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Shelf   /ʃɛlf/   Listen
Shelf

noun
(pl. shelves)
1.
A support that consists of a horizontal surface for holding objects.
2.
A projecting ridge on a mountain or submerged under water.  Synonym: ledge.



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"Shelf" Quotes from Famous Books



... another make," said the shopman, taking down another dozen from the shelf. "Let me call your attention to the original ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... chemist is becoming the architect of his own fortunes. He does not make discoveries by picking up a beaker and pouring into it a little from each bottle on the shelf to see what happens. He generally knows what he is after, and he generally gets it, although he is still often baffled and occasionally happens on something quite unexpected and perhaps more valuable than what he was looking for. Columbus was looking ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... the knowledge he seeks. Perhaps a book may be mentioned, or some reference to some writer be made. If the hint is followed up, the desired information comes to light. Many persons have had the psychic experience of being led to some book store and induced to examine a particular shelf of books, whereupon a particular book presents itself which changes the whole course of the person's life. Or, perhaps, one will pick up a newspaper apparently at random, and without purpose; and therein will find some ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... into the barn, where he saw a telephone receiver and transmitter on a little shelf near ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... 355,050—C.A. Backstrom) shows another very late style of creamer. A pipe delivers the milk into P^{4}. Passing out of the tube separation takes place, and cream falls down the center to P^{2} and out of O^{3}. When the compartment under the first shelf becomes full of the skim milk, the latter passes up through the slot, S, strikes a radial partition, R, and its course is reversed. Here more cream separates and passes to center and falls directly, and so on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... not hesitate to strike while the iron is incandescent and bleed freely, even if it should be necessary, prior to engaging your humble petitioner's services, to turn out one or more of your present contributioners crop and heels, and lay them on the shelf of their own incompetencies. Remember that the slightest act of volition on your part can exalt my pecuniary status to the skies, as well as confer distinguished and unparagoned ennoblement upon your ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... dining-room. By his orders, the water which he drank was drawn from a filter that stood in a pantry at the end of the passage leading from the dining-room to the kitchens and beyond. He ran to it and took from a shelf a bowl which he filled with water from the filter. Then, continuing to follow the passage, which at this spot branched off toward the yard, he called Mirza, the puppy, who was playing ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... the contents of the green box, and having satisfied herself that it was all there, she laid it up, high and dry, on the clock shelf. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... won't do at all," he said, quite pleasantly. "I know these lodgings, and the miserable women who keep them, and can only make ends meet by thieving the lodgers' mutton. The groshery line is altogether on another shelf. You and your daughters can not only make a living at it, you can make ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... scrap of dough, and rolled it out, and rolled it out, and baked it as thin as a wafer; but when it was done it looked so large that she could not bear to part with it; and she said: "My cakes are much too big to give away,"—and she put them on the shelf. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... me. A loud crash in the kitchen disturbed my dream, and Temperance rushed in, dragging my sister Veronica, whose hair was streaming with milk; she had pulled a panful over her from the buttery shelf, while Temperance was taking up the supper. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... be kept in an orderly way upon a shelf in the nursery or in a closet, never piled in a miscellaneous heap in the corner of the room. Children should select their toys and play with one thing at a time, which they should be taught to put away in its place before another is given. They should never be allowed to have a dozen things ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... following morning the dragoness took hold of the young man and reached down from the shelf a sharp knife with which to kill him. But as she untied the cords the better to get hold of him, the prisoner caught her by the legs, threw her to the ground, seized her and speedily cut her throat, just as she had been about to do for him, and put her body in the oven. Then he snatched ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... by the simple and effective process of going into the room where the professor sat and taking it from its shelf. We heard the soft murmur of her voice, fallowed by the rumble of his. When she returned to us, Jessica finished her story in the chastened spirit which follows such an interruption, and there were ten minutes of talk. We forgot the bare little room; old memories softly ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... they lingered on the span-wide shelf That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge, I LIKE YOU bared his icy dagger's edge, And first he slew I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... shrines in this part of Naples. It contains the tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas, and also the tombs of the royal family, which remain in the vestry. There are some large boxes covered with yellow velvet which contain their remains, and which stand ranged on a species of shelf, formed by the heads of a set of oaken presses which contain the vestments of the monks. The pictures of the kings are hung above their respective boxes, containing their bones, without any other means of preserving them. At the bottom of the lofty and narrow room is the celebrated ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... walls, and a bright blue cover hid the round, oak center-table. The eldest brother's violin lay in its case on the organ that had come into the house the month before when the wheat was sold. Up on the clock-shelf was a Dresden shepherd in stately pose before his dainty shepherdess. The curtains on the windows hung white and soft to ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... pit, which has the appearance of having been at one time two pits, one less deep than the other; and the barrier between the two having been removed by some natural process, a passage is found down the steep side of the shallower pit, which lands the adventurer on a small sloping shelf, 21 feet sheer above the surface of the snow in the deeper pit, the sides of the latter rising up perpendicularly all round. It is for this last 21 feet that some sort of ladder is absolutely necessary. Our guide flung himself down in the sun at the outer edge of the pit, and informed us ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... government in the country: ministers were no longer in the position in which they were at the beginning of the session. They stated then that they would place their existence as ministers on the fate of the Irish corporation bill. What had become of that bill? It was laid on the shelf till the lords knew what that house was about. The other house virtually said, "If you do not what we like, we will not pass your bill." What good could be got from playing over the farce of discussing the Irish ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... "What is this? Hallo, a tobaccy-box! An' what's this on it? Let me see. Two letters—a 'P' and an 'M.' 'P.M.'—arrah, what can that be for? Well, divil may care. Let it lie on the shelf there. Here now, none of your cross looks. I say, put these cobwebs to your face, and they'll stop the bleedin'. And now good-night to you, an' let that be a warnin' to you not to raise your ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... the counterfeiters leaped into the passageway. Adam Adams came down from the shelf. But the movement was not swift enough. As he leaped towards the iron door, it was banged shut in his face. Then the combination knob was ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... told mother we must try and get a good rest, that night, on the way to Albany. We located ourselves the best we could for the night. We had only gone a little ways when, all at once, there was a terrible rattling and jingling, made by the passing of another train. It made a noise something like the shelf of a crockery store tumbling down and breaking in pieces glass ware, earthen ware and all. This noise was accompanied with a heavy rumbling sound which shook the ground and the car we were in and ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... 11th of July, 1804, at seven o'clock on a bright, sunny, summer morning, two men, pistol in hand, confronted each other on a narrow shelf of rocky ground jutting out from the cliffs that overlook the Hudson at Weehawken, on the Jersey shore. One was a small, slender man, the other taller and more imposing in appearance. Both had been soldiers; each faced the other in grave quietude, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the sole mourners at this funeral, if we may omit two rock rabbits that sat upon a shelf of stone in a neighbouring cliff, and an old baboon which peered at these strange proceedings from its crest, and finally pushed down a boulder before it departed, barking indignantly. Her mother could not come because she was ill with grief and fever in a little tent by the waggon. ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... and Skirrl, the draw-in test was made by putting food on a shelf outside the cage, beyond the reach of the animal, and placing in the cage with the animal one or two sticks long enough to be used for ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... they were among the mountains, till they reached a narrow ledge or shelf scarcely wider than the stage. On one side there was a sheer descent of hundreds of feet, and ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger

... young gentlefolks nowadays can say their letters. It was well for me, since books with a small quantity of type, and a good deal of frightful illustration, beguiled many of my weary moments. You may see my special favourites, bound up, on the shelf in my bedroom. Crabbe's Tales, Frank, the Parent's Assistant, and later, Croker's Tales from English History, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Tales of a Grandfather, and the Rival Crusoes stand pre-eminent—also Mrs. Leicester's School, with ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... same, for there was a transparency about her throat unlike that of the forehead. This colour I was just now thinking looked something like the inside of a certain mysterious shell upon my father's library shelf. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... miserable man said to himself that, when his hands should be worn out with fatigue, when his cassock should tear asunder, when the lead should give way, he would be obliged to fall, and terror seized upon his very vitals. Now and then he glanced wildly at a sort of narrow shelf formed, ten feet lower down, by projections of the sculpture, and he prayed heaven, from the depths of his distressed soul, that he might be allowed to finish his life, were it to last two centuries, on that space ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... you come from? and what do you know?" asked the mice, who were full of curiosity. "Have you seen the most beautiful places in the world, and can you tell us all about them? and have you been in the storeroom, where cheeses lie on the shelf, and hams hang from the ceiling? One can run about on tallow candles there, and go in thin ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... which brought out one of the young boors, who drove away the dogs by pelting them with bullock-horns, and other bones of animals which were strewed about. He then requested them to dismount. The old boor soon appeared, and gave them a hearty welcome, handing down from the shelf a large brandy-bottle, and recommending a dram, of which he partook himself, stating that it was good brandy, and made from ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... mustard plaster. Have ready a piece of old muslin (a piece of an old nightgown will do) two inches wide and two inches longer than twice the length of the poultice required. On one end of it, with a margin of an inch on three sides, place a piece of oiled paper or shelf paper or a piece of clean paper bag, the size you wish the poultice to be. Mix one tablespoonful of mustard with 8 tablespoonfuls of flour, before wetting. Have water about as hot as the hand can stand. Do not use boiling water. Stir the water into ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... dresser, with all sorts of useful things; a nice clock ticking opposite the fire-place, and a grate as bright as blacklead could make it. And then there was such a pretty little room at one side, with a rose tree against the window; and a little shelf for books against the wall; and a round table, and some chairs, and an easy couch. And there were two nice bedrooms overhead; and, better than all these, was a pretty garden. Oh! how happy was the little flower-girl; and how thankful was poor Mrs. Newton! ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury

... which they slap me on the back or the emotion with which they hurl themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little anaemic and their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf. I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... attracted to this man by the air of embarrassment with which Mrs. Branscome received his approaches. Resolute to neglect no clue, however slight, David sought Marston's companionship, and, as a reward, discovered one afternoon in a Crown Derby teacup on the mantel-shelf of the latter's room his own present of two years back. The exclamation which ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... Fortunately there are paper, pen, and an ink horn on that shelf. Ben Soloman brought them the last time he came, to write down the lies he wanted me to testify to. I am greatly obliged to you, and ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... When he gained the lower apartment his father was standing by the chimney-piece, the sailor having gone. The trumpet-major went up to the fire, and, grasping the edge of the high chimney-shelf, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... see their pretty innocent faces, spared by death. The boy kissed him in return, and told him the room had been full of water, and dada and mamma had gone out at the window, and they themselves had floated in the bed so high he had put his little sister on the top shelf, and got on it himself, and then they had ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... the pot was found with a considerable portion abstracted. Outside of it was a heap of mortar reaching to the edge, forming an inclined plane, while inside a similar structure had been raised with the loose plaster. From the marks on the shelf, it was clearly the work of a mouse; which had thus, by means of a well-designed ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... water do 22 Width of cave from corner of west wall to east wall do 56 From corner of west wall to rear of cave do 47 Height of extreme front from floor at edge of bluff to most projecting ledge above feet 35 Height from shelf or ledge near front of east wall to general level of roof feet 14 Height from ashes to roof at middle ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... Tommy Aitkins himself, For a shilling a day of poor pelf, And for love of his King, And the fun of the thing, He fights till he's laid on the shelf. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... boy sadly. "My father gave me some before he went away, but my cousin said I should only spend it foolishly, and she took it from me, and put it up on the shelf in a box where ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... thankful he was to his father for having made reading interesting to him. He remembered that the books his father had read to him and had given him to read, books that crammed the small bookcase near the fireplace and filled every shelf and table in the room, were the very best—Dickens, Thackeray, Washington Irving, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Addison, and of the later writers, Kipling, O. Henry, Anatole ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... I went off to sawmill with the oxen for boards and shingles. Then, shortly, we had a roof over us, and floors to walk on, and that luxury D'ri called a "pyaz," although it was not more than a mere shelf with a roof over it. We chinked the logs with moss and clay at first, putting up greased paper in the window spaces. For months we knew not the luxury of the ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... square, mahogany counter, upon which stood a tin drain containing a jug of water, and several empty tumblers. An open stove stood opposite the counter; and in it were massive dog-irons in brass, highly polished. A square Connecticut clock ticked on a little shelf between two front windows; and suspended upon the walls were pictures of horses and bulls that had won prizes at the Worcester Cattle Show. Certain parts of the bar room were much distained with tobacco juice; while beneath the stove grate there lay a heap of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... both table and bed. In excavating the cell this ledge had been left intact, with a bench of stone rising from the floor opposite. Indeed, so ingenious had been the workmen who hewed out this room that they carved a rounded stone pillow at one end of the shelf. ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... of both parties was improved, for the time being, by the enjoyments of the table. When the meal came to a termination (which it was pretty long in doing), and Mrs Gamp having cleared away, produced the teapot from the top shelf, simultaneously with a couple of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... nothing, certainly,' answered he, 'but it is very odd. However, it is time that the horses were fed'; and he lifted down an armful of hay from a shelf of rock and held out a handful to each animal, who moved forward to meet him, leaving the king behind. As soon as the giant's hands were near their mouths they each made a snap, and began to bite them, so that his groans ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... up yere, they ain't goin' ter have it all their own way, let me tell yer, pardner. Do yer see that straight face o' rock over yonder?" he rose to his feet, pointing across his shoulder. "Wal, that 's got a front o' thirty feet, an' slopes back 'bout as fur, with a shelf hangin' over it like a roof. Best nat'ral fort ever I see, an' only one way o' gittin' inter it, an' that the devil o' a crooked climb. Wal, we 've stocked that place fer a siege with chuck an' ammunition, an' I reckon four men kin 'bout hold it agin the whole county till hell freezes over. It's ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... surfaces. The first impression received on entering what Rodney Temple called his work-room was that of color—color unlike that of pictures, flowers, gems, or sunsets, and yet of extraordinary richness and variety. Low bookcases, running round the room, offered on the broad shelf forming the top space for many specimens of that potter's art on which the old man had made himself an authority. Jars and vases stood on tables, plaques and platters hung on the walls, each notable for some excellence ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... international: Northern Ireland question with the UK; Rockall continental shelf dispute involving Denmark, Iceland, and the UK (Ireland and the UK have signed a boundary ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... a high shelf and took down three boxes, that looked just alike on the outside. He opened the first and took out a roll neatly wrapped and tied with a silk string. It was this picture of a Japanese lady who has run out quickly to ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... the room, fuming. How recapture the generous certitudes that had one by one been slipping away from him? He found himself staring vacantly at the row of books on the little shelf by his bed. One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself—he could almost have sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that it hopped ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... up her music. The Professor, with his face wreathed in smiles, walked up to her and said, "I tell you what, Miss James, that last composition of mine is bang up. One of these days, when the 'Star Spangled Banner,' 'Hail Columbia,' and 'Marching through Georgia' are laid upon the top shelf and all covered with dust, one hundred million American freemen will be singing Strout's great national anthem, 'Hark, and hear the Eagle Scream.' What do you think of ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... though it did not seem as if anybody could have lived in it lately. He didn't know why this idea came into his mind, but it did. It was a girl's bedroom, for a small blue dress hung on the wall, and on the bureau were brushes, combs, and hair-pins. Beside the bureau was a wooden shelf full of books. A bird-cage swung in the window, but there was no bird in it, and the seed glass and water cup were empty. The narrow bed had a white coverlid and a great white pillow. It looked all ready for somebody, but it was years since the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... it is unable to move a toe or finger. This custom (which we often see represented in old pictures) is universal among the common people. A child is left anywhere without the possibility of crawling away, or is accidentally knocked off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is hung up to a hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at an English rag-shop, without the least inconvenience ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... story turned the balance with the clergyman; Herbert Spencer was put back upon the shelf, and Thomas a Kempis ruled the day. Dr. Hamilton said that he would see one of his rich parishioners, and persuade him to take a second mortgage on the farm. And so Thyrsis went back, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... but seldom: never talked, when he did come: late in the evening generally: and then would punch his skin, and look at his tongue, and shake the bottles on the mantel-shelf with a grunt that terrified Lois into the belief that the other doctor was a quack, and her patient was totally undone. He would sit, grim enough, with his feet higher than his head, chewing an unlighted cigar, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... he, setting the cage on the shelf beside a camellia, and speaking in a low voice, though they were quite alone, "can you keep ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)

... So Dad sought out a comfortable place where they might sit down, a shelf some twenty feet above the edge of the river, whence they could see the turbulent stream for a short distance both ways. It was a wonder to them where all the water came from. The Professor called attention to his former statement ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin

... garden near the sea just beyond the end of the Promenade, or The Leas, as the real Skeatonian always called it. Miss Toms and Mr. Toms were sitting in a very small room with a large fire, a pale grey wallpaper, and a number of brightly-painted wooden toys arranged on a shelf running round the room. The toys were of all kinds—a farm, cows and sheep, tigers and lions, soldiers and cannon, a church and a butcher's shop, little green tufted trees, and a Noah's ark. Mr. Toms was sitting, neat as a pin, smiling in an armchair beside the fire, and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... grandfather's bed, in another was the hearth with a large kettle hanging above it; and on the further side was a large door in the wall—this was the cupboard. The grandfather opened it; inside were his clothes, some hanging up, others, a couple of shirts, and some socks and handkerchiefs, lying on a shelf; on a second shelf were some plates and cups and glasses, and on a higher one still, a round loaf, smoked meat, and cheese, for everything that Alm-Uncle needed for his food and clothing was kept in this cupboard. Heidi, as soon as it was ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... came. They were unsure of being seen by the floating grey of eyes patient to gaze from their vast distance. Big drops fell from Nataly's. Victor heard the French timepiece on the mantel-shelf, where a familiar gilt Cupid swung for the seconds: his own purchase. The time of day on the clock was wrong; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... together they hurled themselves against the door. It resisted. Within they could hear irregular footsteps dashing here and there, with heavy breathing. Although frozen with terror, they fought to destroy the door and finally succeeded by using a great slab of marble that formed the shelf of the mantel in Fargeau's room. As the door crashed in, they were suddenly hurled back against the walls of the corridor, as though by an explosion, the lanterns were extinguished, and they found themselves ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... God flows over the black rock, as the incoming tide does over some jagged reef, then, and not merely when the rod is put on the shelf, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... woodwork in the upstairs front room is most ambitious. Mantel, overmantel and matching cupboards cover one entire wall, the chimney end of the room. The mantel is flanked by two fluted pilasters, reaching from floor to denticulated cornice. Above the shelf is a rectangular dog-eared panel, in each of the four ears of which is a rosette. Under the shelf, oblong panels carry out the same design, divided by a carved half urn. The shelf is supported by consoles and decorated by ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... was lying on a shelf in front of the wheel, and he took a look through it in order to find the boat. After searching in every direction, he discovered the boat, which was pulled by two men, with a third in the stern-sheets. He ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... entered the principal room. As the scene was new to me, I noted the principal objects. In the wall before me were two small square windows looking out upon the road, and in the corner to the right, nearer to the ceiling than to the floor, was a little triangular shelf, on which stood a religious picture. Before the picture hung a curious oil lamp. In the corner to the left of the door was a gigantic stove, built of brick, and whitewashed. From the top of the stove to the wall on the right stretched what might be called an enormous ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... Miss Wiggin, rinsing out with hot water Tutt's special blue-china cup, in the bottom of which had accumulated some reddish-brown dust from Mason & Welsby's Admiralty and Divorce Reports upon the adjacent shelf. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... Malvina cribbage, and usually of an evening they played a hand or two. But to-night the Professor was not in the mood, and Malvina had contented herself with a book. She was particularly fond of the old chroniclers. The Professor had an entire shelf of them, many in the original French. Making believe to be reading himself, he heard Malvina break into a cheerful laugh, and went and looked over her shoulder. She was reading the history of her own encounter with the proprietor ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... on rising, when no other provision is made is expected to air the bed and room, to empty the slop pail and put it on its shelf in the sun, to make the bed and sweep the room; and after breakfast to report for duty, the boys at the office, and the girls to the matron. They will report in the same way at 2:30 p.m., and ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... the bed, and little squares of carpet on the polished floor, in front of the chairs. The dowager Madame Fromont herself could have found nothing to say as to the orderly and cleanly aspect of the place. On a shelf or two against the wall were a few books: Manual of Fishing, The Perfect Country Housewife, Bayeme's Book-keeping. That was the whole of the intellectual equipment ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... walls were some coloured pictures of Biblical subjects. Abraham in red, going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow, cast into a den of green lions, were most prominent. Also, there was a mantel-shelf, and some lockers and boxes which served for seats. Then Peggotty showed me the completest little bedroom ever seen, in the stern of the vessel, with a tiny bed, a little looking-glass framed in oyster-shells, and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... engraving had become more general in use, William Charles cut for an advertisement, as frontispiece to some of his imprints, an interior scene containing a shelf of books labelled "W. Charles' Library for Little Folks." About the same time another form of advertisement came into use. This was the publisher's Recommendation, which frequently accompanied the narrative in place of a preface. The "Story of Little Henry and his Bearer," by Mrs. Sherwood, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... books up at last, and there they are still. I told myself that when a wet afternoon came along I would arrange them properly. When the wet afternoon came, I told myself that I would arrange them one of these fine mornings. As they are now, I have to look along every shelf in the search for the book which I want. To come to Keats is no guarantee that we are on the road to Shelley. Shelley, if he did not drop out on the way, is probably next to How to ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... served as a shelf supplied him with an easy way of turning up the sand. Occupation was pleasant, and in an hour or two he had scooped out a place large enough for the purpose which he had in view. He then went ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... a villain; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... the cause Far better than consulting laws. In a glad hour Lucina's aid Produced on earth a wondrous maid, On whom the Queen of Love was bent To try a new experiment. She threw her law-books on the shelf, And thus debated with herself. Since men allege, they ne'er can find Those beauties in a female mind, Which raise a flame that will endure For ever uncorrupt and pure; If 'tis with reason they complain, This infant shall restore my reign. I'll ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... outside, sent one of her women slaves to find out what the man was crying. The slave returned laughing, and told of the foolish offer. Another slave, hearing it, said, "Now you speak of lamps, I know not whether the princess may have observed it, but there is an old one upon a shelf of the Prince Aladdin's robing room. Whoever owns it will not be sorry to find a new one in its stead. If the princess chooses, she may have the pleasure of seeing whether this old man is silly ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... a table, a printing-press, and one chair in the room; the table was littered with engraver's tools, copper plates, bottles of acid, packets of fibre paper, and photographic paraphernalia. A camera, a reading-lamp, and a dark-lantern stood on a shelf beside a nickel-plated ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... booth and sat down. The emergency control unit rested on a shelf at his side; he took it in his hands. He leaned back and waited for the semi-hypnotic effect to take hold. Dulaq's choice of this very city and the stat-wand were known. But beyond that, everything was locked and sealed in Dulaq's subconscious mind. Could the ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... of a permanent place in our literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... malicious, in putting 'The Master of Ballantrae' in her way. I would place it on her table so that it said good- morning to her when she rose. She would frown, and carrying it downstairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace it on its book- shelf. I would wrap it up in the cover she had made for the latest Carlyle: she would skin it contemptuously and again bring it down. I would hide her spectacles in it, and lay it on top of the clothes-basket and prop it up invitingly open against ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie

... the cabinet. But when the contents of the drawer began to show themselves as I drew near, "I closed my lids, and kept them close," until I had seated myself on the floor, with my back to the cabinet, and the drawer projecting over my head like the shelf of a bracket over its supporting figure. I could touch it with the top of my head by straightening my back. How long I sat there motionless, I cannot say, but it seems in retrospect at least a week, such a multitude of thinkings went through my mind. The logical discussion of a thing that has to ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... the use of burning wood as a light-source was to place such a fire on a shelf or in a cavity in the wall. Later when metal was available, gratings or baskets were suspended from the ceiling or from brackets and glowing embers or flaming chips were placed upon them. Some of these were equipped with crude chimneys to carry away ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... hunting - a fellow rages at the time and rejoices to recall and to commemorate them. My troubles have been financial. It is hard to arrange wisely interests so distributed. America, England, Samoa, Sydney, everywhere I have an end of liability hanging out and some shelf of credit hard by; and to juggle all these and build a dwelling-place here, and check expense - a thing I am ill fitted for - you can conceive what a nightmare it is at times. Then God knows I have not been idle. But since THE MASTER nothing has come to raise any coins. I believe the springs ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not pull through this, old fellow," says Hawk, with just a tear-glint under one eyelid. He lay under a shelf of rock, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... a lenten dish, but it's hot and good. I don't offer you brandy, you're keeping the fast. But would you like some? No; I'd better give you some of our famous liqueur. Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, the second shelf on the right. Here ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had never been. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images. Sharpened by incessant training, it is all culture, but it has retained hardly anything in its meshes. It is without matter, and is only form. It no longer has knowledge; it has become method. It is etherealized, algebraicized. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... revolver at his ear, the second proceeded to search the house. Drawers, boxes, and cupboards were opened and ransacked in quick succession; every corner of the two rooms was examined; the very dishes on the shelf were turned upside down, and the sugar-basin smashed to pieces with a blow, in case it should ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... and the delight of my eyes is my garden. Our house, which is in dimensions very much like a bird-cage, and might, with almost equal convenience, be laid on a shelf, or hung up in a tree, would be utterly unbearable in warm weather, were it not that we have a retreat out of doors,—and a very pleasant retreat it is. To make my readers fully comprehend it, I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... said, taking a little book from the shelf, "I believe this belonged to him too. I remember to have seen him more than once poring over it with them close-seeing eyes of his. The man was a rare scholar, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... at a hotel in a great garden. If it had liked, it could have called the whole valley its garden, for it is a vast flowery lawn with mountains for a wall. Such a strange wall, with a high-up stone shelf on which you might think the brave Pequawket Indians had left the images of their gods, beyond the reach of white men. They had a fine village of wigwams where our hotel stands now, facing the mountains it's named for, and the trees and the Saco ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... answer to this. The ceremony was set for early afternoon when Grandmother Halloran took her nap and Nellie could borrow the bottle of holy water from her shelf. As to the place, there were six boys at the Hallorans' always in the way; Mrs. Lawrence had guests; obviously the baptismal rite would have to be performed at Hannah's home. After lunch the children assembled in the sun parlor of the Josephs' home, in full view of Mrs. Joseph who sat embroidering ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon

... and I did so enjoy them. They were so much more amusing than all the jog-trot Harley Street ways. The wardrobe shelf with handles, that served as a supper-tray on grand occasions! And the old tea-chests stuffed and covered for ottomans! I think what you call the makeshift contrivances at dear Helstone were a charming part ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... want?" drawled the lean girl, resting her red elbows on the well-shelf and looking down at ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... plate-glass base (c) by means of wax or grease. It contains a cylindrical vessel of porous clay (a) into the top of which pure sulphuric acid is poured whilst the material to be dried is placed within its walls on a glass shelf (b). The air is exhausted from the interior and the acid rapidly converts the clay vessel into a ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... replied the clerk, amiably, so the sheepherder stared at the baubles of cut glass on the shelf with a pleased expression and hung over the counter where the rings, watches and bracelets glittered. Then he examined a string of sponges carefully—sponges always interested him—they suggested picturesque ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... faintly smeared with blood. She shuddered, looking in horror at the colour against her hand; and Alf nodded sharply at seeing his supposition verified. His eye wandered from the insensible body, to a chair, to the open cupboard, to the topmost shelf of the cupboard. Emmy followed his glance point by point, and in conclusion they looked straight into each other's eyes, with ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... his cloak," and "Blind man's buff": and then when we got tired we sat down—on the beds or anywhere—Hatty took off the mirror and perched herself on the dressing-table, and Charlotte wanted to climb up and sit on the mantel-shelf, but Sophy would not let her— and then we had a round of "How do you like it?" and then we ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... with a large rock-hole, and water in the sand of the creek-bed. I called this Wyselaski's* Glen, and the creek the Hopkins. It was a very fine and pretty spot, and the grass excellent. On reaching the Peak or Sugar-loaf, without troubling the old rocky shelf, so difficult for horses to approach, and where there was very little water, we found another spot, a kind of native well, half a mile west of the gorge, and over a rise. We pushed on now for Mount Olga, and camped in casuarina and triodia sandhills ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... almanac, and a torn newspaper, but she knew them both by heart. Betsey wished she "only had a little book," but she knew mother couldn't buy books, when she had not money enough for bread; so she twisted and turned, and rubbed her lame foot, and lay and looked at the mantel with its pewter lamp, and the shelf with its two earthen bowls, and its wooden spoons and platters, and the bench with her mother's wash tub on it and a square of brown soap, and the brown jug full of starch, and the old worn-out broom and mop. Betsey could have seen them just as well had her eyes been shut, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... hurled from a catapult, the Irishman was ejected from the white monster's back. He fell on a wide shelf of ice, covered with light snow, through which he was tunnelled, and dropped on another ledge below, near the path by which he and his companions had ascended. "Shied from the finish, by God!" said Jo Gordineer. "'Le pauvre Shon!'" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a good sound," said Skallagrim, and he turned and smelt at the cask; "aye, and a good smell, too! We tasted little ale yonder on Mosfell, and we shall find less at sea." Again he looked at the cask. There was a spigot in it, and lo! on the shelf ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... indulge in in one's own home; but to lead for months and months a lodging-house life is very miserable: it benumbs the best of our faculties; the edge of enjoyment is blunted. Music is sweeter within the compass of your own walls; the book is pleasanter taken from the familiar shelf of your own library; in one's own studio the habit of happy occupation has made an atmosphere that has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... himself, and then took a long pull at a black bottle that always stood on a shelf. When a man puts a black bottle to his lips, tips it up, and takes down several good pulls almost without drawing breath, most people suppose that he is a person of vicious habits. In Overholt's case most people would have been wrong. The black bottle contained ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... anything about Stoke Newton and old Crawley's resignation," said Rendel, quite prepared to follow her advice. "I don't suppose he takes a very jovial view of life just now, poor old boy. Oh, how I should hate to be on the shelf!" ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... experiments, the little girl, who was proud of having arranged it neatly, ran on before him, and showed him the places where all his things were put. "The writing and the figures are not rubbed off your slate—there it is, sir," said she, pointing to a high shelf. "But whose handkerchief is this?" said Henry, taking up a handkerchief which was under the slate. "Gracious! that must be the good gentleman's handkerchief; he missed it just as he was going out of the house. He thought ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... wrists, when he became aware of ascending footsteps overhead. What were they going up-stairs for? Was it a sparring match? Forgetting his precarious position he leaned forward to listen, upsetting a box on the shelf beside him. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... away ole Trouble, An' dry up all yo' tears; Yo' pleasure sho' to double An' you bound to lose yo' keers. Jes lay away ole Sorrer High upon de shelf; And never mind to-morrer, ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson

... same two metals and the same electrolyte, you could make batteries that would run the gamut from terrible to excellent. Some of 'em, maybe, wouldn't hold a charge more than an hour, while others would have a shelf-life, fully charged, of as much as a year. Batteries don't work according to theory. If they did, potassium chlorate would be a better depolarizer than manganese dioxide, instead of the other way around. What you ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)

... tak it ye must be famished; so my old woman must get up an' help mak ye comfortable," says he, bringing forth a black tea-kettle, and filling it from a pail that stood on a shelf near the fire-frame. He will hang it on the fire. He had no need of calling the good dame; for as suddenly as mysteriously does the chubby figure of a motherly-looking female of some forty years shoot from the before described opening, and greeting the strangers with a hearty ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... like being put to sleep on a shelf, Nan declared, when the porter made up the beds at nine o'clock. She climbed into the upper berth a little later, sure that she would not sleep, and intending to look out of the narrow window to watch the snowy landscape ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... ever wore a waistcoat. The local dealers of the Southwest had been utterly unable to impress this fact upon the mind of the Eastern manufacturer. The result was that every suit came in three parts, one of which always remained upon the shelf of the store. Some of the supply merchants had several thousand of these articles de luxe in their stock. In later years they gave them away ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... cannot go yourself, To win the berries from the thickets wild, And housewife skill, instead, has filled the shelf With blackberry jam, "by best receipts compiled,— Not made with country sugar, for too strong The flavors that to maple-juice belong; But foreign sugar, nicely mixed 'to suit The taste,' spoils not the fragrance of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live "like other people." With a gesture that said, "Oh, Hell!" he jumped from his chair and took down a volume of verse from the pine shelf above the mantel and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose himself and forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of things ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... work at a standstill for the moment—'I'll tell you what: the only plan is this—for you to go straight to Miss Scarlett herself and tell her all about your having forgotten the book, and how anxious you are about the prize. I daresay she'd let you go to your shelf and fetch it; she would see you had not ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... host, who silently nodded in return, and the old horse jogged off with him down the road, as Clarsie entered the house and placed the pail upon a shelf. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... merrily. "And six weeks ago if any one had come to me in my Top Shelf where I carried on my profession, and outlined this for me"—she waved her hand around the room—"I'd have called the janitor to put out an unsafe person. Hey-ho!" And then the brown head was bent over the problem of an order which had come in ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well—and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... gnawed my moustache, I tore my gloves off and then put them on again, I walked up and down the little drawing-room, I shifted the clock, which stood on the mantel-shelf; I could not keep still. I had already experienced such sensations on the morning of the assault on the Malakoff. Suddenly the General, who was still going on with his eternal game at ecarte with the prefect, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz



Words linked to "Shelf" :   support, closet, mantel, grocery store, berm, dresser, bookcase, chimneypiece, bureau, overmantel, market, mantlepiece, food market, ridge, hob, buffet, grocery, cabinet, etagere, sideboard, counter, chest of drawers, mantelpiece, mantle, chest



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