Mats

“ Mats are mainly used for covering floors, or in horticulture as a protection against cold or exposure for plants and trees. When used near the entrance to a house for people to wipe their boots on “door mats” are usually made of coarse coco-nut fibre, or india-rubber, cork, or of thickly coiled wire. Bags, rolls or sacks made of matting are used to hold coffee, flax, rice and other produce, and the term is often used with reference to the specific quantities of such produce, e.g. ”

“ These mats are not only used to lie upon, but are also worn by the women over their shoulders as a protection in wet weather. They are especially useful, as I have myself found, when sleeping out in the open in wet weather. ”

“ Mats, plain and ornamented, are also manufactured for use and for sale. It is said that the Indian, with no other instrument than his knife for all his domestic needs, and his plough for his field labours, supplies himself with every object of desire. ”

“ For the man cutting the arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with the appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual arrow-heads or mats of the same type, would become aware of the different effect which such shapes had on the person who looked at them. ”

“ Your best plan would be to experiment a little. Lay the work loosely, confined by a mere basting stitch, and see whether, when the mat has grown as long as your paper pattern, it will be of the proper width. You will not find the planning difficult; it merely needs the patience and carefulness which I feel sure you will bestow; and the result will be an entire nest of pretty and useful mats which will be a delightful surprise to mamma on Christmas morning, and a comfort to her as well as to Hannah throughout the year. ”

“ At night they generally ly on mats, or some other hard matrasses; however, I have sometimes seen good beds in the cells of some of them. They have no possessions here, having made vows of poverty, and live chiefly on the alms which people give them. ”

“ As he said,—
“Mat doesn’t speak the best English, but he doesn’t mind my teaching him, and it’s a real pleasure; he’s so quick at picking anything up.”
And Mat found that his tasks were to his liking. What pleased him most was the fact that he could give a return, in many little ways, for the kindness shown him. One of his chief delights was teaching Master Tom, the squire’s son, how to ride, and also to shoot,—tramping through the forest, and beating up the game for him. ”

“ Mat was a world-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen. [1] He loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, "in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to pass that evening and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a Spiel-haus with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. ”

“ Single men sleep on the ground on a mat, which may be nothing more than the leaves of two branches of the cocoa-nut palm rudely plaited together. Each man lays his mat by the side of a little smouldering wood-fire, which he endeavours to keep up during the night, and for this purpose he gets up at all hours to fan it into a flame. ”

“ The old mat, which from generation to generation has been jealously guarded by his clan, is his patent of nobility, and the title-deed which, proves his right to broad acres. Some of these strips of dirty old matting, which no rag-man would pick off a dust-heap, are known throughout the group by special names. There is one, which is known to be upwards of 200 years old, during which period its successive guardians have all been duly enrolled. ”

“ At the same time, in order to secure his advantage and keep off the teeth and claws of the monster, he gave him a whirling motion. So, round and round they went, the cudgel flying like a flail, and the beast leaping, scratching, and howling, till the woods echoed with the sound. There was an odd mixture of sublimity and fun in the affair, that even then, in the moment of peril, I could not fail to feel. Mat’s hat had flown off, his hair streamed in the wind, and his glaring eyeballs watching every twist and turn of his enemy; his cane went rapidly up and down ”

“ The high mesa, with the water of mirage rolling over it, was a kind of enchanted land to him where almost anything might happen. He would lie contentedly for hours with his head pillowed on the hillocks of blown sand about the roots of the sage, and look up at the merry-go-round. He noticed that, although others joined them from the invisible upper sky, none ever seemed to go away, but hung and circled and faded into the thin blue deeps of air. Often he saw them settle flockwise below the rim of the mesa and beyond his sight, wondering greatly what they might be about. ”

“ Often in early morning, as the sun rises over the lower mists, the naked peaks and precipices, standing apart like islands, glisten with rosy tints, while the mist itself, as yet dense and undisturbed, lies wrapped around their bases, filling every ravine and valley, and glittering like a sea of molten silver. ”

“ If Mat had a source of vanity deeper than another, it was of this above-mentioned article; and this, too, was so well known of him, that most of his presents consisted of handkerchiefs. He had, among his deposits, a good-sized box full of these useful and ornamental inventions. There was one from Lucy and Lizzie, four Sallies, three Dinahs, three Betties, two or three Janes, as many Anns, and hosts of others too numerous to mention. ”

“ Conversing in this manner, the illustrious philosopher [78] and his disciple tranquilly went their way along the valleys of the Zorn. Mathéus, who loved nothing so well as the interior of the woods, forgot the ingratitude of the human species; the scarce perceptible sound of an insect nibbling the bark of an old tree, the flight of a bird through the rustling foliage, the vague murmur of a stream in the ravine, the whirl of the gnats dancing above the still pools—these thousand details of solitude ceaselessly furnished new texts for his anthropo-zoological meditations. ”

“ In autumn, when Matte and Maie went ashore, the cow went to sea, and in spring, when they returned to the rock, there she stood awaiting them.
‘We shall require a better house,’ said Maie the following summer; ‘the old one is too small for ourselves and the men.’
‘Yes,’ said Matte. So he built a large cottage, with a real lock to the door, and a store-house for fish as well; and he and his men caught such quantities of fish that they sent tons of salmon, herring, and cod to Russian and Sweden. ”

“ The mist has descended and filled the valleys as if all the clouds of the heavens had fallen down, while the mountain-peaks, radiant with the sunlight, rise out of the mist like islands out of a deep sea. ”

“ But throughout his long career as guardian of his master, he had been never known to lose patience with him. Even mothers become vexed exceedingly with undutiful children; but this care of Mat for his worthless master exceeded even that of a mother for her child. Exceeded? Nay, we will say equalled.
It was somewhat rare in the slave States for servants to meet for religious purposes; insurrection might brood under such a cover. Mat, however, was so well known and so universally esteemed in his neighborhood, that he was allowed to hold his prayer-meetings every Sunday night. ”

“ The gloom upon them deepens; and they soon present to our view a ponderous mass of almost level surface. From time to time a fleecy tuft of mist, with yet some gleaming light left upon it, drops down upon the dense floor of grey, and loses itself in the opaque and impenetrable mass. ”

“ After spending several hours a day in the mat discussing with the spirits and trying to discover which is menacing the family, he at last decides on one, and when the right moment arrives the medicine man makes a terrific noise inside the mat, as though he were fighting for his life. ”

“ The skins of some beasts supply men with the finest and best linings, in the countries that are most remote from the sun.
Thus the Author of nature has clothed beasts according to their necessities; and their spoils serve afterwards to clothe men, and keep them warm in those frozen climes. The living creatures that have little or no hair have a very thick and very hard skin, like scales; others have even scales that cover one another, as tiles on the top of a house, and which either open or shut, as it best suits with the living creature, either to extend itself or shrink. ”

“ When Mat came down to open the garage, Jules was huddled up, his feet on one of the rungs of the chair and his chin on his knees, and in the gray light with his pallid face and mottled mustache he looked very ill indeed. Mat saw at a glance that he had no business to be there—and besides, the cars had not been washed. He would have to get busy and clean them himself. ”

“ These planks rise the height of the house, and to a drunken man have the appearance of fluted columns. To complete the illusion in the eyes of the drunken man, the planks are topped with wooden Ionic capitals, nailed on, and in, I may say, bas-relief. ”

“ Your identification disks are in order. Come here and take them, and go quietly to your compartment in Section 9Y66. For all I care you can make love romantically all night long—right here in the mating center. That should content you, I should imagine. Why should you go to a vine-covered dwelling in the forest? It's all down here. You have a dwelling in the forest where you spent your—revolting word out of the old books—honeymoon. ”

“ Each mountain, as if its firm and immutable form were flexible and varying, altered in appearance, like that of a shadowy apparition, as the position of the strangers relative to them changed with their motions, and as the mist, which continued slowly though constantly to descend, influenced the rugged aspect of the hills and valleys which it shrouded with its vapoury mantle. ”

“ The ceremony is called “feeding the dead.”351 In the Tenimber and Timor-laut Islands, East Indies, the first-fruits of the paddy, along with live fowls and pigs, are offered to the matmate. The matmate are the spirits of their ancestors, which are worshipped as guardian-spirits or household gods. They are supposed to enter the house through an opening in the roof, and to take up their abode temporarily in their skulls, or in images of wood or ivory, in order to partake of the offerings and to help the family. ”

“ A mat is to be let down from the top in severe weather, and taken up when it is mild. This will preserve them, without making them weak or sickly. The beds and boxes of seedling flowers should also be covered, and the fence removed when the weather is mild. ”

“ Mat—by far the most able man, though they were both cripples—carried Tim over bad bits of ground; but on level country the latter managed well enough by resting one hand on his brother’s shoulder. Having thus covered some miles of country, they came to a water-hole with several small tracks leading to it; round the margin were prints of numerous feet freshly stamped in the sand.
58
“Here they be,” whispered Mat, pointing to the signs, “big feet and little feet, a whole tribe of ’em, and can’t be far off neither. We must go careful like.” ”

“ They are a gruesome spectacle, these fat matrons and lean old maids; even the young girls, who might be good-looking if their faces were dry, have an unsavoury appearance, for salt water seems to have an ugly knack of washing out shams, stripping off borrowed charms, and leaving the original visage clear and visible. ”

“ Of early mornings the mountain bases in the distances are billows of smoked-pearl mist; as the light strengthens and the temperature rises, the mist rises with it, dissipating gradually into thin wreaths of dainty rose-pink, faint orange—and nothingness. ”

“ He took two wicker bottles to a neighboring spring, filled them, and laid them on the ground beside the spring, while he went to gather some plants to stick into the mouths of the bottles as stopples. As he went he heard a voice saying “Hist!” and looking in the direction whence it came he saw a form sitting in the water; it wore a mask like the head of a great owl and it was smoking a pipe. When he turned towards it, it said, “You walk around like one without sense or knowledge. Why don’t you do something for yourself? ”

“ Under matted sheds, which are so many temporary stages without footlights, groups with life-sized figures are arranged, whose faces and hands are of wax or composition, but whose clothes, the accessories, and scenery are made of living flowers, trained so closely over a framework that the mechanism is not even suspected. ”

“ According to Matthew, the householder sent other servants 'more than the first,' and the climax was that he sent his son. Mightier forces are brought to bear. This attraction increases as the square of the distance. The blacker the cloud, the brighter the sun; the thicker the ice, the hotter the flame; the harder the soil, the stronger the ploughshare. ”

“ All the giants of the grove are sacred; and the matting was bound about them to prevent pilgrims from stripping off their bark, which is believed to possess miraculous virtues. But many, more zealous than honest, do not hesitate to tear away the matting in order to get at the bark. ”

“ Far away, rising dimly against the afternoon sky we saw a chain of mountain tops and, towering above them, two singular peaks that were of such needlelike sharpness as to suggest twin Matterhorns, and of such regularity, as seen from that distance, as to suggest the handiwork of man rather than nature. ”