"Homespun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course until the brakes brought them to a stand in the depot. The passengers now swarmed forth by hundreds—a curious and motley crowd of men, women, and children; good-looking people, and ill-looking ones; the fine lady in silk, and the rough backwoods-man in homespun; the middle-aged woman in black, with three trunks and four bandboxes, and the smooth-faced dandy, whose sole ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... assume the responsibility of forming a cabinet, was equally novel. Such a check on reckless criticism was sadly needed. Of the process by which Thomson achieved his ends even his fullest biography gives little information. There must have been endless conferences of homespun, honest farmers like Willson, men of breeding like {42} Robinson, brilliant lawyers like Sullivan, plain soldiers like MacNab, with the little, sickly, understanding governor of the brilliant eyes, the charming manner, and the persuasive ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... there really were some Yankees that did not have any musical accomplishments, and that I was one of that unfortunate number. I asked him to get the ladies to sing for me, and to this they acceded quite readily. One girl, with a fair soprano, who seemed to be the leader of the crowd, sang "The Homespun Dress," a song very popular in the South, and having the same tune as the "Bonnie Blue ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... you first came To clothe young hearts and old, Our ancestors were glad to wear Your woof, nor knew the shame Which later days have bred, to share The homespun's simple fold! ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and libraries to grow the fine flower of wholesome cultured womanhood. Here, beside that lake, whose lady has been made immortal by the hand of Scott, you showed me that God grows ladies still who wear homespun and live in cottages, and are all the wiser and sweeter for the bright seclusion of their lives. In a town, you and your family, endowed only with such means as you found sufficient for existence, would have been despondent drudges, you yourself ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... dripping bucket trickled through the wreath of purple morning-glories and scarlet cypress, which she had twined about her head, ere lifting the cedar pail to its resting-place. She wore a short-sleeved dress of yellow striped homespun, which fell nearly to her ankles, and her little bare feet gleamed pearly white on the green grass and rank dewy creepers that clustered along the margin of the bubbling spring. Her complexion was unusually transparent, and early exercise and mountain ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... it had been the easy custom to dump the sawdust into the stream, but the fish-wardens had lately interfered and put a stop to the practice. Now, a tall young fellow, in top boots, gray homespun trousers and blue shirt, was busy carting the sawdust to a swampy hollow near the lower end of ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sailboats; for the way by land was full of peril, especially on the road from York, which ran through dense woods, where Indians often waylaid the traveller. The bridegroom's father was present with the rest. It was a concourse of men in homespun, and women and girls in such improvised finery as their poor resources could supply; possibly, in default of better, some wore nightgowns, more or less disguised, over their daily dress, as happened on similar occasions half a century later among the frontiersmen of West Virginia.[51] ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... home; and other playmates soon turned up. Bert was at first not very much inclined to be sociable with them. Not only did they seem to have no shoes and stockings, but their entire clothing was usually limited to a battered straw hat, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a pair of rough homespun trousers; and the city boy was inclined to look upon the country lads with some contempt, until his Aunt Martha cured him effectually one day by a remark ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... have rehearsed a scene in which she would be called upon to soothe a stricken woman and speak comfort to a breaking heart. She had supposed that love was the same the world over, whether it went in silk brocade or coarse homespun. She had apt phrases ready to meet the expected, plenty of well-prepared sympathy to bestow, but she had no answer for this quiet, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... trimm'd her fire, And drew the oaken settle nigher, And welcom'd home her own good man To his clean hearth, his pipe, and can; For Homespun and his bustling wife Were honest folks in humble life, Who liv'd contented with their lot, And lov'd the comforts of their cot. With willing hand and chearful heart, Each of life's burden bore ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset
... expressing every aspect of the human character. The Nawab could take pleasure in reading poets as temperamentally dissimilar as Shelley and Scott, Spenser and Byron,—to name only a few. Shelley, who was a spirit utterly unable to understand this world or ordinary homespun human nature; and Scott, who not only comprehended both without an effort, but who combined the practical and the romantic elements successfully in his own life, A devotion to Spenser, "the poet's poet," the poet of a dreamy yet very ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... certain surreptitiousness in his attitude. A handkerchief was bound over his left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a peasant's homespun shirt, and ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... his country homespun, he marched up along River Street, over the bridge, and up the hill to the villa quarter, where he had to ask the way. At last he arrived outside a white-painted wooden house standing back in a garden. Here was the place—the place where his fate ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities which draw ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... jeweller's play was based, meaning to mock the new tragedy with the old song; but so forcible and pathetic were Lillo's scenes that these merry gentlemen were obliged "to throw away their ballads, and take out their handkerchiefs." More tears, we learn, were shed over this 'homespun drama' than at all the imitations of ancient fables by learned moderns. To Fielding this revolution, from the buskin'd heroics of the Alexanders and Clelias to the living and natural pathos of the tragedy of a poor London apprentice, must ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... on,—district nursing, classes in sanitation and hygiene, social clubs and entertainments for people of all ages, and a department of fireside industries, through which is created an outside market for the beautiful coverlets, blankets and homespun, woven by the mountain women, as well as for their ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... a large, comfortable room, with strings of red peppers hanging from the ceiling, and boards of sliced apples drying on upturned flour barrels near the door. The bright homespun carpet left a strip of bare plank by the stove, and on this stood two hampers of black walnuts ready for storing. A few coloured prints, culled from garden magazines, were tacked on the wall, and these, without exception, represented blossoms of a miraculous splendour and size. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... is a gentleman in purple and fine linen, otherwise broadcloth; and sometimes in hodden gray, otherwise homespun or slop-shop; and sometimes he cuts the poor little chap with a silver knife, which is rhetoric, and sometimes with a wooden spoon, which is raw-hide. Am I ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... early childhood a large chest is secured and the stocking of it becomes a pleasant duty. Into it are laid the girl's discarded infant clothes; patchwork quilts and comfortables pieced by herself or by some fond grandmother or mother or aunt; homespun sheets and towels that have been handed down from other generations; ginghams, linens and minor household articles that might be useful in her own home. When the girl leaves the old nest for one of her own building the Hope Chest goes with her as ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... was sorely started to feel a great warm hand on my shoulder, and a loud, cheery voice saith, 'Dolly Jennings, whither away so fast thou canst not see an old friend?' I looked up, and there was dear old Farmer Ingham, in his thick boots and country homespun; but I declare to you, child, that in my trouble his face was to me as that of an angel of God. I brake down, and sobbed aloud. 'Come, come, now!' saith he, comfortably; 'not so bad as that, is it? I've been ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... dressing gown of some rough homespun, a curious shade of Russian blue, the color of her own eyes. Her hair, which had turned far whiter in the past year, was partly concealed under a small lace cap such as the Russian peasant woman often ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... blue eyes. She was also dressed with more care than when in the forest with the hunting party. Around her neck she had a necklace of red beads; she wore a fur jacket opened in front and covered with green cloth, a homespun skirt and new boots. Even old Macko noticed this beautiful attire, and having looked at her ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cotton was growed dar, but jus' de same our clothes was made out of cloth dat Mistess and my mammy wove out of thread us chillun spun, and Mistess tuk a heap of pains makin' up our dresses. Durin' de war evvybody had to wear homespun, but dere didn't nobody have no better or prettier dresses den ours, 'cause Mistess knowed more'n anybody 'bout dyein' cloth. When time come to make up a batch of clothes Mistess would say, 'Ca'line holp me git up my things for dyein',' and us would fetch dogwood bark, sumach, poison ivy, and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... near a box stove, which had but one length of pipe, out of which the smoke was pouring towards an opening in the roof, glancing around on the women in their sun bonnets, the babies in their little calico caps and the men in homespun, then out of the open door into a ravine where the tops of the tall trees were beneath us, I said to myself, I've reached "that beyond." The undefined has taken shape and I have reached the place of which I could never formulate ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... determination to chop, to log, to plough, to dig, to delve, to make his own candles, kill his own hogs and sheep, attend to his horses and his oxen, and "bring in firing at requiring," and abstains from whiskey, it signifies very little whether he is gentle or simple, an honourable or a homespun, he will get on. Life in the Bush is, however, no joke, not even a practical one. It involves serious results, with an absence of cultivated manners and matters, toil, hardship, and the effects of seasoning, including ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Randy, a scold. Raploch, coarse, undyed homespun. Rase, rose. Rax, to stretch, to reach. Redd, to clear up. Reek, smoke. Rin, to run. Ripe, to rake, to search. Rue "to take the rue," to repent of a proposal ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sorrow, but anger. When even Hutchinson had protested against the Stamp Act, it can be seen how the Whigs would feel. Non-importation agreements were widely signed, and people accustomed to silks and laces prepared to go into homespun. But the act, passed in February, 1765, was not to go into effect until November. Before that date, much ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... rival in front, and also contrasted Lawyer Wilson's appearance with that of her father; the former, well dressed in the style of a gentleman of the time, in broadcloth, with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of ridicule these dozen years. (The Deacon would be buried in two coats, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cried the young lady with the black eyes. "I remember when he used to go to school in a grey homespun suit with the hay sticking all over it. He's the son of old Angus McRae who used to bring our cabbage and lettuce to ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... self-possessed manner, and a careless, devil-may-care way about him, that showed he had measured his powers, and was accustomed to 'rough it' with the world. He wore a broadcloth coat of the fashion of some years ago, but his waistcoat and nether garments of the common, reddish homespun, were loose and ill-shaped, as if their owner did not waste thought on such trifles. His hat, as shockingly bad as Horace Greeley's, had the inevitable broad brim, and fell over his face like a calash-awning over a shop-window. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... She had a level, curious gaze upon him, and Jean had never met one just like it. Her eyes were rather a wide oval in shape, clear and steady, with shadows of thought in their amber-brown depths. They seemed to look through Jean, and his gaze dropped first. Then it was he saw her ragged homespun skirt and a few inches of brown, bare ankles, strong and round, and crude worn-out moccasins that failed to hide the shapeliness, of her feet. Suddenly she drew back her stockingless ankles and ill-shod little feet. When Jean lifted his gaze again ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... couldn't see as good as I wanted," was the hesitating reply; "but 'peared to me they were men, all right. And they seemed to be dressed in gray homespun, too, like some of ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... cabins; the vehicles were dusty and the wheels encrusted with yellow mud. The grizzled frontiersman who had smiled at Nell stood leaning on his gun, talking to three men, whose travel-stained and worn homespun clothes suggested a long and toilsome journey. There was the bustle of excitement incident to the arrival of strangers; to the quick exchange of greetings, the unloading of wagons and unharnessing of ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... classes were any less cordial. It meant only that the clear social atmosphere of the colony had not yet become dimmed by the mists of court duplicity. The habitants of New France respected the horny-handed man in homespun whom they called their seigneur: the depth of this loyalty and respect could not fairly ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... twigs, like the great outdoor acorn-granaries, only closer woven, and of an oval shape, and lifted from the floor by four uprights of red manzanita stems,—in this cradle, on soft white wool fleeces, covered with white homespun blankets, lay Ramona's baby, six months old, lusty, strong, and beautiful, as only children born of great love and under healthful conditions can be. This child was a girl, to Alessandro's delight; to Ramona's regret,—so far as a loving mother can feel regret connected with her firstborn. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... an old settler of Tazewell County, says he used to see Lincoln when passing through Washington, in that county, on his way to attend court at Metamora; and he remembers him as "dressed in a homespun coat that came below his knees and was out at ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... following morning the news of the capture had spread to the farthest limits of the county. A much larger number of people than usual came to town that Saturday,—bearded men in straw hats and blue homespun shirts, and butternut trousers of great amplitude of material and vagueness of outline; women in homespun frocks and slat-bonnets, with faces as expressionless as the dreary sandhills which gave them a ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... resting under the wide eaves of the little white houses, looking up where the hills are all so blue, or off across the wide bay. The white houses are very small and they crowd along the road, and the farms are narrow, and there is not much money in the homespun clothes or in the old clock, but the good world is wide about them and the people are not sad like those who ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... arms and drew the mother after her into the house. The room was without light, excepting from the open door; the bare, rough-hewn floor and table were spotless. One chair, a bench and an old chest of drawers was the only furniture besides the large bed with its neat, homespun blue counterpane. The hearth of the huge fireplace was swept clean, and although the middle of May, a good fire was burning. The teacher, sitting on the bench behind the table, let the little boy play ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... prophet, prince, and friend of the people. In the crowds that flocked about his bier homespun elbowed gold lace in the grief of a common loss. Boughs of the fragrant spruce decked his coffin, the gift of the heath to the memory of ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... was no chance for new ones to spring up. Carriages, wagons, and farm implements went to decay, or could only be rudely patched up by the rough mechanics of the plantation. The stringent blockade shut out foreign goods, and the people were generally clothed in homespun. In many houses the floors were bare because the carpets had been cut up to make blankets for the soldiers. Ladies made their own shoes of such materials as they could find. They braided their own hats. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Poyser had laid the cloth herself—a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see—none of your bleached "shop-rag" that would wear into holes in no time, but good ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... honour of a visit from the great lady herself. Down came the coach-and-four, and forth from it came Lady Belamour in a magnificent hoop, the first seen in those parts, managing it with a grace that made her an overwhelming spectacle, in contrast with Betty, in her close-fitting dark-grey homespun, plain white muslin apron, cap, kerchief, and ruggles, scrupulously neat and fresh, but unadorned. The visit was graciously designed for "good cousin Harry," but his daughter was obliged, not unwillingly, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... examination he won respect for the lucidity of his statements and his conciliatory address. It soon became evident that the Stamp Act could not be enforced. No one could be compelled to buy stamps or pay tariff taxes if he preferred to withdraw from all business transactions, wear homespun, do without British manufactures, and even refrain from eating lamb that flocks of sheep might be increased and the wool ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... Russian nobility or of the peasants whose villages bordered on the nobles' estates. Dostoyevsky, though not of this landed-proprietor school, still dealt with the nobility, albeit with its waifs and strays. None of these masters more than touched the Russian merchants, that homespun moneyed class, crude and coarse, grasping and mean, without the idealism of their educated neighbors in the cities or the homely charm of the peasants from whom they themselves sprang, yet gifted with a rough force and determination not often found among the cultivated ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... dusty road in the full blaze of the August sun, he met a woman,—a tall, strong creature with a broad, kind face, burned and seamed and hardened by life in the open. Yet it was a face that appealed to him by its look of simple, trusting earnestness. Her dress was of stout, gray homespun, her shoes were coarse and heavy, and she was bareheaded, her gray, straggling hair half caught into a clumsy knot at the back of her head. She turned out to pass him without looking up, but he stopped his horse and dismounted before her. It seemed to him that here was one ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... careful perusal of 'A Lover in Homespun,' we are impressed with the fact that the author cannot only 'photograph' pictures but 'paint them'; all the characters live, breathe, act, feel and speak naturally. Mr. Smith gives individuality and charm to the personages of his stories, without involving any sacrifice ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... vapid idlers loll in silk, Around their costly board; Give us the bowl of samp and milk, By homespun ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... infinite precaution that he made his preparations, as the enemy, though confident of taking him, were still on the alert to prevent such a prize from slipping through their fingers. He dressed like a habitant from head to foot, putting on a tasselled bonnet rouge and an etoffe du pays (grey homespun) suit of clothes, with a red sash and bottes sauvages like Indian moccasins. Then the whaleboat was quietly brought alongside. The crew got in and plied their muffled oars noiselessly down to the narrow passage between ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... that his alliances were not to be depended on where he was likely to be a material loser. A particularly "fluent" man, accomplished in gestures such as form an ingredient in all French conversation, he was in Zotique's Sunday afternoons a zestful contestant. His clothes were of homespun, dyed a raw, light blue, and he was proud of his choice of the color, for ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... her jewelled hands She smooths her silken gown,— No more the homespun lap wherein I shook ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with delicate green, I saw the white tops of wagons flashing in the sun at the far end of it. We caught up with them, the wagoners cracking their whips and swearing at the straining horses. And lo! in front of the wagons was an army,—at least my boyish mind magnified it to such. Men clad in homespun, perspiring and spattered with mud, were straggling along the road by fours, laughing and joking together. The officers rode, and many of these had blue coats and buff waistcoats,—some the worse for wear. My father was pushing the white mare into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... called, is composed of rather homespun material, to say the least, of it. There may be some fifty individuals dubbed with the title of marquis, and as many more with that of count, most of whom have acquired their wealth and position by carrying on extensive sugar plantations. These are sneeringly designated by the humble classes as ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... years Weaned from the bosom of thy native land, Returnest back and seekest true repose. Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh When laying down your burden at the gate, And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace The cool and quiet of a homespun bed." "Alas," said Dalica, "though all commend This choice, and many meet with no control, Yet none pursue it! Age by Care oppressed Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave. The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth: Frenzied Ambition and desponding ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... the sun, and hair of an exact tow-color, braided up from her forehead in front and from her neck behind. These tails, meeting on the top of her head, were fastened with a small tin comb. Her dress was of checkered homespun, a "very tight fit," and, as she wore no ruff or handkerchief around her neck, she looked as if just prepared for execution. She was evidently awestruck at the sight of visitors, and seemed inclined to take her departure at once; but the boy, not so easily intimidated, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... and in limp-hanging rain-coats, who also sought the back door, but with that absence of ostentation and self-consciousness which invariably marks the truly great. The crowd singled out its "heroes in homespun," and one line or the other applauded, according to the color that was known to be sewed on the blue sleeve beneath ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... that smiling face was evil and threatening in the extreme. But Joan's eyes did not falter beneath the searching gaze of her would-be husband. Her face was set in lines of fearless resolution. She still wore the rough blue homespun tunic of a peasant lad, and her chestnut locks hung in heavy natural curls about her shoulders. The distinction in dress between the sexes was much less marked in those days than it has since become. Men of high degree clothed themselves in flowing robes, and women of humble walk in life in short ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her supper, and had been tucked away between some tow sheets and homespun blankets in a trundle-bed, she heard the whole story, and lifted up her hands with horror. Then the good couple read a chapter, and prayed, solemnly vowing to do their duty by this child which they had taken under their roof, ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cheap Panama, and swung theatrically round on his heel. Between him and the saloon-door there was a solid barricade of heavy Dutch bodies, in moleskin, tan-cord, and greasy homespun, topped by lowering Dutch faces. Brawny right hands that could have choked the reedy crow out of the little bantam gamecock, clenched in the baggy pockets of old shooting-jackets. Others gripped leaded ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the sleeping past! If I were a dove and dwelt in the monstrous chestnuts, where the bees murmur all day about the flowers; if I were a sheep and lay on the field there under my comely fleece; if I were one of the quiet dead in the kirkyard—some homespun farmer dead for a long age, some dull hind who followed the plough and handled the sickle for threescore years and ten in the distant past; if I were anything but what I am out here, under the sultry noon, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... wearing a peculiar homespun dress; with a native dialect strongly resembling many of the Yorkshire phrases. They are generally found located in the poorer parishes and districts, where their primitive-looking cabins are easily designated from that of the more enterprising agriculturist. But few ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... was there, too, with all his following; but they had theirs by themselves, as you might know, seeing that they were of the knacker kind. Him I gave a coat, and Ane Kirstine gave the women each a cap and a kerchief and a piece of homespun for a petticoat for each of the young ones, and they ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... still looking at him, and interested in getting all the rough wool off the collar of his homespun coat. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... as though loath to leave the Patriarch's face, travelled over the gray homespun suit that clothed the man, the white wristbands of the home-washed shirt, unstarched, but spotlessly clean—and his fancy of flowing, Grecian robes with rope girdles seemed to hold him up to mockery as a crude and paltry bungler before the perfect, unostentatious harmony ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... monuments of learning, of art and of charity. As for the restrictions upon domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic and shipping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic manufactures never ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... physique of the women. The male travelers, who are not indigenous to the soil, are more roughly clothed and more careless in manner than the same order of passengers between New York and Boston. Of those who enter and leave at way-stations, the men are clad in that yellow, homespun material known as "butternut." The casual observer inclines to the opinion that there are no good bathing-places where these men reside. They are inquisitive, ignorant, unkempt, but generally civil. The women are the reverse of ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Bunyan, accepting the literal accuracy of the parable as a description of the realities of the world beyond the grave, gives full scope to his vivid imagination in portraying the condition of the lost. It contains some touches of racy humour, especially in the similes, and is written in the nervous homespun English of which he was master. Its popularity is shown by its having gone through nine editions in the author's lifetime. To take an example or two of its style: dealing with the excuses people make for not hearing the Gospel, "O, saith ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... March, 1905, there entered the writer's office in the Criminal Courts Building, New York City, a ruddy, stoutly-built man, dressed in homespun garments, accompanied by an attractive and vivacious little woman, who, while unable to speak a single word of English, had no difficulty in making it obvious that she had a story to tell of the most vital importance. An interpreter was soon found and the names of the visitors ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... of pathetic or emotional interest; but "opulent as Shakespeare was, and of his opulence prodigal" (to borrow a phrase from Coleridge), he knew better than to patch with purple or embroider with seed-pearl the hem of this homespun little piece of comic drugget. The match between cloth of gold and cloth of frieze could hardly have borne any good issue in this instance. Instead therefore of following the lead of Terence's or the hint of Jonson's example, and exalting the accent ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... prey, all clad in dark steel armor, and some displaying the white Maltese cross. From portrait to portrait the countenances grew more refined, but without losing the prominent forehead and the imperious family nose. The wide, soft collar of the homespun shirt became transformed into starched folds of plaited ruffs; the cuirasses softened into jackets of velvet or silk; the stiff broad beards in imperial style changed to sharp goatees and to pointed mustaches, which, with the soft locks falling over the temples, served as a frame for the face. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... years has been rapid. The grandmothers of the women of this generation carded wool and used spinning wheels within the memory of workers of less than middle age. One old woman who died not many years ago told how she used to bake in an oven out-of-doors and had dyed homespun with butternut. The soap cauldron stood on the levelled stump of what had been once a forest tree. Candles were moulded in iron moulds. Household industries were carried on expertly in the homes of pioneers by the women of ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... her up some steep stairs, leading from the kitchen to an unfinished room under the rafters. Here everything again was as neat as wax, but how desolate! An unpainted bedstead of pine wood, holding a round feather-bed covered with a blue-and-white homespun bed-quilt; a strip of rag carpet on a floor grown beautiful from the care bestowed upon it; a small table covered with a homespun linen towel, a Bible in exactly the middle of it; two old yellow chairs, and not ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... sent up its slender thread of blue smoke at one corner of a little badly cleared field a quarter of a mile away on a huge hill-side. As the scant train crawled off again into a deep, ice-hung defile, it passed the silent figure of a man in butternut homespun, spattered with dry mud, standing close beside the track on a heap of cross-tie cinders and fire-bent railroad iron, a gray goat-beard under his chin, and a quilted homespun hat on his head. From beneath the limp brim of this covering, as the train moved by him, a tender, silly smile beamed upward ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... at the close of a fine, autumnal afternoon, that a simple-looking traveller, attired in a homespun suit of gray, and wearing a broad-brimmed, Quaker-looking hat, drove up to the door of the Spread Eagle Tavern, in the town of B——, State of Maine, kept by Major E. Spike, and ordered refreshments for himself and horse. There was nothing particular ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the green hills of Vermont came in all haste a company of hardy mountaineers, at their head a large-framed, strong-limbed, keen-eyed frontiersman, all dressed in the homespun of their native hills, but all with rifles in their hands, a weapon which none in the land knew better how to use. The tidings of stirring events at Boston, spreading rapidly through New England, had reached their ears. The people of America had been attacked by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... face to face with a rapidly changing panorama. Steamers arriving, with happy faces on their decks, from southern ports or distant lands; others with waving handkerchiefs bidding good-bye to friends on crowded docks; swift-shuttled ferry-boats, with hurrying passengers, supplying their homespun woof to the great warp of foreign or coastwise commerce; noisy tug-boats, sombre as dray horses, drawing long lines of canal boats, or proud in the convoy of some Atlantic greyhound that has not yet slipped its leash; dignified "Men of War" at ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... have agreeably prevented me in an attempt to which I find myself in all Respects but too unequal. Yet relying on your good Sense and Candour, I venture to lay at your Feet a few well-intended Sentiments, which tho' in a plain homespun Garb, I hope will not offend. I am convinced that at this present it is not only in your Inclination and Will, but also in your Power, to effect more in favour of your Country, than an Army of an Hundred Thousand Men; and indeed more than all the armed Men on this vast Continent.—Can ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... saw oats and wheat flung down to be trodden into a slough of mud and filth. They saw the walnut presses in their kitchens broken open, and their old heirlooms of silver, centuries old, borne away as booty. They saw the oak cupboards in their wives' bed-chambers ransacked, and the homespun linen and the quaint bits of plate that had formed their nuptial dowers cast aside in derision or trampled into a battered heap. They saw the pet lamb of their infants, the silver ear-rings of their brides, the brave tankards they had drunk their marriage wine in, the tame bird ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... well shot over already since the twelfth of August, but the two had a very pleasant day, for all that, a couple of days later. They went but with a keeper and half a dozen beaters—Frank in an old homespun suit of Jack's, and his own powerful boots, and made a very tolerable bag. There was one dramatic moment, Jack told me, when they found that luncheon had been laid at a high point on the hills from which the great gray mass of Merefield and the shimmer of the lake in front of the house ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... maze two wayfarers warily threaded their course on a chill May day in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-three. They were men, and their speed denoted the urgency of the business upon which they were bent. They were clad in buckskin jackets, and homespun trousers, which showed signs of hard usage. Moccasins encased their feet, and squirrel-skin caps sat lightly upon their heads. Each carried a heavy flint-lock musket in his hand, while at his side swung the inevitable powder-horn, ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... my folks stayed on with Capt. Posey, and I washed and ironed with them later when I was big enough. I done some cooking, too. I could card and spin and make homespun dresses. My ma ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... me a list of things he found most useful. Two rough homespun or serge suits: riding breeches, which are absolutely indispensable; riding boots laced up the centre, and large, as they are continually getting wet; flannel shirts; thick worsted stockings; a warm ulster, ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... we found substantial comfort if not luxury, refinement, and hospitality. This is not an infrequent combination in the outlying districts of the Cape, where the nature of life and things is such that wealth, education, and refinement are often found robed in a modest homespun garb, and housed in a ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... top table stood in one corner of the room, a mahogany gateleg occupied the centre, its beauty largely concealed by a cover of yellow and white checked homespun linen, upon which rested a glass oil lamp with a green paper shade, a wide glass dish filled with pictures, an old leather-bound album with heavy brass clasps and hinges. A rag carpet, covered in places ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... a man came into the room, all dusty and sunburnt, a typical man of Aragon, dry and wrinkled, burnt like a son of Sahara. His clothing, like his face, was dust-coloured. He wore knee-breeches of homespun, brown stockings, a handkerchief that had once been coloured bound round his head, with the knot over his left ear. He was startlingly rough and wild in appearance, but his features, on examination, were refined, and ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... divers small fishing-boats, but also a snug farm, adjoining the brown house, together with some fresh, juicy pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised mutton, unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and wool, which furnished homespun to clothe his family on ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... He could not venture to wear anything calculated to outshine the apparel of his guests, and yet to don the elbow-worn, shiny-backed blue serge of his everyday apparel seemed not to do them quite honour enough. He had not many clothes with him, but he had brought one suit of rough homespun, smart indeed from the viewpoint of the expensive tailor who had made it, but deceivingly unconventional to the eye of the uninitiated. This he put on, taking particular pains to select a very plain cravat, and to fasten in it with care the scarf-pin ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... said, "and in them are homespun and jeans. One can't lead his 'fluttered folk and wild' in a ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun wrap, Her muscular frame gave hints of rebel will, While those great caves of night, her eyes, faced mine, Dread with the silence of unuttered wrongs: At last she spoke as one who must be heeded. Truly I am not clear Whether her meaning ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Viaud was a peasant lad, any one could have told from the blouse of blue homespun, and the wooden shoes which he wore; and that he felt the gladness of the April time could easily be known by the happy little song he began to sing to himself, and by the eager delight with which he now and then ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country—old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles; their brisk withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted shortgowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... father who used to "stick" pale-blue flowers in his wife's belt, and whose love of delicate fabrics and tints made him courageous enough to lead her draped in Canton crape into the unpainted Cape Cod meeting-house, where her fellow-women bristled in homespun, that Mercy inherited all the artistic side of her nature. She knew this instinctively, and all her tenderest sentiment centred around the vague memory she retained of a tall, dark-bearded man, who, when she ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... one must have clothes and personal comforts, so, while we are still in the city humor, let us order a habit suitable for riding astride. Whipcord, or a closely woven homespun, in some shade of grayish brown that harmonizes with the landscape, is best. Corduroy is pretty, if you like it, but rather clumsy. Denham will do, but it wrinkles and becomes untidy. Indeed it has been my experience that it is economy to buy the best quality of cloth you can afford, for ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... but notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, sleep did not come to him. Through the partition he could hear the clear, sonorous voice of Reine singing her father to sleep with one of the popular ballads of the country, and while turning and twisting in the homespun linen sheets, scented with orrisroot, he could not help thinking of this young girl, so original in her ways, whose grace, energy, and frankness fascinated and shocked him at the same time. At last he dozed off; and when the morning stir awoke him, the sun was up and struggling through ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... way air a mighty good way. An' it ain't comical that she likes it." . . . . . . . The song grew momentarily more distinct: among the leaves there were fugitive glimpses of blue and white, and at last Clarsie appeared, walking lightly along the log, clad in her checked homespun dress, and with ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... would pull and pile high again the snowy layers, as quickly as her tired back could move, as quickly as her thin, blue fingers could smooth the heavy homespun sheets and comforters. Quick she must be lest ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse come home before the night fell over their sleeping place. When she placed the telegram under the first high pillow (ClA(C)ment's pillow) it made a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... poets; and some of their poems, though intended originally for their own people only, have been read with delight, even by those who had to spell them out with the help of a dictionary and a grammar. This kind of homespun poetry is a sign of healthy national life. Like the songs of Burns in Scotland, the poems of Klaus Groth and others reveal to us, more than anything else, the real thoughts and feelings, the every-day cares and occupations, of the people whom they represent, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... obliged to lay aside his homespun coat, and the Prince his velvet tunic, and both were dressed in some little white robes with evergreen girdles like the Monks. Then the Prince was set to sewing Noah's Ark seed, and Peter picture-book seed. Up and down they went scattering ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... waning from middle age, clad in a pair of tow homespun pantaloons, and a very soiled shirt, barefoot, and with one of his feet maimed by an axe; also an arm amputated two or three inches below the elbow. His beard of a week's growth, grim and grisly, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postillion, but the most of them were only footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with being son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet, were the capital my ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... passages, for lofty moral purpose. They fancy that his lives of criminals, real or imaginary, were intended to be tracts showing that vice leads to the gallows. No doubt, De Foe had the same kind of solid homespun morality as Hogarth, for example, which was not in its way a bad thing. But one need not be very cynical to believe that his real object in writing such books was to produce something that would sell, and that in the main he was neither ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... children's handwriting, the state of Harvard College, the rate of taxes, the most helpful methods of enlistment, Chesterfield's Letters, the town elections, the higher education of women, and the getting of homespun enough for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... public confidence could follow; he took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... began to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a low chair by the open window wrapped in an old cape of ruddy brown homespun, from the folds of which her delicate head rose like a flower in a bouquet of autumn leaves. One elbow rested on the table; her chin in the cup of her hand. Her head was turned away a little so that one could see only the knot of bronze hair, the curve of a cheek, ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... never have been constrained to swear allegiance to the flag he both hated and despised, or have been obliged to exchange the garb of the son of a true Irish gentleman for that which had so lowered him, in the eyes of her relatives at least. But rich or poor, in scarlet or homespun, he was all the same to her; and now that he was almost at her side, and master, in a measure, of his own fate, she only looked forward to the period when she should have a legal right to his protection, and to call him by that name ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... at the magazine of the Bourgeois. She felt rather the more inclined to take this view of the question inasmuch as Jean had grumbled, just a little—he would not do more—at his wife's vanity in buying a gay dress of French fabric, like a city dame, while all the women of the parish were wearing homespun,—grogram, or linsey-woolsey,—whether ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... were leaving the farms, for a few months at least, to work in the mills. Cotton cloth was the new sensation and the demand for it was steadily growing. Brides were proud to display a few cotton sheets instead of commonplace homespun linen. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... pillow-covers of all patterns, crocheted lace and knitted lace and lace made every other way. There was painting on china and satin and velvet and silk and every other known fabric, and the walls were hung with homespun ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... long to explore the woods again In my own aboriginal way, As before I knew how culture could frown On a hoydenish gait and a homespun gown Or dreamed that the strata of proud "upper-ten" Would smile at ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... restrictions upon voting, and the new States carved out of the West had written manhood suffrage into their constitutions. This new democracy flocked to its imperator; and Jackson entered his capital in triumph, followed by a motley crowd of frontiersmen in coonskin caps, farmers in butternut-dyed homespun, and hungry henchmen eager for the spoils. For Jackson had let it be known that he considered his election a mandate by the people to fill the offices with ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... Hunters, therefore, there are of many degrees. Hunters of the lowly cotton-tail and the woodland squirrel; hunters of quail, woodcock, and grouse; hunters of wild ducks and geese; hunters of foxes—the red-coated English and the homespun clad American; hunters—which is a kinder name for trappers—of beaver, marten, otter, mink, all the furred animals; hunters of deer, cat, wolf, bear, antelope, elk, moose, caribou; hunters of the barren lands where the ice is king and where there are polar bears, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... new clothes. He felt them an intolerable burden. He did not mind his new homespun, home-made flannel check shirt of mixed red and white, but the heavy fulled-cloth suit made by his Aunt Kirsty felt like a suit of mail. He moved heavily in it and felt queer, and knew that he looked as he felt. The result was that he was ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the same sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of a trained chimpanzee. But Craig—the wild man, the arch foe of effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw—Craig accepted the service with heartfelt thanks in his shaking voice and ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... mother wove our clothes. Dey were called homespun. Dey made de shoes on de plantation too. I wuz not married til atter de surrender. I did not dress de finest in the world; but I had nice clothes. My wedding dress wuz made of cream silk, made princess with pink and cream ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... main, the characteristics of that homespun plantation aristocracy which, through the Virginia dynasty, had ruled the nation in the days of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. As their lands declined in value, they naturally sought for an explanation and a remedy. [Footnote: Randall, Jefferson, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... not to those gay flies Gilded i' the beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes, But to poor shepherds' homespun things; Whose wealth's their flock, whose wit to be Well ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... their homes, had not the like temptation to break away. Bitter rivalry arose between the boys of the north and the south. The latter, especially the Virginia lads, were in handsome uniforms. They looked down upon the awkward, homespun ranks in the regiments of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Then came the famous snowball battle between the boys of Virginia and New England. In the midst of it, Washington arrived and, leaping from his white horse, was quickly in the thick of the fight. He seized a couple of ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... her interrogatively the colour faded from her face. The relief of hearing that homespun plan had chilled her blood, and she was faint for an instant with the sickness of hearty youth that only knows it feels odd to itself and concludes the strangeness is of the soul. But she did not answer, for Anne was at ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,—but it lay there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the odd old family names, particularly those of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... shower overtook them, from which, as quickliest they might, they took shelter in the house of a husbandman, a friend and acquaintance of both of them. After awhile, the rain showing no sign of giving over and they wishing to reach Florence by daylight, they borrowed of their host two old homespun cloaks and two hats, rusty with age, for that there were no better to be had, and set out ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in the Cumberland Mountains between the Folwell and the Harkness families. The first victim of the homespun vendetta was a 'possum dog belonging to Bill Harkness. The Harkness family evened up this dire loss by laying out the chief of the Folwell clan. The Folwells were prompt at repartee. They oiled up their squirrel rifles and ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... widowed mother, with her seven young children, her little farm, and two or three slaves, could do no more for him. Next, we see him a tall, awkward, slender stripling of thirteen, still barefoot, clad in homespun butternut of his mother's making, tilling her fields, and going to mill with his bag of corn strapped upon the family pony. At fourteen, in the year 1791, a place was found for him in a Richmond drug-store, where he served as errand-boy and youngest ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... very coarse homespun and home-woven cloth, composed of linen and wool, and called linsey-woolsey, very coarse shoes, and sometimes with buckskin gloves of their own manufacture. If any one chanced to have a ring or pretty buckle, it was a relic of ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... seemed to bring her thoughts back from a long way off. "Old maid? I should say not! We had a man. We nearly always do. Then everybody comes, and there's more glow. He was an English socialist—I guess he was a socialist. Burne-Jones hair, and a homespun jacket,—loose, and all that,—and a heavy ribbon on his glasses. He talked about ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... unpicturesque. There is no rustle of silks, no waving of plumes, no clink of golden spurs. Our sympathies are not awakened by the changeful destinies, the rise and fall, of great families, whose doom was in their blood. Instead of all this, we have the homespun fates of Cephas and Prudence repeated in an infinite series of peaceable sameness, and finding space enough for record in the family Bible; we have the noise of axe and hammer and saw, an apotheosis of dogged work, where, reversing the fairy-tale, nothing ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Sir Tiglath," Lady Enid went on, with pleasant ease, and a sort of homespun self-possession that trumpeted, like a military band, her sensibleness, "Mr. Vivian consulted me as to what to do; whether to give the whole thing up, or to make an appeal to you at the risk of disturbing you and taking up a little of your precious time. When he ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the residence of President Hayden, and inquired for Dr. Robinson, he was decidedly homespun in appearance. He probably was dressed in his best, but his best was shabby enough. His trousers were of coarse satinet, and might have fitted him a season or two before, but now were far outgrown, reaching only half-way down from the tops of his cowhide ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... bed, and knowing no fear looked steadily. What he saw thrown into relief against the shadows was the figure of a hillman of the west, and one that in an instant he knew. The Covenanter was dressed in rough homespun hodden gray, stained heavily with the black of the peat holes in which he had been hiding, and torn here and there where the rocks had caught him as he was crawling for shelter. Of middle age, with hair hanging over his ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... as these homespun spots can make themselves, in their mixture of thrift and prodigality, they are dearer than ever at the points where they register family traits, and so touch the humanity of us all. Here is imprinted the story of the man who owns the farm, that ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... to be proficient. In the census of 1901 nearly a quarter of the whole caste were shown as malguzars or village proprietors and lessees. They wear a coarse cloth of homespun yarn which they get woven for them by Gandas; probably in consequence of this the Agharias do not consider the touch of the Ganda to pollute them, as other castes do. They will not grow turmeric, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... re-election to his great office, when everything was lovely and "the goose hung high," he was surrounded by a large crowd of his fellow citizens, and Thomas Jefferson, in his palmiest days, never looked grander than did the Squire on this occasion. He was attired in his best suit of homespun, the choicest product of his wife's dye pot. His immense vest with its broad luminous stripes, checked the rotundity of his ample stomach like the lines of latitude and longitude, and resembled a half finished map of the United States. His ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... liege lady. Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so pretty)! And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the back and open tails: and—and—one of those real Panamas that you can pull through a wedding ring: and—oh! dear, I am greedy! It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm always ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... has to be heaped up very high to cover a wife's defects, if they be as radical as those in Caroline Everett. Why, to speak out the plain, homespun ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... hardening them by exposure to a slow steady degree of heat, till she was able to work with them, and even mend her clothes with tolerable expertness. By degrees, Catharine contrived to cover the whole outer surface of her homespun woollen frock with squirrel and mink, musk-rat and woodchuck skins. A curious piece of fur patchwork of many hues and textures it presented to the eye,—a coat of many colours, it is true; but it kept the wearer ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... power," concerning which occasion the soldier diarist observes,—"Several sorts of Busnesses was Going on, Som a Exercising, Som a Hearing Preaching." The attention of Parson Moody's listeners was, in fact, distracted by shouts of command and the awkward drill of squads of homespun ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests, but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather picturesque than otherwise, for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... in spick an' span clean clothes come Sund'ys. Ever'body wore homespun clo'es den. De mistis an' de res' o' de ladies in de Big House made mos' of 'em. De cullud wimmins wore some kin' o' dress wid white aprons an' de mens wore overalls an' homespun pants an' shirts. Course, all de time us gits han'-me-downs from de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... man who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which would lay him open to smarts of evil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shoulder in his homespun jacket was shaken smartly. "See here, my boy, either you tell me what you're screaming for, or I'll pick you up and carry ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney |
