"Buttons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... messes kept up a racket and a row all the time, in spite of the taut rein which the first lieutenant, Mr. Bispham, kept over us. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles; and I can see him now, with the flat eagle-and-anchor buttons shining on his blue coat, as he would pace the quarter-deck, eyeing us young gentlemen of the watch, as demurely we planked up and down the lee side, tired enough, and waiting for eight bells to strike to rush below and call our relief. He was an austere man, and, unlike the brave old commodore, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... with sleeves was the one Margaret put on after breakfast. It buttoned around her wrists snugly, but on unfastening the buttons the sleeves could be rolled up and pinned out of the way, so they would keep clean. After she was ready the grandmother showed her how to stand all the dining-room chairs back against the wall and take up the crumbs ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... get you any favour with great men: You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute, And now and then stab, as occasion serves. Bald. Spenser, thou know'st I hate such formal toys, And use them but of mere hypocrisy. Mine old lord, whiles he liv'd, was so precise, That he would take exceptions at my buttons, And, being like pins' heads, blame me for the bigness; Which made me curate-like in mine attire, Though inwardly licentious enough, And apt for any kind of villany. I am none of these common pedants, I, That cannot speak without propterea quod. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... was a middle-aged man of small stature, and very bandy-legged, dressed in a blue coat and brass buttons, and carrying a great bass-viol bigger than himself, in a rough baize cover. He came out of a footpath into the road just before them, and, on seeing them, touched his hat to Miss Winter, and then fidgeted along with his load, and jerked his head in a deprecatory manner ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... was copper-fastened with gold lace and brass buttons chock up to his ears, with a thundering great broadsword triced up to his larboard quarter and slung ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. It was green and gold and woven so that I cannot describe how delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under his chin. And the buttons in their newness shone like stars. He was proud and pleased by his suit beyond measure, and stood before the long looking-glass when first he put it on, so astonished and delighted with it that he could hardly turn ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... page to attend upon her person; a handsome boy of about twelve years of age, but a mischievous varlet, very much spoiled, and in a fair way to be good for nothing. He is dressed in green, with a profusion of gold cord and gilt buttons about his clothes. She always has one or two attendants of the kind, who are replaced by others as soon as they grow to fourteen years of age. She has brought two dogs with her also, out of a number of pets which she maintains at home. One is a fat spaniel, called Zephyr—though ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... daughters of the strong elder race were factory workers. The world had been made better by an output of thousands of shiny new buttons when at last the six o'clock whistle blew on this ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... towers above the crowd, we ape his weaknesses, if not his faults, many of these admirers of Crisostomo's held rigorously to the tie of his cravat, or the shape of his collar; almost all to the number of buttons on his vest. Even Captain Tiago burned with generous emulation, and asked himself if he ought not to build ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of the girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul, who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated several ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at him searchingly, looked at him from head to foot, noted the trim exactness of his evening attire, and his enamel links and waistcoat buttons, the air of confidence with which he crossed the room to mix himself a whiskey and soda. It was she who had been like that a few months ago, and he the timid one. They seemed to have ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his hand in the direction of the hilltop, brass buttons and polished gun-barrels began to glitter in the rays of the setting sun, and the chief ordered his braves to fold their tents and ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... one of the buttons at the back of his coat, and immediately Fritz opened his mouth, and in thin tones that appeared to proceed from the back of his head, remarked suddenly, 'May I have the pleasure?' and then shut his mouth ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... buttons as the family can afford and remove the thread. Add pure spring water, put in a saucepan and stir gently until you burst your buttons. Add a little flour to calm them and let them sizzle. Serve with tomato ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... of form and feature,—is more important,—conscience. Crawford declared this was the only portrait of Washington which literally represented his costume; having recently examined the uniform, sword, etc., he was enabled to identify the strands of the epaulette, the number of buttons, and even the peculiar seal and watch-key. A man so faithful to details, so devoted to authenticity, Crawford argued, was reliable in more essential things. He remarked, that one of his own greatest difficulties in the equestrian statue had been to reconcile the shortness of the neck in Stuart's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... around the control cabin, still hunting for a weapon. The symbols on the levers and buttons were meaningless to him. They made him feel frustrated because he imagined that among that countless array were some that might help him out of the trap if he could only ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... accompanied me into the cell to complete the preliminaries which comprised the final search. This involved my transition to a state of nature. My frock coat was removed and all pockets further examined. The seams and lining were closely investigated while even the buttons were probed to make certain they concealed nothing of a dangerous nature. In a few minutes they discovered my silent companion, the tiny camera, which I had deftly removed from its secret hiding-place to a tail pocket in my coat, as ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... summer clothes which my dear parents had given me for the holiday. The dress consisted, as you know, of shoes of polished leather, with large silver buckles, fine cotton stockings, black nether garments of serge, and a coat of green baracan with gold buttons. The waistcoat of gold cloth was cut out of my father's bridal waistcoat. My hair had been frizzled and powdered, and my curls stuck out from my head like little wings; but I could not finish dressing myself, because I kept confusing the different articles, the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... came the material for clothing. For the men we had purchased "gray denims" and "Kentucky jeans;" for the women, "blue denims" and common calico. These articles were rapidly taken, and with them the necessary quantity of thread, buttons, etc. A supply of huge bandana kerchiefs for the head was eagerly called for. I had procured as many of these articles as I thought necessary for the entire number of negroes on the plantation; but found I had sadly miscalculated. The kerchiefs were large ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... sojus had on nice buttons an' had plumes in dere hats. Dey wus singin' an' playin' on a flute dis song, 'I wish I wus in Dixie,' an' dey went in de big house an' broke up ebery thing. Dey say to me, 'you are as free as a frog,' an' dey say to my pa, 'all your chillun are free.' Dey say 'little niggers ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... their pitch and their timbre. How fully this a priori conclusion is confirmed by infantile instincts, all will see on being reminded of the delight which every young child has in biting its toys, in feeling its brother's bright jacket-buttons, and pulling papa's whiskers—how absorbed it becomes in gazing at any gaudily-painted object, to which it applies the word "pretty," when it can pronounce it, wholly because of the bright colours—and how its face broadens into a laugh at the tattlings of its nurse, the snapping of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... gone out in my shirt sleeves. Marjie looked bravely up at my tall form. I knew she was thinking of him who had worn that coat. The only thing for O'mie was Marjie's big water proof cloak. The old-fashioned black-and-silver mix with the glistening black buttons, such as women wore much in those days. It had a hood effect, with a changeable red silk lining, fastened at the neck. To my surprise O'mie made no objection at all to wearing a girl's wrap. But I could never fully forecast the Irish boy. He drew the circular ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... to himself for delaying, the Count sprang towards Dorothy, was conscious of a swift white streak, and the head of the angel child, impelled by wiry muscles and a weight of seventy-six pounds, smote as a battering ram upon the first and second buttons of his waistcoat. He doubled up and sat down hard in one movement; then turned on his side, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... here, and coming back from Court past midnight stood, huddling their satin skirts, under the carved door-posts while the footman roused himself from his mattress on the floor, hurriedly fastened the lower buttons of his waistcoat, and let them in. The bitter eighteenth-century rain rushed down the kennel. Southampton Row, however, is chiefly remarkable nowadays for the fact that you will always find a man there trying ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... short shrift for J. M. G. He quickly called "One to me." Then I quickly lunged, got home, and called out, "One to me." Next instant we both lunged again, with equal results. We would have finished each other's earthly career if there had been no buttons and no leather jackets. The referee sharply called "Dead heat. All over." We shook hands in the usual amicable way and had a ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... in a strap of elastic metal, resembled only superficially a watch, he now saw. Rather it had the appearance of some delicate electric switch. Rectangular in shape, it was divided into two halves by a band of white crystal. In each of these halves were two little buttons of the same material, those on one side round, on the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... afflicted with sickness because he had always been insensible to passions, and a perfect stranger to intemperance. I never in my life saw a more noble or a more engaging aspect than his. He was dressed like those of his persuasion, in a plain coat without pleats in the sides, or buttons on the pockets and sleeves; and had on a beaver, the brims of which were horizontal like those of our clergy. He did not uncover himself when I appeared, and advanced towards me without once stooping his body; but there appeared more politeness in the open, humane air of his countenance, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... immense rond-point, such as we often see in the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to ornament. The air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a family was sitting out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in a hunting-jacket of green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of the same stuff, and wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the knee, was cleaning a gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives to the work in his leisure hours. This man had neither game nor game-bag, nor any of the accoutrements which denote either departure ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... dwell on her unaccountable change of feeling for through the glass of the inner door she saw Craven in the vestibule struggling stiffly to rid himself of a dripping mackintosh. It had been no protection for the driving rain had penetrated freely, and as he fumbled at the buttons with slow cold fingers the water ran off him in little trickling streams on to ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... wampum. The conferences were continued from the eighth to the twenty-sixth day of October, when every article was settled to the mutual satisfaction of all parties. The Indian deputies were gratified with a valuable present, consisting of looking-glasses, knives, tobacco-boxes, sleeve-buttons, thimbles, sheers, gun-locks, ivory combs, shirts, shoes, stockings, hats, caps, handkerchiefs, thread, clothes, blankets, gartering, serges, watch-coats, and a few suits of laced clothes for their chieftains. To crown their happiness, the stores of rum were opened; they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Admiral reminded me of Gabriel Ravel, when in his glory as The White Knight. It would be hard to say which wore the nattier cap, but that of the Admiral was of the more jaunty cut, while the General—gold cord for a band and gold buttons, especially became his blue eyes. If the officers of the army, navy and transports could be photographed as they stood in dazzling array, as if hewn from marble, the fashion plate resulting would be incomparably attractive, and in ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... newspaper and said in a quick determined way, "What this country wants, Sir, is more buttonholes. The best suits have only two buttonholes; that is to say, only two that are superfluous, the rest are all needed by buttons. It's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... pale, cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius and hell had engraved their lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly prosaic—with rosy, wrinkled face, bright gray little coat with steel buttons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors' trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than pieces of small squid bones ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... motherly care of all the household did not leave Westover out. Buttons appeared on garments long used to shifty contrivances for getting on without them; buttonholes were restored to their proper limits; his overcoat pockets were searched for gloves, and the gloves put back with their finger-tips drawn close as the petals of a flower which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the sigh of some sleeper, and once more he lay down hot, weary, and uncomfortable, for sleeping in his clothes seemed to be a horrible mistake. He had never before realised how many buttons he had about him; for, if he lay on one side, a brass button seemed to be thinking that it was a seal, and his ribs were wax. On the other side it was just as bad. If he turned over on his face, as if about to swim in the soft sand, the sensation ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... they had; and I couldn't rightly think up any arguments against that notion—at least from their standpoint. They were chattering away to each other in Mexican for the benefit of Maria. Oh, they had me all distributed, down to my suspender buttons! And me squatting behind that ore dump about as formidable as ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... November, all lost their identities to merge with that swirling tide. Over their heads, like agitated bits of flotsam, pennants fluttered and placards rose and dipped. Beneath their feet, discarded metal buttons that bore the names of two or three "favorite sons" and those that had touted the only serious contender against the party's new candidate were trodden flat. None of them had ever ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... given by foreigners, derived from the Portuguese, signifying to "command," to Chinese official functionaries, of which there are some nine orders, distinguished by the buttons on their caps, and they are appointed chiefly for their possession of the requisite qualifications for the office ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... it on myself and illustrate the theory for you. You see the rod here in my trousers? This is the air-pump here, just above my suspender buttons. The hat now contains about six atmospheres. Now I am ready to move. See? You observe how it works? The only noise you hear is a slight click of the valve in the pump. A couple more turns, and you put your hand on my shirt-collar and feel how near zero it is. I will ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... laughter. I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his shoes. I would choose To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover, Till he caught me in the shade, And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me, Aching, melting, unafraid. With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, And the plopping of the waterdrops, All about us in the open afternoon- I am very like to swoon With the weight of this brocade, For the sun ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the box with just the same air, as Diamond thought, with which he had used to get upon the coach-box, and Diamond said to himself, "Father's as grand as ever anyhow." He had kept his brown livery-coat, only his wife had taken the silver buttons off and put brass ones instead, because they did not think it polite to Mr. Coleman in his fallen fortunes to let his crest be seen upon the box of a cab. Old Diamond had kept just his collar; and that had the silver crest upon it still, ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... on wooden pegs behind a seed-cloth, which partitioned off one part of the room from the other like a curtain. First the under ones of silver-gray or red woolen damask, adorned with flowers, and then the outside ones of brown, yellow and green cloth. These were all adorned with heavy silver buttons. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... trim uniform, the cap and buttons, he seemed cast in a larger mould than most men of his kind. He was garrulous without offence, and carried with him some of the atmosphere which only travel gives. He was more fit, Leigh reflected, to command a ship, or to crack the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... this stage passed, and the "great house" received them, there was still the same need for rushing down to the fire in kitchen or living-room, before which they dressed, running out, perhaps, in the interludes of strings and buttons, to watch the incoming of the fresh logs which Caesar or Cato could ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... servants should have slaves to wait on them. The king commands the first lord in waiting to desire the second lord to intimate to the gentleman usher to request the page of the ante-chamber to entreat the groom of the stairs to implore John to ask the captain of the buttons to desire the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has none for his coffee, which probably is getting cold during the negotiation. In our little Brentfords ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Continental army when a mere lad in some menial capacity, but before the end he carried a musket in the ranks. He was with Washington at Valley Forge and had many stories to tell of their hardships. He was upward of seventy-five years old when I first remember him—a little man in a blue coat with brass buttons. He and Granny used to come to our house once or twice a year for a week or two at a time. Their permanent home was with Uncle Martin Kelly in Red Kill, eight miles away. I remember him as a great angler. How many times in the May or June mornings, as soon as he had had his breakfast, have ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... itself, according to Mrs. Roberts' ideas of simplicity; yet, from the row of ostrich tips that bobbed and nodded at each other, all around the front of her velvet hat, to the buttons of her neat-fitting boots, she seemed to bring a ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... women's holiday-dress is particularly showy. Their boots, also of reindeer-skin, are beautifully and tastefully embroidered. In summer, the men go bare-headed: the women divide their hair into tresses, and use artificial plaits, ornamented with pearls, buttons, &c. Like the man, the woman is small, with coarse black hair, face of a yellow colour, small and sunken eyes, a flat nose, broad cheek-bones, slender legs, and small feet and hands. She competes with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... out to dinner, on account of his brass-buttons with the Queen's cipher, and to have the air of being well with the Foreign Office. "Where I dine," he says solemnly, "I think it is my duty to go to evening-parties." That is why he is here. He never dances, never sups, never ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into lint and bandages for the wounded. Soft white fingers knitted socks, shirts and gloves, to keep the cold from the men in the trenches. Calico was $10 per yard quite early in the strife. Homespun was made upon the old colonial wheels and looms that had been kept as souvenirs and curios. Buttons were obtained from persimmon seeds with holes pierced for eyes. Women plaited their hats from straw or palmetto leaf, and used feathers from ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... of being a churchman once," Harry answered, "and your father's orders did not prevent him fighting at Castlewood against the Roundheads. Your enemies are mine, sir; I can use the foils, as you have seen, indifferently well, and don't think I shall be afraid when the buttons are taken off 'em." And then Harry explained, with some blushes and hesitation (for the matter was delicate, and he feared lest, by having put himself forward in the quarrel, he might have offended his ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... are a dozen shirts already cut out, with the sewing cotton, buttons, and so forth rolled up in them. Take them to your aunt. Ask her if she can do them, and tell her that ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... board with buttons on it. It might be a control-board, but it didn't look like it. There was a metal box with a transparent plastic front. One could see cryptic shapes of metal inside. Two bright-metal balls mounted on a side-wall. They had holes in them, about ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... them of a quantity of rust. For although he was not in uniform, and bore no sword, his dress was conspicuous, as he liked to have it, and his looks and deeds kept suit with it. For he wore a blue coat (very badly made, with gilt buttons and lappets too big for him), a waistcoat of dove-colored silk, very long, coming over the place where his stomach should have been, and white plush breeches, made while he was blockading Boulogne in 1801, and therefore ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... when he would not intrust a young attorney with the suing a note where ten witnesses saw the note signed and the "consideration money" paid over. And if the public really knew how much danger their pockets were in when the "buttons" were under the control of inexperienced lawyers, the number of "starvers" would be doubled. What "eminent" lawyer is there who does not look back to the "practice" of his youth, in perfect terror to witness the mistakes he made, as the helmsman, who has scudded through ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... very much pleased with his work so far; but to complete it was the most fun. He got little stones, and stuck them into the clay for eyes, nose, and buttons; made a cut for the mouth; and, for a head-dress, made use of the green spikes from a pine-tree. This made the figure look so much like an Indian, that Harry ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... construction; the harness is profusely ornamented with brass, and the horse's hend decorated with tufts and tassels and dangling bobs of scarlet and yellow worsted. I had for calasero, a tall, long-legged Andalusian, in short jacket, little round-crowned hat, breeches decorated with buttons from the hip to the knees, and a pair of russet leather bottinas or spatterdashes. He was an active fellow, though uncommonly taciturn for an Andalusian, and strode along beside his horse, rousing him occasionally ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... where, under the eye of the guard, a row of men and women, principally negroes and negresses, were sitting on the ground with their baskets in front of them containing tobacco, pipes, fruit, cakes, needles and thread, buttons, and a variety of other articles in demand, while a number of prisoners were bargaining and joking with them. Presently his eye fell upon a negro before whom was a great pile of watermelons. He started as he did so, for he at once recognized the well-known ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... beefsteak and broiled it himself; he made his coffee, swept and dusted his office, put up his sofa-bed, blacked his boots; and oh! miracle of independence, he mended his own gloves and sewed on his own shirt buttons, for you may depend that the widow's son knew how to do all these things; nor was there a bit of hardship in his having so to wait upon himself, though if his mother and Clara, in their well-provided and comfortable home at Willow Heights, had only ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... to indicate that he gave permission to all to think of him exactly what they pleased. Those pockets were characteristic of the whole costume; their very name is unfamiliar to the twentieth century. They divide the garment by a fissure whose sides are kept together by many buttons, and a defection on the part of even a few buttons is apt to be inconvenient. James Ollerenshaw was one of the last persons in Bursley to defy fashion in the matter of pockets. His suit was of a strange hot colour—like ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... the stenographers and clerks were left alone to attend to purely business matters. Sommers came late the day after his return from New York. The general door being opened to admit a patient, he walked in and handed his coat and hat to the boy in buttons at the door. The patient who had entered with him was being questioned by the neat young woman whose business it was to stand guard at ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... What was the meaning of that? Cut prices on flour, pork, sugar and tea? What was the meaning of that? Sir Archibald saw in a flash what it meant to Topsail, Armstrong, Grimm & Company. But what did it mean to Armstrong & Company? Sir Archibald flushed and perspired with wrath. He pushed buttons—he roared orders—he scribbled telegrams. In ten minutes, so vociferous was his rage, so intense his purpose, it was known from one end of the establishment to the other that the Black Eagle must be communicated with ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... marbles, gives him any satisfaction there; although a plea of extenuation might be entered in Hawthorne's favor, for statues of heroic size could not be seen to greater disadvantage than when packed together in a studio. The immense buttons on the waistcoats of our revolutionary heroes seem to have startled him on his first entrance, and this may be accepted as an indication of the rest. Yet the tone of his criticism, both in the "Note-book" and ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... guiltiness, as if I had been "caught." There was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on her black silk dress, and even from the ground I could see the immense coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held fingering the small jet buttons of her bodice. She watched our united advance without stirring, until, imperceptibly, her eyes raised and lost themselves in the distance, so that it was out of an assumed reverie that she appeared suddenly ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the gaming-table. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the blue uniforms and the shiny brass buttons had descended from the North on Athens—descended in spite of the double-barrelled cannon that the little master and the little master's men had tried on them. The blue clad invaders had come in despite of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... cried, when she had done laughing; "red hair, and a green habit with brass buttons, a yellow waistcoat like her papa's, and a rose in her button-hole. How I should like to see her ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... rubbed together by idle lads who were in no hurry, and occasionally the echo of a voice, instantly subdued to an undertone as the speaker remembered that this day was not to be like other days. At the door of the servants' hall the two comfortable policemen in their dark uniforms and shining buttons sunned their fair beards as they smoked their morning pipes, exchanging a remark in a low voice about once in five minutes, and never without previously looking round to see whether any one was listening to them, but chiefly occupied in watching ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... fool: sell such gold buttons and rings for so little money. Good Lord! what pennyworths these strangers can afford. Now, wife, let me see: ten pound! when we have ten pound, we'll have a large shop, and sell all manner of wares, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... fragments of decayed cloth. It was blue serge. Lying about were a few blackened objects—brass buttons marked with an anchor. The dead man's boots were in the best state of preservation, but the leather had shrunk and the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the ground. He had it up to the hilt. We put a buttoned foil by the side of Morsfield, and all swore to secrecy. As it is, it 'll go badly against poor Chiallo. Taste for fencing won't be much improved by the affair. They quarrelled in the dressing room, and fetched the foils and knocked off the buttons there. A big rascal toady squire of Morsfield's did it for him. Morsfield was just up from Yorkshire. He said he was expecting a summons elsewhere, bound to await it, declined provocation for the present. May filliped him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to set as severe tasks as the wicked stepmother in the fairy tales," said Mr. Cross. "She decrees that you are each to be given a small box of peas and beans and buttons mixed together, and that you are to sort them before you start to run the race. Will you please all kneel on the grass with your boxes in front of you. Are ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... things—golden hairpins, and bracelets, and great golden earrings like wreaths of yellow flowers, and necklaces with pictures of warriors embossed in the gold, and brooches in the shape of stags' heads. There were gold covers for buttons, and every one was molded into some beautiful design of crest or circle or flower ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... latter showing a white triangle of hard-polished shirt and a black bow tie, with indefinite gray trousers and square-toed boots by no means new. His middle was crossed by a thick silver watch-chain, and curious, old-fashioned buttons of agate set in square frames of gold fastened his round stiff cuffs of yesterday. He carried a well-brushed ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... was a bench, and on the bench sate a poorly drest woman, and by her, leaning against a tree, was a man whom I thought I'd sean befor. He was drest in a shabby blew coat, with white seems and copper buttons; a torn hat was on his head, and great quantaties of matted hair and whiskers disfiggared his countnints. He was not shaved, and as pale ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that I felt obliged to. We found Evadne alone in the drawing room, and I noticed to my surprise that she was extremely nervous. Her manner was self-possessed, but her hands betrayed her. She fidgeted with her rings or her buttons or her fingers incessantly, and certainly was relieved when I ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... by his workpeople; but as these did not mingle with the genteel classes of Marsden their opinion of Mr. Mulready went for nothing. The mill owner was a man of forty-three or forty-four, although when dressed in his tightly fitting brown coat with its short waist, its brass buttons, and high collar, and with a low hat with narrow brim worn well forward and coming down almost to the bridge of his nose, he looked seven ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... combats between human beings; more and more it was a war of machines such as battleships, tanks, big guns and by war's end, of airplanes. Human beings drew up the plans, made the blueprints, shifted the gears, pushed the buttons. Their efforts were supplemented and multiplied by the killing power of physics, chemistry and mechanics brought to the task of wholesale murder, which produced 8.5 ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... even destined "a great part" for the Basle (his cousin) in the affair; but he was now to learn that Aloysia had been faithless to him. Nissen relates: "Mozart, being in mourning for his mother, appeared dressed, according to the French custom, in a red coat with black buttons; but soon discovered that Aloysia's feelings towards him had undergone a change. She seemed scarcely to recognize one for whose sake she had once shed so many tears. On which Mozart quickly seated himself at the piano and sang, "Ich lass das Madel gern ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... wore full skirts of brown alpaca, gathered into a band, and tight-fitting waists, boned and lined, buttoning down the front with a row of small jet buttons. The sleeves were always long, plain, and tight, no matter what other people were wearing. A bit of cheap lace gathered at the top of the collar was ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... 'Hath been in a boosing ken. There they drug the wine with simples, and the women—may pox fall on all women—perfume themselves so that a man goeth stark raving. I warrant he had silver buttons to his Lincoln green, but they be torn off. I warrant he had gold buckles to his shoen, but they be gone. His sword is away, ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... either. What could be queerer than the high coat-collars of some of your great-grandfathers, which came up under their ears, while their throats were wrapped in fold after fold of long cravats—or else encircled by a hard, stiff stock,—and the hind-buttons of their coats were away up in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the forepart muffled and lost in a mass of corded black fleece, but the rest of him sharply clipped from the chest aft; and his trim, slim legs were clipped, though tufts were left at his ankles, and at the tip of his short tail, with two upon his hips, like fanciful buttons of an imaginary jacket; for thus have such dogs been clipped to a fashion proper and comfortable for them ever since (and no doubt long before) an Imperial Roman sculptor so chiselled one in bas-relief. In brief, this dog, who caused Kitty Silver so much disquietude, as she sat upon ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... exactly! and an emery-bag! how pretty! and a bodkin! this is a great nicer than yours, Mamma yours is decidedly the worse for wear; and what's this? oh, to make eyelet-holes with, I know. And oh, Mamma! here is almost everything, I think here are tapes, and buttons, and hooks and eyes, and darning-cotton, and silk- winders, and pins, and all sorts of things. What's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in the seventeenth century, and only given to generals who had been victorious against rebels. Gordon had besides six dresses of mandarins, and a book explaining how they should be worn. They were of course the handsomest that China could produce, and the buttons on the hats alone were worth 30 l. or 40 l. each. From the two empresses he received a gold medal specially struck in his honour; and by this he set great store, though not long after, having spent all his pay on his boys at Gravesend, he sold it for 10 l., and, smoothing out the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Now she could see the outline of Leffler's body at her feet. The wealthy collector was doubled up on the ground, shrivelled as had been Rooney. His feet, moving as though by reflex action, patted the floor from time to time, making a curious clicking sound as the buttons of his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... fact when men and women are graceful, beautiful, and noble, through whatever costume they wear, so it ought to be the test of the sculptor's genius that he should do the same. Mrs. Jameson decidedly objected to buttons, breeches, and all other items of modern costume; and, indeed, they do degrade the marble, and make high sculpture utterly impossible. Then let the art perish as one that the world has done with, as it has done with many ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... traces of his work; but this we should have expected. Boswell tells us that Guthrie's reports were sent to Johnson for revision (ante, p. 118). Nay, even a whole speech now and then may be from his hand. It is very likely that he wrote, for instance, the Debate on buttons and button-holes (Gent. Mag. viii. 627), and the Debate on the registration of seamen (ib. xi.). But it is absurd to attribute to him passages such as the following, which in certain numbers are plentiful enough long ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... at the mass of matter. With a muttered "Thank you," she gazed thoughtfully at the row of white push buttons inlaid at her elbow. There were more than a dozen of them and they ranged from the pantry to the kitchen, from the garage to the stable. By means of them the mistress of The Crags kept in touch with nearly fifty servants. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... removed from its settings, and the gold is either melted or the engraving is burnished out, so as in either case to make identification impossible. Rich velvet and silk garments are transmogrified by the removal and re-arrangement of the buttons and trimmings. Pointed edges are rounded, and rounded edges are pointed, entirely changing the whole aspect of the garment, with such celerity that the lady who had worn the dress in the morning would not have the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... listlessly, without turning his head, looked askance at Sobashnikov, at the lower row of buttons on his short, foppish, white summer uniform jacket, and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... neither his room nor his effects, because, in the first place, there were no heirs, and, in the second, there was very little to inherit beyond a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three buttons which had burst off his trousers, and the mantle already known to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows. I confess that the person who told me this tale took no interest in the matter. They carried Akaky Akakiyevich out, and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... three mustache combs, nineteen suspender buttons, thirteen needles, eight cigarettes, four photographs, two hundred and seventeen pins, some grains of coffee, a number of cloves, twenty-seven cuff-buttons, six pocket-knives, fifteen poker-chips, a vial of homeopathic medicine for the nerves, thirty-four lumps of ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... is too stuck up in some ways and not proud enough in others—just as was the countess while she lived. She was most at home in the kitchen and among the cows, but she would never drive with only one horse. She wore her cuffs till they were dirty, but she had to have cuff buttons with a coronet on them. And speaking of the young lady, she doesn't take proper care of herself and her person. I might even say that she's lacking in refinement. Just now, when she was dancing in the barn, she pulled the gamekeeper away from Anna and asked him herself to come and dance with her. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... blend, so that we will react as a balanced unit. Sure I know Johnny's bugaboos, and Hoskins', and yours. They were all in my indoctrination treatments. I know all your case histories, all your psychic push-buttons." ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... favour. The ordinary man in the street wears anything he may have been able to acquire, anyhow, and he does not fasten it on securely. I fancy it must be capillary attraction, or some other partially-understood force, that takes part in the matter. It is certainly neither braces nor buttons. There are, of course, some articles which from their very structure are fairly secure, such as an umbrella with the stick and ribs removed, or a shirt. This last-mentioned treasure, which usually becomes the property of the ordinary man from ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a very large crowd, but it was wonderfully well selected. It ran, in the majority of its component parts, to heavy white coats with pearl buttons. The white coats were shouldered by long blue coats with astrakhan fur trimmings, the wearers of which preserved a cliqueness not remarkable when one considers that they believed every one else present to be either a ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Gothic art. Above were artistic ornaments, crooked as the arms of Sabbath candlesticks,69 executed not with the graver or chisel, but with skilful blows of the carpenter's hatchet; at their ends hung balls, somewhat resembling the buttons that the Jews hang on their foreheads when they pray, and which, in their own, tongue, they call cyces. In a word, from a distance the tottering, crooked tavern was like a Jew, when he nods his head in prayer; the roof is his cap, the disordered thatch his beard, the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Texas, extending southward into Mexico. Mrs. A. B. Nickels reports that the Indians use the plants in manufacturing an intoxicating drink, also for "breaking fevers," and that the tops cut off and dried are called "mescal buttons." ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... chest of drawers against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank—costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court dresses—a handsome court sword—in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... formerly used by Archbishop Sharpe, the prelate whom Balfour of Burley murdered. Either in this room or the next one, there was a glass case containing the suit of clothes last worn by Scott,—a short green coat, somewhat worn, with silvered buttons, a pair of gray tartan trousers, and a white hat. It was in the hall that we saw these things; for there too, I recollect, were a good many walking-sticks that had been used by Scott, and the hatchet with which he was in the habit of lopping branches from his trees, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... us the best lessons in the art of expression. See what vast truths and principles informing such simple and common facts! It reminds one of suns and stars engraved on buttons and knife-handles. Proverbs come from the character, and are alive and vascular. There is blood and marrow in them. They give us pocket-editions of the most voluminous truths. Theirs is a felicity of expression that comes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... side of the shop he found the entrance to a flight of stairs which led to the floors above. In the little hallway, just before the narrow ascent began, was a row of electric buttons and names, and under each of them a mail-box. "3a" had a ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... length: a female figure, standing, with long curling light hair, and a wreath of flowers round the head. She wears a white satin gown, with a yellow edge; gold chain on the stomacher, and pearl buttons down the front. She has a pearl necklace and earrings, with a high plaited chemisette up to the necklace; and four rows of pearls, with a yellow bow, round the sleeve. She holds in her hands a large highly ornamented gold horn. The back-ground consists of mountains. Underneath ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... till late in the evening, when he entered the room dressed in an antiquated blue coat with brass buttons, finished off by a ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... the way, has written his first poem, or, rather, his first two poems. The first one he slipped folded into my sewing-basket and I found it when I was looking for new buttons for Pauline Augusta's red ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... low that Ann Harriet could see the brass buttons on the back of his coat, and then, taking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... natives who came to this place to trade with the Portuguese, was a king named Bruto Chembanga with above 500 fighting men. His sons were almost white, with long hair, wearing gowns and breeches of cotton of several colours with silver buttons and bracelets and several ornaments of gold, set with pearls and coral. The territory of this king was named Matacassi, bordering on Enseroe to the west. He said that the Portuguese were all dead, who ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... round, each village yields Its bumpkin swains, and labour quits the fields. * * * * * * {134} Full many a smock shines white as driven snow, With pea-green smalls, whose polished buttons glow. * * * * * * Nor they alone the glorious sight to share, Their master's family will sure be there. Lo! the old wagon, lumb'ring on the road, Bears on its pond'rous sides the noisy load. Lopp'd is the vig'rous ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... buttons also?" asked Robinette, taking the piece of muffin from his hand and buttering it for herself; an act highly disapproved of by Mrs. de Tracy, who hurriedly requested Bates to pass ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tribe. In raising for the summer market, start in the cold frame, or plant as early as the ground can be worked, that the plants may get well started before the dry season, or the crop will be likely to make such small heads "buttons" as to be practically a failure. For late crop, plant seed in the hills where they are to grow, from the 20th of May to the middle of June. The crop ripens somewhat irregularly. When there is danger from frost, the later heads ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... blustery morning when the old man set out on his errand. He was clad in a coarse blue frieze coat, with the usual complement of large white-plated buttons. His head was sheltered by an oil case-covered hat, tied down with a blue and white check handkerchief, and he held a long stick before him at arm's length, on which his sorrowful and drooping frame hung ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... but it cannot be mine," he returned with a smile. "I have but one pair, and both buttons are in place, as you can see," and he held out ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... does not interfere with the motion and different positions of the body, and is readily put on and taken off. It has adjustable elastic shoulder straps, and opening at the sides by lacings and elastic bands and buttons. The front part of the corset is stiffened by a stay that slides in a pocket to provide for stooping. A central front and lacing admit the front part of the corset to expand. The lower extension part of the corset ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... to your Mr. Bradley, who was on board. I think you call him 'Diamond King John.' He was most attractive," and, with a charming smile, "he showed me his diamond suspender buttons; and he dances beautifully, my daughter tells me. I understand that Mr. Bradley is one of your oldest Arizona families—or was it Virginia?—I am so stupid about the names of your different counties. But I agree with him that family is not everything, and that ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... platform two feet in height, while the space behind is to be filled with soldiers engaged in fencing. They should be placed on raised platforms, varying from two to eight feet in height. The costume of Napoleon consists of a blue dress coat with a buff breast, eagle buttons, buff vest and knee breeches, top boots, spurs, sash, side arms, black chapeau, and gray overcoat. The horse which Napoleon rides can be made of wood, at a trifling expense. Minute explanation in regard ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... in physical, mental, emotional, or behavioral impairment in an individual. Hallucinogens are drugs that affect sensation, thinking, self-awareness, and emotion. Hallucinogens include LSD (acid, microdot), mescaline and peyote (mexc, buttons, cactus), amphetamine variants (PMA, STP, DOB), phencyclidine (PCP, angel dust, hog), phencyclidine analogues (PCE, PCPy, TCP), and others (psilocybin, psilocyn). Hashish is the resinous exudate of the cannabis or hemp plant ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... or three minutes in painful thinking, the forlorn marionette put his hands into his pockets, hoping to find in them a forgotten coin. He found nothing but a few buttons. ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... pile on the counter of some department store—the wrong pile. Papa kept taking off his hat and wiping his bald spot, and hitching his camera case into a different position, so that it made a new set of wrinkles in the middle of his back. The coat belt strained against its buttons over papa's prosperous paunch, and he wheezed when ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... some of the girls of the graduating class were to have them; but Ruth chose something so durable and at so low a price that she hoped Uncle Jabez would not be sorry for his generosity. She saw the goods, and lace, and buttons, and all the rest, made up into a neat package and sent across to the other counter with the bill, and then went out of the store and up ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... de Motteville) described her on the occasion of her own presentation as reclining upon this Moorish sofa in the midst of her attendants, habited in a dress of green satin embroidered with gold and silver, with large hanging sleeves looped together at intervals by diamond buttons; a close ruff, and a small cap of green velvet ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... pieces for the coat and four pieces for the waistcoat; and there were pocket flaps and cuffs, and buttons all in order. For the lining of the coat there was fine yellow taffeta; and for the button-holes of the waistcoat, there was cherry-coloured twist. And everything was ready to sew together in the morning, all ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter
... believed he was the actor. He is a desperate foolish fellow; and if he is guilty, came to the country for that very purpose. He is a tall, pock-pitted lad, very black hair, and wore a blue coat and metal buttons, an old red vest, and breeches of the same colour." A second witness testified to having seen him wearing "a blue coat with silver buttons, a red waistcoat, black shag breeches, tartan hose, and a feathered hat, with a big coat, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... magnificent horse that seemed made for armor, whereas he himself would surely have been crushed under so much as a Crusader's buckler. Being so very small, and perched so very high, he cut a ludicrously martial figure with his plumed hat and epaulettes and gold buttons and braid and medals and exquisitely mounted sabre. It was not a French uniform that he wore, but Mexican Imperial, and stupendously ornate. And within the brave array, he was such a little, little man!—insignificance ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Sir Gregory Gubbins took precedence of Colonel Maltravers! He could not ride out but he met Sir Gregory; he could not dine out but he had the pleasure of walking behind Sir Gregory's bright blue coat with its bright brass buttons. In his last visit to Lisle Court, which he had then crowded with all manner of fine people, he had seen—the very first morning after his arrival—seen from the large window of his state saloon, a great staring white, red, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pavement, the entrance was again darkened, but Faversham had just time to see that the man who stooped down wore the buttons of a uniform and a soldier's kepi. He kept quite still, holding his breath while the man peered down into the cellar. He remembered with a throb of hope that he had himself been unable to distinguish a thing in the gloom. And then ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and maidens, gather round the royal presence, wonder and admire, and then shout, Oh misi haine O! (Mrs. Lawes). Ah, Koloka, I wonder how you are going to get out of that dress to-night; will you understand buttons, hooks, ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... and took him out there now and then even Lor his morning glass, was a pavilion standing close by the "Society House," in which a major with a historical name and most affable manners, dressed in a faultless blue frock coat with gold buttons, kept the bank. This was only too often the resort of my father, who, when he had lost a considerable sum and had correspondingly enriched the pot of the bank keeper, instead of being out of sorts over it, simply drew the inference that the keeping of the bank ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... sir!" roared Robert, "with, haw! the help of my glass I see, haw! a speck of rust on one of your buttons, haw! as big as the tip ...
— Sugar and Spice • James Johnson
... shapes and composition. Our stern disapproval of these was tempered in time by the fact that she freely shared them with us. We were not surprised to discover also, though these revelations came later, that the old house-keeper had difficulty in keeping buttons on the child's frocks, and that Katrina was addicted to surreptitious consumption of large cucumber pickles behind her geography in school hours. These were small faults of an otherwise beautiful nature, and stimulating to our youthful fancy in the possibilities ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... to swim; Work—work—work Till the eyes are heavy and dim I Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... incurring a serious risk. Nevertheless he finished his "Death of Wolfe," and it was exhibited in the National Gallery. The public "acknowledged its excellence at once, but the lovers of old art—called classical—complained of the barbarism of boots, buttons, and blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers, and battering rams." Lord Grosvenor was much pleased with the picture, and finally purchased it, though he did so with hesitation, daunted to some extent by the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled with straw, with her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat, with its large, white metal buttons, over her feet. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... insects all in green livery, with gilt buttons, contributed to Nature's Great Boston Jubilee of music with their hum. How ridiculous it seems that insects should have a hum!—and yet the Bee has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... Paine was so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box which was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer; and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!" This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... on the account given by the War Diary. "At 2-30 we were drawn up in close column in Ceremonial—Companies sized. We received the new G.O.C. with several salutes, the last was probably the worst. The Battalion was then closely inspected, and a few names taken for unsteadiness, dirty buttons, badly fitted packs, and the like. A slight confusion between the terms packs and equipment led us to take off equipment, and we then formed up as a Battalion in Brigade. We saluted again, this time we had no bayonets, and then marched past by Companies and back in close column several times. Then, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... conducted Mrs Hurtle in an omnibus up to the Inn, and afterwards himself drove Mrs Pipkin and Ruby out to Sheep's Acre; in the performance of all which duties he was dressed in the green cutaway coat with brass buttons which had been expressly made for his marriage. 'Thou'rt come back then, Ruby,' said the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Wilkinson had never been a bright woman. She had certain motherly good qualities, which had been exerted in George's favour in his earliest years; and on this account she was still able to speak to him in a motherly way. She could talk to him about his breakfasts and dinners, and ask after his buttons and linen, and allude to his bachelor habits. And in such conversation the first evening was chiefly passed. Adela said almost nothing. The Wilkinson girls, who were generally cheerful themselves, were depressed by Adela's ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... near my present growth of six feet, and with my hair in buckle, a handsome lace jabot and wristbands to my shirt, and a red plush waistcoat, barred with gold, looked the gentleman I was born. I wore my drab coat with plate buttons, that was grown too small for me, and quite agreed with Captain Fitzsimons that I must pay a visit to his tailor, in order to procure myself a ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fashion, and it was difficult to say whether he meant the oriental idea or the appearance of the girl who stood before him. She came close and offered the cuff of one of her sleeves to show him the embroidery, lifting a delicate chin to display the jade buttons at ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... novels of the first period, George Sand takes her Byronic revenge upon M. Dudevant. In Indiana and its immediate successors, consciously or unconsciously, she declares to the world what a beautiful soul M. Dudevant condemned to sewing on buttons; in Jacques she paints the man who might fitly have matched her spirit; and by the entire series, which now impresses us as fantastic in sentiment no less than in plot, she won her early reputation as the apologist for free love, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... as to the probable contents of the pitcher on Mr. Webster's desk. He came at last, tumultuously accompanied and received, and advanced to the front, his large frame, if I remember right, dressed in the blue coat with brass buttons and buff vest usual to him on public occasions, which hung loosely about the attenuated limbs and body. The face had all the majesty I expected, the dome above, the deep eyes looking from the caverns, the strong nose and chin, but it was the front of a dying lion. His colour was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... his costume from that of old! Where was the long wig with its myriad curls? the coat stiff with golden lace? the diamond buttons,—"the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war?" the glorious war Beau Fielding had carried on throughout the female world,—finding in every saloon a Blenheim, in every play-house a Ramilies? Alas! to what abyss of fate will ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... her narrow little chest to where it met in the days when there were buttons on it, and marched up and down the room, making as much noise as possible with the ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... uniform at home, at that very moment, and a cap with "gold reading" on it—it read "Conductor" on one side, and "Candy" on the other. Only—this veritably smacked of genius—the blue coat with the gold buttons had been made too small for him, and he'd have to wait until they sent him a larger size—"a No. 12," he said, with a careless, unseeing glance at our group. This was a stroke that had nearly done for one ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... a few minutes after five o'clock that Jack, Andy and Pepper hurried down to the gymnasium, to get their wheels. At the last moment Andy discovered that one of his buttons was loose and had to be sewed on, and Jack had trouble with the new cap he was going to wear. It was a trifle too large and he had to place a strip of paper under the band to make it stay ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... mine worthy host, firm and well set up on his limbs, smoking his long churchwarden and caring nothing for nobody at home, and despising everybody abroad. He wore the typical scarlet waistcoat, with shiny brass buttons, the corduroy breeches, and grey worsted stockings and smart buckled shoes, that characterised every self-respecting innkeeper in Great Britain in these days—and while pretty, motherless Sally had need of four pairs of brown hands to do all the work that fell ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... up to them. "I thought that you would be in a fix about clothes, my lads," he said. "You could not very well join in these midshipman's uniforms, so I set the tailor yesterday to cut down a couple of spare suits of my corps. The buttons will not be right, but you can easily alter that when you join. You had better go below at once and see if the things fit pretty well. I have told the tailor to take them to the cock-pit and if they do not fit they can alter them ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty |
