"Wainscot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wall. Simultaneously the boy's foot struck the back of the chair which in rising Crispin had overset, and he stumbled. How it happened he scarcely knew, but as he hurtled forward his blade slid along his opponent's, and entering Gregory's right shoulder pinned him to the wainscot. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the 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
... 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 him ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... 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, nothing more threatening ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... over Endymion, 'how I wished something would happen—anything to stir us out of this statuesque, sleeping-beauty state of being. I verily believe the spiders are all asleep in the ivy, and the mice behind the wainscot, and the horses in ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... or Oliviers, a father and son of French extraction, and by a Swiss named Petitot. A collection of miniatures by the Oliviers, including no less than six of Venitia, Lady Digby, had a similar fate to that of Holbein's drawings. The miniatures had been packed in a wainscot box and conveyed to the country-house in Wales of Mr Watkin Williams, who was a descendant of the Digby family. In course of time the box with its contents, doubtless forgotten, had been transferred to a garret, where ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... glazed, and looked very well, perfectly white, and painted with blue figures, as the large China ware in England is painted, and hard as if it had been burnt. As to the inside, all the walls, instead of wainscot, were lined with hardened and painted tiles, like the little square tiles we call galley- tiles in England, all made of the finest china, and the figures exceeding fine indeed, with extraordinary variety of colours, mixed with gold, many tiles making but one figure, but ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... applied to the new altar-piece this did not last long, for in 1752 a large piece of rich velvet, in a frame elegantly carved and gilt, was purchased with L50 given by Archbishop Herring, a former dean, to take the place of the central panel of plain wainscot. This was itself removed in 1788, when a picture by Sir Benjamin West, P.R.A., "The Angels appearing to the Shepherds," was inserted in its stead. This picture was presented anonymously, but the name of the donor, J. Wilcocks, Esq., a son of the bishop, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... 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
... modernized by the late Mme. Sechard; the walls were adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted the color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with wall-paper —Oriental scenes in sepia tint—and for all furniture, half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather cushions were ranged round the room. The ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a long, low room with a wainscot of dark walnut, and a single lamp upon the table gave it shadows rather than light. He had just time to notice that a girl and a man were bending over the table in the lamplight, to recognise with a throb of the heart the play of the light ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Mistress Bolt informed him, had lately been paved and glazed at Sir Richard Whittington's own expense. The bright new red and yellow tiles, and the stained glass of the tall windows high up, as well as the panels of the wainscot, were embellished with trade-marks and the armorial bearings of the guilds; and the long tables, hung with snowy napery, groaned with gold and silver plate, such as, the Duke of Orleans observed to Catherine, no citizens would dare exhibit ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... &c. and 'tis found that the 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 is in New-England ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... 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 were allowed for the task], when we come there, with boards radiated and coloured, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Sir Hildebrand and the young squires,—some to close round the table and be in the way,—some bawled to open, some to shut, a pair of folding-doors which divided the hall from a sort of gallery, as I afterwards learned, or withdrawing-room, fitted up with black wainscot. Opened the doors were at length, and in rushed curs and men,—eight dogs, the domestic chaplain, the village doctor, my six ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... suffice my collection. The brasses for the shelves I like—but not the price: the notched ones, after all, do very well. I have had three grand hawls since I last wrote to you. The pulpit, repentance-stool, King's seat, and God knows how much of carved wainscot, from the kirk of Dunfermline, enough to coat the hall to the height of seven feet:—supposing it boarded above, for hanging guns, old portraits, intermixed with armour, &c.—it will be a superb entrance-gallery: ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... 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 ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... 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. Not ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... marvellously 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 is scarcely noticeable; ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... imitation more or less unconscious. It is to the example of the dangerous poet named that Mr. Aldrich evidently owes, among other minor blemishes, a mouse which does some mischief in his verses. It is a wainscot mouse, and a blood-relation, we believe, to the very mouse that shrieked behind the mouldering wainscot in the lonely moated grange. This mouse of Mr. Aldrich's appears twice in a brief lyric called "December"; in "Garnaut Hall," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... "look here, and here!" and I pointed out to the priest various lines in which my name legibly and frequently occurred. A change came over Montreuil's face: he released my arm and staggered back against the wainscot; but recovering his composure instantaneously, he said, "I forgot, my son—I forgot—your name is mentioned, it is true, but with honourable eulogy, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dancing room is not especially big, it adds considerably to the floor space to put no chairs around it. Those who dance seldom sit around a ballroom anyway, and the more informal grouping of chairs in the hall or library is a better arrangement than the wainscot row or wall-flower exposition grounds. The floor, it goes without saying, must be smooth and waxed, and no one should attempt to give a dance whose ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... can be more trivial than for a spirit to employ himself in knocking on a morning at the wainscot by the bed's head of a man who got drunk over night, according to the way that such things are ordinarily explained? And yet I shall give you such a relation of this, that not even the most devout and precise Presbyterian will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... spaces, so as to be 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 ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... also the 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 ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... house dining-room I know is ceiled and wainscoted with wood, the walls above the wainscoting carrying an ingrain paper of the same tone; the line of division between the wainscot and wall being broken by a row of old blue India china plates, arranged in groups of different sizes and running entirely around the room. There is one small mirror set in a broad carved frame of yellow wood hung in the centre of a rather large wall-space, its angles ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... induce them to assert their right to have opinions of their own. This has ever been a free country, and they shall not imperil its freedom by their volubility and self-conceit." Here Mr. Lavender paused for breath, and in the darkness a faint noise, as of a mouse scrattling at a wainscot, attracted his attention. "Wonderful," he thought, elated by the silence, "that I should so have succeeded in riveting their attention as to be able to hear a mouse gnawing. I must have made a considerable impression." And, fearing to spoil it by further speech, he set to work to grope his way ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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
... all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law, and that grand divine thing which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... House, which must once have been the principal house in the parish, though now it is so much gone to decay. Old Dr. Plank, the President of Magdalen, used to come thither in Farmer Colson's time. What used to be the principal room has a short staircase leading to it, and in the wainscot over the fire- place is a curious old picture, painted, I fancy, between 1600 and 1700, showing a fight between turbaned men and European soldiers, most likely Turks and Austrians. It is a pity that it cannot tell its history. The moat goes all round the house, garden, and farmyard, ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... logic kills me 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 ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... led to the front door, and knocked; but as she could only just reach the 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 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 outbuilding ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... might, if we had room, speak of at large, and divert you too with the Relation, such as my Lady Hatt's Devil in Essex, who upon laying a Joiner's Mallet in the Window of a certain Chamber, would come very orderly and knock with it all Night upon the Window, or against the Wainscot, and disturb the Neighbourhood, and then go away in the Morning, as well satisfied as may be; whereas if the Mallet was not left, he would think himself affronted, and be as unsufferable and terrifying as possible, breaking the Windows, splitting the Wainscot, committing all the Disorders, and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... they thought it 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, which ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced at least three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from the country ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, Or from the crevice peer'd about. Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices call'd her from without. She only said, 'My life is dreary, He cometh not,' she said; She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... It is now a public-house; and, of course, we alighted and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much overscribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form really curious and interesting articles of furniture. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 Mr. Clem ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of running round a room on the edge of the wainscot, a strange power of holding by the foot: an art which, in lower life, might have been serviceable to him in the showing it. And Anthony, likewise, amongst better and more brilliant qualifications, had the reputation ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 drawers and bottles were; and finding nobody there, knocked with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... little mouse, Running all about the house, Through the hole your little eye In the wainscot peeping sly, Hoping soon some crumbs to steal, To make quite a hearty meal. Look before you venture out, See if pussy is about. If she's gone, you'll quickly run To the larder for some fun; Round about the dishes creep, Taking ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... 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
... somewhat musicianless musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-adzed at Jake Offutt's car-body works, the hinge; were of hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet asserted to be not only larger than any of the fireplaces in European castles but of a draught incomparably more scientific. It was also ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... are about sixteen inches square, and a quarter of an inch thick: wainscot is the best, as it does not warp. These will go into the groove of the lesson post: there should be about twenty articles on each board, or twenty-five, just as it suits the conductors of the school; there should ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... constrained manner, sought their 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
... my wainscot last night, and plunged me in horrible dilemma: for I am equally idiotic over the idea of the creature trapped or free, and I saw sleepless nights ahead of me till I had secured a change of locality ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... 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
... I, but 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the old palace of Linlithgow, is finely groined, and there are stags' horns nailed up in it. When the door opens, you find yourself in the entrance-hall, which is, in fact, a complete museum of antiquities and other matters. It is, as described in Lockhart's Life of Scott, wainscoted with old wainscot from the kirk of Dumfermline, and the pulpit of John Knox is cut in two, and placed as chiffoniers between the windows. The whole walls are covered with suits of armor and arms, horns of moose deer, the head ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... 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, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... restless-patterned wall papers. Leather (used with paneling or above wainscot), modern tapestries, fabrics of all kinds are suitable for covering dining-room walls. If low, the ceiling should never be dark, since this makes the room appear still lower. (A breakfast room done in lacquer is very effective, however, if not too low.) A single ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... 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 ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... long again as I did, had it not been for her brother. He was to go to school, in about three days time, so was determined to have one more good piece of fun (as he called it) before he went. He procured a squirt, and filled it full of ink; he then bored a hole in the wainscot of the room where he was, quite through into the room where I was. All things being prepared, he waited till his sister came to let me out, which, as soon as she had done, he let off the whole in my face; at least attempted to do it, for ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous
... like the sea after a storm, and looked about for a mouse to tame. One could not begin too soon. But unfortunately there seemed to be no mouse at liberty just then. There were mouse-holes right enough, all round the wainscot, and in the broad, time-worn boards of the old ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... windows seen in the front of the chateau, and over them still hung long sweeping curtains, so tattered and moth-eaten that they were almost falling to pieces. Profound silence reigned here, unbroken save by occasional scurrying and squeaking of mice behind the wainscot, the gnawing of rats in the wall, or the ticking ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... portico—the climate did not permit it—but in one or other hall. The hall was wainscotted; the walls were hung with shields and weapons, like the hall of Odysseus. The heads of the family usually slept in the aisles, in chambers entered through the wainscot of the hall. Such a chamber might be called muchos; it was private from the hall though under the same roof. It appears not improbable that some Homeric halls had sleeping places of this kind; such a muchos in Iceland seems to have had ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... behind the wainscot, And the Spirits of Pity sighed. It's good," said the Spirits Ironic, "to tickle their minds With a portent of their wedlock's after-grinds." And the Spirits of Pity sighed behind the wainscot, "It's ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... the darkness 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
... on the west side of this part of the triforium was discovered in 1718, against the then eastern end of the nave, underneath the panelled wainscot at the back of the seats occupied by the clergy when the nave was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... never heard," continued Conrad, "or read of those wonderful persons, or, as you have been such a great traveller, have you yourself never stumbled upon such, whose eyes can pierce through a board, through wainscot and wall, nay down into the depths of the earth and into the heart of ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... by the same man who had directed us hither on the other side of the lake, and afterwards we learned that he was the father of our hostess. He showed us into a room up-stairs, begged we would sit at our ease, walk out, or do just as we pleased. It was a large square deal wainscoted room, the wainscot black with age, yet had never been painted: it did not look like an English room, and yet I do not know in what it differed, except that in England it is not common to see so large and well-built a room so ill-furnished: there were two or three large ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... 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 came aboard with another gentleman in his company, attended ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... to is that caused by a mouse nibbling at the wainscot; and I venture to say so much in a tone ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Rosebud Boudoir," said Lady Anstruthers, smiling faintly. "All the rooms have names. I thought them so delightful, when I first heard them. The Damask Room—the Tapestry Room—the White Wainscot Room—My Lady's Chamber. It almost broke my heart when I ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suddenly checked by observing the reeve of the forest peeping from behind the wainscot, and earnestly regarding the miller, and he called the attention ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of drainage and patchouli, of, in some odd way, the sea and fish and wet pavements. It is a smell that will, until I die, be presented to me by those dark half-hidden passages, warrens of intricate fumbling ways with boards suddenly rising like little mountains in the path; behind the wainscot one hears the scuttling ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... with 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. The beds ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... lowest humiliation. However, 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 me ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... mistaken—'twas but the wind in the old wainscot. (Aside.) He is quite capable of destroying that innocent child; but, old and attached servant as he is, there are liberties I still know how to forbid. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... 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, and brought his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... plucked 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
... the footsteps died away; he listened, but again the stillness was profound. He felt his way to the secret door; the wainscot screen stood ajar. It was plain that some one had come to the Rat's-Hole only to discover that the key of the outside door was missing. Constans realized that he, too, had missed something—his chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... 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 that he does not notice the boy at his side offering ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... 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 ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... rising from his seat walked to the other side of the room and touched a spring in the wainscot. A panel flew to one side and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... officer giving instructions by signals, and frequently putting his fingers on his lips, as if enjoining silence. There was now no time to be lost in rousing the family, and all the haste that could be made was scarcely sufficient to hurry the venerable man from his bed, into a small recess behind the wainscot of an adjoining room, which was concealed by a bed, in which a lady, Miss Gordon of Towie, who was there on a visit, lay, before the soldiers obtained admission. A most minute search took place. The room in which Lord Pitsligo was concealed did not escape: Miss Gordon's bed was carefully ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... 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
... this confusion in his personal pronouns, Capua mounted nimbly on pieces of furniture, thrust his pocket-knife through a crack of the wainscot, opened the door of a small unseen closet, and, after groping about and inserting his head as Van Amburgh did in the lion's mouth, scrambled down again with his hand full of charred and blackened papers, talking ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... covered with gilding, decorated with rude paintings and horrible statues of saints in coloured wood, paved in the Arabic style with enamelled faience laid out in various mosaic designs, and provided with a fountain or marble conch; the pretty church, unfortunately without an organ, but with wainscot, confessionals, and doors of most excellent workmanship, a floor of finely-painted faience, and a remarkable statue in painted wood of St. Bruno; the little meadow in the centre of the cloister, symmetrically ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... faces in a mist of smoke That up-curled, blue, from long Winchester pipes, While—like some rare old picture, in a dream Recalled—quietly listening, laughing, watching, Pale on that old black oaken wainscot floated One bearded oval face, young, with deep eyes, Whom Raleigh ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... know," I said. "Some of the wainscot panels rattle a bit, but I imagine the house will stand it unless you go in too much for Wagner. 'Tannhaeuser' or 'Siegfried' might shake a few beams loose, but lighter music, I think, can be ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... On the hall wainscot just opposite hung his horse-pistols; and when he saw them, and that wasn't for a while—for though he was looking straight at them, he was staring, really, quite through the dingy wooden panel at quite other objects three ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... spoken to him in vain, drew nearer to him, and began to pull him by the sleeve. Frederick, angry, and out of patience with these interruptions, suddenly turned round, and gave Marcus such a push, that he sent him reeling across the room, and he at last fell against the wainscot. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... picture of one calmly asleep. Then, as they continued to gaze at with fascinated eyes, not knowing what to expect, they saw something white escape from her lap and slide across the floor till it touched and was stayed by the wainscot. It was the top page of the manuscript she held, and as some inkling of the truth reached their astonished minds, she sprang impetuously to her feet and, pointing ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... and he breathed hard, but he could not go back and leave the door unclosed. With a suppressed sob of agony he thrust out his head and arm. In a moment it was over, but the moral effort had been terrible, and his strength failed him, so that he staggered against the wainscot and would have fallen but for ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... long time I hoped against hope. Never did a rat squeak behind the wainscot, or rain drip upon the attic-floor, without a wild thrill shooting through me as I thought that at last I had come upon traces of some unquiet soul. I felt no touch of fear upon these occasions. If it occurred in the night-time, I would send Mrs. D'Odd—who is a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... led him 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 goodly web from over sea such as the soldan ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... 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 voices called ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... enough of it, but there had been one scene near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes in the evening dusk the walls of her attic to see whether there too verses had been scribbled. Now, obscure in the corner ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... "It consisted," says he, "of a plank of stone of about six inches in thickness, and in its other dimensions equalling the size of an ordinary door, or somewhat less. It was carved in such a manner as to resemble a piece of wainscot: the stone of which it was made was visibly of the same kind with the whole rock; and it turned upon two hinges in the nature of axles. These hinges were of the same entire piece of stone with the door, and were contained in two holes of the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... though much damaged, and the marble bath still in its place in a niche painted with river gods. In one of the Vatican's periodical fits of prudery the frescoes were completely hidden with a wooden wainscot, the bath-tub was taken away and the room was turned into a chapel. It is believed, however, that the paintings still ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... "O heavens! I'm undone," suffered him, after a faint struggle, to make a lodgment upon the covered way of her bed. Her honour, however, was secured for the present, by a strange sort of knocking upon the wainscot, at the other end of the room, hard by the bed in which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the staircase hall and being supported by square, fluted columns. In this smaller hall a simple, though only a molded cornice in harmony with that of the main hall suffices. Unlike the plain dado of the main hall, however, elaborated only by a molded surbase and skirting, a handsome paneled wainscot runs around the staircase hall and up the stairs. The spacing and workmanship displayed in this heavily beveled and molded paneling could hardly be better. At the foot of the flight, on the landing and at the head of the stairs, the ramped surbase with ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... useful-steering goad Laid on the strong-neck'd 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 ...
— 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)
... flakes of rust. No one wove now in that old room—no one but the assiduous ancient spiders who, watching by the deathbed of the things of yore, worked shrouds to hold their dust. In shrouds about the cornices already lay the heart of the oak wainscot that the worm ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... are rarer, but we overhear his conversation in his tunnels that open on our shelves, the patter of his pink feet across the canvas overhead, and the muscular squirming of his body in some tight place about the sandbag wainscot. Like a friendly dog he trots about your dug-out by night, bumping with trustful carelessness against the fragile legs of your rustic bed. You hear him crooning to himself or a pal, in his content—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... fake outfit I ever had anything to do with was 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, ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... slandered, his lady's influence involved in some political matters which had been more wisely let alone. She was a woman of high principle, however, and masculine good sense, as some of her letters testify, which are still in my wainscot cabinet. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... tiles, with queer squat figures of Flemish citizens on foot and on horseback; the candles burning dimly on the spindle-legged table—two poor pale flames reflected ghastly in the dark polished panels of the wainscot; the big open Bible on an adjacent table; the old silver tankard, and buckhorn-handled knives and forks set out for supper; the solemn eight-day clock, ticking drearily in the corner; and amid all ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... said Lady Gerard; and immediately the dumb prophetess was at her side. She threw off a disguise, ingeniously contrived, and Ellen beheld her cousin William! The magic mirror was but an aperture through the wainscot into another apartment, and the plot had been arranged in the first place by Mrs Bridget, who had been confederate with the handsome but somewhat haughty wooer, having for his torment a maiden as haughty and intractable as himself. Thus two ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... description can give the idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles from Arbraeth (Aberbrathock), the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom where the mason-work ceases to be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the people's provisions, water, etc.; above ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... 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 wailing like a woman through ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... 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 was not to be caught in that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... startled, peered into the shadows: it was a strip of ragged tapestry which fluttered on the wall. As he watched it flapping fitfully there came a hollow rattle in the wainscot, and an uncanny sound like the moaning of wind in ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Ethelwolf. As the girl's glance ranged the hall in search of her jailer it rested upon the narrow, unglazed windows beyond which lay freedom. Would she ever again breathe God's pure air outside these stifling walls? These grimy hateful walls! Black as the inky rafters and wainscot except for occasional splotches a few shades less begrimed, where repairs had been made. As her eyes fell upon the trophies of war and chase which hung there her lips curled in scorn, for she knew that they were acquisitions by inheritance rather than ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thought better of it, though it would have been impossible to catch cold on such a stifling night I heard every clock strike in Westminster and London. It was light at five, yet the night seemed endless. I would have welcomed even a mouse behind the wainscot. Priscilla is an odious tyrant," making a face at the easy-tempered gouvernante sitting by; "she won't let me have my dogs in ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... they were. Very like mice, indeed. Very like mice behind a wainscot at night, when you have just thrown something to frighten them away. Death-like stillness for a few seconds, and then all the rustling and scuffling you please. So the children sat holding their breath for a moment or two, and then shuffling feet and smothered bursts of laughter testified to ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... more absolute than ordinarily he turned round. The heavy, gloomy oak wainscot, which extended over the walls upstairs and down in the dilapidated "Old-Grove Place," and the massive chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling, stood in odd contrast to the new and shining brass bedstead, and the new suite of birch furniture that ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... windows gave a wonderfully mediaeval look to the apartment. There was, moreover, a magnificent bay window, which formed a little room of itself, besides a second room much less, which, with carved wood wainscot and ceiling, could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Dawson says) whose senses had been numbed by misery. When all was lost, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, and stood some time, with folded arms, stupid and motionless. Then snatching his sword, that hung against the wainscot, he sat him down; and with a look of fixt attention, drew figures on the floor. At last he started up, looked wild, and trembled; and like a woman, seized with her sex's fits, laughed out aloud, while the tears trickled down his face—so ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... before 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 ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and passed behind the bronze Pompeian Antinous. Under the shadow of the curtains, in the angle of the bay, against the wainscot, Queen Mary's magic ball showed softly luminous. Helen could have believed that it watched her. She hesitated before stooping to pick it up and looked over her shoulder at Richard Calmady. His back was towards her, his chair close against the table again. He leaned forward ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... 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 the apples with ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the seat of imagination from the head to the heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the floor in an ague, is highly Shakesperesque, and, as the Courier is made to say at page 3 of the Opinions, "is worthy of the best days of that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... for the last fourteen years, came next, with the bedroom beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and placed around a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. A stove of white porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out a gentle heat. Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural state without decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the place was in keeping with the sober and ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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 profoundest recesses ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... and 'prentice fops, 300 To Fanny come, 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 breach of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... no reply. At last I could see him, and it was one of those spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing, his elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw his body forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his bent head. His hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders and hanging about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of the great ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... woman, elderly nor young: the little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was to be heard in the sick-room but the labored breathing of the sufferer. But there was a stir on the floor below him—doubtless a mouse gnawing the wainscot. Bernhard listened uneasily. "How long will it go on gnawing? till it makes a hole at last, and comes into the room." A shudder came over him—he tossed about on his bed—the darkness seemed to press him in—the air grew thick. He ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... wolf your flocks Thus Envy pleads a natural claim To persecute the Muse's fame; On poets in all times abusive, From Homer down to Pope inclusive. Yet what avails it to complain? You try to take revenge in vain. A rat your utmost rage defies, That safe behind the wainscot lies. Say, did you ever know by sight In cheese an individual mite! Show me the same numeric flea, That bit your neck but yesterday: You then may boldly go in quest To find the Grub Street poet's nest; What spunging-house, in dread of jail, Receives them, while they wait for bail; What alley are ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Janet was in her 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 one of the keys into the lock. It would not fit, and in turning ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... renovation and restoration of the venerable pile. The purity of the marble columns had been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the foliated capitals of the columns supporting the "Round" bore traces of gilding. These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy pews of Charles II.'s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... to Henry-street for some Madeira that Miss Burns fancied. On her return, not seeing the lady on the sofa, where an hour previous she had left her, she looked round the room and discovered her doubled up in a corner of the room with her face towards the wainscot, while Mr. Angus was asleep sitting in a chair covered by a counterpane. The evidence was most conflicting. Several witnesses declared Miss Burns was not pregnant, others that they believed she was. The ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... assertive, and to arouse him to unusual, and almost unnatural animation. As we sat at a small round table beside the dining room fireplace, he launched into a cheerful discourse, ignoring completely any displeasure I attempted to assume. The great room with its dingy wainscot only half lighted by the candles on the table before us, was cluttered with a hundred odds and ends that collect in a deserted house—a ladder, a stiff, rusted bridle, a coil of frayed rope, a kettle, a dozen sheets of the Gazette, ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... 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, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... fitted 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 ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... elderly nor young; the little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the wainscot; the bird that, in frost and snow, pecks at the window for a crumb. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it loves to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel and wags his ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... run of boarding-school bedchambers. Miss Pew had taken a good deal of the Mauleverer furniture at a valuation when she bought the old house; and the Mauleverer furniture being of a rococo and exploded style, the valuation had been ridiculously low. Thus it happened that a big wainscot wardrobe, with doors substantial enough for a church, projected its enormous bulk upon one side of the butterfly-room, while a tall narrow cheval glass stood in front of a window. That cheval was the glory of the butterfly-room. The girls could see how their skirts hung, and if the backs of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... a thousand years hence, and taken perhaps for a Runic history in rhyme. I have part of another valuable MS. to dispose of, which I shall beg leave to commit to your care, and desire it may be concealed behind the wainscot in Mr. Bentley's Gothic house, whenever you build it. As the great person is living to whom it belonged, it would be highly dangerous to make it public; as soon as she is in disgrace, I don't know whether it Will not be a good way of making court to her ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... at my journal; there was nothing more to add, and so, sanding the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola, where it should soon blow ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... is apsidal, externally, as well as the nave, covered with modern house tiles. Internally the nave has a flat ceiling of deal boards. The pulpit and seats are painted wainscot; there is a small modern oak reading desk, and a lectern to match it. The chancel arch is a plain semicircle, but on its eastern side has a pointed Early English arch. The chancel rails are of modern oak, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the second floor. Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting his best foot foremost as usual. What ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... as the mice in the old wainscot when they smelt Miss Latournelle's cat, whilst the ladies were in the parlour, for our teachers insisted on our being quiet; but as soon as we saw the coach bowling away, we all began to chatter, and to speak our thoughts concerning the occasion of ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... 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, he tells them, as a watch-case: "For who knows," said he, "my dear, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... them a real sound fell upon her ear—very low, but different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after all. There it was again. Where did ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... mouse in the wainscot that's not feeling quite well this morning," suggested Honor, though it would have needed an absolute giant of a mouse to give vent to the unearthly yowl in which Pete had indulged. She said it, however, rather too innocently on this occasion. Miss Farrar was not dull, and had suspected ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... inspection, that a flue could be run through the closet in your room into the rear one of the west chimneys. She thinks the hall must be freezing cold in winter, and caught eagerly at my idea that a blazing fire at one end would lighten the sombre effect of the oaken wainscot and lofty ceiling. I proposed to tear down the panelling, but she was horrified at the thought. I could not take more pride and interest in preserving the antique character of the home of my forefathers ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... glowing face mirrored in this floor; and, when alone, I often skate upon it. But as I do not wish to see my less sure-footed friends disposed about it in writhing attitudes expressive of agony and broken bones, I usually keep it covered, up to a yard's breadth from the dark-carved wainscot, with a velvety carpet, which was woven for me at Wilton, and represents the casting scene in the 'Song of the Bell.' The window curtains are of velvet, of just the shade of purple that nestles in the centre of the most splendid kind of fuchsia, and have an Etruscan ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... those only who sit next him. The greater part read the newspapers, and no one ever disturbs another. The room is commonly on the ground floor, and you enter it immediately from the street; the seats are divided by wooden wainscot partitions. Many letters and projects are here written and planned, and many of those that you find in the papers are dated from some of these coffee-houses. There is, therefore, nothing incredible, nor very extraordinary, in a person's composing a sermon here, excepting ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... After having delivered Orleans she must drive the 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 ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... door was open; and, after several shouts, the poor wretch began to sing a college drinking-song, and then to hurray and to shout as if he was in the midst of a wine-party, and to thump with his fist against the wainscot. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... presentiment appeared to take 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 into ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... that are to be mourners in this house, put on your sad looks, and walk by me that I may sort you. Ha, you! a little more upon the dismal—(forming their countenances)—this fellow has a good mortal look—place him near the corpse; that wainscot face must be o' top of the stairs; that fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the entrance of the hall—so—but I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now on ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... audience room, up one pair of stairs—and in which Charles V. received the deputies respecting the famous Augsbourg Confession of Faith, in 1530,—is, to my taste, the most perfectly handsome room which I have ever seen. The wainscot or sides are walnut and chestnut wood, relieved by beautiful gilt ornaments. The ceiling is also of the same materials; but marked and diversified by divisions of square, or parallelogram, or oval, or circular, forms. This ceiling ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the wainscoting of a wall; let them be at the common height of a man's head; and in each of them place a transparent glass, surrounded with a frame, like a common mirror. Behind this partition place two mirrors, one on the outward side of each opening, inclined to the wainscot at an angle of forty-five degrees; let them both be eighteen inches square; let all the space between them be enclosed by boards or pasteboard, painted black and well closed, that no light may enter; let there be also two curtains to cover them, which may be drawn ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... yards and gardens to a house more remote, where I remained until 4 o'clock, by which time one of the best finished houses in the Province had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings, and splitting the doors to pieces, they beat down the partition walls; and although that alone cost them near two hours, they cut down the cupola or lanthorn, and they began to take the slate and boards from the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knotty oak 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 ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... thing 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 ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... marble, and fluted pilasters painted with 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 ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... stories in height, and of imposing proportions, stood at one corner of the central public square, where were the Capitol building and principal stores. The lobby was large and had been recently redecorated. Both floor and wainscot were of white marble, kept shiny by frequent polishing. There was an imposing staircase with hand-rails of walnut and toe-strips of brass. An inviting corner was devoted to a news and cigar-stand. Where the staircase curved upward the clerk's desk ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser |
