"Signboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not successful in his business, and was compelled to close his shop and abscond from his creditors. He took refuge in Paris, where he seemed likely to die of hunger. One day over a magnificent establishment in the Rue de Grammont appeared a signboard with the name of Van Klopen, dressmaker, and in the thousands of handbills distributed with the utmost profusion, he called himself the "Regenerator of Fashion." This was an idea that would have never originated in the brain ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Tatler and Spectator; and he also commenced his attack on John Partridge, quack doctor and maker of astrological almanacs. On the appearance of Partridge's "Merlinus Liberatus" for 1708, Swift—borrowing a name from the signboard of a shoemaker—published "Predictions for the year 1708, wherein the month and day of the month are set down, the persons named, and the great actions and events of next year particularly related, as they will come to pass. Written to prevent the people of England from being further imposed ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... foot on the ladder of fame in this year's beginning of his connection with Froben, he was as yet very thankful to accept any commission, however humble. And as a human document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about the Schoolmaster's Signboard preserved by Bonifacius Amerbach, and now with his collection in the Basel Museum (Plate 3). It is a simple thing, with no pretension to a place among "works of art"—this bit of flotsam from 1516, when it was painted. ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... ordinary public house, and beyond the signboard announcement that "Spiritis and aile is retailed here" there was little to indicate its commercial character. The parlour was a large room with a window at each end—one facing the street, the other being so situated that the seamen sitting ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... Veron who presents himself with an awkward air. His tall and badly jointed body swings like a hanging signboard. He is an original and sentimental soul, but no one has ever troubled to find out what he is. He begins, "My young friend—hum, hum—" (he repeats this formless sound every two or three words, like a sort ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and a week or two before Mr. Trapp changed his signboard and resumed his proper business, I was idling by the edge of the Barbican one evening when a boy, whose eye I had blacked recently, charged up behind me and pushed me over. I pretended to be drowning, and sank theatrically as he ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as usual, waiting at the station when the down train arrived, on the Tuesday—or Wednesday—of the selectmen's meeting. The train was due, according to the time-table, at eleven forty-five. This time-table, and the signboard of the "Bayport Hotel" are the only bits of humorous literature peculiar to our village, unless we add the political ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ride was uneventful, but not so the night. I spent it in a village of the mountains at a very curious hostelry, kept by a fat native Christian, named Elias, who laid claim, upon the signboard, to furnish food and lodging 'alafranga'—that is, in the modern European manner. There was one large guest-room, and an adjoining bedroom of the same dimensions, for some thirty travellers. I had to find a stable for my horse ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... down hill I pricked my gallant gray; and when the forest was past, and his hoofs glinted on the stones of a street leading through a small village, I felt an animation that I cannot well describe. A creaking signboard, swinging in the wind on rusty irons, directed me to the only inn of the village. It was a two-story brick building, standing a little back from the road. I drew rein at the door, and dismounted my weary nag. My loud vociferations summoned to my side a bull dog, cursed with a most unhappy disposition, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... It was nothing but sandwiches, but it was the most delicious food they had tasted there. It is a mistake if you are old to go back to the village in which you were born and bred. Ghosts meet you in every lane and look out from the windows. There are new names on the signboard of the inn and over the grocer's shop. A steam-engine has been put in the mill, and the pathway behind to the mill dam and to the river bank has been closed. The people you see think you are a visitor. The church is restored, and there is a brand new Wesleyan chapel. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... handpost^, fingerpost^, directing post, signpost; pillars of Hercules, pharos; bale-fire, beacon-fire; l'etoile du Nord [Fr.]; landmark, seamark; lighthouse, balize^; polestar, loadstar^, lodestar; cynosure, guide; address, direction, name; sign, signboard. [Of the future] warning &c 668; omen &c 512; prefigurement &c 511. [Of the past] trace, record &c, 551. [Of danger] warning &c 668, alarm &c 669. [of authority]. scepter &c 747. [of triumph]. trophy &c 733. [of quantity]. gauge &c 466. [Of Distance] milestone, milepost. [Of disgrace], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... again, never wearying, but constantly retouching the sketch, and adding innumerable little characteristic details which his painter's eye had noticed; here the red signboard of a distant shop vibrated in the light; closer by was a greenish bit of the Seine, on whose surface large patches of oil seemed to be floating; and then there was the delicate tone of a tree, the gamut of greys supplied by the house ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... arrived at my destination. My vehicle had stopped before a house of modest appearance, occupied by artisans as lodgings, and as the signboard said more particularly ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... who had had the good fortune to marry a Dutch lady of most distinguished family. Almost at the summit of the hill, about eight miles from the station, stood a little halting house bearing the English-looking signboard with the legend of the "Pig and Whistle." Here refreshments awaited the travellers, and then the journey was continued along a jungle path which shortly emerged on to the cultivated slopes of the estate. ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... he came opposite a neat, three-story brick building, across the width of which was a black and gold signboard, lettered THE GAZETTE. Below it was the large plate-glass window of a counting-room, now dark. On the left was a lighted ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of this mile, below Horton's Ferry, the road forks, and there stands a white signboard with its arms crossed, proclaiming the ways to the travelling stranger. The cattle Ward had bought were in two droves. Four hundred were on the lands of Nicholas Marsh, perhaps three miles farther down the Valley River, and the remaining two ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... occupied by a photographer, the fourth by a dealer in picture frames, the third and the second are let out for offices. Over the first hangs the gilded symbol of the three balls and the further information, lettered on a signboard, "Isaac Buxbaum, Money to Loan." The basement is given over to a restaurant-keeper whose identity is fixed by the testimony of another signboard, bearing the two words, "Butter-cake Bob's." Mr. Ricketty's little black eyes wander for an instant ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... haberdashers lived in West Chepe or Cheapside, which Stephen had to go down every day. One morning, at the end of those eight years, he noticed that a shop long empty had been reopened, and over it hung a newly-painted signboard, with a nun's head. As Stephen passed, a woman came to the door to hang up some goods, and they exchanged a ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Master Altham had not received a full dozen in all the seven-and-twenty years that he had lived in the Strand and made patties. Next door to him was John Arnold, the bookbinder, who displayed a Saracen's head upon his signboard; then came in regular order Julian Walton, the mercer, with a wheelbarrow; Stephen Fronsard, the girdler, with a cardinal's hat; John Silverton, the pelter or furrier, with a star; Peter Swan, the Court broiderer, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... encircled by bright red rays, something like the rays which one sees proceeding from the sun when depicted on the signboard of a public house. Inside of this came a broad stripe of very brilliant red, which was coped by lines of white; both inside and outside of this red space were narrow stripes of a still deeper red, intended probably to mark its boundaries. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... where. King Fisher reigned nearly twenty years ago. He lived in the building the folks in Rocky Springs use as a Meeting House. He was pretty tough. One of the worst badmen ever hit this part. Had a signboard set up on the trail down from the prairie. He wrote it. 'This is King Fisher's trail, take any other old trail.' I believe most folks used to take 'any other old trail.' There was one feller didn't though. And that was the end ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... lovely. At Patterdale I had a cup of tea, with bread and butter and the veritable orange marmalade manufactured at Dundee. Thence I took a stage over Kirkstone Pass, and walked two miles up the hills to a small hotel with a signboard saying it is the highest inhabited house in England, 1,114 feet above the sea—not very much beside Denver's 6,000 and others in Colorado 10,000 or 12,000. Arrived at Ambleside to find the hotel overflowing, so they sent me to a farmer's house where I had a good bed, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... front of the house, recognizable by an immense wooden signboard where the name of "Gatonax" sprawled in enormous pumpkin-colored letters, and by two little glass cases where false teeth were carefully set in rose-colored wax, he gasped for breath. He perspired profusely. A horrible fear shook him, a trembling ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Estate" faced the travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the eager ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... with this difference, that they are Japanese, and inhabit Japanese houses. The one we intend to honor to-day carries on his business in the suburbs, in that ancient quarter of big trees and gloomy pagodas where, the other day, I met the pretty little mousme. His signboard, written in several languages, is posted against a wall on the edge of the little torrent which, rushing down from the green mountain above, is crossed by many a curved bridge of old granite and lined on either side with light bamboos or ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... grasslands, its budding bushes and flowers, its rich fields of wheat, dotted with spring blossoms, revealed itself to their delighted eyes. In the distance glistened the tavern of Langfuehr, with its broad red and blue stripes and its tempting signboard that displayed ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of cyclists, and came presently upon a wide space intersected with broad footpaths from which he shrank; it was altogether too public here; he was approaching an exposed corner in an angle of lighted streets, with the Marble Arch at its apex, as a signboard made quite clear. He had come right across the Park; back over the grass, keeping rather more to the right, in the direction of those trees, was the best ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... are almost bound to change their dress three times a day, there is a hotel of the second and third class; and there is the old inn; the comfortable, hospitable, patriarchal inn, with its Gothic signboard.... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... the kindly hours of darkness, save for light of moon and star, Hide the picture on the signboard over Doughty's Horse Bazaar; When the last rose-tint is fading on the distant mulga scrub, Then the Army prays for Watty at the entrance ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... trolley, had retained a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Men, rushing hither and thither in search of friends, traps, and luggage, were goaded to fury by the calmness of the officials and their determination not to be hurried. Hearing there was no chance of having tea on board that night, and discovering near the wharf a signboard announcing that meals could be obtained at all hours (except, as we were told, that particular one), we with difficulty persuaded the proprietress to let us have something to eat. Amidst muttered grumblings that she was "slaved to death," that "her life was not worth ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... market-place of a little, red and grey, home county town; a place of but one street dominated by a great inn-signboard a-top of an enormous white post. The effigy of So-and-So of gracious memory ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... of that Universal Consciousness "in which we live, and move, and have our being;" and of the reality of the Eternal Now, in which past, present and future are blended as one fact of infinite consciousness. He sees the signboard pointing ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... elbow and looked out the window. The train slowed with a squealing of brakes and the hiss of escaping air to a station. On the signboard over the office window she read the name of the place and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of one description being placed together, as is very much the custom in Russia, Portugal, and other European countries. Suspended high above, like a banner over each shop, is a huge varnished and gilded signboard, with a description of the style of merchandise to be sold within. As these boards hang at right angles from the walls, they contribute much to the gay ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... small as it may be, and darkened as it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot forget—men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging signboard of the tavern, and—worst of all—in the trim-printed "ATTORNEY AT LAW." Even the little milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and its string across the window all hung with tabs and with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... of an inn alone was in those times so well considered that it addressed a cheerful front towards the traveller "as a home of entertainment ought, and tempted him with many mute but significant assurances of a comfortable welcome." Its very signboard promised good cheer and meant it; the attractive furnishing of the homely windows, the bright flowers on the sills seemed to beckon one to "come in"; and when one did enter, one was greeted and cared for as a guest and not merely ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... getting proposed to. He must have minded; he couldn't have helped minding it, really. That's his way; he's so mean—he won't show things. He knows me. I can't keep anything from him; he reads me like a signboard; and then about himself he keeps me guessing, and I can't tell when I've guessed right. Ray Vilas behaved disgustingly, of course; he was horrid and awful. I might have expected it. I suppose Richard was wailing his tiresome sorrows ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... night of Epiphany and the nineteenth anniversary of my birth, the sky poured down with the melting snow a cold ill- humour, penetrating to the bone, while an icy wind made the signboard of the Queen Pedauque grate, a clear fire, perfumed by goose grease, sparkled in the shop and the soup steamed in the tureen on the table; round which M. Jerome Coignard, my father and myself were seated. My mother, as was her habit, stood behind her husband's chair, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... a little less than three hours to that time when the boys reached the little cluster of six houses which comprised West Hill. The signboard had probably told only half the truth in regard to distance—as country signboards ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... Hotel and Warm Lane to its right, and Woodisun Bank creeping inconspicuously down to its left, stood a three-storey building consisting of house and shop, the frontage being in Wedgwood Street. Over the double-windowed shop was a discreet signboard in gilt letters, "D. Clayhanger, Printer and Stationer," but above the first floor was a later and much larger sign, with the single word, "Steam-printing." All the brickwork of the facade was painted yellow, and had obviously ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Christ, and all else was forgiven them. Nevertheless, Catholicism was the religion of the country. Its inhabitants might be likened to promiscuous guests at an inn whose landlord made no criticisms on their beliefs, further than to inscribe the Papal insignia on the signboard over his door. Thus liberty was discriminated from license, and in the midst of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... then he is filling his place. Otherwise he is no more fit for his position than would be an infant. The employer, like everyone else, is to be judged solely by his ability. He may be but a name to the men—a name on a signboard. But there is the business—it is more than a name. It produces the living—and a living is a pretty tangible thing. The business is a reality. It does things. It is a going concern. The evidence of its fitness is that the pay ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... nothing. It is true, the older men, less concerned perhaps at staring the word in the face, are not altogether unfortunate in their self-revelation; but consider the portrait of Lord Leighton by himself,—it must have been painted originally as a signboard for Burlington House, for the summer exhibition of the Academy there, as who should say to a discerning public: Here you may have your fill of the impudent and blatant commonplace you love so much. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... meal to a tired wanderer. My choice rests with one that swings the sign of the White Horse; for, to tell the truth, I have somewhat of a superstitious belief in the luck that this emblem brings to the traveller. I place it immediately after the Golden Lion, my favourite beast on a signboard, although it deceived me once. The deception, however, befell in the Bordelais, where the inhabitants are far from being the most pleasant to be found in France; therefore I judged this Lion d'Or charitably, and took account of all that might have frustrated ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... perfect craftsman. This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum." I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. "Strange, is it not," I added, "that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a large one, as Sir John had described. It was, in fact, a waterside inn, with its name, The Saracen's Head, painted in black letters along its whitewashed front and under a swinging signboard. Looking up at the board Mr. Molesworth discerned, beneath its dark varnish, the shoulders, scimitar, and grinning face of a turbaned Saracen, and laughed aloud between incredulity and a sense of terror absurdly relieved. This, then, was Sir John's ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it; for his vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on what it ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... clothmaking become under Elizabeth that the Corporation required special acknowledgment of the fact from the innkeepers, doubtless because prosperity in the town meant full tankards emptied at the inns. Every alehouse keeper had to have a signboard hung above his door with a woolsack painted on it, under a fine of six-and-eightpence; he had to buy the sign from the hall warden at the Town Hall, and pay two shillings for it. Woolsacks were added to the borough arms. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... little and its nickel work dull, but seemingly all right. In the middle of the road stood a chauffeur, his cap pushed back and a hand to his head. As we approached, he looked away from the little writing-block and stared up at the signboard of the inn. When he heard the car approaching, he made for the pavement, turning a puzzled face in our direction. At that moment I ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... and Wild made a large signboard, taking it out to a prominent point on the glacier, three and a half miles to the north. It was lashed to a bamboo pole with a flag flying on it. The open water was then only three ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... There she found Dechartre. He was serious and agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy. He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which she did not know. She read on a signboard: Via Alfieri. After they had taken fifty steps, he ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the Rev. Laurence Sterne wrote A Sentimental Journey, lies about 18 miles north of York. The hamlet stands on slightly rising ground. At the bottom of the hill is the village smithy, the well, a farm, and facing a big elm tree is the inn, bearing a great hatchment-like signboard showing the Fauconberg arms and motto. The cottages of the villagers are on the slope of the hill, and at the top is the church to which Sterne was appointed vicar in 1760. Close at hand is the quaint seventeenth-century house he occupied. It is a singularly picturesque little building, with its ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... something ahead," said Giant, who was standing in the bow. "It looks to me like a signboard. Let us ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... of essential vulgarity.[13] Smaller men have printed their 'Recollections,' or rather retailed their gossip; but they themselves occupy the foreground, much as your chimney-sweep introduces himself prominently in front of his signboard presentment of some many-chimneyed 'noble house.' Even Emerson's 'English Traits' (a most un-English book) belongs to the same underbred category. The new 'Recollections' by AUBREY DE VERE, Esq., it is a privilege to publish—full of reverence and love, and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... furlong farther, I came suddenly upon a house by the roadside, and a man coming out of the door with a light at the same moment enabled me to see "Vendeglo" on a small signboard. Good-luck: here, then, was an inn, where at least shelter was possible; and shelter was much to be desired, seeing that the rain was now a steady downpour. On making inquiries, I found that I was already in Bueksad. The peasant had played ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... with a good-nature decidedly optimistic, as could be seen, when the fiacre finally drew up at the given address. It was that of a very modest restaurant decorated with this signboard: 'Trattoria al Marzocco.' And the 'Marzocco', the lion symbolical of Florence, was represented above the door, resting his paw on the escutcheon ornamented with the national lys. The appearance of that front did ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of building,—half on dry ground and half arched over the stream. The road here drew in its shoulders and crept through between the landward extremity of the mill and a little garden enclosure, with a small house and a large signboard within its privet hedge. I was pleased to fancy this an inn, and drew little etchings in fancy of a sanded parlour, and three-cornered spittoons, and a society of parochial gossips seated within over their churchwardens; but as ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all manner of servility to keep him at home, neglecting even their own business in order to be always ready for his orders. But this did not prevent him from being constantly away. He said he could not possibly receive his friends in a house where his name was to be seen on the signboard of such ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... displayed the needles of Ua- pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three; it was just an empty, unemployable room. The building had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where, behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window and a door that led directly by two steps into the street. A strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard. Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had blown into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He had always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reason would never hear of such a thing as a clearance sale. The hatred of "puffing" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... clippings, and similar printed or written communications in a pictorial close-up the enlargement of which makes every word readable. This scheme is more and more introduced into the plays today and the movement is in a proper direction. The words of the telegram or of the signboard and even of the cutting from the newspaper are parts of the reality which the pictures are to show us and their meaning does not stand outside but within the pictorial story. The true artist will make sparing use of this method in order that the spectator may not change his attitude. He must remain ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... that it should be a distinction, give people a cachet, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a prominent position in the road in front of it, where every motor-car would be bound to see it, there would be a real wayside inn signboard, such as inns in England always have, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... two rather steeply sloped gables. Houses in that day were more picturesque than they have been for the last two hundred years, though they have shown a tendency in recent times to turn again in that direction. Over Master Clere's door—and over every door in the street—hung a signboard, on which some sign was painted, each different from the rest, for signs then served the purpose of numbers, so that two alike in the same street would have caused confusion. As far as eye could see ran the gaily-painted ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... the inn to this day on the western side of the Hauen as you go to the Old Quay. A pair of fish-scales faces the entrance, and the jolly pilchards themselves hang over your head, on a signboard that creaks mightily when the ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tree-clump could be seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... remembered some Dawson acquaintances in town made the fall before while coming down the Yukon River with my brother. To one family of these I made my way. They were in the grocery and bakery business on a prominent corner on First street and their signboard caught ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... likenesses. An English writer says: "As the English, a particularly quick-witted race, tinged with the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in their reputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity the figure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does not resemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that they ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... himself at one end of the street, behind a doorway, whilst Chauvelin did the same at the other. Rateau, standing in the gutter, appeared once more in a state of hesitation. Immediately in front of him the door of a small cabaret stood invitingly open; its signboard, "Le Bon Copain," promised rest and refreshment. He peered up and down the road, satisfied himself presumably that, for the moment, his pursuers were out of sight, hugged his parcel to his chest, and then suddenly made a dart for the cabaret ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... reflections when suddenly he caught sight of the signboard of the Amour peintre, and a torrent of bitter-sweet emotions swept tumultuously ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the list of post-towns, but every cross-road for miles around had a fingerboard showing the direction and telling the distance to New Boston. Upon a tall cottonwood-tree on the river-bank, and nearly in front of Wardelow's residence, was an immense signboard bearing the name of "New Boston Landing," and on the other side of the river, at a ferry-staging belonging to a crossing whose other terminus was a mile further down the river, was a sign which informed travelers that ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... of the church was a goodly tavern with a weatherbeaten signboard a-swing above the door, whereon was painted what purported to be a leopard asleep and below the following ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of a young calf; pigs are squeaking one against another, and in the midst of the din a dog begins to bark. At the farther corner, where the hedge retreats from its encroachments on the meadow, a grey house comes into view, with a signboard across its upper part announcing that here the tired traveller may get ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... appearances, advertisements, and the huge general showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York is the true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicines straining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowds of men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marble signposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, and the end of the show of a show world is ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... there in that waste about the man with the information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me—it seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots. "We have wronged that man with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... in his own life for suspecting other people. He had always disliked Jim Dyckman because Dyckman had always disliked him, and Jim's transparent face had announced the fact with all the clarity of an illuminated signboard. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... women—most of them carrying small bundles, stood at this turning, about 100 steps from the prison. To the right there were several low wooden buildings; to the left, a two-storeyed house with a signboard. The huge brick building, the prison proper, was just in front, and the visitors were not allowed to come up to it. A sentinel was pacing up and down in front of it, and shouted at any one who ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... The signboard had said "1 MILE." One hundred miles, one thousand miles; that was what it should have said to be truthful. Galusha plodded on and on, stopping to put down the suitcase, then lifting it and pounding on again. He had had no luncheon; he had had no dinner. He ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... banks in Yunnan city. Wong's whose bank, the signboard tells us, is "Beneficent, Rich, United," and Mong's "Bank of the Hundred Streams," which is said to ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... hour they found themselves on a good stone road and reached a signboard put up by the automobile association, telling the exact distance to Philadelphia. This set them at ease mentally, and they started off at a speed of twenty miles an hour. Tom wanted to "let her out," as he put it, but Nellie demurred ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... pupil perceives no possibility of putting into use. At one of the new schools in the south, the ignorant child of the mountains at once acquires a knowledge of measurement and elementary arithmetic by laying out a garden, of letters by inscribing his name on a little signboard in order to identify his patch—for the moment private property. And this principle is carried through all the grades. In the Gary Schools and elsewhere the making of things in the shops, the modelling of a Panama Canal, the inspection of industries and governmental ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... roused no thrill in my bosom. On the morrow, I said, I would seek a lodging, and perhaps write to Ethel Ryley. Meanwhile I strolled up into Trafalgar Square, and so into Charing Cross Road. And in Charing Cross Road—it was the curst accident of fate—I saw the signboard of the celebrated old firm of publishers, Oakley and Dalbiac. It is my intention to speak of my books as little as possible in this history. I must, however, explain that six months before my aunt's death I had already written ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... word that I would fix it up; and when I was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it. There was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the Avenue, and I saw right off that it was just a natural signboard. So I called over the boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice little ad that ran ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... church at "Bettws-y-Coed" one of the finest of his paintings, fetched L2,500 at a sale in London, in March, 1884. In the hall of the Royal Oak Inn, Bettws-y-Coed (David's favourite place), there is fixed a famous signboard which Cox painted for the house in 1847, and which gave rise to considerable litigation as to its ownership being vested in the tenant or the owner, the decision being in ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... display does not end the tale of Denry's splendour. He had an office in St Luke's Square, and in the office was an office-boy, small but genuine, and a real copying-press, and outside it was the little square signboard which in the days of his simplicity used to be screwed on to his mother's door. His mother's steely firmness of character had driven him into the extravagance of an office. Even after he had made over a thousand pounds out of the Llandudno lifeboat in ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... later, as they camped outside a little village for the night, they saw beside the road a signboard which read: ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... sculptor, Hegion a bronze-founder; AEschine a fuller, and Cydias a wit—that is his profession. He has a signboard, a workshop, finished articles for sale, mechanics who work under him. He cannot deliver for more than a month the stanzas which he has promised you, unless he breaks his word to Dosithee, who has ordered ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... with a grave effort of memory. "At a place called Farnham, it was, a way inland up the Portsmouth Road. Me and the landlord of a public there came to words, by reason he called his house 'The Admiral Howe,' but on his signboard was the face of a different man altogether. Whereby I asked him why he done so. Whereby he said the painter didn't know How. Whereby I knocked him down, and he called in the constables and swore he'd meant it for a joke; and they took me afore a Justice; and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was surrounded with a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against landing. Weber's land claim—the same that now broods over the village in the form of a signboard—then appeared in a more military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors manned the breastwork at the isthmus—"to protect German property" and its trifling parenthesis, the king of Samoa. Much vigilance reigned and, in the island fashion, much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thirsty men," answered Rob. "Lead us where thou wilt; we'll speak our thanks under one signboard as well as another." ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... the loom of trees I espied a twinkling light that upon our nearer approach I saw proceeded from a wayside inn with a great trough of water before it and a signboard whereon, though evening was falling apace, I could make out ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... what signboard did you rob? Shreve is a good name, too good for a foc'sle rat. Did you come by it honestly? Did you have a father by that name? I dare say not. A gutter product would not know his ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... movement, as if he were a puppet loosened by a spring from a box. He sways from side to side to give emphasis to his words. His mouth opens to huge proportions in moments of excitement. His black hair falls over his forehead. His great nose sticks out like a signboard. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... repulsed him when they first met. There are lines in the face chiseled by a sculptor who never makes a wrong stroke. The face is a truthful record of our vices and virtues. It is a map of life that outlines character so clearly that there is no getting away from the story it tells. The face is a signboard showing which way the man or woman is traveling, which of life's crossroads they are on. The face cannot betray the years one has traveled until the mind gives its consent. The mind is the master. If the mind holds youthful, innocent thoughts, the face will retain a youthful appearance. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprenticed hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words, John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells Hats for ready Money, with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... is not much altered. Here too is the "Bell," under the shadow of the abbey tower. It is the original of Phineas Fletcher's house in the novel John Halifax, Gentleman. The "Bear and the Ragged Staff" is another half-timbered house with a straggling array of buildings and curious swinging signboard, the favourite haunt of the disciples of Izaak Walton, under the overhanging eaves of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... jargon which was spoken by the young dandies, in which he was not particularly successful (for in addition to a marvellous assortment of oaths, they talked a mixture of bad English, worse French, and vilest Latin), and in examining the signboard which hung out over the doorway of ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... inquiries of her. The mere aspect of the place chilled him. It was one of the black houses of old Paris, with a dark, evil-smelling passage, leading into a small yard which the nurse's few squalid rooms overlooked. Above the passage entrance was a yellow signboard which simply bore the name of Madame Rouche in big letters. She herself proved to be a person of five- or six-and-thirty, gowned in black and spare of figure, with a leaden complexion, scanty hair of no precise color, and a big nose of unusual prominence. With her low, drawling ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the whole town, the Huns had gone to the trouble of displaying a huge signboard on the side of a building in the square on which were these words: ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... before a goodly hostelrie, which bore upon its swinging signboard the device of "The Pig ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... a bridge, and on the farther side of the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was a little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurance company,—so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock in trade,—sole leather, dry goods, etc.,—that spoke for itself. I stepped inside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when at last he looked up there was no speculation in his ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... not notice, although they passed it close, a certain signboard over a low-browed shop half-way down the street. Afterwards Hetty remembered passing the shop, and that its one window was caked with mud and grimed with dust on top of the mud. She did not see a broad-shouldered ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the rock a cave of good depth. I explored it at once, while there was light, to ascertain that it was not the abode of another grizzly. Having assured myself that the lodgings were unoccupied, though no signboard announced that they were to be let, I piled my wood up in front, and collected all the branches of fir trees and moss which I could find, to form a bed for myself inside. These arrangements being made, I lighted my fire and sat down ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... of her name that he carried everywhere with him a volume of Lessing, because the name of Minna occurred in it, and every day when he left the theater he went a long distance out of his way so as to pass a mercery shop, on whose signboard the five ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a sort of decayed inn with the dingy sign of The Grapes. The signboard was dark and indecipherable by now, and hung black against the sky and the gray moorland beyond, about as inviting as a gallows. March remarked that it looked like a tavern for ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... a sea-legged sailor, Come to this tottering Inn, Just when the bronze on its signboard is fading, And the black ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... years back, opposite this dealer, stood a shop whose bottle-green woodwork excreted damp by all its cracks. On the signboard, made of a long narrow plank, figured, in black letters the word: MERCERY. And on one of the panes of glass in the door was written, in red, the name of a woman: Therese Raquin. To right and left were deep show cases, lined ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... Fox at parting. But Fox, who was 'stiff as a tree and pure as a bell,' would not kiss any man, however much he loved him, who persisted in such wrong notions. The two friends parted very sorrowfully, and with a sad heart Fox returned to the inn on Exeter Bridge. Not all the 'Seven Stars' on its signboard could ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... dealers in the second-hand. In its vivid familiarity it seemed to make straight for the two Englishmen, to surround and take possession of them, and they paused. The source of it was plain—an open door under a vast white signboard dingily lettered "The Salvation Army." It loomed through the smoke and the streetlights ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... a signboard at the crossroads, but this had fallen down, so the tourists did not know which of the forks of the road to take. Finally a man, coming along in a runabout, told them to take the highway on ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... sees that the father has indeed spoken the truth, the real daughter being a perfect scarecrow. The beautiful lady returns to the bridegroom to gloat over his desperation, and promises to release him from his terrible marriage if he will remove the motto from his signboard. At this point I departed from the original, and continued as follows: The enraged jeweller is on the point of tearing down his unfortunate signboard when a curious apparition leads him to pause in the act. He sees a bear- leader in the street making his clumsy beast dance, in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... but very clear, and all things are sharply outlined, as in a frost. It is an hour that has a charm of its own, when, but for a postman or a milkman, one has the pavement to oneself, and even the most common thing takes an ever-recurring freshness, as though causeway, and lamp, and signboard had all wakened to the new day. Then even an inland city may seem beautiful, and bear ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waterless plain of coal-black rocks and yellow sand, and sleep in his berth upon the way. The morning will show to him, perhaps, a tent, a great pile of coal, a water tank, and a number painted on a white signboard, and the stoppage of the train will inform him that he has come to a station. Let him put his head from the window, he will see the long line of telegraph poles reaching from the sky's rim behind him to the sky's rim in front, and huddling together, as it seems, with less and ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... search, and about the middle of the Rue Tronchet he read, at a distance on a signboard, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... stumps showing dismally through coronets of young redwoods that grew riotously around the base of the departed parent trees. From the fringe of the thicket thus formed, the terminus of an old skid-road showed and a signboard, freshly painted, pointed the way to the Valley of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... receiving proper attention, madam?' From the first he eschewed the facile trickeries and ostentations which allure the populace. He sought a high-class trade, and by waiting he found it. He would never advertise on hoardings; for many years he had no signboard over his shop-front; and whereas the name of 'Bostocks,' the huge cheap drapers lower down Machin Street, on the opposite side, attacks you at every railway-station and in every tramcar, the name of 'E. Brunt' ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the string for two or three seconds, but presently faltered. "You come to me to-morrow," he went on, with another mysterious wink, "and I'll show you something. Up the hill, past Market Strand, till you come to a signboard, 'G. Goodfellow. Funerals Furnished'—first turning to the right down the court, and ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... turn is a good turn," Westy said. "Maybe everything has changed, but good turns haven't changed. Their own tent is gone, their canoe is smashed—you said so yourself—and they're on the opposite side from Temple Camp. You know our signboard over there, 'Welcome ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... show how three of the arrows were removed each to a neighbouring square on the signboard of the "Chequers" Inn, so that still no arrow was in line with another. The black dots indicate the squares on which the three ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... into the country road in the gathering twilight, and turned sharply to our left at the crossroad where the signboard read, "To the Firing-Line. For the Use of the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... wedding had been, the verses became more so. They were copied into the weekly and tri-weekly issues of the "Tribune," and into the evening papers. Stedman, in later years, told of being startled by a huge signboard in front of the then young Brentano's, opposite the New York Hotel, at the corner of Broadway and Waverly Place, reading: "Read Stedman's great poem on the Diamond Wedding in this evening's 'Express'!" The father of the bride, infuriated by the unpleasant publicity, challenged the poet to a duel, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... farther down the road we passed a signboard on the edge of a cratered field. New words had been painted on it in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... They were a little larger and more pretentious than most of the houses in this street, and a goodsized garden ran backwards from each towards Saint James's Park. As every house had then its name and a signboard to exhibit it—numbers being not yet applied to houses—these were no exception to the rule. That one of the trio nearest to the Abbey displayed a golden fish upon its signboard; the middle one hung out a white bear; while from the northernmost swung a ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... white-painted, shed-like, wooden erection of one story. Then up the street, past the shops with their large canvas signs, until at length we pull up alongside a wooden one-storied house, roofed with iron, and a large wooden verandah projecting over the pathway in front. The signboard over the door tells me this is the Bank. I have reached my destination, and am safely landed in the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Elsmere stood looking a moment at the inn, the bridge, and the village. It was a characteristic Westmoreland scene. The low whitewashed inn, with its newly painted signboard, was to his right, the pony at the door lazily flicking off the flies and dropping its greedy nose in search of the grains of corn among the cobbles; to his left a gray stone bridge over a broad light-filled river; beyond, a little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stout in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the 'stump,' we have said all that need be said of the exterior ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... under the shade of the elms mammoth sandwiches and a large slice of cheese waited in an untied handkerchief until such time as his thirst should be satisfied. At the other side of the table the oldest man in Claybury, drawing gently at a long clay pipe, turned a dim and regretful eye up at the old signboard. ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... by excessive thirst, saw a goblet of water painted on a signboard. Not supposing it to be only a picture, she flew towards it with a loud whir and unwittingly dashed against the signboard, jarring herself terribly. Having broken her wings by the blow, she fell to the ground, and was caught ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... up before me as large as a Malted Milk signboard. With a shuddering apprehension I read the details. Apparently the express that left Providence at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon had crashed into an open siding near Willdon about six o'clock, and collided with a string ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... nature herself has directed him which to take and how to use their is so extraordinary as the colour and ornaments which the flowers have acquired to tell the bees where the honey is. You have often seen an ear of rye, which shows a baker's implements like a signboard. And if you look at the flax, the most useful of all the plants, you will have to admit that it is the plant itself which has taught man to spin. Look right into the heart of the flower and you will find the filaments wound round the style like ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... is! The famous Japanese mountain seen in thousands of the country's drawings and paintings; in fact, it has come to be a sort of national signboard. Now that we know where to look we see that the white fan part is merely the snow-cap running in large streaks downward, and that this rests upon a base as blue as the sky. Henceforward we shall see ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... fancy, dwelling upon that very incident, tricked me into believing that a door had creaked again? I listened, but a silence followed, broken only by a drone of voices ascending from the common room. As I had assured the host upon the stairs, so I now assured myself that it was the wind, the signboard of the inn, ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... fastened to a post by a rusty tenpenny nail, served as a signboard and notified the passing traveler that he was about to enter the limits ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... grotesque, interwoven and ornamenting the cornices and surrounding the windows; but the most remarkable fact was that the house opposite reproduced exactly the same sculptures, the same ornaments; even the signboard, with its post and spiral of iron, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... house was well filled. The signboard bearing the legend, "Standing Room Only" was put out in front to catch a few more. It was such an audience as would make any manager's heart rejoice. The curtain rose promptly on the first act. To say the act went off tamely would ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... signboard of the White Lamb, and before the front-door, stood a couple of men who chatted as they passed a tankard of beer to each other. Captain Salt could not see their faces owing to the extreme width of their hat-brims. But he turned a shade paler, and ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to get it into the van. Messrs. Blake, Johnson and Jones tried alone and failed. For ten minutes they tried alone and failed. Between each attempt they paused to mop their brows and throw longing glances towards the Blue Cow, whose signboard was ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton |
