She put back the page of
vellum in her writing-desk, locked it, and led the way to the door.
From brother Francis I have learned to paint on
vellum, on glass, and on metal, with a knowledge of those pigments and essences which can preserve the color against damp or a biting air.
All that was most sugared and musical and generally delusive in the old library of her fathers had been brought out to this little woodland library, and to that nucleus of old leather-bound poets and romancers, long since dead, yet as alive and singing on their shelves as any bird on the sunny boughs outside, my young lady's private purse had added all that was most sugared and musical and generally delusive in the
vellum bound Japanese-paper literature of our own luxurious day.
Then he unlocked one of the safes and drew out from an inner drawer a parchment book bound in brown
vellum. He spread out the dispatch and read it carefully.
It is written on
vellum, and is some four or five thousand years old.
The name of this old book helps us to remember that long ago there was no paper, and that books were written on
vellum made from calf-skin and upon parchment made from sheep-skin.
Just now I am afraid," he concluded, "this will seem to you but a bundle of purple velvet and
vellum, but it is really a manuscript of great curiosity which comes from the oldest monastery in Asia, the Monastery of Koya-San."
You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or
vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire.
I believe he had been knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate address engrossed on
vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar.
All this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than look at the little
vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before (the "Sonnets from the Portuguese"); but she was learning by heart "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," because it was one of the first things he had ever read to her; and it amused her to be able to tell him that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called Robert Browning.
People told them what to see, when to see it, how to stop the electric trams, how to get rid of the beggars, how much to give for a
vellum blotter, how much the place would grow upon them.
There also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses, alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls placed upon
vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders' webs; but there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the flaming vision, as the eagle gazes upon the sun.