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Thatch   Listen
verb
Thatch  v. t.  (past & past part. thatched; pres. part. thatching)  To cover with, or with a roof of, straw, reeds, or some similar substance; as, to thatch a roof, a stable, or a stack of grain.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books



... enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to tea. Our bungalow was of the usual type, consisting of cement floor, roof of crossed bamboos and two feet of sun-grass thatch, supported by immense teak posts, hard as iron and bidding defiance to the white ants. The walls were of mats. Tea-gardens usually had a surface of 300 to 1000 acres; some were on comparatively level ground, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... unbroken thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered—not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces. But south of us, along the ascending trail by which we had come, the westering sun glowed red across a ledge of rock, from which the hill fell sheer away, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... before. He was, I should think, not less than six feet six inches high, and broad in proportion. His great arms hung down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. His skin was quite dark, almost negroid; and a thick, close mat of curly black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. His face was muscular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, especially about the jaws and on the forehead. But the eyes fascinated me. They were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, sullen and glaring; they seemed to shine ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... only three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... you see the little birds that fly back and forward over the castle walls so freely, and build their nests in the thatch of the housetops?' ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... the cordelle, and still more rarely the oars, they moved all day across the lands and waters that were once the fastnesses of the Baratarian pirates. The engineer made his desired observations without appreciable delays, and at night they slept under Achille's thatch of rushes. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... all. They would be quiet and well-behaved for months, till one night, without word or warning, they would rush a police-post, cut the throats of a constable or two, dash through a village, carry away three or four women, and withdraw, in the red glare of burning thatch, driving the cattle and goats before them to their own desolate hills. The Indian Government would become almost tearful on these occasions. First it would say, 'Please be good and we'll forgive you.' The tribe concerned in the latest depredation would collectively put ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... the village is found to be beyond repair, it shall be replaced by a new house exactly like the original. In consequence, the houses look equally old and equally attractive, with their roofs of grayish thatch, and the second stories leaning protectingly over the ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... farm implements or human labor to be seen. "Which is the inspector's house," inquired Anton, in dismay. The driver looked round, and at last made up his mind that it was a small one-storied building, with straw thatch and dirty windows. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... passage in and out: With turfs and furze some others yet more gross Their homely sties in stead of walls inclose: Some, like the swallow, mud and hay doe mixe And that about their silly [p. 209] cotes they fixe Some heals [thatch] their roofer with fearn, or reeds, or rushes, And some with hides, with oase, with ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... holes for the foundation, and, as all hands worked hard, by the close of the day they had made some progress. The cocoa-nut fibre, twisted into rope, enabled them to bind the rafters together, and the long leaves of some palms, which grew farther inland, served for thatch. Old Tom encouraged them to proceed, though he had lost all hopes ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston

... before thou makest a feast. If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away, Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay. They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain, The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain. But if thou thinkest the price be fair, and thy brethren wait to sup, The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,—howl, dog, and call them up! And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack, Give me my ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... impregnable or so vulgar, but a summer's grass will attempt it. It will try to persuade the yellow brick, to win the purple slate, to reconcile stucco. Outside the authority of the suburbs it has put a luminous touch everywhere. The thatch of cottages has given it an opportunity. It has perched and alighted in showers and flocks. It has crept and crawled, and stolen its hour. It has made haste between the ruts of cart wheels, so they were not too frequent. It has been stealthy in a good cause, and bold out of reach. It has been ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... interest in the fish. The negro story of how Brother Rabbit nailed Brother Fox's tail to the roof of the house, and thus succeeded in getting the Fox's dinner, is identical with Hlakanyana's feat of sewing the Hyena's tail to the thatch. When this had been accomplished, Hlakanyana ate all the meat in the pot, and threw the ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... that al fresco entertainment, the luau. But in the old times of strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to lift his hand and the entire population of a district ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles, beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of the hula, such as La'a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... extend his arms and grasp the ground, pretending that his prostration was designed, and saying at the same time, "Thus I seize this land; from this moment it is mine." As he arose, one of his officers ran to a neighboring hut which stood near by upon the shore, and breaking off a little of the thatch, carried it to William, and, putting it into his hand, said that he thus gave him seizin of his new possessions. This was a customary form, in those times, of putting a new owner into possession of lands which he had purchased or acquired in any other way. The new proprietor ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... barking with delight, as if they knew him, half-smothering him with their rough caresses. Jacob led him into the hut, which looked extremely dirty and neglected, and had only one room. In the corners against the walls were piles of sheep-skins that had a strong and rather unpleasant smell: the thatch above was covered with dusty cobwebs, hanging like old rags, and the clay floor was littered with bones, sticks, and other rubbish. The only nice thing to see was a teakettle singing and steaming away merrily on the fire in the grate. Old Jacob set about preparing the evening meal; and ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.

... his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, they will need," he added after a minute, "and it is unlikely that the Senor Seem'son understands the making of a thatch. Diego and Juan are skillful; and the tules they lay upon a roof will let no drop of rain fall within the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... defense of it were equally fierce, bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in the paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way into the fortifications, and the castle ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... conveyed up to the clouds, and fall from them afterwards on land, not far distant from the sea." He had before related an instance of one that passed over the town of Hatfield, in Yorkshire, filling the air with the thatch it plucked off from the houses, and rolling strangely together several sheets of lead on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... spring bubbled out of the ground, at the rate, I suppose, of a pint of water in a minute. The ferns grew immensely thick there; but someone had thinned out a few of the roots from the ground, leaving the uprooted plant with the ferns still living, to form a rough kind of thatch above a piece of earth big enough for a man's body. In the scented shade of this thatch, with the side of his face turned towards me, a big, rough, bearded man sat, filing away some bright steel irons which were riveted on his ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... the small cottage where, at that very moment, her grandmother was preparing the evening meal. And, beyond, in the village was the little old stone church and Father Murphy's square bit of a house with its wide doorstep and its roof of thatch, and Widow Mulligan's and the Denny's and the Finnegan's ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... Belleisle, we shall find, does practically set off towards Germany;—like a kind of French Belus, or God of the Sun; capable to dazzle weak German Courts, by optical machinery, and to set much rotten thatch on fire!— ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... over the other, and are tied to the bamboos which serve for rafters. There are various other and more durable kinds of covering used. The kulitkayu, before described, is sometimes employed for this purpose: the galumpei—this is a thatch of narrow split bamboos, six feet in length, placed in regular layers, each reaching within two feet of the extremity of that beneath it, by which a treble covering is formed: iju—this is a vegetable production so nearly resembling horse-hair as scarcely ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... "A roof of thatch is better than that of heaven," is an old Spanish proverb, and means, doubtless, that the poorest accommodation is better than none, or that which the streets provide. Jessica, clinging to the Sister of Mercy's ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... Anne's shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly thatch ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and it is singular that the names should vary so little. I have never seen an instance of its poisonous powers, but I have seen a whole company of sepoys run out of their quarters because they have heard the animal make its usual cry in the thatch of the building; they say that it drops down upon people from ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... but talk by rote, Speak when they're taught, and so to vote. When rogues like these (a Sparrow cries) To honour and employment rise I court no favour, ask no place, From such, preferment is disgrace: Within my thatch'd retreat I find (What these ne'er feel) true ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... feeble or tentative stroke in the whole of it. The color is brilliant and the textures are expressed with wonderful skill. The student ought to carefully observe the rendering of the various roofs. Notice how the character of the thatch on the second cottage differs from that on the first, and how radically the method of rendering of either varies from that used on the shingle roof at the end of the picture. Compare also the two gable chimneys with each other as well ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis

... the next morning he quickly put his hand under his pillow. Yes, the little coffer was there! It had not been a dream. He drew it forth and raised the cover. The yellow bars glittered in the morning rays sifting through the overhanging thatch at the window. He passed his hand gently across them. What a fortunate discovery! And how strangely brought about. They were rich! Now he could take Carmen and flee! His heart leaped within him as he hastily threw on his scant attire and went out into the balsamic ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... right to look upon their foul frocks as scandalous and vile; at all events no miner should ever shake hands with 'em, or drink out of the same mug. I am determined too to die a man of honour, as I have grown old, without ever setting foot under their thatch roofs, or on their threshing-floors; I have preserved myself four and fifty years from this disgrace, and heaven will continue to guard me from it ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... permitted to go to their huts during rain; and even had this privilege been granted, many of those miserable habitations were in so dilapidated a condition, that they would afford little or no protection. Negro huts are built of logs, covered with boards or thatch, having no flooring, and but one apartment, serving all the purposes of sleeping, cooking, &c. Some are furnished with a temporary loft. I have seen a whole family herded together in a loft ten feet by twelve. In cold weather, they gather around the fire, spread their blankets on the ground, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... trench opposite had a chance at him. He advanced through a vast burrow. Trenches ran parallel, and other trenches cut across them. One could wander through them for miles. Most of them were uncovered, but others had roofs, partial or complete, of thatch or boards or canvas. Many had little alcoves and shelves, dug out by the patient hands of the soldiers, and these niches contained ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and Ned saw that his suspicions were correct, and that they were regarded by their captors as gods. Further proof was given of this when they were escorted to a large shed, composed of a roof of thatch supported on four upright posts, which stood in the center ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the Norwegians; ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... met and escorted by a delighted wife to her cot. The children and the husband are duly presented. At an opportune moment the proud wife cannot refrain from informing her visitors that "it was Donald himsel' the laird had to send for to thatch the pretty golf-house at the Castle. Donald did all that himsel'," with an admiring glance cast at the embarrassed great man. Donald "sent for by the laird at the Castle" ranks in Donald's circle and in Donald's own heart with ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... tell everything he knew about the previous night's events, without equivocation or reserve. He took a chair at the table, his bright bird's glance wandering from one to the other of the faces opposite him as he smoothed with one claw-like hand the thatch of iron-grey hair which hung down over his forehead almost to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... long, furtively drawn breath. Then her eyes flashed open and fixed themselves on me. Relief was there, yet something stricken, as they traveled over me from my gray thatch to my big feet. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... the longest boughs in a row against the side of the fallen tree. This left a little place beneath their slope into which it was possible to creep. Archie smiled with satisfaction, and proceeded to thatch the sloping roof with moss and bits of bark. Then he grubbed up the green cushion and transferred ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... resolute, was tanned by desert suns and winds. His hair, once brown, was almost white. His beard, once flowing and silky, was cropped to a gray stubble. His steely blue eyes snapped under their heavy thatch, his head was carried high and well back, and his soft felt hat, wide-brimmed, was pulled down over the brows. His deep chest, square shoulders, erect carriage and straight muscular legs all told ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... wound, wrapped the shaft of it with cotton as a wad, and fired it back over the paling with his musket. The cotton he had used caught fire from the powder, and it chanced that this blazing shaft drove home into a palm thatch. In the hurry and confusion the flame was not noticed, though it spread rapidly across the huts till it reached some powder casks. There was a violent explosion just within the palisadoes, and stones and blazing sticks ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... a drawing in of the superficial gases toward the vortex. All the luminous spaces of more transparent cloud forming the adjacent photosphere, will be changed in shape by these centripetal currents. They will be greatly elongated; and there will so be produced that "thatch"-like ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... any money in the house?" whispered a long-nosed, sharp-visaged man; "I heard that he had lots hidden away under the thatch. Old Grenard knows that a box containing several thousand gold guineas was ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... first three there was a uniformity; the remnants of military training still clung to them. But this shrunken figure with a wild gray beard, watery, bloodshot eyes, a matted thatch of hair on which a broken-rimmed hat perched, ragged and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... amenities of civilisation are sadly lacking. The bungalows are lit only by oil-lamps, their floors are generally of pounded earth covered with poor matting harbouring fleas and other insect pests, their roofs are of thatch or tiles, and such luxuries as bells, electric or otherwise, are unknown. So the servants, who reside outside the bungalows in the compounds, or enclosures, are summoned by the simple expedient of ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... That which protects the dwelling and the property of the rich man, belongs just as much to the hovel of the beggar. God sends but one sun, and it is the same light that kindles against the roof of a mansion, that dawns upon the thatch of a hut. The same air comes to each, the same showers, the same seasons, summer and winter. And as is Nature, so in the North, is law, and the distributive benefits of society. They bathe society from ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it meant more to him than almost any kind of an honour could have meant to the prematurely gray man in the howdah. The latter passed on to his estate, and some of the villagers went back to their women and their thatch huts. But still Little Shikara stood motionless—and it wasn't until the thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had already gathered and were telling the story of the kill that with startling suddenness he raced back through the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... undergrowth around had to be cleared; the huts, of which there were six, had to be cleaned out, fitted up with new parchment in the windows—for there was no glass in those days—and new thatch on the roofs, besides being generally repaired; additional huts had to be built for the people, pens for the sheep, and stabling for the cattle, all of which implied felling and squaring timber, while the smaller ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... wing Of morn, from Sorrow's dreary shades shall spring; 180 Young Modesty, with fair untainted bloom; And Industry, that sings beside her loom; And ruddy Labour, issuing from his hatch Ere the slant sunbeam strikes the lowly thatch; And sweet Contentment, smiling on a rock, Like a fair shepherdess beside her flock; And tender Love, that hastes with myrtle-braid To bind the tresses of the favoured maid; And Piety, with unclasped holy book, Lifting to heaven her ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... of the adjoining room was opened, and little Charlot appeared. He had heard his mother's voice, and came trotting into the apartment in his nightgown to give her a kiss. He was a chubby, pink little urchin, large and strong for his age, with a thatch of curling, straw-colored hair and big blue eyes. Silvine shivered at his sudden appearance, as if the sight of him had recalled to her mind the image of someone else that affected her disagreeably. Did she no longer recognize him, then, her ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... of the cottages were built in an Essex fashion, of puddled clay and chopped straw faced with tarred boards. Some dwellings, however, were faced with straw instead of boards. They had just had their wall thatch ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... gun wadding fired by the mock cannon was thrown on the open roof of the Globe, and immediately ignited the thatch, spreading flames around the top rim of the great ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... is but a very small place indeed, now-a-days,—yet it possesses a church, grey and ancient, whose massive Norman tower looks down upon gable and chimney, upon roof of thatch and roof of tile, like some benignant giant keeping watch above them all. Near-by, of course, is the inn, a great, rambling, comfortable place, with time-worn settles beside the door, and with a mighty sign a-swinging before it, upon which, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... Trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o'er?— They are but sailing foam-bells Along Thought's causing stream, And take their shape and sun-color From him ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... country-folk within a circuit of twelve miles or more his knowledge was something daemonic. He could recount their pedigrees, intermarriages, numbers in family; he understood their straits, their degrees of affluence; he could not look across a gate at a crop, or view the state of a thatch, but his mind worked sympathetically with some neighbour's economies. He gave away little in hard money; but his charities in time and personal service were endless. And the countryside respected him thoroughly: for he was eccentric in the fashion of a true Englishman, and, with ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... way for you. I was a hunter of beasts and a fighter of men. I discovered fire and covered my nakedness with the skins of animals. I builded cunning traps, and wove branches and long grasses and rushes and reeds into the thatch and roof-tree. I fashioned arrows and spears of bone and flint. I drew iron from the earth, and broke the first ground, and planted the first seed. I gave law and order to the tribe and taught it to fight with craft and wisdom. I enabled the young men to grow strong and lusty, and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... the foliage in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. In front it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho Bay in a flood of almost constant volume and velocity, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sense of the words, ere, leaping from his horse, he bounded up the stairs, through the smoke, amid flakes of burning thatch falling from the roof, groped in the dense clouds of smoke for the senseless weight, and holding the shoulders while Malcolm held the feet, they sped down the stair, and rested not till they had laid him under a chestnut ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... broken sheds, all sad and strange. He shoo-ed them from the clinking latch, And from the weeded, ancient thatch, Upon the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various

... bivouacked by the brawling Jihun under a roof of thatch, whose walls were represented by more or less upright wooden posts and debris; for Kagig would not permit anything to stand even for an hour that Turks could come and fortify. None of us believed that the repulse of that handful ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... leaves. It was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of the open plain. This happened only where the path lay much upon the slope, and there was a flaw in the solid leafy thatch of the wood at some distance below the level at which I chanced myself to be walking; then, indeed, little scraps of foreshortened distance, miniature fields, and Lilliputian houses and hedgerow trees would appear for a moment in the aperture, and grow larger and smaller, and change ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... were cunning, treacherously shifting under the thatch of his heavy brows; he was like an old rat seeking for any hole of refuge. "Well—maybe I might. Anyhow, I'll go on—with ye. Kin I sit up? I 'm ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... were in striking here," and Friedel sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust into the thatch. ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and transport to the beach selected for the bivouac. Double rows of these arundos, driven into the sand, formed the partitions of the cabins, for which their interwoven leaves made an appropriate thatch. The green halls with matted vaults were picturesque enough; each peon, seeing how easily they were constructed, chose to have a house for himself; and the Tiger's Beach quickly presented the appearance of a camp disposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... roots of the plant. The Zostera of the warmer latitudes attain to a larger size than those of our Scottish seas. "A southern species," says Loudon, "Zostera oceanica, has leaves a foot long and an inch broad. It is used as a thatch, which is said to last a century; bleaches white with exposure; and furnishes the rush-like material from which the envelops of Italian liquor flasks are prepared." The simple rectilinear venation of ribbon-like fronds, usually much broken, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... the top of the dome of thought." I have not yet tried the remedy, but I intend to do so, and when I appear again on the American platforms I shall probably rival Paderewski, who owes a great deal of his success and fortune to his "thatch." ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... occupied in resolves and plans for to-morrow's enterprise, the maiden on retiring to her chamber felt no inclination for repose, and her little couch was left vacant. It was a low room within the thatch, into which a narrow window, projecting from the roof, admitted the clear mellow radiance of the moon, now shining uninterruptedly from above. So lovely and inviting was the aspect of the night, that, after a long and anxious train of thought, she resolved to enjoy the calm and delicious ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... save the expense of glass, the broken panes up and down supplied by brown paper, few being able to afford white; in some places they were stopped with straw or hay. Another mark of our riches, are the signs at the several inns upon the road, viz. In some, a staff stuck in the thatch, with a turf at the end of it; a staff in a dunghill with a white rag wrapped about the head; a pole, where they can afford it, with a besom at the top; an oatmeal cake on a board at the window; and, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... more than regal welcome give, Ye thousands crowding round; Shout for the once lorn Fugitive, Whose soul no solace found Save in that SELF-RELIANCE—match For adverse worlds, alone— Which cheer'd the Tutor's humble thatch, Nor left him on the throne. The WANDERER MULLER'S sails they furl— The Wave-encounterer, who, When Freedom leagued with Crime to hurl Up earth's foundations, from the whirl Where vortex'd Empires raged, the pearl Of matchless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... Five Hundred and Fifty-two, The Saxon invaders—a terrible crew— Had forced the lines of the Britons through; And Cirencester, half mud and thatch, Dry and crisp as a tinder match, Was fiercely beleaguered by foes, who'd catch At any device that could harry and rout The folk that ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... he thought on those things, while resting under the modest little portal of the hotel, whose former magnificence, when a hermit cell, might still be discernible in a few remaining remnants of the rich Gothic lintel yet mingling with the matted straw and the clinging ivy of the thatch. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... pulling it down, as the caprice of the moment dictated. Now it had bow-windows and white stuccoed walls—now it was Elizabethan—now the simplest, quaintest, rose-embowered cottager's dwelling, with diamond-paned casements, and deep thatch on the old gray roof. This afternoon she amused herself by collecting a small library for Valentine, while waiting Mr. Sheldon's next observation. He was to have all her favourite books, of course; and they were to be bound in the prettiest, most girlish bindings. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... now? She, accustomed to all the luxury that wealth could procure, no longer had any home except a poor thatch-covered hovel, whose walls were not even whitewashed, whose only floor was the earth itself, dusty as the public highway in summer, frozen or muddy ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... honey-comb,—which, however, had been treated by the builders so that they had a hard glaze, to prevent the wings and feet of the butterflies from sticking when they touched the walls. The roof was a woven affair, very cunningly made so that the top surface was a sort of thatch of flower-stems, while the ceiling was a solid sheet of flowers. Of course, in this climate, they were always fresh. The butterflies had their beds on the ceiling; indeed, as Sara arrived rather early, a few roistering young blades who had ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... his sandy thatch, she said, with a rueful droop at the corners of her mouth, a contradictory smile in her eyes: "I shall rejoice more if you do not lose your ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... a rich man, Or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch To shelter me from the cold, And there shall the Sussex songs be sung And the story of ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... it, wiped it out with his hand, and went with it to the door, where a rude "launder" or shoot of wood carried the water from the thatch immediately over the door, and sent the collected moisture in a stream down one side. The boy held the vessel under the shoot till he had obtained sufficient for his purpose, and then, returning within, said, "I'll stop your wandering," went up to the child, sprinkled ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... Witham, enumerated in the Great Life, and not even planned before his time, are the major and minor churches, the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers' little houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen was a poor building of brushwood and thatch, six or seven paces from the guest house, the blaze of which, when it caught fire, could be seen from the glass windows of the west end of the lay church. The wooden cells of the brothers lay round this in a ring. The guest house ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... the shore, and then draw it back, but the chub showed such little eagerness to be caught by me that I generally preferred to steer and watch my companion pulling them out as he stood in the prow, his face nearly hidden under the thatch of his straw hat. When the fish were in a biting humour, he had one on his hook every time he ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... the way, his voice strong, his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder. Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was still dominant,—sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money. Scalding words rose to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... trunk and the massive bole of a breadfruit, a house had come into being. It was not much larger than a big hen-house, but quite sufficient for the needs of two people in a climate of eternal summer. It was built of bamboos, and thatched with a double thatch of palmetto leaves, so neatly built, and so well thatched, that one might have fancied it the production ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... match For Timour or for Zinghis in his trade. While mosques and streets, beneath his eyes, like thatch Blazed, and the cannon's roar was scarce allayed, With bloody hands he wrote his first despatch; And here exactly follows what he said:— "Glory to God and to the Empress!" (Powers Eternal! such ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... there is beyond the sea That I have never seen, But Johnny says he'll take me there, And I shall be a queen. He'll build for me a palace there, Its roof will be of thatch, And it will have a little porch ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford

... village, between low wooded hills, with a canal passing through it. Old Japanese cottages, dingy, neutral-tinted, with roofs of thatch, very steeply sloping, above their wooden walls and paper shoji. Green patches on all the roof-slopes, some sort of grass; and on the very summits, on the ridges, luxurious growths of yaneshobu, [1] the roof-plant, bearing pretty purple flowers. In the lukewarm air a mingling of Japanese odours, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... turnpike-gate called Hendy gate. This gate was kept by an old woman upwards of seventy years of age, who has received frequent notices that if she did not leave the gate, her house should be burnt down. About three o'clock on Sunday morning, a party of ruffians set fire to the thatch of the toll-house. The old woman, on being awakened, ran into the road and to a neighbouring cottage within twenty yards of the toll-house, shouting to the people who lived in it, 'For God's sake to come out and help her to put out the fire; there was ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... one of these children about here, boy or girl, who cannot swim; and every one of them has been used to tumbling about the little forest ponies—there's one of them now! They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can mow; many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep shop. I can tell you they ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... Wife never left it until she was borne forth into the securer refuge of the narrow house that needed none of her care-taking. Upon the low green thatch lies heavily the shadow of a mighty monument that, to the satirist's eye, has a family likeness to the stone pile ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... sides, eating the little pests as the Papallactans do their lice.[115] Archidona is the largest village in the Napo country, containing about five hundred souls. The houses are of split bamboo and palm-thatch, often hid in a plantation of yuca and plantain. The central and most important structure is the little church; its rude belfry, portico, chancel, images, and other attempts at ornament remind us of the fitting words of Mrs. Agassiz, that "there is ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... blanket in a treeless hollow in the midst of trees. The ground had been cleared by no human hand; it was a little basin of barren clay, burnt to a brick, and drained by the tiny water-hole that sparkled through its thatch of leaves and branches in the centre of a natural circle. Vanheimert lay on the eastern circumference; it was the sun falling sheer on his upturned face that cut short his sleep of deep exhaustion. The sky was a dark and limpid blue; but every leaf within Vanheimert's vision bore its little load ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... had neglected to thatch his cottage, was one day asked by a gentleman with whom he was conversing, "Did it rain yesterday?" Instead of making a direct and candid reply, he sought to hide his fault, which he supposed had been discovered; and the conversation proceeded as follows. "Did it rain yesterday?" ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... end of June, in 1807. The workshops have been shut up half an hour or more in Adam Bede's timber-yard, which used to be Jonathan Burge's, and the mellow evening light is falling on the pleasant house with the buff walls and the soft grey thatch, very much as it did when we saw Adam bringing in the keys on that ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... seemed nothing of interest about the old cabin. The thatch had half blown off; the adobe-plastered stone fireplace and chimney had tumbled down, and sand had drifted in past the broken wattle door. But when Lennon went in to take advantage of the patch of shade that was offered, ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... glow. Village after village we passed through, returning the polite salutes of early rising grand-sires who uncovered their grey heads, or wrinkled, pink-faced grandmothers, who waved kerchiefs from gabled windows beneath the thatch and smiled the straight and dry-lipped smile of toothless age as they wished us good ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... desolate. At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white, timbered cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to the tumble-down house, whose thatch was rotting into holes, and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden about it was neglected and untidy, here and there windows were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments. Altogether a sinister and repellent ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a rawboned man with a thatch of thick black hair and small watery eyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in a pair of tight-fitting trousers of white lawn, a flaming red tunic ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... shorter. It was a steep and stony bit of road which ran uphill through the broom. On the very top of it I always used to stop in front of Jean le Rouge's house. This house was low-roofed and spreading. The walls were as black as the thatch which covered it, and it was quite easy to pass by the house without seeing it at all, for the broom grew so high all round it. I used to go in for a chat with Jean le Rouge, whom I had known ever since I had been at Villevieille farm. ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... people had more civilization, more regular industry, and more wealth. They were much more highly skilled in the arts of civilized life. They had cities and large towns; and dwelling-houses, built of timber and covered with thatch, like those common in England, were scattered over all the rural districts. Some of the cities now found in ruins were then inhabited. This peninsula had been the seat of an important feudal monarchy, which arose probably after the Toltecs overthrew the very ancient kingdom of Xibalba. It was ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... went out. At the threshold of the door I found an axe which I took in my hand, walked around the hut several times, but could not discover the object of my search. I at length found his blanket tucked up among the thatch under the eaves of the hut, and immediately re-entered the room to tell my companions I was apprehensive that this strange departure of the Spaniard was influenced by another motive than ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water, A drench for sur-rein'd jades, their barley-broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land, Let us not hang like roping icicles Upon our houses' thatch, whiles a more frosty people Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields! Poor we may call them in ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... dressed its walls, Houseleek adorned the thatch; The door was standing open wide,— They ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... straw-thatched houses. The flames caught in many places; but with the help of the Indians they were extinguished, though several Frenchmen were wounded, and there was great fright for a time. But the thatch was soon stripped off and the roofs covered with deer and bear skins, while mops fastened to long poles, and two large wooden canoes filled with water, were ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... as to her daughter-in-law's project and even Musai was but half-hearted. Yet he went to work diligently. With beam, and wattle, and thatch, floor of mats and window of latticed paper, with walls made tight because well daubed with clay, he built the room apart. There alone, day by day, secluded from all, the sweet wife toiled unseen. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... button'd-up one-half of him in a pair of short knee-enders. Now, Punch, on your oath, did you ever hear the likes o' that? But oh, houly Paul, if you only seen his big cock'd hat, Stuck up on the top of his jazy;—a mighty illegant thatch, With hair like young Deaf Burke's, all rushing up to the scratch, You must have been divarted; and, Jewil, then he wore A thund'ring big Taglioni-cut purple velvet roquelore. And who but Misther Dan cut it fat in all his pride, Cover'd over with white favors, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various

... would turn white or potato color or something," said Lathrop, to whom Harry confided his expectation, "this red thatch of mine is a nuisance. At school I was always Brick-top or Red-Head and out here the natives all look at my carrot-colored top-knot as if they'd like to scalp me and ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... ended only by a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day, and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the bare moor over which they were walking. Presently, a little way in front of them, the princess espied a whitewashed cottage, gleaming in the moon. As they came nearer, she saw that the roof was covered with thatch, over which the moss had grown green. It was a very simple, humble place, not in the least terrible to look at, and yet, as soon as she saw it, her fear again awoke, and always, as soon as her fear ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... distance, beneath a fog which is just beginning to dissolve, he perceives a vast mass of white and red houses, some with terraced roofs, others covered with thatch; through the humid veil which envelopes them, he sees the glistening of the glass in the windows; already he hears at his feet the confused noise of cities; murmuring voices reply; the measured sound of hammers and of mills even ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... know not, but others always supplied the places of those who fell. Hundreds of balls whistled by our ears and flattened themselves on the stone walls; the plaster was broken from the walls, and the thatch hung from the rafters, and as I turned for the twentieth time to fire, my musket dropped from my hand; I stooped to lift it, but I fell too: I had received a shot in the left shoulder and the blood ran like warm water down my breast. I tried to rise, but all that I could do was to seat ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... muddy road wound through huts of turf—among them one or two of clay, and one or two of stone, which were more like cottages. Hardly one had a window two feet square, and many of their windows had no glass. In almost all of them the only chimney was little more than a hole in the middle of the thatch. This rendered the absence of glass in the windows not so objectionable; for, left without ordered path to its outlet, the smoke preferred a circuitous route, and lingered by the way, filling the air. Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... house that seems to stoop Yellow under thatch, Like a three-sided chicken-coop, Where, if you watch, You'll see the starlings go and come All a spring morn— Half of that is my old ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett

... to Pegg to be sleeping as heavily as ever, and after he had looked at him carefully for a few minutes, there was a deep, buzzing hum as of some insect, and a great fly flashed across the golden rays which streamed in through the thatch, and hovered around for a few moments as if about to settle ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... which covered a piece of ground 327 feet long, and forty-two feet broad. It consisted of a roof, thatched with palm leaves, and raised upon thirty-nine pillars on each side, and fourteen in the middle. The ridge of the thatch, on the inside, was thirty feet high, and the sides of the house, to the edge of the roof, were twelve feet high; all below the roof being open. As soon as we entered the house, she made us sit down, and then calling four young girls, she assisted them to take off my shoes, draw down my ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... wild-looking, unclothed little daughter who shared his humble home. They generally kindled their fire inside the hut, which was made of most inflammable materials, and to judge by the clouds of smoke which poured out through the coarse thatch at cooking time, the operations were on rather a large scale. He also made a large bonfire of refuse bits of wood outside his hut on cold nights, and there he and a few friends would sit and toast themselves till ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... of darkness, that a few feet from the lantern still encompassed them, gave no indication of their progress, until their feet actually trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit. Had it not been ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... was few left to plow the fields and sow them, to spin cloth and to make coats, to mend nets and to mend shoes, to thatch roofs and to plant apple-trees—there was few left to do these things for all the young men were out on the mountain hunting for ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum

... their eyes below, they beheld all the country sunk in a lake, only their own house left standing. While they gazed with wonder at the sight, and lamented the fate of their neighbors, that old house of theirs was changed into a temple. Columns took the place of the corner posts, the thatch grew yellow and appeared a gilded roof, the floors became marble, the doors were enriched with carving and ornaments of gold. Then spoke Jupiter in benignant accents: "Excellent old man, and woman worthy of such a husband, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... accommodated. The governor, in spite of this action, took all my apartments from me and lodged therein a royal official; whereupon, as there is a great lack of houses in this city, I was obliged to move into a house of wood and thatch, which was unsuitable to the last degree, and attended by much danger because of the frequent fires which occur in this city. Accordingly, in the two fires which have occurred this year I have been obliged to go with my effects and books from one place to another, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... showed the village crowded with Indians, over whose heads the cracked rocket slowly whizzed. The light of the next rocket did not disclose a single person, and it was apparent that the place was deserted. The third rocket happened to strike one of the roofs, and exploding there, set the thatch on fire. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... Sambo Should take his place and fight; An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue Than a liver that's wake an' white; Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades His finger a thrigger can pull, An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel sight From under its thatch o' wool. So hear me all, boys, darlins! Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff, The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, An' ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... the white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's was the launching place for fleets of canoes that were to ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... or the royal mount, which afterwards became famous as the site on which the church of St. Andrews was founded, and as giving to that place the name of Kilrimont.[28] The earliest Celtic church at St. Andrews was probably, like that of Iona, constructed with wattles and turf and roofed with thatch. It was customary to have caves or places of retirement for the hermits; they were used, too, as oratories or places of penance, and one such there is at St. Andrews, known as St. ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... the nine cocos we made our camp, and old Sru and the women and children at once set to work to build a "house" to protect us in case it rained during the nights. Very quickly was the house built. The "devil" was sent up the cocos to lop off branches, which, as they fell, were woven into thatch by the deft, eager hands of the women, who were supervised by Sivi, Nalik's handsome wife, amid much chatter and laughter, each one trying to outvie the other in speed, and all anxious to follow Nalik and ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke

... be better than it then was? I love to think on thee, pretty, quiet D—-, thou pattern of an English country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided thy Lady Bountiful—she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her golden-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. Pretty, quiet D—-, with thy ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... any exact sense, was Nikky, but tall and straight, with a thatch of bright hair not unlike that of the Crown Prince, and as unruly. Tall and straight, and occasionally truculent, with a narrow rapier scar on his left cheek to tell the story of wild student days, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of the down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks; and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of the mountain peaks ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should be carried outside the town and burnt. Here and there, however, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... architecture that would not shrink, that had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone; it would have its windows and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... between the roof and the palisade, and in the attempt lost his balance and nearly precipitated himself to the ground below. Cautiously he drew back, still looking about for some means to cross the chasm. One of the saplings of the roof, protruding beyond the palm leaf thatch, caught his attention. With a single wrench he tore it from its fastenings. Extending it toward the palisade he discovered that it just spanned the gap, but he dared not attempt to cross ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... sent in his report. When he had finished he did not go out to her immediately. He stood staring down the hill with his eyebrows pinched together. Now and then he lifted his hand unconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back from his forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old. He was feeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire; cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from that beautiful ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... ought to be a water-furrow across this land: it's a nasty, stiff, clayey, dauby bit of ground, and thou and I must fall to, come next Monday—I beg your pardon, cousin Manning—and there's old Jem's cottage wants a bit of thatch; you can do that job tomorrow while I am busy.' Then, suddenly changing the tone of his deep bass voice to an odd suggestion of chapels and preachers, he added. 'Now, I will give out the psalm, "Come all harmonious tongues", to be ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... stream of fluid behind it as it went spinning down to earth. All that stream of inflammable stuff was aflame. The can itself struck earth and seemed to explode, and the trailing mass of fire was borne onward by the wind and lay across a row of thatch-roofed buildings. An incredible sheet of fire spread out. The stuff in the drying ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... tree in the orchard, and, having rifled the corpse, they dragged it up the stream, concealing it under the overhanging banks of the water-course. Then they carefully covered over all marks of blood on the road, and hid the pistol in the thatch of a disused hut close to the roadside; then, setting the horse free to gallop home alone, they decamped across the country to ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... was about to start for the mountain, she shut him up in the house and thus detained him by force. But the words of his mother, warning him not to remain too long, came to his mind, and he determined to break away from his prison. So he climbed up to the roof, and removing a portion of the thatch, made his escape. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... living with it was a real enchantment; but I pondered most the kind of house that would be provided for the General Commanding the District, how many the dining-room would seat, and whether it would have a roof of thatch or of corrugated iron—I prayed against corrugated iron. I confess these my preoccupations. I was forty, and at forty the practical considerations of life hold their own even against domes of marble, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... me! Nowt prospers wi' me. My poor dame is besoide hersel, an' th' chilter seems possessed. Ey ha' tried every remedy, boh without success. Ey ha' followed th' owd witch whoam, plucked a hontle o' thatch fro' her roof, sprinklet it wi' sawt an weter, burnt it an' buried th' ess at th' change o' t' moon. No use, mesters. Then again, ey ha' getten a horseshoe, heated it redhot, quenched it i' brine, an' nailed it to t' threshold wi' three nails, heel uppard. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... came a huge fire-ball, blazing brightly. It struck the thatch of the cottage close to the edge of the roof, and before it fell to the ground had set fire to the abode, which began to burn as though no shower had ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer



Words linked to "Thatch" :   sea rover, roofing material, thatcher, thatch palm, Edward Thatch, Blackbeard, buccaneer, hairdo, thatch tree, Edward Teach



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