"Wainscot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... order, and secured in excellent wainscot presses, by order of the house of peers, in the year 1719 and 1720. Attendance is given at this office, and searches may be made from seven o'clock in the morning to eleven, and from one to five ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... cannot I refrain joining with her in affectionate Tears.—No, but do not weep for me, my excellent Lady, for I have made a pretty competent Estate for thee. Eight thousand Pounds, which I have conceal'd in my Study behind the Wainscot on the left hand ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... about 1588 to gather materials for a history of England. With the help of Camden and Sir Henry Spelman he obtained nearly a thousand volumes of records and documents; and these he arranged under a system, by which they are still cited, in fourteen wainscot presses marked with the names of the twelve Caesars, Cleopatra, and Faustina. He was so rich in State Papers that, as Fuller said, 'the fountains were fain to fetch water from the stream,' and the secretaries and clerks of the Council were ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... careful review of all the evidence makes almost every scientific observer conclude that at most a parrot knows a word of command as a horse knows 'Whoa!' or a dog knows the order to hunt for rats in the wainscot. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... one will never fade, but always be a pleasure hanging there. Now, I really have something beautiful all my own," said Merry to herself as she ran up to hang the pretty thing on the dark wainscot of her room, where the graceful curve of its pointed leaves and the depth of its white cup would be a joy to her eyes as long ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... pious, of late years does often fall into the sin of drunkenness; he often lodges long together here in his brother's house, and whensoever he is drunk and has slept himself sober, something knocks at his bed's head, as if one knocked on a wainscot. When they remove his bed it follows him. Besides other loud noises on other parts where he is, that all the house hears, they have often watched him, and kept his hands lest he should do it himself. His brother has often told it me, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... fastened about twenty small tablets provided with hooks, from which are suspended the telephones. The latter are connected with the underground conductors by extensible wires which project from the wooden wainscot of which we have just spoken, so that it is very easy for the auditors to put the telephones to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... Drelindin din! Midnight Mass is about to begin. In the chapel of the chateau, a miniature cathedral with arches intercrossed and a wainscot of oak mounting as high as the walls, all the hangings have been arranged, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... used with reference to the top of a room—the ceiling. It is an old English word, and means overlaid or lined with wood, wainscot, or plank, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fell off! Oh dear! that was a long time ago! It was! 'In my Father's house are many mansions—'A little scrattling noise caught her ear—'but no mice!' she thought mechanically. The noise increased. There! it was a mouse! How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't! It would be eating through the wainscot before they knew where they were, and they would have to have the builders in. They were such destructive things! And she lay, with her eyes just moving, following in her mind that little scrattling sound, and waiting for sleep to release ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... and if he had been half blind he could not have missed the last and most damning evidence of all. The carpet was of a biscuit colour and covered the room flush to the wainscot. Opposite the fireplace was a big, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... and hitched it away again, as not being able to make up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the day he cruised completely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than once went ashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in a very ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... tired, worn-out, fretting charge in through the great draughty porch, and was led up the old shallow oak stairs to a big panelled room, clean and scantily furnished, where the rats ran about behind the wainscot, and a rain-laden branch of monthly rose went tap, tap against the window, and a dog howled all night long, I thought we had come to a miserable place at the end of the earth. I thought so still the next morning, when ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... begone!" said Kitty. "There is nothing but a wainscot between my chamber and Milady's; every word that is uttered in one can be ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lighted by two windows on the street and finished with a wainscot painted gray, was so damp that the lower panels showed the geometrical cracks of rotten wood when the paint no longer binds it. The red-tiled floor, polished by the old lady's one servant, required, for comfort's sake, before each seat small round mats of brown straw, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... inhabitants of the castle. The mouldering tapestry, which, in his father's time, had half covered the walls of this stately apartment, and half streamed from them in tatters, had given place to a complete finishing of wainscot, the cornice of which, as well as the frames of the various compartments, were ornamented with festoons of flowers and with birds, which, though carved in oak, seemed, such was the art of the chisel, actually to swell their throats and flutter their wings. Several old ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... queer, quaint, picturesque room!" she went on, looking about her. "I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the wainscot, and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the ribs—nothing but ribs and darkness—I should think that ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... open, and abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold and suffocation at all other ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... a spacious and low room, with an outlook on the court, that I found them bestowed. In the good days of that house the apartment had probably served as a library, for there were traces of shelves along the wainscot. Four or five mattresses lay on the floor in a corner, with a frowsy heap of bedding; near by was a basin and a cube of soap; a rude kitchen-table and some deal chairs stood together at the far end; and the room was illuminated by no less than four windows, and warmed by ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Italian mind, to consider the difference necessitated in the English temper merely by the general domestic use of wood instead of marble. In that old Shakesperian England, men must have rendered a grateful homage to their oak forests, in the sense of all that they owed to their goodly timbers in the wainscot and furniture of the rooms they loved best, when the blue of the frosty midnight was contrasted, in the dark diamonds of the lattice, with the glowing brown of the warm, fire-lighted, crimson-tapestried walls. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... accessible. The rooms are ventilated through the hollow columns of the kiosks, and each is provided with an electric fan. They are heated by electric heaters. The woodwork of the rooms is oak; the walls are red slate wainscot and Keene cement. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof, The long tables, and the faces merry and keen; The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof, The Dons on the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... the oaken mantel glowing, Faintest light the lamp is throwing On the mirror's antique mould, High-backed chair, and wainscot old, And, through faded curtains stealing, His ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the little empty book room, where nothing stood except the old bureau. That, she said, had been full of letters, but all the oldest things had been within a door opening in the wainscot, which she should never have found had not Bob pushed it open in his search for rats, and then she found a tin case full of papers and parchments, much older, she thought, than the letters. She had tied them up together, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... submit to, that so by a mechanical process, if in no other way, the flesh might be subdued. The beds of the monks were arranged along the walls of the dormitory, at regular intervals; and in some monasteries a wainscot partition separated the sleepers from each other, thus making for each a little cubicle, with a low door leading into it. The broad passage, running from end to end, between the sleeping-places in the dormitory was strewn with rushes; and at the end opposite to the flight ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... form in his mind; and sitting, the only person awake in the slumbering house, where no sound broke the stillness, except the falling of a few cinders, and the occasional noise of a mouse behind the wainscot, somewhat of the superstitions of his northern youth came over him. His countenance became grave, and he sank ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... through the two days, and look spruce as a robin when I get out. I'll ask the Squire for the things this very night when he drops in. Hark! ain't that a sort of rumbling in the wall? I hope there ain't any oven next door; if so, I shall be scorched out. Here I am, just like a rat in the wainscot. I wish there was a low window to look out of. I wonder what Doctor Franklin is doing now, and Paul Jones? Hark! there's a bird singing in the leaves. Bell ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... usual rainy-day amusement, hide-and-seek. They never tired of rushing about through the old passages and rooms, and often came upon strange discoveries. Things hidden away for years and forgotten, doors which had remained unopened, or perhaps even had been mistaken for a part of the wainscot for generations. These discoveries were somewhat awe-inspiring, and the game not unfrequently became what the children called 'Treasure-hunting.' They generally managed to keep together on such occasions; it was too uncanny to be alone in those ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... plucky guest, who sees a ghost, and knows it is a ghost, and watches it, as it comes into the room and disappears through the wainscot, after which, as the ghost does not seem to be coming back, and there is nothing, consequently, to be gained by stopping awake, he goes ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... deevil had his entrails in his breest and his hert in his belly, and regairdet neither God nor his ain mither. His lauchter's no like the cracklin' o' thorns unner a pot, but like the nicherin' o' a deil ahin' the wainscot. Lat ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... away fancies, especially as the sounds were beginning; but though we generally yielded to him we COULD not give our attention to anything but these. There was first a low moan. 'No great harm in that,' said Griff; 'it comes through that crack in the wainscot where there is a sham window. Some putty will put a ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sidney drew his description of "Laconia" in Arcadia. The buildings, particularly their window-heads, are ornamented with the tracery peculiar to Kent. The great hall, the earliest of these buildings, has a characteristic open-timber roof, while its minstrel-gallery, fronted by a wainscot screen, is ornamented with the badge of the Dudleys, the "bear and ragged staff." Within these halls are the family portraits of a noble lineage. Of Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sidney and heiress of Sir John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... words about nothing at all, ... this—but I am like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can—and believe how profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all, much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... respective rooms. I thought, I must acknowledge, that they went to bed rather too early at my friend's. I had no wish to sleep; I therefore examined my room, which was charming. It was completely hung with an old figured tapestry framed in gray wainscot. The bed, draped in dimity curtains, was turned down and exhaled that odor of freshly washed linen which invites one to stretch one's self in it. On the table, a little gem dating from the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, were four or five books, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... alone in Urrard, Perchance in midnight gloom Thou'lt hear behind the wainscot Sounds in that haunted room, It is a thought of horror, I would not sleep alone In the haunted room of Urrard, Where ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... laughed, but looked round the old wainscot walls with unusual interest; she thought it would be a fine thing to be Lady ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Wainscot of Fifteenth Century, with addition circa late Seventeenth Century, fitted on to it in angle of room in the Church House, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... rough-grain'd body of a stubbed oak, is the fittest timber for the case of a cyder-mill, and such like engines, as best enduring the unquietness of a ponderous rolling-stone. For shingles, pales, lathes, coopers ware, clap-board for wainscot, (the ancient{54:1} intestina opera and works within doors) and some pannells are curiously vein'd, of much esteem in former times, till the finer grain'd Spanish and Norway timber came amongst us, which is likewise of a whiter colour. There ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... instance, hear this direction to an upholsterer of the early thirteenth century. Under the commands of the Sheriff of Wiltshire, he is thus ordered to make some alterations in a room for Henry the Third. He is to "wainscot the King's lower chamber, and to paint that wainscot of a green color, and to put a border to it, and to cause the heads of kings and queens to be painted on the borders; and to paint on the walls of the King's upper chamber the story of St. Margaret, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... burn them.—This terrified me greatly, and I was entirely broke of swearing.—Soon after this, as I was placing the china for tea, my mistress came into the room just as the maid had been cleaning it; the girl had unfortunately sprinkled the wainscot with the mop; at which my mistress was angry; the girl very foolishly answer'd her again, which made her worse, and she call'd upon God to damn her.—I was vastly concern'd to hear this, as she was a fine young lady, and very good to me, insomuch that I could not help speaking ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... these intervals, I heard a scratching sound—just such a sound as a mouse makes behind the wainscot. I had not noticed it before, and it caused me nothing but irritation now, for when a man is wakeful, such sounds, however slight they may be, become magnified to his overstrung nerves. I endured the sound for a time; then shooed to scare ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... May—to May—beloved niece—I knew it; but May shall never have it," she said, through her set teeth, as her eye ran rapidly over it. "They will think she burned it with those papers. I am saved—I shall marry Jerrold!" A mouse gnawing in her wainscot near her, caused her to start up and look around; and there, looking down from the cross, where the sins of the world had hung Him, was the image of His divine and woeful face. In the flickering light, the drops of blood appeared ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... start for Gravesend. Since he had wakened out of that wonderful dream on purpose to go to Gravesend, he might as well start at once. But his jump ended in a sickening sideways fall, and his head knocked against the wainscot. ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... perceptible. Crossing Rochester Bridge, keeping to the right along Strood and Frindsbury—the churchyard of which affords a splendid view of Rochester, Chatham, and the Medway—passing up Four Elms Hill and through the little village of Wainscot, nothing of interest calls for notice until we have travelled some miles from Strood. After crossing a tramway belonging to Government, and utilized by the Royal Engineers as a means of communication between the powder-magazine and Chatham Barracks, we observe that vegetation, which is so rich ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... wore nankeen that day. And then he danced, and capered, and fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons, and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic loins; anon he gave it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window or wainscot, expressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a laundress's bill instead—made a dart at Blomfield's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a right ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... something very confidential, and hitched it away again, as not being able to make up his mind how to begin. In the course of the day he cruised completely around the parlor in that frail bark, and more than once went ashore against the wainscot, or the closet door, in a very ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... lawyers of the last century; and there were old pier-glasses to reflect them, as well as the little satin-wood tables and the sofas resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief against the dark wainscot This was the physiognomy of the drawing-room into which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive him, who were also old-fashioned, and of a faded but genuine respectability: Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's white-haired mother, befrilled and kerchiefed ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... read aloud in secret places to a select few. I found myself a person of immense importance, it having leaked out that I was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had once written a story the foundation of which was a ghost. If a table or a wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large drawing-room, there was an instant silence, and everyone was prepared for an immediate clanking of chains and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... irresistible motion of creatures that divide and trouble the medium in which they move. The white, painted wainscot behind her showed her small, eager head, its waving rolls and crowning heights of hair, black as her gown. She had a sweet face, curiously foreshortened by a low forehead and the briefest of chins. It was white with the same whiteness ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... hands—she submitted, rather than consented to the ceremony; but there her compliance ended; and, when forcibly put into bed, she started quite frantic from it, screaming out, that after three gentle taps on the wainscot, at the bed-head, she heard Cromlus's voice, crying, 'Helen, Helen, mind me!' Cromlus soon after coming home, the treachery of the confidant was discovered,—her marriage disannulled,—and Helen ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to the remnant of the broken woodwork of the chair. The silk handkerchief, red and yellow, he gathered into a loose pad in his left hand for his cheek and temple to rest on. His face was thus supported by his hand and arm, while the side of his head touched and rested against the wainscot of the wall. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... ox; no gentle bud The sun had dried; the cattle chew'd the cud Low levell'd on the grass; no fly's quick sting Enforc'd the stonehorse in a furious ring To tear the passive earth, nor lash his tail About his buttocks broad; the slimy snail Might on the wainscot, by his many mazes, Winding meanders and self-knitting traces, Be follow'd where he stuck, his glittering slime Not yet wip'd off. It was so early time, The careful smith had in his sooty forge Kindled no coal; nor did his hammers urge His neighbours' ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... about the room, pausing at the stiff, distinguished, grey-haired couple, one on either side of the fire. The effect was of a highly finished genre picture: the rich wainscot between low book-shelves, the brooding portraits, the black-blue rug bordered by a veiled Oriental motive, the black-velvet cushions that brought out the watery reflections of old Sheraton as even the ancient horsehair had not done; the silver candlesticks, the miniatures, and on ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... come." Again the silence was broken, this time by a strange hurrying, rustling sound behind the wainscot, followed ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... well preserved. The panelled wainscot, about three feet high, is of chestnut. A magnificent Spanish leather with figures in relief, the gilding now peeled off or reddened, covers the walls. The ceiling is of wooden boards artistically joined and painted and gilded. The gold ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the counsellors, the judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor. But the room in its present condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches which have been extinguished ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no longer occupied, filled with ghastly fears and fancies. He did not dare to put out the light, and yet its faint glimmer only made the darkness more horrible. He did not dare to look behind him, though he knew that there was nothing there. He trembled at the scratching sound in the wainscot, though he knew that it was only mice. A sudden light on the window, and a distant chorus, did not make his heart beat less wildly from being nothing more alarming than two or three noisy students going home with torches. Then his light took the matter into its own hands, and ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he thought to himself, as though he were seeing her for the first time, "preparing to run off into the wainscot" He was conscious, too, of her quiet clothes and shy preoccupied timidity—all of it he seemed to see for the first time, a disguise for some purpose as secret, perhaps, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Nicholas took possession of the estate. He treated his old mother even worse, being fierce with her because of the small annual charge. She grew blind and demented toward the end, and was given a room in the west wing, over the counting-house. Nicholas removed the door-handle on the inside, and the wainscot there still showed a dull smear, rubbed by the poor creature's shoulder as she trotted round and round; also marks upon the door, where her fingers had grabbled for the missing handle. There were dreadful legends of this Nicholas—one in particular of a dark foreigner who had been landed, heavily ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... high knocker, she was not likely to alarm anybody with the noise she made. After a great many little faint raps, which, if anybody heard them, might easily have been mistaken for the attacks of some rat's teeth upon the wainscot, Ellen grew weary of her fruitless toil, and of standing on tiptoe, and resolved, though doubtfully, to go round the house and see if there was any other way of getting in. Turning the far corner, she saw a long, low out-building or shed, jutting ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... doorway one enters a hall of baronial character, thirty-three feet long, eighteen feet wide, and twenty-one feet high, finished in oak with open beam ceiling and above the high wainscot a rough wall in ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... civil, discreet man. He resides in the main fort close by the sea. There is a sentinel stands at his door; and he has a few servants to wait on him. I was treated in a large dark lower room, which has but one small window. There were about 200 muskets hung up against the walls, and some pikes; no wainscot, hangings, nor much furniture. There was only a small old table, a few old chairs, and 2 or 3 pretty long forms to sit on. Having supped with him I invited him on board, and went off in my boat. The next morning he ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... large Hall, called the Frater-house, finely wainscotted on the North and South sides; and in the West and nether Part thereof, is a long Bench of Stone in Mason-work, from the Cellar Door to the Pantry or Cove Door: Above the Bench is Wainscot Work two Yards and a Half high, finely carved, and set with imboss'd Work in Wainscot, and gilded under the carved Work. Above the Wainscot was a large Picture of our Saviour Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, and S. John, in fine gilt Work, and most excellent Colours; which Pictures ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... very fine in its proportions and decoration, and hung with the portraits of the multitude of brilliant men who in their young days were Christ Church men. During all the centuries that the rich dark stain has been gathering upon the carved oak in the ceiling and wainscot, it has been the scene of banquets and pageants without number, at which the most illustrious characters of English history have figured. I doubt, however, if any of its associations are finer than those connected with the student plays that have been performed here. Passing over occasions of this ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... treasure of which his parent had been possessed. Sending every one away on one pretext and another, he searched the palace from attic to basement, peeped into all the drawers his father had used, turned over every document, sounded every wall, bored holes in the wainscot, ripped up the bark, and covered himself with dust in his furious endeavours to find it. But though he did this twenty times, though he examined every hollow tree within ten miles, and peered into everything, forcing even the owl's ancestor to expose certain skeletons that were ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... magic of those thick old silver-coloured huge unpruned olives, of the high flowering grasses. These vestiges of porticoes and domes and grottoes are not in the least beautiful architecturally; and every statue, every bit of frieze has been ruthlessly removed, only the broken slabs of marble, of wainscot and a few broken mosaics remaining—'tis the only garden near Rome with not one statue in it! But somehow the divine vegetation, the divine view of near blue mountains and blue plain seem to transform all this ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... he has come, By Charon kindly ferried, To tell me of a mighty sum Behind my wainscot buried? There is a buccaneerish air About that garb outlandish— 70 Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, 'My name ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the index to the whole house, due care should therefore be given to its furnishing. Light colors and gilding should be avoided. The wall and ceiling decorations now mostly used are in dark, rich colors, shaded in maroons or deep reds. Plain tinted walls and ceilings in fresco or wainscot are also frequently used. The latest shades of wall paper come in wood colors, dark olive-greens, stone color, and grays, in tile, arabesque and landscape designs, and with these are used a corresponding ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... carrells, which are mentioned in the above quotation from the Rites of Durham, have of course entirely disappeared. Nothing is said about their height; but in breadth each of them was equal to the distance from the middle of one mullion of a window to the middle of the next; it was made of wainscot, and had a door of open carved work by which it was entered from the cloister. This arrangement was doubtless part of the systematic supervision of brother by brother that was customary in a monastery. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... basement; plinth, dado, wainscot; baseboard, mopboard^; bedrock, hardpan [U.S.]; foundation &c (support) 215; substructure, substratum, ground, earth, pavement, floor, paving, flag, carped, ground floor, deck; footing, ground work, basis; hold, bilge. bottom, nadir, foot, sole, toe, hoof, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... within the dreamy house The doors upon their hinges creak'd, The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peer'd about, Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and wainscot old Within doth eat the silly worm;[53] Even so a mind in envy rolled Always within it self doth burn. Thus every thing that nature wrought, Within itself his hurt doth bear! No outward harm need to be sought, Where enemies be within ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... than they, so well had she concealed her heart-sickness. But bride and bridegroom had not long been home at the castle when the young wife's unhappiness became plainly enough perceptible. Her maids and men said that she was in the habit of turning to the wainscot and shedding stupid scalding tears at a time when a right-minded lady would have been overhauling her wardrobe. She prayed earnestly in the great church-pew, where she sat lonely and insignificant as a mouse in a cell, instead of counting her ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... live lady mouse, and made a courtesy to the tailor! Then she hopped away down off the dresser, and under the wainscot. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... is a natural and easy transition, and here Jane, the housemaid, shone pre-eminent. She would sit there and discourse by the hour of lonely and deserted houses, long silent galleries, down which misty shapes had been seen to glide in the pallid moonlight, gaunt and ruinous chambers, the wainscot of which rattled, and the tattered tapestry of which swayed and rustled mysteriously; gloomy passages through which unearthly sighs were audibly wafted; dismal cellars, with never-opened doors, from whose ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... lofty, paved with stone. The panels of the oaken wainscot shone with the same uncompromising polish which was on every object within and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... brick, the roofs covered with a thick coat of stucco, and the walls whitewashed. People of distinction hang their chambers with damask, striped silk, painted cloths, tapestry, or printed linnen. All the doors, as well as the windows, consist of folding leaves. As there is no wainscot in the rooms, which are divided by stone partitions and the floors and cieling are covered with brick and stucco, fires are of much less dreadful consequence here than in our country. Wainscot would afford harbour for bugs: besides, white walls have a better effect in this hot climate. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... any remorse at all for having killed Borromee, since the manner in which Monsieur de Carmainges' affair occupies my mind makes me forget that I have killed the man; and if he, on his side, had nailed me to the table as I nailed him to the wainscot, he would certainly have had no more remorse than I have about it myself, at ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... sufficiently admired the antiquity of the structure and the beauty of the situation, the Prince, having proceeded down a long corridor, opened the door into a small chamber, which he introduced to Vivian as his cabinet. The furniture of this room was rather quaint, and not unpleasing. The wainscot and ceiling were painted alike, of a light green colour, and were richly carved and gilt. The walls were hung with green velvet, of which material were also the chairs, and a sofa, which was placed under a large and curiously-cut looking glass. The lower panes of the windows of this room were ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... materials of which it is composed. I was told that it was "the Imperial Library in miniature,"—but with this difference, let me here add, in favor of Moelk—that it looks over a magnificently wooded country, with the Danube rolling its rapid course at its base. The wainscot and shelves are walnut tree, of different shades, inlaid, or dovetailed, surmounted by gilt ornaments. The pilasters have Corinthian capitals of gilt; and the bolder or projecting parts of a gallery, which surrounds the room, are covered with the same metal. Everything is in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... floor and draw my boots. I did it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom door—all ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... aspirations being ended, an air of calm composure reigned around my "Father's Fireside." He seated himself in his arm-chair, while my mother busied herself in preparing tea, and each little one took his appointed place around the oval wainscot table. The turf fire burned cheerily on the hearth. The tea-kettle gave out its hissing sounds, indicative of comfort; and the solitary candle diffused light on the fair young faces which brightened as the oat-cake and the "buttered pieces" began to disappear. But the minister's wonted playfulness ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... corner of a dainty boudoir. The panel-mirrors which surrounded him, majestically duplicated on every side his enormous person; bags filled with gold covered the table; around him, the furniture, the wainscot, the doors, the locks, the mantel-piece, the ceiling were gilded; so was his coat. I do not know but that his brain was gilded too. He was calculating the issue of a little business affair which could not fail to bring him a few thousand ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... with the same view, To find her false, or find her true. Hark! something creeps about the house! Is it a spirit, or a mouse? Hark! something scratches round the room! A cat, a rat, a stubb'd birch-broom. Hark! on the wainscot now it knocks! 'If thou 'rt a ghost,' cried Orthodox, With that affected solemn air Which hypocrites delight to wear, 310 And all those forms of consequence Which fools adopt instead of sense; 'If thou 'rt a ghost, who from the tomb Stalk'st sadly silent through this gloom, In ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... what soothsayers I would consult?" . . . "The little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in my wainscot; the bird in frost and snow that pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... whose gilded capitals supported the vaulting, were of many-veined dark yellow marble, polished and gleaming like the slabs of pale yellow marble which panelled the interspaces. The high-moulded wainscot was of red and green porphyry, somberly smooth and shining. Against it, below the wall-panels, were set great chests of carved and gilded wood, while about the bases of the pilasters were placed groups of settees and armchairs, similarly carved and ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... secret cupboard. After a few moments she bent over, lifted and replaced the panelling and passed her slim hand over the wainscot, thoughtfully. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... evening, last autumn; it was here, too, that she had led him last Christmas Eve, scarcely ten days ago, after he had kissed her in the enclosed garden. But the low frosty sunlight lay in it now, upon the blue painted wainscot that rose half up the walls, the tall presses where the linen lay, the pieces of stuff, embroidered with pale lutes and wreaths that Mistress Manners had bought in Derby, hanging now over the plaster spaces. There was a chimney, too, newly built, that was thought a great ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... shell of a building Bob holds no great matter; the inside is the test of elegance. Of this house he was no sooner master than he summoned twenty workmen to his assistance, tore up the floors and laid them anew, stripped off the wainscot, drew the windows from their frames, altered the disposition of doors and fire-places, and cast the whole fabrick into a new form: his next care was to have his ceilings painted, his pannels gilt, and his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... The change was certainly amazing, and made the funeral day seem longer ago than it really was. The walls were not literally lime-washed; but (which is the same thing, except for a little glue!) they were distempered, a soft pale pea-green. About a yard deep above the wainscot this was covered with a dark sombre green tint, and along the upper edge of this, as a border all round the room, the school-mistress had painted a trailing wreath of white periwinkle. The border was painted with the same materials as the walls, and with very rapid touches. The white ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... room was closely curtained, and a couple of night-lights shed their feeble and uncertain rays upon the objects within it. The height of the apartment, and the absorbing complexion of the dark oaken wainscot, here and there concealed by falls of tapestry, served to render such an illumination extremely inefficient. But Conrad knew that this must be the chamber of death, even before he was able to distinguish that an apparently ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... back! disregard me! Look! that last arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently I did not see the feather ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... broad oaken panel over the mantelpiece were examined and in vain. The last took his attention the most, looking as if it might be a low door-way, and sounding hollow; but he could make nothing of it, and he fell to examining the wainscot in other ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... the life, which seems to us who are living it now, so passionless and commonplace. It is only when I stand amid ruined castles, that look at me so mournfully, and behold the heavy armour of old knights, hanging upon the wainscot of Gothic chambers; or when I walk amid the aisles of some dusky minster, whose walls are narrative ofhoar antiquity, and whose very bells have been baptized, and see the carved oaken stalls in the choir, where so ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ready at hand in a new livery; up went the head; out rushed my honour; the woman behind the counter all in flutters, respect and fear giving due solemnity to her features, and her knees, I doubt not, knocking against the inside of her wainscot-fence. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... dado of a darker colour and of wainscot is, no doubt, due to considerations of wear and tear, and so, like the origin of much ornamental art, may be traced to actual use and constructive necessity. When the wood-work of a room—the doors and window frames—is of the same colour and character as the dado, a certain agreeable ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... at the Hanyards looked so fair. The firelight danced on the black oak wainscot which age and polishing had made like unto ebony, and the row of pewter plates on the top shelf of the dresser glimmered in their obscurity like a row of moons. Our special pride, a spice-cupboard of solid mahogany, ages old, glowed red across the room, and from the neighbouring wall ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... 1244 Henry issued a writ enjoining "the clerks of the works at Windsor to work day and night to wainscot the high chamber upon the wall of the castle near our chapel in the upper bailey, so that it may be ready and properly wainscoted on Friday next [the 24th occurring on a Tuesday, only two days ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as maddening as the noise of a mouse in a wainscot. Jovannic wanted not so much to think as to dwell in the presence of his impressions. Those strange, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... chances, in his bouncing random flight, to get entangled in the glutinous meshes, he shakes and roars, and blusters so loudly, until he breaks away, that the spider affrighted, invariably takes advantage of his long legs to scamper off to his sanctum in the cracked wainscot—like some imbecile watchman, who fearing to encounter a tall inebriated bruiser, sneaks away with admirable discretion to the security of his snug box, praying the drunkard may speedily reel into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... detained their prisoner in a sort of steward's room, Mr. Glossin was ushered into what was called the great oak-parlour, a long room, panelled with well-varnished wainscot, and adorned with the grim portraits of Sir Robert Hazlewood's ancestry. The visitor, who had no internal consciousness of worth to balance that of meanness of birth, felt his inferiority, and by the depth of his bow and the obsequiousness of his demeanour, showed that ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... drowned the Cats, and poisoned the Rats. The latter have revenged 'emselves by dying behind the Wainscot, which makes the lower Part of the House soe unbearable, 'speciallie to Father, that we are impatient to be off. Mother, intending to turn Chalfont into a besieged Garrison, is laying in Stock of Sope, Candles, Cheese, Butter, Salt, Sugar, Raisins, Pease, and Bacon; besides Resin, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... "Ha! ha! These forms are air—mere counterfeits Of my imaginous heart, as are the whirling Wainscot and trembling floor!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... blows like the devil; our landlord here has showed us the window where we must break in, and tells us the plate stands in the wainscot cupboard ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... forth his revolver with quivering fingers, levelled it at his guest, and pulled upon the trigger. The bullet sang across the room, passed through armchair and screen into the wainscot beyond. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again Dapples ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... to find a great parchment book, behind the ceiling, with some twenty pieces of gold laid there, by a person a little before.—This encourages the souldiers in their work, and makes them the more eager in breaking down all the rest of the wainscot. The book was called 'Swapham,' and was afterwards redeemed by a person belonging to ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... him that I counterfeited, and all that might afford a hiding-place in the hut was opened and turned about—nay, the very holy rest of the chapel was disturbed as search was made, walls and wainscot rapped, cupboards forced, and stones prised up, the while I stood at ease peeling a light cane that I had cut ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... when you tell me what those letters spell." And again in response there was silence on the part of the closet, broken by occasional kicks that shook the door, and even caused the old panel to stir in its worm-eaten setting of oaken wainscot. As Helen looked up after the silence that followed Tommy's demonstration, while the panel yet slightly stirred, it seemed to her that a shiver ran over the lady painted there; she remembered the ghost-stories, it made a shiver run over her herself. She rose and went to look out of the window ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... fallacious expedient. Yet she sleeps in the same chamber with me; and ought I not to beware of inspiring perfidy with projects? 'Tis true my slumbers are broken, my nights restless, and the cracking of the wainscot is as effectual in waking me as a thunder-clap could be. I am resolved, however, to take the key out of the door, and either hide it or hold it all night in my hand. Mischief is meant me, or why ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... minutes he looked about. The hall occupied the lower story of the tower. It was square, and roughly-hewn beams, slightly curved, crossed the ceiling. The spaces between were paneled with dark wood and an oak wainscot ran round the wall. Half of one side was occupied by a big fireplace and its old, hand-forged irons. The carved frame and mantel were Jacobean and obviously newer than the rest. The old windows, however, had been enlarged and a wide casement ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... closed the door, and crossed to the stairs. There he stopped. From his pouch he had drawn a fine length of whipcord, attached at one end to a tiny bodkin of needle sharpness. That bodkin he drove into the edge of one of the panels of the wainscot, in line with the topmost step; drawing the cord taut at a height of a foot or so above this step, he made fast its other end to the newel-post at the stair-head. He had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that the performance of it occupied but a few seconds. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... sitting-room, and she began to descend the private stairs that led down to it. She was as light in figure and in step as ever, and her soft slippers made no noise as she went down. The door in the wainscot was open, and from the foot of the stairs she had a strange view. Janet's candle was on the chair behind her, in front of it lay half-a-dozen different keys, and she herself was kneeling before the bureau, trying ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the house; and if it were goodly without, within it was better. For there was a fair chamber panelled with wainscot well carven, and a cupboard of no sorry vessels of silver and latten: the chairs and stools as fair as might be; no king's might be better: the windows were glazed, and there were flowers and knots and posies in them; and the bed was hung with ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... at his house—not a thing left but some empty Bottles that were overlooked and the Family Pictures, which I believe are framed in the Wainscot. [Going.] ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... committed[1], and I usually having my servants here allowed me, to read nightly an hour to me after supper, it fortuned that Fulcis, my then servant, reading in the Christian Resolution, in the treatise of Proof that there is a God, &c., there was upon a wainscot table at that instant three loud knocks {513} (as if it had been with an iron hammer) given; to the great amazing of me and my two servants, Fulcis ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... fiddle. The clouds were scudding across the sky; time was passing—and I could not get away. Ah, but my heart was sore; I did not know what to do. And if the leaves rustled outside, or a rat gnawed behind the wainscot, I fancied I saw the old woman gliding in by a secret door and creeping softly through the room, with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of the chambers of the tower is the following sentence, carved on the frieze of the wainscot:—"In the yeire of owre Ld. MDLV. was this howse buyldyd, by Sir Wyllyam Ingilby, Knight, Philip and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... thick plate glass glowing in all the richest hues of purple, ruby, emerald, and azure, through several squares of which the light stole in, gorgeously tinted, from the peristyle, there being no distinction except in this between the windows and the other compartments of the wainscot, if it may be so styled; and of the ceiling, which was finished in like manner with slabs of stained glass, between the intersecting ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... imprudent to make any changes in it. So when Madame du Chatelet was announced, Zephirine went up to her with—"Look, dear Louise, you are still in your old home!" indicating, as she spoke, the little chandelier, the paneled wainscot, and the furniture, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... a clock strikes two: And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse. ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... bare, poverty-stricken look in this room as in every other part of the manor house. The bed was a tall melancholy four-poster, with scantiest draperies of faded drab damask. Save for one little islet of threadbare Brussels beside the bed, the room was carpetless. There was an ancient wainscot wardrobe with brass handles. There was a modern deal dressing-table skimpily draped with muslin, and surmounted by the smallest of looking-glasses. There were a couple of chairs and a three-cornered washhand-stand. There was neither sofa nor writing-table. There ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... Christ's sake! Good night!' I pronounced 'Amen.' He fell asleep immediately. I was not so fortunate for a long time. I fancied myself bit by innumerable vermin under the clothes; and that a spider was travelling from the wainscot towards my mouth. At last I ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... "know everything" her husband knows; and she had guessed that those two were discussing secret matters which they had no intention of imparting to her. A woman has a faculty about such things which corresponds to scent in the terrier; the little mystery is there—the small rodent lurks behind the wainscot; she is consumed with a desire to get at it—to worry its life out; and if it refuse to leave its hiding-place she cannot rest and be satisfied. It was her nature; and though she asked no questions, knowing that her husband ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... is complete without the rats. In stories of ghosts and murderers they scamper through the echoing rooms, and the gnawing of their teeth is heard behind the wainscot, and their gleaming eyes peer through the holes in the worm-eaten tapestry, and they scream in shrill, unearthly notes in the dead of night, while the moaning wind sweeps, sobbing, round the ruined turret towers, and passes ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... the most minute orders, which are very funny: "In the search," says the document, "first observe the parlour where they use to dine and sup; in the last part of that parlour it is conceived there is some vault, which to discover, you must take care to draw down the wainscot, whereby the entry into the vault may be discovered. The lower parts of the house must be tried with a broach, by putting the same into the ground some foot or two, to try whether there may be perceived some timber, which if there be, there must ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies." The rake has lost all his recently acquired wealth, pulls off his wig and flings himself upon the floor in a paroxysm of fury and execration. In allusion to the burning of White's in 1733, flames are seen bursting from the wainscot, but the pre-occupied gamblers take no heed, even of the watchman crying "Fire!" To the left is seated a highwayman, with horse pistol and black mask in a skirt pocket of his coat. He is so engrossed in his thoughts ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... nothin' a lump, if you don't mind, sonny," the boatswain went on; "in a nice airy parlour painted white, with a gilt chandelier an' gilt combings to the wainscot." His picture of the Mansion House as he proceeded was drawn from his reading in the Book of Revelations and his own recollections of Thames-side gin-palaces and the saloons of passenger steamers, and gave the impression of a virtuous ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and gorgeous furniture would derive but little pleasure from a minute description of my simple dwelling. It is dear to me for the same reason that they would hold it in slight regard. Its worm-eaten doors, and low ceilings crossed by clumsy beams; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, and gaping closets; its small chambers, communicating with each other by winding passages or narrow steps; its many nooks, scarce larger than its corner-cupboards; its very dust and dulness, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... were, I sat still. Occasionally I heard them laugh, but under their breath as it were; and persuaded by this that they were bent on a frolic, I might have persisted in my silence until midnight, which was not more than two hours off, had not a slight sound, as of a rat gnawing behind the wainscot, drawn my attention to the door. Raising my candle and shading my eyes I espied something small and bright protruding beneath it, and sprang up, thinking they were about to prise it in. To my surprise, however, I could discover, on taking the candle to the threshold, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... I carried up the pail, slopping the water on the stairs at every step, with a scrubbing-brush in the other hand, and then I set to work. When once I had begun, I cannot pretend that I found the actual washing of the wainscot particularly distasteful, although it seemed rather hard, after I had done my best, that Mrs. Turton should upbraid ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... she said, "the body mustn't be left a minute: there's a whole army of rats in the house already! As I was covering the table with a blanket before I put on the sheet, there got up all at once behind the wainscot the most uprageous hurry-scurry o' them horrid creaturs. They'll be in wherever it is—you may take your bible-oath! Once ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... between a shop and a private house, and which a red lamp, projecting over the fanlight of the street door, would have sufficiently announced as the residence of a medical practitioner, even if the word 'Surgery' had not been inscribed in golden characters on a wainscot ground, above the window of what, in times bygone, had been the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the gilt-labelled ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... unfortunate knack at preserving likenesses. Heads powdered even whiter than the originals, laced waistcoats, enormous lappets, and countenances all ingeniously disposed so as to smile at each other, encumber the wainscot, and distress the unlucky visitor, who is obliged to bear testimony to the resemblance. When one sees whole rooms filled with these figures, one cannot help reflecting on the goodness of Providence, which thus distributes self-love, in proportion as it denies those gifts that excite ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... ultramarine and veined with gold[914]. The Vicar of Leeds, writing to Ralph Thoresby in 1723, tells him that a pleasing surprise awaits his return, 'Our altar-piece is further adorned, since you went, with three flower-pots upon three pedestals upon the wainscot, gilt, and a hovering dove upon the middle one; three cherubs over the middle panel, the middle one gilt, a piece of open carved work beneath, going down towards the middle of the velvet.' If, however, the reader cannot altogether ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... so red that it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of the pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic wainscot half around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest fragrance in the world.... They petted the soldier until an ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... and they succeeded in her affections the poets and artists she had loved in early life. It does not reflect much credit upon the latter, that her ladyship used to complain of never having met with true gratitude except from four-footed animals. She had a panel in the oak wainscot of her dining-room, which she tapped upon and opened at meal times, when ten or twelve jolly rats came tripping forth, and joined her at table. At the word of command or a signal from her ladyship, they retired again to their native obscurity—a trait of good sense in ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... some means of education, which the stern genius of puritanism would have proscribed. She ventured to have her charge taught music—nay, even dancing; and the picture of the stern Colonel Christian trembled on the wainscot where it was suspended, while the sylph-like form of Alice, and the substantial person of Dame Deborah, executed French chaussees and borrees, to the sound of a small kit, which screamed under the bow of Monsieur De Pigal, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... paper is worse than I expected. Look! in places you see it is dreadfully dirty: and the wainscot is more yellow and forlorn than anything ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... with a mosquito-netting under a linen canopy, a large bureau of mahogany wood, and a table, was the furnishing of this room, which opened upon the garden. Its only ornament was a crucifix suspended from the center of the slightly roughened wainscot. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... full of years, and of Glory, and of infirmities. A message went to his grand house in Pall Mall, and he presently waited on my Grandmother. He was closeted with her for an hour, when the tap of my Grandmother's cane against the wainscot summoned Mistress Talmash, and she, doing her errand, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... daylight, while I lay dreaming in my cosy box bed, I was awakened by hearing a rapping noise. I listened, fancying it was but the noise of some rat behind the wainscot that had come for shelter into the warm house; but the loud knocking came again. I hurriedly drew on some clothes and opened the outer door. A wild gust of wind and snow swished in upon me, and in the deep snow outside there stood a woman holding ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... quite; A noisy man is always in the right— I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair, Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare; And when I hope his blunders all are out, Reply discreetly, "To be ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Vango's Spirit Thought Institute in St. Paul. I've told you before how ashamed I am of that. I left because there's some kinds of work I won't stand for. Well, he used a ceiling trap for his materializin'; though the wainscot is a sight better and more up-to-date in my experience. When he let it drop careless, in practicing before the seance, it used to make a noise like that. I fell asleep by-and-bye; and out of my dreams, which was troubled and didn't bring nothing definite, I got ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... will indeed be more elegant; though that is to be rather plain than rich, as well in its wainscot as furniture, and to be new-floored. The dear gentleman has already given orders, and you will soon have workmen to put them in execution. The parlour-doors are to have brass-hinges and locks, and to shut as close, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... king with great despatch, forthwith ordered a strong body of cavalry, for—there was a mouse scratching behind the wainscot. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... did at the moment, or as soon as he recovered his presence of mind, was to set down his bottle and dive under the counter; while Nicky-Nan chased the coin which had ricochetted off the spittoon and lodged against the wainscot. Their physical infirmities made the pursuit painful for both, as the darkness in a small room overcrowded with furniture made it difficult. Mr Latter emerged panting, in audible bodily distress. His search had been longer than ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... partition wall which fell in at the great shock." "Have you had an earthquake?" blazed up my uncle, now fairly in a rage. "No, not an earthquake, worshipful Herr Justitiarius," replied the old man, grinning all over his face, "but three days ago the heavy wainscot ceiling of the justice-hall fell in with a tremendous crash." "Then may the"—— My uncle was about to rip out a terrific oath in his violent passionate manner, but jerking up his right arm above his head and taking off his fox-skin cap with his left, he suddenly checked himself; and turning to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... is. It IS so absurd to be an engaged orphan and it IS so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about after one, like mice in the wainscot; and it IS so absurd to be ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... circumstance which probably had not escaped the review of the parties on the other side, whom much it stood upon not to be deceived in it; but at length I observed a paper patch of the same colour as the wainscot, which I took to conceal some flaw; but then it was so high, that I was obliged to stand upon a chair to reach it, which I did as soft as possible, and, with a point of a bodkin, soon pierced it, and opened myself ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... this wooded paradise as a residence. He built him a fine castle of red brick, full of wide halls and drawing rooms and chambers of state, and filled it with fabulous paintings, Gobelin tapestries, and black walnut wainscot. He kept a small garrison of French soldiers by converting the huge stables partly into a barrack. One night the peasantry rose. There was a conflict, as the walls still show; and the prince by patent fled, no one knew where. After its baptism in blood it ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... and pretend about her until her own eyes would grow large with something which was almost like fear, particularly at night, when the garret was so still, when the only sound that was to be heard was the occasional squeak and scurry of rats in the wainscot. There were rat-holes in the garret, and Sara detested rats, and was always glad Emily was with her when she heard their hateful squeak and rush and scratching. One of her "pretends" was that Emily ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Godons out of France, lead the King to be crowned and anointed at Reims and rescue the Duke of Orleans from the hands of the English.[1144] One day she grew impatient and went to the King when he was in one of those closets of carved wainscot constructed in the great castle halls for intimate or family gatherings. She knocked at the door and entered almost immediately. There she found the King conversing with Maitre Gerard Machet, his confessor, my Lord the Bastard, the Sire de Treves and a favourite noble ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... unaccountable noises after dark—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... through a weir; Oft interrupted by the din Of laughter and of loud applause, And, in each intervening pause, The music of a violin. The fire-light, shedding over all The splendor of its ruddy glow, Filled the whole parlor large and low; It gleamed on wainscot and on wall, It touched with more than wonted grace Fair Princess Mary's pictured face; It bronzed the rafters overhead, On the old spinet's ivory keys It played inaudible melodies, It crowned the sombre clock with flame, The hands, the hours, the maker's name, And ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Whether we may not, for the same use, manufacture divers things at home of more beauty and variety than wainscot, which is imported at such expense ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... spirit—whither?—that cold, cold creeping dread—of what? As he entered the house, he met his confidential servant. He gave him orders respecting the flight of the morrow, and then retired into the chamber where he slept. It was an antique and large room: the wainscot was of oak; and one broad and high window looked over the expanse of country which stretched beneath. He sat himself by the casement in silence—he opened it: the dull air came over his forehead, not with a sense of freshness, but, like ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eight feet in height, and the heavy, whitewashed beams made it look still lower. In the narrow space between the ceiling and wainscot, the wall was covered with an old-fashioned paper, florid of design, and musty of odor. On the mantel-shelf stood two brass candle-sticks with snuffer and extinguisher. As Flint stared idly at them, wondering what varied scenes their candles had shone upon, his eyes ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... one hand, slapping me on the face with the other,'—clenched as a fist (POING),—'several blows; one of which struck me on the temple, so that I fell back, and should have split my head against a corner of the wainscot, had not Madame de Sonsfeld caught me by the head-dress and broken the fall. I lay on the ground without consciousness. The King, in a frenzy, was for striking me with his feet; had not the Queen, my Sisters, and the rest, run between, and those who were present prevented him. ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... breakfast was finished we began to chat and smoke, which reminded me of those gulping mouths under the wainscot, and I leaned down to catch a glimpse of their rows of black fangs, thinking to ask Edmund for further explanation about them; but the sight gave me a shiver, and I felt the hopelessness of trying ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss |
