United States or Switzerland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled letters and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay awaiting their recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of dirty plates and to an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the portress was busy mending. And in the middle of this untidy, ill-kept storeroom sat four fashionable, white-gloved society men.
Padna thought it must be very dreary to sit there all day among old and new boots, pieces of leather, boxes of brass eyelets, awls, knives, and punchers. No wonder the shoemaker was a melancholy-looking man. Padna maintained a discreet silence while the shoemaker turned his critical glasses upon the boots he had brought him for repair.
Last of all, the shoe is put upon a treeing machine, where an iron foot stretches it into precisely the shape of the wooden last on which it was made. This is the method by which large numbers of shoes are made, but there are many details which differ. Laced shoes must have tongues as well as eyelets, while buttoned shoes must have buttons and buttonholes.
They fluttered; the laces raced through the eyelets; the flaps parted, and a girl, unveiled, stepped out into the firelight. They stood, silent, gazing one at the other. "You have been long in coming," she said, at length. There is no love-making in the desert. Thanks to its fervent heat, love there comes ready-made.
Our private soldiers wore the rubber poncho-blankets above their overcoats in wet weather, and two "pardners" would make a shelter tent of the pair of waterproofs which had metal eyelets to adapt them to this use.
Every man is provided with a square of canvas with eyelets, which serves as a carpet on which he lies at night, as a stretcher on which, when wounded, he is carried to the place where he can have his injuries attended to, and which, when he is killed, is used as a winding-sheet. The medical organization of the army is as thorough as the military.
In fact, he was too busy to give much heed to it. With nimble fingers he unpacked his roll of banners; and, in a few minutes, he was securing the long streamer to the pole, which he did by lacing it to the pole with leather thongs, through eyelets that he had sewed in the cloth. In a few minutes the great banner fluttered to the breeze. "Hurrah!" cried Teddy exultingly. "We're off!"
Then imagine a piece of stout canvas, some four and one-half feet in length, with large and heavy brass eyelets running down both edges. The width of this canvas is never the full girth of the human body it is to surround. The width is also irregular broadest at the shoulders, next broadest at the hips, and narrowest at the waist. The jacket is spread on the floor.
All we wanted was them needles and a little elbow-grease and gumption. So we started in, and 'fore night, she still a-thrashin', I'd fixed up the sails, patched the eyelets with a pair o' boot-legs, and was off again." "What were you doing off Hatteras, Captain Bob?" I asked.
But when he began to finger his leggings with the endless laces and the innumerable eyelets she snatched them from him. "Those in the taxi," she said. "But there is no taxi." "There will be a taxi. I have sent the maid." At the last moment, as she was hurrying him on to the staircase, she grasped her handbag. They stumbled one after the other down the dark stairs.
Word Of The Day