value was left save the camphor trunks on the floor, the cane-bottomed settee, a few chairs, and a table. All the beautiful things, ornamental as well as useful, had disappeared, even to the rich packages of merchandise in the great vault beneath. The late possessor, however, of all that worldly wealth did not appear to be at all discomposed, or to cherish the faintest pang of regret at his loss. In truth, he seemed to be relieved ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... bead-roll of cousins merely for the pleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked to superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me with him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; but feeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped as often as I could." This strong dash of the conventional in Scott's father, this satisfaction in seeing people fairly to the door of life, and taking his final leave of them there, with something of a ceremonious ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... to the other. If you will work hard enough to kill the scale wherever it appears you can have all these trees, but, of course, it costs a lot to fight scale on big pepper trees, and it is, therefore, wisest usually to choose an ornamental tree not likely to ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... education, institutions, opinion, manners, the habits of society, and of domestic life, happily combine to give the just proportion of all that is attractive, useful, ornamental, and amiable to the female character—in England, Count Altenberg had hopes of finding a woman who, to the noble simplicity of character that was once the charm of Switzerland, joined the polish, the elegance, that was once the pride of France; a woman possessing an enlarged, cultivated, embellished ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... wholesome way of serving the State than by abridging the liberty of the people in the choice of personal attire. Meantime the preachers were left to thunder from their pulpits upon the sinfulness of starched rues and ornamental top-knots, and to threaten their fair hearers with the wrath to come, with as much success ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... results, in a few years' time, would be far more charming if they would take the trouble to copy some of the Algerian municipalities in this respect, or—better still—obtain professional advice from the Agricultural Institute at Tunis, which could furnish them with a large list of ornamental timber and shrubs that would thrive equally well, and convert Metlaoui into a veritable garden city. The plants suffer at first from the strong winds, but they acclimatize themselves ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... found more relics of past pecuniary transactions in the shape of receipted bills, neatly tied together, and each inscribed at the back. Among the bills I found nearly a dozen loose papers, all equally unimportant. The fifth drawer was in sad confusion. I took out first a loose bundle of ornamental cards, each containing the list of dishes at past banquets given or attended by the Major in London or Paris; next, a box full of delicately tinted quill pens (evidently a lady's gift); next, a quantity of old invitation cards; next, some dog's-eared French plays and books of the opera; next, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... own living? Was it out of kindness that you thwarted her instinct and filled her soul with regret that may be eternal? It was not. I have already indicated, in speaking of your son, one of the real reasons. Another was that you took pride in having these purely ornamental and loving creatures about you, and you would not suffer them to have an interest stronger than their interest in you, or a function other than the function of completing your career and illustrating your success in the world. If ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... Portugal, a cousin to the Queen of England, himself a Coburg, finally declined the honour. And Spain could not wait. There was a certain picturesqueness in Prim, the usual ornamental General through whose hands Spain has passed and repassed during the last century. He was a hard man, and the men of Spain, unlike the French, understand a martinet. But Spain could not wait. She must have a king; for the regency was wearisome. It was weary of itself, like an old man ready ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... China is the Stillingia sebifera of botanists; a plant originally indigenous to China, where it occurs in wet situations, but which is now somewhat common in various parts of India and America, chiefly as an ornamental tree. In Roxburgh's time, it was very common about Calcutta, where, in the course of a few years, it became one of the most common trees; and it has become almost naturalised in the maritime parts of South Carolina. In China alone, however, is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... explanations and the investigation of those who come afterward. The first and foremost object of this museum—as it should be of every such institution—is the preservation of historical evidence; the second, the making it accessible in its original aspect for study. Ornamental display, when in the least degree inconsistent with scientific uses, has no place in any of the rooms. Nothing is put up because it is pretty; and if the history of any specimen is at all doubtful, it is kept out of sight, or else its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror. But death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet: that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd. He appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... abundant and good, but there are not any plantains or bananas. On the higher lands, that is, above the general height of the vineyards, the walnut and chesnut grow most luxuriantly, and are both ornamental and useful. The chesnuts are so plentiful that, in the fruit season, they form a considerable article of food amongst the lower orders of the people. The fine old forest trees, the original occupiers of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... shrubs; and these, with a few scattered natives of the soil—elm, hickory, sycamore, and tulip trees—farther from the house, were the only attempts at embellishment that had been made. The garden, surrounded by a white paling, was thought an ornamental object, and lay within full view of the drawing-room windows; and yet it was but a mixture of the useful and the beautiful, in which the former largely predominated. As a kitchen-garden it was certainly excellent; but the narrow flower-borders, which surrounded the ample beds of melons ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that arrears were shown in his secretary's subscription-books, and that, unless the funds were augmented, he would reconsider the step he had taken in accepting the Mastership. Useless servants, useless hounds, and merely ornamental members of the Hunt, alike disappeared; and with system and discipline came season after season of prosperity, contentment, and justice, till it seemed that the best old traditions of British sport were revived in a community of hard-working, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... since and told me he was a resident of an interior city of some eight or ten thousand inhabitants, and at a recent public meeting had been appointed chairman of a committee on the improvement of a small park, which it was thought might be made an attractive ornamental feature ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... {"parterre" ornamental flower garden; "out of Weathersfield" Wethersfield (the modern spelling), Connecticut, was famous for its onions (there is still a red onion called "Red Weathersfield"), until struck by a blight about 1840; "old Egyptians" ancient Egypt was proverbial ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... whitewashed. The streets, with gutters in the centre, are at right angles, and paved, and adorned with numerous cypress-looking trees, called sauce, a species of willow. The Plaza, which contains a useful if not ornamental fountain, presents a lively scene on Sunday, the great market-day. The inn is a fair specimen of a public house in Spanish America. Around the court-yard, where the beasts are fed, are three or four rooms ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... I recall the familiar features of true Bohemians, when Bohemianism was at its best—not the ornamental names of those one finds mentioned in all reports of the famous gatherings, but of the members who really used and made the Club. Few of the outside public recollect, for instance, the name of Arthur Mathieson, who wrote and sang that pathetic ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... said "The Dickens!" and though his meaning was indefinite, he really meant it, whatever it might be. He looked up at the ornamental figure carved on the rich headboard of his bed as if he suspected that the headboard of English walnut had spoken in Irish. He looked at the headboard intently a long time, partly because the Irish voice had come from ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... life. London, Paris, and New York have alike contributed to its furniture. I was told that $50,000 was invested in pictures alone. When I looked at the perfection to which the house, the grounds, and the ornamental works had been carried, my only wonder was that $300,000 could have paid for such a combination of elegance and good taste. The family, which consists only of Don Manuel and his widowed sisters, had left on account of the cholera then prevailing in Tacubaya, but the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... was how to distribute Betty, Babe and Helen in white, Bob in blue, Eleanor in her favorite yellow, Madeline in ecru, and Mary in any one of a bewildering number of possible toilettes, so as to justify Ethel's hope that the aisle would be ornamental as well ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... of occupations; In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the developments, And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen! Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me, what would it amount to? Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to? Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... already been said of the social habits and status of the persons occupying that position, it will be readily imagined that the company thus called together is often a very numerous and sufficiently brilliant one. A good half of the assemblage will in all probability belong to the more ornamental sex. A liberally supplied picnic luncheon will not fail to complete the pleasures of the day; and altogether the festival of the merca of such or such a year will probably remain as an epoch in the memories of many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Charles, first and last a simple business man, having only one point of contact with their world, enjoyed—perhaps a trifle guiltily—his excursions into so sophisticated a set, feeling, no doubt, that in some new way for him he was "seeing life." The men and women he met were ornamental and amusing, possessed expensive habits, spoke in thousands, and told you in the same breath that they hadn't a bean. Many might have been somewhat hazy as to antecedents, but all were well-provided with a certain ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... twists itself round the Trees it grows near, making a very fine Shade. I never saw any thing of that Nature outdo it, and if it be cut away close to the Ground, it will presently spring up again, it being impossible to destroy it, when once it has got Root. 'Tis an ornamental Plant, and worth the Transplanting. Its Seed is a ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... his mouth looked almost square as he fought to say something. Then he slumped, tumbling from the saddle into the embrace of an ornamental bush as his horse clattered along the sidewalk. Drew ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... ready for action in defence of his comrade, Murray gripped his cutlass hard, and in those exciting moments found time, oddly enough, to congratulate himself upon the fact that he was armed with the heavy service weapon in place of the ordinary ornamental dirk that formed part of a midshipman's equipment. As to his chance, slight, well-built and youthful, he could not help feeling doubtful, pitted as he was about to be against a heavy, work-hardened negro ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... my natural grace! I took a few lessons of a wandering minstrel, out home, but I don't know the technique of it, as you and that ornamental captain do." ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... knowingness, sparkling with puns, of Beckett,—the inimitable, wise, easy, playful, worldly, social sketch of Thackeray. In imagery he had no rivals there; for his mind had a very marked tendency to the ornamental and illustrative,—even to the grotesque. In satire, again, he had fewer competitors than in humor;—sarcasms lurk under his similes, like wasps in fruit or flowers. I will just quote one specimen from a casual article of his, because it happens to occur to my memory, and because it illustrates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... as it is and must be of decorative sculpture. For to get decorative sculpture, you must have your sculptors; and they, you know, are wanting. Where are the men who will model capitals and panels in clay, with some sense of ornamental effect? We have the men who can make a copy in relief of an architect's drawings: but then the architect, even if he have the sense of ornamental effect, in the first place can never draw out, full size and with care, all the work required in a rich building, and, in ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Factory has been erected on a portion of the site of the Refinery, Laboratory and Incorporating Mills, and so arranged that the Confederate obelisk stands conspicuously in front of the centre; the battlemented and ornamental architecture of the Powder Works was adopted in the construction of the Factory buildings, which give them a ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... on the Bight of Benin in West Africa, Daniell stated, it was considered ornamental to elongate the labia and the clitoris artificially; small weights were appended to the clitoris and gradually increased. (W.F. Daniell, Topography of Gulf of Guinea, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... itself was a fine old substantially-built edifice, with thick walls, standing on a gentle elevation, and overlooking a wide extent of country. The grounds which surrounded it were large, and contained woods, and shady walks, and fishponds, or rather lakes, and ornamental flower gardens, and rich ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston |
