"Quill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fairer complexion than the generality of Indians. The women have two double lines of black or blue colour upon each cheek, from the ear to the nose; and the gristle of the nose is perforated, so as to admit a goose-quill, or a small piece of wood to be passed through it. The clothing of these Indians is made of the dressed skins of the rein or moose-deer. Some of them, says Mr. Mackenzie, were decorated with a neat embroidery of porcupine-quills ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... shuddering father, "How she loves my child; they all love her," but the thought made little impression at the time; the mind was too full of terror and woe. The doctor now asked for brandy in a whisper. Mrs. Dodd left the room with stealthy foot, and brought it. He asked for a quill. Julia went with swift, stealthy foot, and brought it. With adroit and tender hands they aided the doctor, and trickled stimulants down her throat. Then sat like statues of grief about the bed; only every now and then eye sought eye, and endeavoured to read what the other thought. Was there ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... he was interrupted more than once by a sotto voce observation from his then clerk, who was very impatient when the luncheon hour drew near. Accustomed to this interruption, the sheriff, as a rule, took no notice of them. On this occasion, however, he threw down his quill with a show of annoyance, leaned back in his chair, and addressed the interrupter thus: "I say, Mr. ——, are you, or am I, sheriff here?" Promptly came the unabashed reply: "You, of course; but ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Presently the folding-doors are to be shut, the ladies are to descend from their chambers, the bar will be kept appropriated to our house, the male part of the company will get into good humour, dinner will be ready, and then I must lay aside the grey goose-quill. As a preliminary to these promised comforts, the servant is mopping the hearth, which is composed (like a tesselated pavement) of little bricks about two inches long by half an inch wide, set within a broad black stone frame. The fuel is of fire-balls, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... quill-drivers,' he said contemptuously; 'but as Renan remarked to me, there is one thing to be said for a government of that sort, "Ils ne font pas la guerre." And so long as they don't run France into adventures, and a man can keep a roof over his head and a sou in his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the French term for a small harpsichord, at that time called in England a spinet. It was named from a fancied resemblance of its quill plectra to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and seed diet, gentle and frequent bleedings, as symptoms exasperate, a little ipecacuanha or thumb vomit repeated once or twice a week, chewing quill bark in the morning, and a few grains of rhubarb at night, will totally cure consumptions, even when attended with tubercles, and hemoptoe, and hectic, in the first stage; will greatly relieve, if not cure, in the second stage, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... called me a mole, and said my eyes would be opened some day. But very soon he came to be interested in something else, and I never gave Edie another thought until one day she just took my life in her hands and twisted it as I could twist this quill. ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the mice to carry it to the barn, Sing ivy, sing ivy; And thrashed it with a goose's quill, Sing holly, go whistle, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name. This letter—written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle perfume about it—requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite club—the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... heavenly Spirit! from this vain Reck'ning their vanity; less is their gain Than hazard still to meditate on ill, Though with good mind; their reasons like those toys Of glassy bubbles which the gamesome boys Stretch to so nice a thinness through a quill, That they themselves break, and do themselves spill. Arguing is heretics' game, and exercise, As wrestlers, perfects them. Not liberties Of speech, but silence; hands, not ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a score of curious faces turned on him, of some one on the bench folding up a newspaper and adjusting his glasses, of a man at a table throwing aside a quill pen and taking another, of a click of a latch closing behind him, of a row of spikes in front of him. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the fertile tribe is seen Tom Tyres, in the Magazine, That teazer of Apollo! With goose-quill he, like desperate knife, Slices, as Vauxhall beef, my life, And calls ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... on the arrested Raths has been received. But do you think I don't understand your Advocate fellows and their quirks; or how they can polish up a bad cause, and by their hyperboles exaggerate or extenuate as they find fit? The Goose-quill class (FEDERZEUG) can't look at facts. When Soldiers set to investigate anything, on an order given, they go the straight way to the kernel of the matter; upon which, plenty of objections from the Goose-quill people!—But you may assure yourself I give ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... For example, in the year 1760, agrant of arms was made to a Lincolnshire family named Tetlow, which, with thirteen other figures, includes the representation of a book duly clasped and ornamented, having on it a silver penny; while above the book rests a dove, holding in its beak a crow-quill! This was to commemorate one of the family having, with a crow-quill, actually achieved the exploit of writing the Lord's Prayer within the compass of a silver penny. Amongst the most objectionable of the arms of this class are those which were granted ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... his crop rapped upon the factor's door. Old Islay came out with a quill behind his ear and a finger ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... many of them would have fallen, but a number having secured their hold, and reaching to each other, remained stationary, and over them the main column passed. Another time they were crossing a water-course along a small branch, not thicker than a goose-quill. They widened this natural bridge to three times its width by a number of ants clinging to it and to each other on each side, over which the column passed three or four deep. Except for this expedient they would have had to pass over in single file, and treble the time ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... seemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on Broadway. A large man of unmistakable American make, but with so little that was of New England or New York in his presence that she might not at once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quill toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He had a jealous blue eye, into which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straight mouth stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawny chin-beard, and he wore his soft hat so far back from his high forehead (it showed to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... producing a ludicrous effect. His appearance as he passed along attracted little notice, such vagaries being common in America. My attention was also arrested by a person who was arrayed in a hunting suit of buck-skin, curiously wrought with strips of dyed porcupine-quill, and who wore an otter-skin cap and Indian moccasins. There, is, however, little novelty in this costume, which I frequently saw afterwards. Caps of the description I have mentioned are commonly worn in the interior. I subsequently donned one myself, and found it an admirable adjunct ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Ida hill So oft hath cald on Alexanders name, As hath poore Rowland with an Angels quill Erected trophies of Ideas fame: Yet that false shepheard, Oenon, fled from thee; I follow her that ever flies ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... cents' worth Citrate of Potassa in an ounce vial of clear cold water. This forms an invisible fluid. Let it dissolve and you can use on paper of any color. Use quill pen in writing. When you wish the writing to become visible hold ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... new fur coat. Her beautiful black eyes looked out from under a saucy fur-trimmed hat with a scarlet quill on the side. Elviry wore black broadcloth with fox collar and muff. Lydia, in a remodeled coat of her mother's, and her old Tam and mended mittens, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to have his children brought up on foreign soil and under foreign influences. But for himself he resolved to abandon literature. As soon as he had finished the manuscript he had in hand, he would give up all further thought of writing. "The quill and I are divorced," he wrote to Greenough in June, 1833, "and you cannot conceive the degree of freedom, I could almost say of happiness, I feel at having got my neck out of the halter." Longings for his old sea-life often came over him. "You must not be surprised," ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... describes, for example, an instrument that accompanied dinner-parties during the reigns of the last few Caesars. It was a device that accomplished, two thousand years ago, the function of our proud Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. A feather, my boy. A simple goose-quill." ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... served in bay leaves with vinegar. And as we sat and made merry, there entered to us an old man bearing a leathern carpet and a lute that had two horns of amber. And when he had laid out the carpet on the floor, he struck with a quill on the wire strings of his lute, and a girl whose face was veiled ran in and began to dance before us. Her face was veiled with a veil of gauze, but her feet were naked. Naked were her feet, and they moved over the carpet ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... was a coarse edition of Maurice Quill; when he had examined my knee, and dressed it—not unskillfully—(the conical point of "the Sharp's" bullet had just reached the bone), he took great interest in the search of my saddle-bags; desiring ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... to have been made of a quill with a very sharp point, hollow, and containing the deadly poison in ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Club of England at this time consisted of Geoffrey of Monmouth and another man. They wrote their books with quill pens, and if the authorities did not like what was said, the author could be made to suppress the entire edition for a week's board, or for a bumper of Rhenish wine with a touch of pepper-sauce in it he would change the ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... their respectability. So they resolved to have a passport, and pitched upon Zeke to manufacture it, he being well known and much respected in Imeeo. Zeke was gratified by the compliment, and set to work with a rooster's quill, and a piece of dirty paper. "Evidently he was not accustomed to composition; for his literary throes were so violent, that the doctor suggested that some sort of a Caesarian operation might be necessary. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the method of staining the sheets with a thin broth of untanned leather, of which the analysis would give a result closely approaching that of the parchment itself. Moreover, he made all sorts of trials of quill pens, until he had found a method of cutting which produced the exact thickness of stroke required, and during the whole time he exercised himself in copying and recopying many pages of the manuscript upon common paper, in order to familiarise himself with the ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... to do with him; and the half-breeds were profane regarding him. But Little Hammer was oblivious to any depreciation of his merits, and would not be suppressed. He loved the Hudson's Bay Company's Post at Yellow Quill with an unwavering love; he ranged the half-breed hospitality of Red Deer River, regardless of it being thrown at him as he in turn threw it at his dog; he saluted Sergeant Gellatly with a familiar How! whenever he saw him; he borrowed tabac of the half- breed women, and, strange ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... taught him how to prepare these colors, to which he added another, namely, indigo, which his mother gave him from her laundry. His colors were rude enough, but his pencils were ruder. They were made of the hairs which he had pulled from a cat's back and fastened in the end of a goose-quill. Soon after this, a relative from Philadelphia, chancing to visit the old homestead, was struck with the talent of the little fellow, and upon his return to the city sent him a box of colors, with pencils and canvas and a few prints. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... of the last war against Great Britain "Non-Intercourse Quills" were for sale. This reminds us that most young people know but little about quills of any kind, and probably not one in a hundred knows, in these days, how to make a quill pen. Quills were in pretty general use for writing until about 1835 or 1836, when steel pens took their place to some extent, although quill pens were used by many down to a comparatively recent period, and occasionally a person may now ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... proportion of base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the gold from the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in the furnace and kept some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it is rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric acid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to be weighed on its own merits. Then salt water is poured into the vessel containing the dissolved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Then throwing out a long worm-like tongue, which glittered with a viscous coating, she drew it back again covered with ants. These passed into her mouth, and thence, of course, into her capacious stomach. The tongue, which was more than a foot in length, and nearly as thick as a quill, was again thrown out, and again drawn back, and this operation she continued, the tongue making about two "hauls" to every second of time! Now and then she stopped eating, in order to give some ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the world, who wrote about the year 1700; for he told all Europe that "he could find nothing amongst us but our writings to distinguish us from the worst of barbarians." But to become an "Author by Profession," is to have no other means of subsistence than such as are extracted from the quill; and no one believes these to be so precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed, and thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the noblest mind is cast into the lot of a ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Last Judgment, and Mr. Clarkson began to realise his responsibility so seriously that when the jurors were dismissed to their duties, he took his seat before a folio of paper, a pink blotting-pad, and two clean quill pens, with a resolve to maintain the cause of justice, whatever ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... looked at each other in an ironical silence. Basil, who was sitting by his desk, swung the chair round idly on its screw and picked up a quill-pen. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... smote what you thought British wrong, Well, that won't put us in a passion. "I ken write long-tailed if I please," You said. And truly, polished writer, More like "a gentleman at ease," Never touched quill than this shrewd smiter. Your "moral breath of temperament" Found scope in scholarly urbanity; And wheresoever LOWELL went Sounded the voice of Sense and Sanity. We loved you, and we loved your wit. Thinking of you, uncramped, uncranky; Our hearts, ere we're aware of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... of hue, With orange-tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true: The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Language % 590. Writing. — N. writing &c. v.; chirography, stelography[obs3], cerography[obs3]; penmanship, craftmanship[obs3]; quill driving; typewriting. writing, manuscript, MS., literae scriptae[Lat]; these presents. stroke of the pen, dash of the pen; coupe de plume; line; headline; pen and ink. letter &c. 561; uncial writing, cuneiform character, arrowhead, Ogham, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... pen at the advanced age of fifty-six ... I drove the quill thirty years, during which time I wrote and published ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... of a brick-red, about the thickness of a large quill, and five or six inches long, half protrudes its flat head from one of those enormous, perfumed calyces, in which it ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the branches in some way, and darted off up the opposite slope. He had failed to secure his prize, but it was wonderful how so large a bird could slip through the network of branches and extricate himself without striking a quill against a twig. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the appearance of your prospectus, there was on board an unusual and unprecedented demand for ink. The green cloth of our tables was suddenly covered with a deluge of quill-pens, to the great injury of one of our servants, who, in trying to remove them, got ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... another pause. The master suddenly turned from the window. "I tell you what, Uncle Ben," he said with prompt decision and unshaken gravity, "the only thing for you to do is to just throw over Dobell and Parsons and Jones and the old quill pen that I see you're accustomed to, and start in fresh as if you'd never known them. Forget 'em all, you know. It will be mighty hard of course to do that," he continued, looking out of the window, "but ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... ten square leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls her keen eye, her Dragon-claws extends, Darts from above, and tears at each fell swoop With iron fangs the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... ink was early used, though it is certain that it was either kept in a solid state, like India ink, or that it was of the consistency of glue, and needed the application of water before it could be used. For pens, the iron stylus, the reed, needle, and quill (though the last was not admitted without a struggle) were the common substitutes ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... the term "pen" as a rhetorical phrase; here it is valid in the strictest sense, and if a pious reverence pays homage to many an author by seeking to gain possession of the quill with which he formed his works, the quill of which Wieland availed himself, would surely be worthy of this distinction above many another. For the fact that he wrote everything with his own hand and most beautifully, and, at the same time, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... cannot inject the human life element into it. Biography is universally limited to an operation in which the life is the subject, not the agent. It is simply the writing out of a life's history by some one with a common goose-quill or steel pen. Still, the word biograph would be the best, of the same length, that we could form to describe one of these disks of light, if it were made the same verb active as photograph; or to mean that the life is the agent, as well as ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... years ago that could not happen. The greater part of the people were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art of handling the goose-quill belonged to an international republic of letters which spread across the entire continent and which knew of no boundaries and respected no limitations of language or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not follow the frontier. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose—in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... had been waved to seats by a great window with Mr. Pollock, made no protest. There they sat in silence for a few minutes, while the Governor General dictated to a secretary who sat at a little table by his side and who wrote with a goose-quill. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... moment. This deed would fetter all his future. The Duke was unreasonable. But under the steady, compelling eyes of Charles he moved forward to the table, and accepted the quill the clerk was proffering. There was no alternative, he realized. He was trapped. Well, well! He must make the best of it. He stooped from his great height, and signed in his great sprawling, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... there is deftly dight With meats and drinks of rare delight; There too the wine flows, sparkling, free; And all, my love, to pleasure thee. There sound enchanting symphonies; The clear high notes of flutes arise; A singing girl and artful boy Are chanting for thee strains of joy; He touches with his quill the wire, She tunes her note unto the lyre: The servants carry to and fro Dishes and cups of ruddy glow; But these delights, I will confess, Than pleasant converse charm me less; Nor is the feast so sweet to me ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... man; and having a vast deal of learning, he will respect thee for thy acquirements.' The same day I was introduced to Mr. Asgrave, who was a little man with a fine, bald, benevolent head; and after a long conversation which he was pleased to hold with me, I became one of his quill-drivers. I don't know how it was, but by little and little I rose in my master's good graces. I propitiated him, I fancy, by disposing of my L500 according to his advice; he laid it out for me, on what ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have had king Dietrich's opinion. Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers—the two classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was Dietrich no scholar himself, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... their side the witness-box. Above us on the right was the judge's seat, and immediately below it a structure somewhat resembling a large pew or a counting-house desk, surmounted by a brass rail, in which a person in a grey wig—the clerk of the court—was mending a quill pen. On our left rose the dock—suggestively large and roomy—enclosed at the sides with high glazed frames; and above it, near the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... cried. "Why, every quill on your head was standing up and you look five years older 'n you did this morning! You heard the undertaker shaking out your shroud all the way down- -you know you did. I never seen a man as scared as you was!" When Bridges accepted the accusation ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... spatter on the iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, while a goose-quill, tool of the tuneful Nine, was expectantly poised ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Captain Solomon writing up the log for the day. He always wrote it just after dinner. And when he had finished dinner, he would get out the book and clear a place on the table to put it; and then he took a quill pen in his great fist and wrote, very slowly, and with flourishes. And when he had it done he always passed the book ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... of * *'s poem will travel through one or other of the quintuple correspondents, till it reaches the ear, and the liver of the author.[75] Your adventure, however, is truly laughable—but how could you be such a potatoe? You 'a brother' (of the quill) too, 'near the throne,' to confide to a man's own publisher (who has 'bought,' or rather sold, 'golden opinions' about him) such a damnatory parenthesis! 'Between you and me,' quotha—it reminds me of a passage in the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... hurry, indeed, in a peaceable rambling world, and one can imagine Westcote, with his pointed beard and his tall hat of the fashion of James I., taking a little walk in the afternoon sun after having spent the morning with his quill-pen and his calf-bound, close-printed classics—Suetonius, and Gesnerus, and Diodorus Siculus. His book is interspersed with little rhymes, couplets or longer verses, in the style of the "Arabian ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... question was a soft brown beaver that rolled slightly away from the face and boasted as trimming a single scarlet quill. It was undeniably becoming, and Bob ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... my grandmother and work like this. Yes, Chief Totantora taught me to shoot and paddle a canoe, and to do many other things out-of-doors. But my grandmother was the head woman of our tribe, and her beadwork and dyed porcupine-quill work was the finest you ever saw, Ruth Fielding. I was sorry to leave my war-bag with Dakota Joe. It had in it many keepsakes my grandmother gave me before she passed to ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... phone. "There's a Captain Sir Henry Quill on the phone, Mr. Gabriel. Do you wish to ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war—at the point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and paid, they had been ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... artists of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons, instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron worth a single gesture of the quill. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... when Esther came in from canvassing, there lay upon her desk the neglected manuscript of her book, found in a bottom drawer. Before it stood a chair; beside it a drop-light. A quill pen, brand new, bright green and very gay, perched atop a fresh bottle of ink. Near-by appeared a small flat book showing an account between Esther Claff and Ruth Vars and an uptown bank. Inside, between roseate leaves of thin blotting paper, ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... back my words." He waved the weapon threateningly. "Sit down there," he ordered Windham. "If you want to vote you'll vote for a gentleman. Write Bob Ridley's name on your ballot, or, by God! I'll fix you." Benito, as if hypnotized, took a seat at the table and dipped his quill in the ink. The others stirred uneasily, but made no move. There was a moment of foreboding silence. Then a hearty voice said from the door: ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... pen were of the quill of the swan that sings for future days! then shouldst thou, my friend, receive the fulness of thy fame. The fathers, of the years to come, should talk of thy noble deeds; and the youth yet unborn should ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... in the cool arbour, in a green-and-gold twilight. It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets, I only know that they are red and open, And that the sun above the arbour shakes with heat. My quill is newly mended, And makes fine-drawn lines with its point. Down the long, white paper it makes little lines, Just lines—up—down—criss-cross. My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill; It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen. My hand ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... writing a book; that might have been fairly easy. But he was telling about a friend of his, the friend of his life, his one dearest Friend. And when he remembers how they treated Him his eyes fill up, and his heart beats till it thumps, and his quill sticks into the paper in sheer ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... a soldier was his theme, my name—my name [namme de plume] was nor far off.' King James forgot how many weapons this man carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that that pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath another. He did not know what strategical operations the scholar, who was 'an old soldier' and a politician also, was capable of conducting under such conditions. Those were narrow quarters for 'the Shepherd of the Ocean,' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... going in and out down there in the narrow streets, who were neither princes, nor generals, nor even captains, and yet the people looked after them with respectful curiosity—mere quill-drivers! It ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... word that he meant to finish them without more delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the party ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... they had expected, a chart. The drawing was crudely done in ink, applied it seemed with a stick, or possibly with a very badly fashioned quill-pen. There was very little writing upon it, and this of the raggedest sort. To their intense disappointment it bore no name to tell where in the seven seas it might be. That the chart was of some coast was certain. A deep, irregular bay occupied ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... could it care for a fellow's happiness, or even for his leading a correct life! Would he not be a much better man if allowed to have Hester!—whereas in all probability she would fall to the lot of some quill-driver like her father—a man that made a livelihood by drumming his notions into the ears of people that did not care a brass farthing about them!—Thus would Vavasor's love-fits work themselves off—declining from cold noon to a drizzly ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Adams, but your father wrote a very firm, strong hand, and the writing on the bill of exchange is weaker and a little shaky. That is undoubtedly due partly to the fact that the signature on the bill of exchange is written with a very fine steel pen, while that in the letter was written with a quill. But, what makes me doubt the genuineness of the signature is this,—although the characters are practically the same on the two pieces of paper, your father's name in the letter is the writing of an educated man, that on the bill of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... in. How provokingly calm are the countenances of the five legislators! Not a twinkle in the eye of any of them to betray the nature of their decision—nay, with a refinement of cruelty positively appalling, the chairman is elaborating a quill into a toothpick until order shall be partially restored. Now for the dictum—"The Committee, having heard evidence, are of opinion that the preamble of the Dreep-daily Extension Bill has not been proved, and further, that the preamble of the Powheads Junction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... feel disposed to bolster yourself up with the wet blanket of a non possumus, and reply to me that your existing quill-drivers are too fat-witted and shallow-pated for the production of more pretentiously polished lucubrations—aye, not even if they burn the night-light oil and hear the chimes at midnight! I will not be hoodwinked by the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the sword, after the fashion of greater men, and requiring no secretary. I now take up the quill to set forth, correctly, certain incidents which, having been noised about, stand in danger of being inaccurately reported by some imitator of Brantome and De l'Estoile. If all the world is to know of this matter, let ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was forgotten, and so was Dyke's want of energy, for he set to work manfully, helping his brother to cut off the abundant plumes, tying them up in loose bundles with the quill ends level, that they might dry, and carefully carrying them into the room used for storing feathers, eggs, and such curiosities as were collected from time to time; Dyke having displayed a hobby for bringing home stones, crystals, birds' eggs, and any ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... Donald until to-night. Almost by accident I met him out there in the timber. I delivered the telegram you sent him. After he had read it I showed him mine. He scribbled something on a bit of paper, folded it, and pinned it with a porcupine quill. I've been mighty curious, but I haven't pulled out that ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... woman all her will: Field, bright and loud with laughing flower and bird And keen alternate notes of laud and gird: Barnes, darkening once with Borgia's deeds the quill Which tuned the passion of Parthenophil: Blithe burly Porter, broad and bold of word: Wilkins, a voice with strenuous pity stirred: Turk Mason: Brewer, whose tongue drops honey still: Rough Rowley, handling song with Esau's hand: Light Nabbes: lean Sharpham, rank and raw by turns, ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... whither none but your gallants resort. After dinner you may appeare againe, having translated yourselfe out of your English cloth cloak, into a light Turky-grogram (if you have that happiness of shifting) and then be seene (for a turn or two) to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gummes with a wrought handkercher: It skilles not whether you dinde or no (thats best knowne to your stomach) or in what place you dinde, though it were with cheese (of your owne mother's making, in your ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the shops where the summer sales were being held a couple of cotton frocks to which her height and her small, long waist gave an air of actual elegance. A sailor hat, with a smart ribbon and well-set quill, a few new trifles for her neck, a bow, a silk handkerchief daringly knotted, and some fresh gloves, made her feel that she ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I writ this book, Made of a grey goose-quill; A pen it was when it I took, And a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to ropes or cords which, when pulled, are made to act upon distant objects to which one end is fastened. Sometimes the tendon runs down the middle of a muscle, and the fibers run obliquely into it, the tendon resembling the quill in a feather. Again, tendons are spread out in a flat layer on the surface of muscles, in which case they are called aponeuroses. Sometimes a tendon is found in the middle of a muscle as well as ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... hat with a quill in it and a woollen skirt that bagged at the knees like trousers. Her hair was thin at the temples, and she wore gold glasses astride her long, "foxy" nose. Although no average cake would have held the candles to ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... to the table as she spoke, and picking up a quill held it appealingly toward him. ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... was always a quill, which, during the lecture, he kept constantly twirling about and crushing. He pushed the desk forward upon two legs, swinging it back and forth, and every few minutes would plunge forward almost spasmodically, throwing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... suffered and seen, And ready once more at his Country's call To leave his wife, his home, his all. And I, as I thought of what he had done, And the arm-chair band (of which I am one), Elderly scribblers, who can't even drill, And are only good at driving a quill— Humbled and shamed to my inmost core I wished I could drop clean through the floor. For the tables were turned; I stood at zero, And the office boy was a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... Inn grew daily more irksome. There he would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers, and biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winter afternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the gaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... inferior importance to the ill-dressed and overworked Vicar's daughter. Imperial Shirley, no need to wave your majestic wand, we have bowed to it long ago unblinded; and all its illusive splendours are not so potent as that worn-down goose-quill which you used to wield in the busy kitchen of your ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... forms and standard variations of the Round Gothic. In lieu of any detailed analysis of these letter shapes, it may perhaps be sufficient to say that they were wholly and exactly determined by the position of the quill, which was held rigidly upright, after the fashion [132] already described in speaking of Roman lettering; and that the letters were always formed with a round swinging motion of hand and arm, as their forms and accented lines clearly evidence; for the medieval ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... companion ladders, and I roll across the street as if it were the deck of a liner. Every building I enter seems to be rocking up and down, up and down, and as on the occasion I refer to I sat before the knights of the quill to be cross-examined, I felt as if I were in the cabin of a ship rather than in my own room at the hotel, and that the books on the table were in reality fiddles to keep the glasses and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... not only by jellyfish but also by the GRAPTOLITE, which takes its name from a fancied resemblance of some of its forms to a quill pen. It was a composite animal with a horny framework, the individuals of the colony living in cells strung on one or both sides along a hollow stem, and communicating by means of a common flesh in this central tube. Some graptolites were straight, and some curved or spiral; some ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... firm of Cutt, Comeagain, & Co. It was evident, however, from the frequency with which Jipson plied his knife and rubber to his "figgers" of the day's accounts, and the tremulousness with which he drove the porcupine quill, that Jipson was thinking of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... had found it and played with it until it was creased and cracked all over like "crazed" china, yet not torn. Old Madam Leigh's face could not be said to be wrinkled, for the lines were shallow. They were as fine as if made with an inkless crow quill, and so close together you would have thought there was not room for another. Her eyes were dark and bright She had French blood in her veins, and showed it in her ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... otter, with only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang of banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit was thoroughly broken to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... visiting-cards, stood a shopkeeper's clock, smothered with dust, and a couple of candlesticks with tallow dips thrust into their sockets. A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be manuscript articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they were set up. He admired a ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... a quill between his teeth. His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... searched till she found a fragment of the narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs and tied round the neck of the image. Then fetching ink and a quill from the rickety bureau by the window, she blackened the feet of the image to the extent presumably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot marked cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandal-strings of those days. Finally she tied a bit ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... one hundred and seventy-ninth day, with no nails on its fingers or toes, no hair, the extremities imperfectly developed, and the skin florid and thin. It was too feeble to grasp its mother's nipple, and was fed for three weeks by milk from the breast through a quill. At forty days it weighed 3 pounds and measured 13 inches. Before the expiration of three months it died of measles. Dodd describes a case in which the catamenia were on the 24th of June, 1838, and continued a week; the woman bore twins on ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... to the second. Nevertheless France does neither the one nor the other; she continues to recognize Eugenius IV, and derides the pope of Ripaille and of Basel, as she will declare in a new assembly of Bourges in 1440. Above certain laws which men write on sheets of paper, with a goose-quill and ink, they bear in themselves another law, written by the hand of God, and which is good sense. Happy the nations which never depart from this living and general law, or which, at least, know enough to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... mounted to a spruce-spire and acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, in one single, watery, weak stab of apology for sunshine, on the top of a fowl-shed, he surrendered himself to what, in wild-bird land, is known as the "sunning reaction," which really consists of giving body and mind utterly to the sun ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... little progress in the art, and letter-writing always appeared to me a great undertaking; but Aunt Henshaw, having one afternoon provided me with pen, ink, and paper, and elevated me nicely with the large Bible and my "Pilgrim's Progress," I sat biting the end of my quill, and pondering over some form of commencement. I had already written "dear mother" at the top; at length I added ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... were in America with that fine face and your ready quill, you would have no need to be ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... upon my brother first. And I lied. I told him he had made a mistake, and killed you, that his life was not worth the quill from a porcupine's back if he remained in the country. I made him believe it was another who fought him in the forest. He fled. I am glad of that. He will never come back. Then I followed over the trail ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... mayor of Tours, relates incidents of the novelist's method of work, according to the report of a servant employed at the chateau of Sache: "Sometimes he would shut himself up in his room and stay there several days. Then it was that, plunged into a sort of ecstasy and armed with a crow quill, he would write night and day, abstaining from all food and merely contenting himself with decoctions of coffee which he himself prepared." [Brochure of M. le Docteur Fournier in regard to the statue of Balzac, that statue a piece of work to which ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... been afraid. With the next night Hepburn came; and Kinraid did not. After a few words to her mother, Philip produced the candles he had promised, and some books and a quill or two. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... subdued and gentle tones, hurried forward, and Mayence requested him to produce the documents entrusted to his care. These were spread out before the young man, who signed each of them amidst a deep silence, broken only by the scratching of the quill. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... philosopher, with his brevity of stature, goodly-conditioned paunch, next-to-nothing legs, protuberant back, bill-hook nose, and twinkling eyes,—to speak respectfully, Mr. Punch, attended by the solemnly-sagacious, ubiquitously-versatile "Toby," together with the invisible company of skirmishers of the quill and pencil, producing in his name those ever-welcome sheets, flying forth the world over, with hebdomadal punctuality. Of the ingredients and salutary influence of this Punch—an institution and power of the age, no more to be overlooked among the forces of the nineteenth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... to retort, when he was anticipated by a new speaker. It was Quill, the journalist, who has long thin fingers and indigestion. At meals he pecks suspiciously at his plate, and he eats food substitutes. Quill runs a financial supplement, or something of that kind, to a daily paper. He always knows ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... a hen roost under the shed, and the savage old hetchel was doing duty behind the old churner when he sulked and pulled back so as to stop the churning machine. It was hetcheling wool then instead of flax. The flax was spun on a quill which ran by the foot and the quills or spools holding the thread were used in a shuttle when the cloth was woven. The old loom stood in the hog-pen chamber, and there Mother wove her linen, her rag carpets, and her ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Canada. I have used this poison myself, when baiting for foxes. The properest method in the winter-season, is to take a piece of hog's-lard, about the size of a walnut, make a hole in the centre, and insert it carefully with a quill or the point of a small knife, taking care not to spill any on the outside, then to fill up the puncture with some ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... hitherto concealed his long sword, and just as Joachim looked up to see what was going on, he whirled the sword round like a flash of lightning, and cut Budde's head clean off from the shoulders, so that not even a quill of his Spanish ruff was disturbed, and the blood spouted up like three horse-tails to the ceiling (for he drank so much that all the blood was in his head), and down tumbled his gay cap, with the heron's plume, to the ground, and his head along ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... In forming their type the German printers imitated the lettering made by copyists with a quill. Their type is called Gothic, and it is still widely used in German books. The Italian printers made their letters more round and simple in shape, imitating the handwriting of the best Italian copyists. This is the Roman type, in which many European peoples, as also the English ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... discussion of a few points, chiefly technical, connected with his art as a poet. I knew Patmore only during the last ten years of his life, and never with any real intimacy; but as I have been turning over a little bundle of his letters, written with a quill on greyish-blue paper, in the fine, careless handwriting which had something of the distinction of the writer, it seems to me that there are things in them characteristic ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... corresponds with the small deer of Ceylon. I never saw so beautiful a little creature, appearing more like a fable than a reality. Their tiny black horns are but slightly curved inwards, their legs are not thicker than the quill with which I am now writing; and yet all the characters of the antelope are strongly marked. The first I saw had been brought to my uncle; and as I entered his room, I stood quite still at the door, with surprise at this exquisite, tiny creature, who remained with ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... pronounced that he was virtually obliged to challenge the editor of one of the most vituperative of the metropolitan sheets, and very gallantly lodged a bullet through the shoulder of this "knight of the quill!" ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... dress is plain, without singularity,—with no other ornament than the quill, which is the badge of his function, stuck behind the dexter ear, and this rather for convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat there again shortly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... crests for families without the right to use them. But the extreme in "crests" is the crest which does not mean family at all, but is a device supposed to give an idea of the art or taste of the individual. For example, a quill or a scroll may be the ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn Miquon, in their own language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the Iroquois, Onas; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice the years that had passed over his head. The elm-tree ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... impression. It is used for moistening the rotten stone in polishing the plate, and may be prepared by putting about an ounce and a half of alcohol in a close bottle, and add half a stick of caustic potash. This will soon become of a deep red color. For use, fill your small bottle, having a quill in the cork, with alcohol, and add a few drops of the above, or enough to change it to a bright ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... with the writing of my master," hurriedly remarked Gino, who trembled for the fate of the packet, "you will see his skill in the turn of those letters. There are few nobles in Venice, or indeed in the Sicilies, who have a more scholarly hand, with a quill, than Don Camillo Monforte; I could not do the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stowed away in it, for your trouble: but don't forget to secure the casks till we can stow them away below. We can't break bulk now; but the sooner they are down the better; or we shall have some quill-driving rascal on board, with his flotsam and jetsam, for the Lord knows who;" and Thompson, to use his own expression, went down again "to lay his soul ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... after them at headlong pace The evanescent fashions fly In motley and amusing chase. The world is ever altering! Farthingales, patches, were the thing, And courtier, fop, and usurer Would once in powdered wig appear; Time was, the poet's tender quill In hopes of everlasting fame A finished madrigal would frame Or couplets more ingenious still; Time was, a valiant general might Serve who ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... will think it's a specimen. Put the same feather with a ribbon and an artificial flower and everyone will think it's for a lady's hat. Put the same feather with an ink-bottle, a book and a stack of writing-paper, and most men will swear they've seen a quill pen. So you saw that map among tropic birds and shells and thought it was a map of Pacific Islands. It was the map ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... and valuable ana were the Visitors' Book of "Watts' Charity," at Rochester, containing the signatures of "C. D." and Mark Lemon; the quill pen belonging to Charles Dickens, and used by him just previous to his death; a paper-knife formerly belonging to "C. D.," and the writing-desk used by "C. D." on his last American tour; silver wassail-bowl and stand presented to "C. D." by members of the Philosophical ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... of the highest importance. A courier from Tientsin has arrived at last—a courier who slipped into our lines, delivered his quill of a message which had been rolled up and plaited into his hair for many days, and is now sitting and fanning himself—a thin slip of a native boy, who has travelled all the way down that long Tientsin road and all the way ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... accompanied by Charley, divided some empty tin canisters among them, with which they seemed highly satisfied. They were altogether fine men. Three or four old men with grey beards were amongst them; and they introduced a young handsome lad to me, with a net on his head and a quill through his nose, calling him "Yappar." He was probably a youth of the Yappar tribe who had been sent forward as a messenger to inform them of our having passed that country. Seeing my watch, they pointed to the sun; and appeared to be ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... upon this point to-morrow?" Again three raps. "Will the spirit condescend to signify, in writing, in what way he shall act to obtain this end?" Three raps again testified that the amiable spirit was willing to oblige. Accordingly, Selim having produced an antique ink-stand and an eagle's quill—a goose quill and steel pens would have been quite too common—the hand of the medium was guided in tracing strange characters, which looked like a jumble of the Greek, Arabic, and cuneiform alphabets. This "spirit dialect" was translated to the inquirer: it contained a direction to call early ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... with ink the ocean fill, Were the whole world of parchment made, Were every single stick a quill, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of God alone, Would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the earth contain the scroll, Though stretch'd from sky ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... forward a sheet of paper, bites the end of her quill, and cries great drops of tears on the blotting-book. In a straggling hand she addresses an envelope to Mrs. Mounteagle, placing therein that unlucky letter from ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... DAVIS.—My Dear Friend:—Bless you for The Una, and for sending me a copy. I am pleased with its appearance and with the heartiness of your correspondents. Would you find room for some of my lucubrations? If so, I will drive my quill a little for you some of these evenings. Perhaps I might ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... on her simple black straw hat with a quill through it and set off for the office of the lawyer, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of seven, Gauss went to the Catherine Parish School at Braunschweig, and remained at it for several years. The master's name was Buttner, and from a raised seat in the middle of the room, he kept order by means of a whip suspended at his side. A bigger boy, Bartels by name, used to cut quill pens, and assist the smaller boys in their lessons. He became a friend of Gauss, and would procure mathematical books, which they read together. Bartels subsequently rose to be a professor in the University of Dorpat, where he died. At the parish school the boys of fourteen ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... dollars. I then ripped open the print and found my first suspicions confirmed; for, underneath, the quiver was of buckskin, beautifully embroidered with red feathers and porcupine {80} quills of deep red and turquoise blue. The Indian was as much puzzled by my preference for the quill work as I was by ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... purpose. He was very short of funds, and this fact alone would have discouraged most young men; not so with this man. He hired a cellar; two barrels with a board across served as desk on which was an ink-stand and goose quill. The proprietor of these apartments was not only editor and manager, but reporter, cashier, book-keeper, salesman, messenger and office boy. One hour he was writing biting editorials or spicy paragraphs; the next rushing out to report a fire or some other catastrophe, working sixteen to twenty ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... in getting a pen, though the lack of a good sharp knife made it hard to make a good one. In going about he had gathered a quantity of large feathers. He saved these for the time when he should have his paper and ink ready. Now, he cut away a quill to a point and split it up a little way. He was now supplied with writing materials. "Is it not wonderful," he thought, "how all our wants are filled? We have only to want a thing ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... motionless back with a sort of fascination. He moved uneasily, as if to break a spell of silence almost unbearable in its intensity. He went to the table and sat down. From mere habit he took up a quill pen. He looked at the point of it and at the inkstand. But he had nothing to write. There ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... have full sway, and beyond the general notion that Indians like bright color, they had paid no attention to the traditional ideas of dress among the noble red men. Pocahontas, as she is usually pictured in her quill-embroidered tunic and dull, heavy mantle, would have laughed outright at the appearance of this vision of silk and satin, of purple and scarlet and vivid green, which was solemnly parading up and down the room, in all the ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... book-cases, and, where the wall showed between them, panelled. On the table near the doctor's elbow was a green cloth, and upon it what he would have called a silver standish—a tray with inkstands—quill pens, a calf-bound book or two, some papers, a churchwarden pipe and brass tobacco-box, a flask cased in plaited straw, and a liqueur glass. The year was 1730, the month December, the hour somewhat ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... you will begin to think that air is something very serious. I will make another experiment, to convince you of this positive resistance. There is that beautiful experiment of the popgun, made so well and so easily, you know, out of a quill, or a tube, or anything of that kind,—where we take a slice of potato, for instance, or an apple, and take the tube and cut out a pellet, as I have now done, and push it to one end. I have made that end tight; and now I take another piece and put it in: ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... the curb and the throat-latch; and the nag's tail was stiffly braided with strips of woolen—scarlet and yellow and blue. Close beside him rode two stately braves of high rank, their mounts as richly caparisoned, their buckskin shirts gorgeous with bead and porcupine-quill embroidery, otter-skin head-dresses upon their hair. Like their leader, the dusky faces of the two Indians and of those forming the rest of the party were hideously painted, showing that all had but recently been upon ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... morning betimes, plum your ground, gage your line, bait your hook with a red knotted worme; but I hold a Menow better: put the hook in at the back of the Menow, betwixt the fish and the skin, that the Menow may swim up and down alive, being boyed up with a Cork or Quill, that the Menow may have liberty to swimme a foot off the ground: there is no doubt of sport ...
— The Art of Angling • Thomas Barker |
