"Four-poster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hepplewhite four-poster that he wheedled out of an old Pennsylvania Dutch woman for a mere song. The posts at the head were sawed off so that the bed could stand in a room with a sloping ceiling, but, fortunately, the thrifty owner had saved the pieces instead of using ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... creaking stairs. The door to his parents' room stood slightly ajar. He pushed it open cautiously and peered in. The blinds were drawn, and the room was very dim, so Bobby could make out only the dark shape of the great four-poster bed, and could not tell whether or not his father and mother still slept. For a long time he hesitated, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. Then he ventured, only just ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... rose-geranium that always hung about her; he noticed that the green shutters on the west windows were bowed, and from between them a line of sunshine fell across the matting on the floor and touched the four-poster that had a chintz spread and valance. How well he knew the faded roses and the cockatoos on that old chintz! Over there by the window he had caught her crying that time he had hurt her feelings, "just for his own pleasure"; the old stab of this thought ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... room, its chintz hangings, four-poster bed, low wicker chair by the fireplace, fresh Cherokee roses on the mantel; a room of cheerfulness and open spaces. He stared into woods where a cool light lay on moss and fern. He did not need to remember Ruth's kisses. For each breath of hilltop air, each emerald of moss, each shining mahogany ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... won't sleep in that bed," said Mrs. Cameron. "I must have a four-poster with curtains all round, and plenty of dark drapery to the windows. My eyes are weak, and I don't intend to have them injured with the cold ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... rooms were the finest in the house. The oak paneled walls were hung with tapestry, and every piece of furniture was an antique curiosity. It was a bedchamber for a prince, and indeed a royal prince had once slept in the quaint high four-poster with its carved oak pillars and ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mother had put a nice clean valance, freshly starched and ruffled, around the big four-poster bed in the sitting-room, Will would daub it up with smearcase, and just before the preachers arrived, sneak in under ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... She. "Go right back and start all over, and possibly sometime Next Year you will again have the blessed Privilege of going up a neglected Alley twice a Day and changing your Clothes in a Barn. Any Girl with your Looks and Family Connections can curl up in a Four-Poster at night and then saunter to the Bath over a soft Rag in the Morning, but only a throbbing Genius can make these Night Jumps in a Day Coach and stop at a Hotel which is operated as an Auxiliary to a first-class Saloon. It will be Hard Sledding for the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... looks much as the Mayflower must have looked steering across Cape Cod Bay on that special occasion we read of in sacred and profane history, hung about with four-poster beds and whatnots. In our neighborhood," the plump girl added, "there is enough decrepit furniture declared to have been brought over on the Mayflower to have made a cargo for ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... and indeed quite convinced that wherever the criminal lurked at that moment he was not in the same room with me, I turned my attention to my surroundings, which had many points of interest. Foremost among these was the big four-poster which occupied a large space at my right. I had never seen its like in use before, and I was greatly attracted by its size and the air of mystery imparted to it by its closely drawn curtains of faded brocade. In fact, this bed, whether from its appearance or some occult influence ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... possibilities. There must be room for endless Uplift in Whitmanville. And what could be richer than Uplift? She would start a school, she thought, as she turned off the light and climbed into her four-poster. She would teach the women how to take care of their babies and the men how to take care of their women. But it must all be done tactfully. She must be eternally vigilant upon that score. Yet not so tactful as to become less rich. Nor yet so rich ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... presence of a pair of low-branched oak trees in the side-yard, almost within arm's length of the wall,—they were so close, in fact, that their limbs stretched out over the rough shingle roof, producing in the wind an everlasting sound of scratching and scraping. There was a huge four-poster feather bed of mountainous proportions, leaving the occupant scant space in which to move ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... nice old party is so pinched for money that she'll have to take their offer. So the time has come when she'll have to leave that old cottage, with its romance, and its memories, and its lamp in the window, and go to live in a cheap little flat, see? Where the old four-poster will choke up ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the short turning staircase, and into a quaint old-fashioned bedroom, with four-poster bed, chintz hangings, and fine ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... and there is literally no more excitement of emotion in Homer, as he describes them, nor does he expect us to be more excited or touched by hearing about them, than if he had been telling us how the chambermaid at the Bull aired the four-poster, and put ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the old Tartar throne, which puts one in mind of Attila's queen, Zingis's lieutenant, and Timour. "The old divan, upon which the Sultans formerly reclined when they gave audience, looks like an overgrown four-poster, covered with carbuncles, turquoise, amethysts, topaz, emeralds, ruby, and diamond: the couch was covered with Damascus silk and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... take the whole matter coolly, while I see what is the matter with the patient. That is what I say to myself, as I draw a chair to the bedside. The bed is an old-fashioned, dark mahogany four-poster. It was never that which made the noise of something moving. It is too heavy to be pushed about the room.—The Little Gentleman was sitting, bolstered up by pillows, with his hands clasped and their united palms resting on the back of the head, one of the three or four positions specially affected ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... so wired that one can illuminate every room from the hall or from the master's bedroom. This necessitates complicated wiring and will not be found necessary by most of us. Neither will we desire to spend our hardly won cash in wiring our four-poster bed for reading lights, or to put lights under the dining table for use in searching for the lost articles that always by some instinct seek the darkest spots in the room. If there be a barn or shed on the lot, an extension carried there ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... large, and, as is unusual here, apart from stables and cow-shed, the kitchen and outhouse being on the ground floor, the young men's bedrooms above. Our hostess slept in a large, curtained four-poster, occupying a corner of the kitchen. A handsome wardrobe of solid oak stood in a conspicuous place, but held only a portion of the family linen. These humble housewives count their sheets by the dozen of dozens, and linen is still spun at home, although not on the scale of former days. The ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and, softly pushing open the chamber-door, entered noiselessly, turned, and, as the other stepped across the threshold, nestled her hands one on the other at her waist, shrank inward with a sweet smile, and waved one palm toward the huge, blue-hung mahogany four-poster,—empty. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... hardened into a glacier: its visible third dazzling and symmetrical, its deadly bulk skulking below the surface of the waters which divided the two parts of him from his victims; might have died in the chaste reclusion of an ancestral four-poster, beneficiaries at his side. But that immalleable mind lacked the strong fibre of logic and foresight—which is all that moral force amounts to—that lifts a man triumphant above his worst temptations; and he paid the bitter and hideous penalty in a poverty, loneliness, and living death ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... I replied: "why what can you want with a couch in the day-time, Annie? A couch is a small bed, set up in a room without space for a good four-poster. What can you want with a couch downstairs? I never heard of such nonsense. And you ought to be in ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... happened to notice this when visiting a guard-room, and he had the whole story explained to him. The late Prince Imperial also came for a 'British Workman,' and probably it was pinned behind His Royal Highness' four-poster. He was a member of the Royal Canoe Club, and one of his canoes was saved from the fire at the palace of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... was a four-poster bed with pineapples, and an Adams screen, an old brass-bound chest, the most adorable things in Sheffield and crystal, and to crown it all, a picture of George Washington—a print, faintly colored, with the country's coat of arms carved ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... passed; Louis spent Christmas at Lashnagar and then took Marcella and the boy to London. Marcella was feeling very ill, but he was too happy and too full of his work to notice it. She was very glad to get back again, to sleep in her father's old four-poster bed looking out on Ben Grief. When he had gone back to Edinburgh she spent many wakeful nights, drawn in upon herself, thinking herself to nothingness like a Buddhist monk until pain brought her to realization ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... It was a huge four-poster bed which one could mount only by the aid of a set of bedside steps, and so high that the valance, draped around it like a skirt, would have reached from her neck to her heels had it been draped on her. It was a chintz valance with birds of paradise patterned ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... enough to illuminate it with the pale flames of their candles, before they realized that they were very near the heart of the mystery. It was another bedroom, the largest so far, and its aspect was very different from that of the others. The high four-poster was tossed and tumbled, not, however, as if by a night's sleep, but more as if some one had lain upon it just as it was, twisting and turning restlessly. Two trunks stood on the floor, open and partially ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... a few lessons in the last two years, lessons which were making her (at least on her "good days") a trifle kinder, and at any rate a juster woman than she used to be. When she alighted on the wrong side of her four-poster in the morning, or felt an extra touch of rheumatism, she was still grim and unyielding; but sometimes a curious sort of melting process seemed to go on within her, when her whole bony structure softened, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Elise had managed to make it habitable by getting it scrubbed very clean, and by taking out everything that was not in keeping with the oldness and quaintness. The resulting effect was bare but beautiful. There were a great many books, a few oil-portraits, mahogany sideboards and tables and four-poster beds, candles in sconces and in branched candlesticks. They were married in April, and when we went down in June poppies were blowing in the wide grass spaces, and honeysuckle rioting over the low stone walls. I think we all felt as if we had passed through ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... worn and worried; she had been up nearly all night, back and forth from Ben's bed in the loft to restless, fretful little Phronsie in the big four-poster in the bedroom; for Phronsie wouldn't get into the crib. Polly had tried her best to help her, and had rubbed her eyes diligently to keep awake, but she was wholly unaccustomed to it, and her healthy, tired ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... she begged to retire at once, and was forthwith escorted to a huge cavern of a room, which boasted tapestried walls, an oaken ceiling, and a four-poster bed large enough to have accommodated the whole fifth-form at a pinch. It looked cheery enough, however, in the light of a great peat fire, and the visitor was feeling so unwell after her stormy crossing that her one overpowering ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... brought out and set in order. There was a great four-poster bed with hangings and curtains of damask, a basin and ewer and other costly novelties such as never before had ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... with the two chairs and the table, on which a kitchen lamp with a half-inch of oil in it was standing, gave no sign of recent habitation. Carmichael glanced around him and hurried up the stairway to the bedroom. A tall four-poster stood in one corner, with a coverlet apparently hiding a mattress and some pillows. A dressing-table stood against the wall, and in the middle of the floor there were a few chairs. A half-open closet door showed a pile ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... room just as clean as the other one, and also with a canopied four-poster in one corner. With cries of delight the girls discovered that it also ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... to the dreary room that his father inhabited. Even here the paper was peeling off the walls, some of the window-glass was broken and the carpet was torn. His father lay on his back in an old high four-poster. His eyes stared before him, cheeks were ashen white—his hands too were ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Municipal" above its portals. In Spanish times it was the training-school for girls, and here temporary accommodation had been provided for us. We crossed a hall and a court where ferns and palms were growing, and were ushered into a room containing a number of four-poster beds. We were to obtain our food at a neighboring restaurant, whither we soon set out under guidance. The street was narrow, and all the houses had projecting second floors which overhung the sidewalk. Box-like shops on the ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... her bed and, trembling with excitement, ran silently down the long, bare hall to her brothers' room. It was a big chamber above the dining-room. Its only furniture was two beds; a big old four-poster, where John and Malcolm slept on a lumpy straw mattress, and a low "bunk" or box-like structure on casters, where the little boys, Archie and Jamie, lay tossed about in a tangle of bare limbs and blankets. Elizabeth brushed back her hair from her sleepy eyes, and peered into the dim room. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... you shall see straight this very night if you do what I tell you. Go home and tell your wife to make your bed on the roof of the four-poster; and she must make it widdershins, turnin' bed-tie and all against the sun, and puttin' the pillow where the feet come as a ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pitying sound. The officer on the bed had now breathed his last. She brought the unneeded surgeon to the crushed ankle, summoned to help him another of the women in the house, then moved to the four-poster and aided the tearless widow, young and soon again to become a mother, to lay the dead calm and straight. The little girl began to shake and shudder. She took her in her arms and carried her out of the room. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... which the political philosopher slept is a broad four-poster, not with slender and finely carved posts, like Fnelon's, but severely simple. Indeed, in none of the furniture of this room is there any indication of the love of the ornamental. On the contrary, everything tells of a mind that set no value upon aught but the strictly ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... probabilities of sport the eight hundred acres of wild shooting belonging to The Shallows would afford me, than of the supposed will my poor aunt had evidently worried herself about so much. Thoroughly tired after my long journey, I soon fell fast asleep amid the deep shadows of the huge four-poster I mentally resolved to chop up into firewood at an early date, and substitute for it a ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a low four-poster, shelving downward in the centre like a trough, and the room was crowded with impracticable tables and exploded chests of drawers, full of damp linen. A graphic representation in oil of a remarkably fat ox hung over the fireplace, and the portrait of some former landlord (who might have been the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... marshaled her forces with no lack of decision, but with a fainting voice which made me run over to her quickly as Paul laid her down on the four-poster. Her eyes were still indomitable, but her mouth hung open slackly and her color was startling. "Oh, Paul, quick! quick! Haven't you your ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... him into another bedroom, where there was a fine four-poster with a dais, and everything worthy of a noble to sleep upon. Then the King became sure that Jack was a real noble, and married him soon to his daughter ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... still drawing in his breath and Honor smiled. "Merry from much comedy" the house had been in the old gay days; dark from much tragedy it seemed to-day. What would it be to her when she came back again? But, little by little, the old room soothed and stilled her. There were the sedate four-poster bed and the demure dresser and the little writing desk, good mahogany all of them; come by devious paths from a Virginia plantation; the cool blue of walls and rugs and hangings; the few pictures she had loved; three framed ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... a good spot for camping, a place cleared for a camp, a camp as an abstract proposition, and a camp in the concrete as represented by a tent, a thatched shelter, or a conical tepee. In like manner, the English word camp lends itself to a variety of concepts. I once slept in a four-poster bed over a polished floor in an elaborate servant-haunted structure which, mainly because it was built of logs and overlooked a lake, the owner always spoke of as his camp. Again, I once slept on a bed of prairie grass, before a fire of dried buffalo chips and mesquite, wrapped in a single ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... married. I don't know what her meanin' was. You won't believe it, but it's true what I'm going to tell you. She said to me, did Susanna, 'Simon there was Mary Toft, couldn't die, because there were wild-fowl feathers in her bed. They had to take her off the four-poster and get another feather-bed, before she could die right off. Now,' said Sanna, 'it's somethin' like that with me. I ain't got wild-bird feathers under me, but there's a wild fowl in the house, and that's Polly. So long as she's here die I can't, and die I won't.' 'Well, old woman,' sed I, if ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... to smoke a cigarette. That done, he began to undress slowly and almost unconsciously. During the process he repeated to himself more than once the Count's measured but emphatic words: "A person whom I particularly wish to avoid." The words died away as Dieppe climbed into the big four-poster with a wrinkle of annoyance ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... a handsome dressing-bureau and French bedstead that my wife went to look at in the ware-room of a high-priced cabinet maker, tempted her strongly, and it was with some difficulty that I could get her ideas back to a regular maple four-poster, a plain, ten dollar bureau, and a two dollar dressing-glass. Twenty and thirty dollar mattresses, too, were in her mind, but when articles of the kind, just as good to wear, could be had at eight and ten dollars, where was the use ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... peace of the whole scene,— then, shutting the lattice, she pulled the curtains across it, and taking her lit candle, went to her secluded inner sleeping- chamber, where, in the small, quaintly carved four-poster bed, furnished with ancient tapestry and lavendered linen, and covered up under a quilt embroidered three centuries back by the useful fingers of the wife of Sieur Amadis de Jocelin, she soon fell into a sound and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... two candles apiece, the girls followed Miss Aurora to a large bedroom on the second floor, which also boasted its carved four-poster and chintz draperies. ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... the boys each in a narrow white bed that looked quite absurdly small in that high, dark chamber, and in face of that tall gaunt four-poster hung with tapestry ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... in his four-poster bed, his head slightly inclined to the left; his expression was that of one gently dreaming; his arms were resting over the coverlet, and in his left hand he held one white and three red roses, a last love-token from ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... had early learned not to part with any massive claw-footed sideboard with glass knobs, or any mahogany four-poster, or tall clock, or high-boy, except after feigning a distressed reluctance. It had learned also to hide its consternation at the prices which this behaviour would eventually induce the newcomers to pay for such junk. Indeed, it learned very soon to be a shrewd valuer of ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... entered Isabelle's suite unannounced. It was in exquisite order; streams of late afternoon light were falling on the gay walls and the bright chintzes. The novels Isabelle had been skimming, the gold service of her dressing table, the great four-poster with its deeps of transparent white embroideries over white, all spoke of the beautiful woman who had spent so many hours here. On the dressing table, with its splendid length doubled in the mirror, was the great fan that ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... say of this majestic four-poster, with its multifarious memories "of births and deaths and marriage nights," that it does not come so near the essential idea of bedness as does the most non-descript product of the carpenters' tools. James Thomson's ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... light on the comfortable wicker chairs, the cream-colored woodwork, and the scattered books and magazines. Several photographs of Carol, beautifully framed, were on bookcase and dresser, and a fine oil painting of the child at fourteen looked down from the mantel. On the bed, a mahogany four-poster, with carved pineapples finishing the posts, the frilled cretonne cover had been flung back; Mr. Breckenridge had retired; his blond head was sunk in the pillows; he clutched the blankets about him with his arms, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... on a cot to his mother's house, and put him in the great carved four-poster bed, and in the morning Miss Lucy came and hovered over him, and they talked of Captain Ward to her heart's content, and the boy told Miss Lucy the gossip of the hospital,—that Captain Ward was to be made a major,—and ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... invitation to stay as long as they pleased, and the best that the Castle could afford for their accommodation. When Nora had left O'Shanaghgan, the only thing that had remained in the old room was a huge four-poster. Even the mattress from this old bed had been removed; the curtains had been taken from the windows; the three great windows were bare of both blinds and curtains. Now a soft carpet covered the entire floor; a ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... asleep and that she suddenly woke. She was gazing, from her bed, into her own room, but at the farther end of it instead of the wall with the rosy trees and the gold mirror was another room. This room was strange and cheerless with bare boards, a large four-poster bed with faded blue hangings, two old black prints with eighteenth-century figures and a big standing mirror. In front of the bed, staring into the mirror, was Martin, He was dressed shabbily in a blue reefer ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris—yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz—the regular fringed valance all round—the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then there was ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... bedrooms on the lower floor; two of them, in fact, on one side of the hall. The front one had been not only locked but padlocked; the windows had been nailed on the inside, and heavy wooden shutters nailed on the outside. So long had the room been closed that dry-rot had set in. The silk quilt on the four-poster was falling to pieces, the linen was as yellow as beeswax, and the sheets made one think of the Flying Dutchman's sails. This room was of almost monastic severity: an ascetic or a stern soldier might have occupied it. Besides the bed it contained four chairs, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... sacque, and carried them into the spare bed-room, where there was a great "four-poster" bedstead, with blue-and-white chintz hangings and a blue-and-white spread; and then she came and sat down by Linda, and asked her a great many questions about the break-down, and about her father and mother and herself, but she was such a nice old lady that Linda did ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... full of horsehair sofas and chairs. These displeased Frank, but some handsome china—an entire tea service in Crown Derby—reconciled him to the room. In the bedroom they found a huge four-poster of old time, with a lengthy bolster and imposing pillows, and they were shown into another and a similar room. One looked out on the green, the other on the fields that lay between the green and the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... taking a peep out of my window down over the back garden to Roxanne Byrd's cottage and asking her in my heart to forgive me for taking her home, and asking God to make her love the cottage as I would like to be let to love her. To think that I have to sleep in her great-grandmother's four-poster bed that Roxanne has always slept in! I have to pray hard to be forgiven for it and to be able to endure ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... room—not enough to hurt her, but just to frighten her a little. But when she saw him coming toward her, she screamed and ran. Billy pursued her into a bedroom, where he overtook her and gave her a gentle butt that landed her in the middle of a big four-poster bed, after which he turned and trotted off to see what the boy was doing. He found him floundering in the sink, trying to get out that he might go to the girl's rescue, but he could not as his feet would not reach the floor and he could get no grip on himself ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... had chanced at that early time that an influx of visitors to the farm had exceeded the sleeping room, and he and another little fellow had been provided with a bed in the miller's house. He had never quite forgotten that bedroom—its huge old-fashioned four-poster, slumbrous with great dark hangings, such as Queen Elizabeth seems always to have slept in; its walls dim with tapestry, and its screen of antique bead-work. But it was round the toilet table that memory grew brightest, for thereon was a crystal phial of a most marvellous ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... taken up to the box-room and made as comfortable as possible in a snug nook between an old nursery fender and the wreck of a big four-poster. They gave him a big rag-bag to sit on, and an old, moth-eaten fur coat off the nail on the door to keep him warm. And when they had had their own tea they took him some. He did not like the tea at all, but he liked the bread and butter, and cake that went with ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... slept a wink. His bed was a huge four-poster, girt about with plush hangings like over-ripe plums, that shut him in as though he were in some monstrous Victorian trinket box. A post creaked at every turn he made in its downy softnesses, and being used to the light, camp-like furniture of an Indian bungalow he ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the room in which her grandfather and grandmother died—an immense apartment, wherein stood, grim and tall, a gigantic mahogany four-poster, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... while the minister was slowly recovering in the great four-poster in Henry Roberts's guest-room, she listened to Hannah's speculations as to the cause of his attack, and expressed no opinion. She was dumb when John Fenn tried to tell her how grateful he was to her for that terrible run through the darkness for ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... the animal. John fell asleep almost as soon as he touched the pillow. Then the maid who had undressed him beckoned the other in. Candle in hand she led the way to the trundle-bed drawn out from under the Judge's empty four-poster, and sat upon its edge. The child lay chest downward. She lifted his gown, and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... a dhota, which they use then after the manner of a sheet. The mosquito-nets cut off a good deal of air, and people are tempted to discard them unwisely when the nights are intensely hot. The framework from which the nets depend is a frail counterpart of the four-poster of the Victorian age. The net is usually tucked in under the mattress, to prevent any possibility of the mosquito entering. In places where mosquitoes abound they are troublesome by day as well as by night, and they ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... "The bedstead, a four-poster of the most funereal type, stood near the fireplace, from which a couple of thick pine logs sent out a ruddy glare; and directly opposite the foot of the bed, with its back to the wall, stood an ebony ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... back to the dear old Room under the Eaves, with a patch-work Quilt on the Four-Poster and a Steel Engraving of U. S. Grant ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... man! She would say no more; and Father Taylor was devoutly thankful for her forbearance. He would have done anything rather than hurt her feelings, but the mere sight of that ancient, venerable, and much-begrimed four-poster made him shudder; while he scarcely ventured to contemplate the attitude likely to be assumed by his housekeeper—of whom he stood in some little awe—if the question were mooted of adding this piece of furniture to her well-polished and ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... her arrival had worn off, and the element of depression reigned supreme in her mind. Certainly the apartment, which was supposed to be a bed-sitting-room, but which was merely a bedroom, was not enlivening to contemplate. No carpet, dirty boards, a large four-poster bed canopied with faded draperies against the wall facing the window. There was a feeble attempt at a washstand in a small alcove on the left, furnished with the usual doll's house crockery affected on the Continent,—no wardrobe and no ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... bulkhead of the cabin were two silent fans, one drawing air into the room, the other drawing it out. The most striking feature of the room was an immense four-poster bed which stood in the center of the cabin, with a couch at the foot and one or two chairs at one side. Hanging at the head of the bed was a set of electric push-bells, the cords being of different lengths so that Mr. Pulitzer could call at will for the major-domo, the chief ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... alone, I looked with some curiosity round the gloomy oak-paneled chamber, where the fire-light flashed on the carved four-poster, with its faded yellow damask curtains, and lit up the moth-eaten tapestry that adorned a portion of the upper part of the walls, but scarcely illumined the dark corners which lay beyond. There were quaint old presses and chests roomy enough to hide a dozen ghosts in, and a portrait of a gentleman ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... candles on his dressing-table, gave a glance into the now scarcely distinguishable abyss below his window, as he drew the curtains, and by the more diffused light for the first time surveyed his room critically. It was a larger apartment than that usually set aside for bachelors; the heavy four-poster had a conjugal reserve about it, and a tall cheval glass and certain minor details of the furniture suggested that it had been used for a married couple. He knew that the guest-rooms in country houses, as in hotels, carried no suggestion or flavor of the last tenant, and therefore lacked ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... four-poster beds with a frame built around the top of the bed, and over the frame hung pretty, ruffled white curtains and a similar ruffled curtain was around the bottom of the bed; the curtains made pretty ornaments. Slaves had beds of this general kind, but they warn't quite as pretty ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... in from under the peering little stars and fell asleep in an ancient four-poster. He dreamed that he had the world, a foot-ball, clasped to his breast, and was running down the field for a gain of a hundred yards. Then, suddenly, in place of the world, it was Avice Milbrey in his grasp, struggling frantically to be free; ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... a room, gay with big-flowered chintz curtains, and quaint with old-fashioned carved furniture. There was a high four-poster bed in one corner, with a chintz valance around it, and pink silk quilled into the tester. The only modern thing in the room was a tiled grate, piled full of blazing coals. It threw out such a summer-like heat that Lloyd almost gasped. She was glad to accept Mrs. Bisbee's invitation to take off ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Versailles had little of privacy in it. From his rising to his going to bed he was constantly in the hands of his valets and courtiers, even receiving ambassadors of state while he was still half hidden by the heavy curtains of his great four-poster. They had probably been waiting hours in the Salon de l'OEl de Boeuf before being admitted to ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... grief. "It was trying to wait outside that door while the afternoon faded and the night came. It was night, of course, long before the end. He would have no lamp left in his room. One imagined him just the other side of that thin door-panel, lying very still and silent in the great four-poster bed with his face towards the hills, and the light falling. One imagined the room slipping away into darkness, and the windows continually looming into a greater importance, and the dog by his side and no one else, right to the very ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... table may be put, this article of ours fulfils even another purpose. It comes in very handy sometimes as a bedstead. I have known two men to sleep upon it on occasions; its breadth being considerable. For a long time it went by the name of O'Gaygun's four-poster, that gentleman having a predilection for sleeping on it. He is a huge, bony Irishman, and somewhat restless in his sleep. Accordingly, it was no unusual thing for him to roll off the table in the night, and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor ...
— Saint Ursula - Story of Ursula and Dream of Ursula • John Ruskin
... was still. Mr. Thomasson, wondering which way Julia's room lay, stood listening until a stair creaked; and then, retiring precipitately, locked his door. Lord Almeric, in the gloom of the green moreen curtains that draped his huge four-poster, had fallen into a drunken slumber. The shadow of his wig, which Pomeroy had clapped on the wig-stand by the bed, nodded on the wall, as the draught moved the tails. Mr. Thomasson shivered, and, removing the candle—as was his prudent habit of nights—to the hearth, muttered that a goose was walking ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... rolls himself in a blanket instead of sitting over the library fire; turns in at 9 P.M. and rises ere the sun has topped the hills instead of keeping late hours and lying abed; sleeps on the ground or upon a narrow camp-bed (which occasionally collapses) instead of sprawling at his ease in a four-poster. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... at the big, helpless figure lying between the sheets of the great four-poster bed. Except for an unwonted pallor and the fact that no movement of the body below the waist was visible, Roger looked very much as usual. He waved away the words of sympathy which ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... read of a country sale advertised for the following Thursday, to take place at an old farm home-stead way back in the hills of Westchester. The items mentioned included a mahogany four-poster bed, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and likewise sobbing myself to sleep in the four-poster. Often since I have wished that I had questioned Breed of many things on which I had no curiosity then, for he was my chief companion in the weeks that followed. He awoke me bright and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... what she had, and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my nose in the air when she offered to show me; but this was different. I was wild to see what was going on because the Princess was there. The room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large, and all of them were talking, so no one paid ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... looking up, I thought. If I could only get people to buy a few legs for tables, and banisters for their staircases, good old-fashioned four-poster beds, and some of the other goods for which I was presumably agent, business would look up and a fair start ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Henry soon found two old knobs lying on the ground (a four-poster had been wrecked hard by) and a piece of deal plank jutting out of a mass of things. He pulled hard at the plank; but it was long, and so jammed in by miscellaneous articles, that he could not ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... matter. I had it and she came, and I told her I was subject to nightmares and ought not to sleep in a room by myself, though I hadn't mentioned it before, and I wished she would please sleep in mine with me and take the four-poster, which I thought gave me bad dreams, as I wasn't accustomed to such high beds. And if she would I would take the cot, as I liked cots much better. I am subject to nightmares, or anything else that is advisable to have at the proper time, and if I had ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... I fought it all out with myself about Peter. I felt that Sam had brought the sore spot in my heart to head and I would have to operate and find out what was really there. Accordingly, after I had safely anchored myself in the middle of my old four-poster bed I slashed myself. This is what I found. That I had made up my mind to marry Peter just as soon as he wanted me to, which I knew would not be until after the play was finished down in Sam's wilderness. I had two reasons for my ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... anxious to see the woman who had been the mistress of so much splendor in days gone by and could not give up the house. The bedroom we were shown to was luxurious compared to what I had been used to at home. The bed was a mahogany four-poster covered with a spread of lace, and the rug on the floor was a faded oriental. Opening out of the bedroom was a bath with a shower and we made a dash to get under the cooling flood. I have never seen such towels as were stacked ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... bedroom behind her with its dark hangings and oak furniture seemed dreary and unhome-like. She viewed the ancient and immense four-poster with misgiving and wondered if Queen Elizabeth had ever ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... up, and crept on tiptoe past the door of the best bedroom, which stood a little open, and invited him inwards by the mysterious gleam on the ceiling and the thrilling shadows of the great four-poster with its dusky hangings—a family heirloom, hint of far-off family prosperity, big enough for a hearse and quite as gloomy to look at. A heavy, solid mahogany chest of drawers stood near the window, and Paul, aided by the gaslights glistening amongst ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... as he had come. After a moment, Newmark replaced the magazine on the table, yawned, threw aside the cigar, of which he had smoked but an inch, and passed from his study into his bedroom across the hall. This contained an exquisite Colonial four-poster, with a lowboy and dresser to match, and was papered and carpeted in accordance with these, its chief ornaments. Newmark bathed in the adjoining bathroom, shaved carefully between the two wax lights which ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... way of furniture. There was the four-poster cedar bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was rather proud of it: it had 'turned' posts and joints that bolted together. There was a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her 'ironing-table', upside down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to his room, the one with the four-poster bed in which the old Squire had died, with the wide view of the rolling fields. And there, it was soon plain, Archelaus would remain for what was left to him of his ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the cold weather, always sat in her bedroom; and there, between the tapestried four-poster and the fireplace, the family grouped itself around the ground-glass of her single carcel lamp. In the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library; otherwise the family again sat about the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... She was a little girl when she came to live at Ashwood, and the room at the top of the stairs had been her nursery. There were the two beds; both were now dismantled and bare. It was in the little bed in the corner that she used to sleep; it was in the old four-poster that her nurse slept. And there was the very place, in front of the fire, where she used to have her tea. The table had disappeared, and the grate, how rusty it was! In the far corner, by the window, there used to be a press, in which nurse kept tea and sugar. That press had been removed. The other ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... conducted him to a well-appointed bedchamber, off which gave a smaller room, containing a little four-poster draped in dimity. With a vague gesture in the direction of the bed, she sank on a chair beside ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... four-poster bed that Poquelin had carved, Felicia slept, she smiled as she stirred in her slumbers. She was very tired. "Maman," she muttered drowsily as the Major paused outside her door on his way to his room, "In the garden—" and the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... in the white wilderness of his first four-poster, the poor New England boy missed his mother very hard, more perhaps than he had ever missed her before. He fell asleep on a pillow that was wet in spots—and ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the generation gains is more for its happiness than what it discards, as a new brass Birmingham bedstead is cleaner, healthier, and more desirable for a small crowded cottage than a worm-eaten old wooden four-poster. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Knight broke up housekeeping in New England they moved every stick of furniture they possessed to their new home. This furniture had been in the family for generations. There were old highboys of polished mahogany and chaste design, four-poster beds and gate-legged tables, a Sheraton sideboard and Chippendale chairs, a claw-footed secretary with leaded glass doors and secret drawers. There were hooked rugs and patchwork quilts of intricate and wonderful design, hand woven bedspreads of a blue seldom seen and Chinese cabinets ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... cast by the eaves, my feet upon the step that had soaked in the noonday heat, and to be as wretched as a five-year-old could make herself, with a sharp sense of injury boring like a bit of steel into her small soul. The room behind me was my mother's—the "chamber" of the Southern home. A big four-poster, hung with dimity curtains, stood in the farther corner. The dimity valance, trimmed, like the curtains, with ball fringe, hid the trundle-bed that was pulled out at night for Mary 'Liza and me to sleep in. At the foot of the bed was my baby brother's ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... up the steep, winding stairs to the second floor. Mary opened one of the many doors of the long hallway, and Hortense followed her into a large old-fashioned room with a great four-poster bed. It was a corner room. Through the windows on one side Hortense could look out over the orchard slope that ran down to the brook. Beyond the brook rose a shadowy mountain whose side was so steep that trees could ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... said Tant Sannie; "and I am going to marry him this day four weeks. I am dead sleepy," she added; "the stupid thing doesn't know how to talk love-talk at all," and she climbed into the four-poster, clothes and all, and drew the ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... and gloomy. As formerly, it contained a huge four-poster, a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a wardrobe. The rain beat fiercely against the window panes running down in ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... four-poster bed, he thought again of his conversation-spree and longed for self-justification. He sat up, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... confidence. This occasion I recollect with extreme vividness. I had been put to bed by my Father, in itself a noteworthy event. My crib stood near a window overlooking the street; my parents' ancient four-poster, a relic of the eighteenth century, hid me from the door, but I could see the rest of the room. After falling asleep on this particular evening, I awoke silently, surprised to see two lighted candles on the table, and my Father seated writing by them. I also saw ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... kindly, that'll do nicely', said the lad; and with that he pulled off his clothes and lay down in the cradle; but, to tell you the truth; it was quite as big as a four-poster. As for the old dame, she had to follow the man who showed her to bed, though she was out of her wits ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent |
