"Calico" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The last of the trio was the most amusing; his face was blacked and a wig of kinky black hair stood out in dozens of tiny braids, each tied with a different colored string. He wore a red and white calico dress that was just short enough to show his big, clumsy boots. He made a very deep bow before Sally and said in ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... least older than a great many of our considerable cities. But you would think this was at the beginning. There are the natives, and there are the dogs, just as they were when Sir Alexander came through. Perhaps they didn't have so much calico then. Of course they didn't have repeating-rifles then, and surely not steel traps. But they talked the same language, and in my opinion they had about as much religion then as they ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... the clothes off him, and has occasion to be taken up in the night, and if he have not a flannel gown on, is likely to catch cold; on which account I recommend it to be worn. The usual calico night-gown should be ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... days, tinged with no trace of blue, when I attended the district school, wearing trousers buttoned to a calico waist. I had ambitions then—I was sure that some day I could spell down the school, propound a problem in fractions that would puzzle the teacher, and play checkers in a way that would cause my name to be known throughout the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... remark that the bullocks at Ambong were remarkably fine and the price of them ridiculously cheap. Two of the largest were to be purchased for about twenty-five shillings worth of calico or any other European manufacture. Wherever we went on this island, and I may say over the Indian archipelago generally, the spirit of trade and barter appeared to be universal; and if the inhabitants of Borneo ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... at her clean calico dress, and she saw that it was faded and patched. A bright rose color flitted over her cheeks, and when she looked up, tears stood in her eyes. Mary did not say any more; but she watched Fanny all the forenoon, and saw that she had made her feel very unhappy. When they went out to play, she went ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... brown apron, whose face proclaimed that she lived much in the open air. Perhaps she lived so much in it as to disdain bonnets, for she wore none—a red cotton handkerchief, fellow to the one on Charley's head, being pinned over her white calico cap. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... used to know something about that myself, in the Spanish war. Now let's see what I remember. Watch this. And somebody keep an eye on that hill and report if a blue calico dress is ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... poet, communicating his designs in a stage soliloquy, disguised himself in a tow wig and beard, and a railway rug turned up with yellow calico; and the scene shifting to the palace, he introduced himself to the Elderly Princess as the greatest of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Angeles. In a few days he moved on shore, took up his quarters at Larkin's house, and established his headquarters, with Captain Turner as his adjutant general. One day Turner and Warner were at my tent, and, seeing a store-bag full of socks, drawers, and calico shirts, of which I had laid in a three years' supply, and of which they had none, made known to me their wants, and I told them to help themselves, which Turner and Warner did. The latter, however, insisted ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... warned me in time. I had thought of sending over a sack of flour occasionally, or a few bolts of calico to help on the good work. You’ve ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... Indians for painting their bodies; among civilized communities its principal use is for colouring butter, cheese and varnishes. It yields a fugitive bright orange colour, and is to some extent used alone, or in conjunction with other dyes, in the dyeing of silks and in calico printing. It contains a yellow ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were of unpainted wood, but the wood was perfectly fresh, and smelt pleasantly of resin. The window was preposterously small, with only four squares of glass in it, and it was curtained with mere calico, but the calico was rose-coloured, which imparted a delightfully warm glow to the room, and the view from the window of pine-woods and cliffs, and snow-fields, backed by the distant sea, was magnificent. Two little beds in the corner furthest from the window looked so snug that ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... wore linses [flax] petticoats and 'bedgowns' [like a dressing-sack], and often went without shoes in the summer. Some had bonnets and bedgowns made of calico, but generally of linsey; and some of them wore men's hats. Their hair was commonly clubbed. Once, at a large meeting, I noticed there but two women that had on long gowns. One of these was laced genteelly, and the body of the other was open, and ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... picked up a guide—will he let me say a friend?—an Aberdeenshire Scot, who hurried out fresh from his bath, his trusty cutlass on his hip, and in heavy shooting-boots and gaiters; for no clothing, be it remembered, is too strong for the bush; and those who enter it in the white calico garments in which West-India planters figure on the stage, are like to leave in it, not only their ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... able to stand no end of wear. It was fashioned for the habitant's use into roomy trousers and a long frock coat reaching to the knees which he tied around his waist with a belt of leather or of knitted yarn. The women also used this etoffe for skirts, but their waists and summer dresses were of calico, homemade as well. As for the children, most of them ran about in the summer months wearing next to nothing at all. A single garment without sleeves and reaching to the knees was all that covered their nakedness. ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... a tail jerked spasmodically, in its struggle to wag. Then with two or three delirious yelps of joy he started madly down the lane. At the sound of his voice the door of the gray house opened. A tall, thin woman in a bluish homespun skirt and red calico waist came out, and moved slowly across the yard to welcome the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... into Cummins' face, and he pointed to a calico-covered box standing upon end in a ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... policeman, talking to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect. His strange creed seems to be, that human nature is human nature,—whether, in its feminine department, you robe it in silk or calico, and, in its male department, button a red coat over the breast of an officer of the Guards, or put the coarse jerkin on the broad back of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Tops for Convenient Holders.—For soft, convenient holders use old stocking tops. Take two thicknesses, cut in squares, bind all around with some bias pieces left from calico dresses and sew a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... immediately the water began to flow. I turned triumphantly on Mrs. Carkeek, who had grown suddenly red in the face. Her eyes were fixed on the cork in my hand. To keep it more firmly wedged in its place somebody had wrapped it round with a rag of calico print; and, discoloured though the rag was, I seemed to recall the pattern (a lilac sprig). Then, as our eyes met, it occurred to me that only two mornings before Mrs. Carkeek had worn a print gown of that same ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... soliloquy as he glanced ahead and noticed the trim figure of Medaine Robinette swinging along the road, old Lost Wing, as usual, trailing in her rear, astride a calico pony and leading the saddle horse which she evidently had become tired of riding. A small switch was in one hand, and she flipped it at the new leaves of the aspens and the broad-leafed mullens beside the road. As yet, she had not seen him, and Barry hurried toward her, jamming his cap into ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the visiting chief from Vait-hua found welcome among the waiting natives, while Titihuti of the tattooed legs took her seat beside me. She had combed her Titian tresses and anointed them with oil till they shone like the kelp beds of Monterey. Her tunic was of scarlet calico, and she carried in her hand a straw hat with a red ribbon, to put on when she entered the church. "Kaoha!" I said to her, and she smiled, displaying her even, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... European calico clothing has not been adopted by these people, even in the district where they are in touch with the missionaries. Indeed I may say that the people, happily for their own health, show no inclination to wear more clothing; and no doubt ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... would have struck terror to the sad-eyed aesthete, but an artist who liked to see colors burn and glow on the canvas would have been glad to paint her: a little frock of buttercup yellow calico, bare neck and arms, full of dimples, hair that put the yellow calico to shame by reason of its tinge of copper, skin of roses and milk that dared the microscope, red smiling lips, one stocking and ankle-tie kicked off and five ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... half. The twilight darkened, and the fire brightened, and in the light of the fire the two sat and talked; till a door opened, and in the same flickering shine a figure presented itself which Mr. Dillwyn remembered. Though now it was clothed in nothing finer than a dark calico, and round her shoulders a little white worsted shawl was twisted. Mrs. Barclay began a sentence of introduction, but Mr. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... three, Tillie hid her "Ivanhoe" under the pillow of her bed when she went up-stairs to change her faded calico school dress for the yet older garment she ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... funeral garlands. In the churchyard and at the tavern-door, were groups of peasants, waiting for divine service to begin. They were clothed in their holiday dresses. The men wore breeches and long boots, and frock-coats with large metal buttons; the women, straw hats, and gay calico gowns, with short waists and scant folds. They were adorned with a profusion of great, trumpery ornaments, and reminded Flemming of the Indians in the frontier villages of America. Near the churchyard-gate ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... her eyes there rolled, steadily, the biggest, roundest tears I ever saw. They ran down her cheeks, formed a stream in the first groove of her double chin, overflowed it, and dripped drop, drop, a drop at a time, on the breast of her stiffly starched calico dress, and from there shot to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... crevices, various garments, and such as were apparently fitted for all ages and conditions, and for either sex. British and American uniforms hung peaceably by the side of each other; and on the peg that supported a gown of striped calico, such as was the usual country wear, was also depending a well-powdered wig: in short, the attire was numerous and as various as if a whole parish were to be equipped ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a thumb toward the house, and in the tense silence Hardy could clearly discern the sound of women's voices. Now you could ride the Four Peaks country far and wide and never hear the music of such voices, never see calico on the line, or a lace curtain across the window. There were no women in that godless land, not since the Widow Winship took Sallie and Susie and left precipitately for St. Louis, none save the Senora Moreno and certain strapping Apache squaws who wore buckskin tewas ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... questions of a practical kind much discussed, is that of a patent process for contracting the fibres of calico, and of obtaining on calico thus prepared colors of much brilliancy. It is regarded by chemists as likely to lead to valuable results. In the British Association, it was described as the discovery that a solution of cold but ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted calico. He ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... driving, and sitting by him was Mrs. Fewkes in a faded calico dress, her shoulders wrapped in what was left of a shawl. Fewkes was letting old Tom take his own way, which he did by rushing with all vengeance through every bad spot and then stopping to rest as soon as he reached a good bit of road. The old man was thin and light-boned, with a ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... squeaked like a frightened locomotive temperament! His "boughten" sack coat, fitting him all over, similar to a wet shirt on a broom-handle, was pouched out at the pockets with any quantity of numerous articles, in the way of books and boots, pamphlets and perfumery, knick-knacks and gim-cracks, calico, candy, &c. His vest was short, but that deficiency was made up in superfluity of dickey, and a profusion of sorrel whiskers. Having got into the store, he very leisurely walked around, viewing the hardware, separately ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... at her side within the circle of her arm, his head against her shoulder and his eyes wide with a delicious horror as he gazed upon a calico book whose pages were brilliant with the tragedy of the three bears, which she was reading very slowly and with many explanatory annotations. Crimie balanced himself against her knee and beat with a spoon against the back of the book and whooped up the situation in every ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hours of the day or night these several articles arrived. Often quite late in the evening—and this happened more than once—an old fellow, pinched and wheezy, would sneak in, uncover a mysterious object wrapped in a square of stringy calico, fumble in his pocket for a scrap of paper, put his name at the bottom of it, and sneak out again five, ten, or twenty dollars better off. Once, as late as eleven o'clock, a fattish gentleman with a hooked nose and a positive dialect, assisted another ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... approval or disapprobation concerning the state of affairs behind the green shutters. It was a warm night and the big round moon sailed serenely in a cloudless, blue sky. Mrs. Tuckley had put on a clean calico wrapper, and planted herself with the indomitable Stella on her steps, "to ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... down from the house a bed and mattress, which she supplied with sheets, pillows, blankets, and a quilt. Then Uncle Nathan, the carpenter, took a large wooden box and put shelves in it, and tacked some bright-colored calico all around it, and made a bureau. Two or three chairs were spared from the nursery, and Diddie put some of her toys on the mantel-piece for the baby; and then, when they had brought in a little square table and covered it with a neat white cloth, and placed upon ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... pictured to myself the slaves—a miserable, squalid, half fed, ill—clothed, over—worked race—and their masters, and the white inhabitants generally, as an unwholesome—looking crew of saffron faced tyrants, who wore straw hats with umbrella brims, wide trowsers, and calico jackets, living on pepper pot and land crabs, and drinking sangaree and smoking cigars the whole day; in a word, that all that Bryan Edwards and others had written regarding the civilisation of the West Indies was a fable. But I was agreeably undeceived; for although I did ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... The calico sun-bonnet trembled, and the little gray eyes flashed indignantly as she said, "That man never wanted my red heifer a bit more than ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... of idlers, torn and dirty. The sick girl lived on the second floor, with her grandmother and one sister, and as the strangers entered, she shrunk still further back into the corner where she was sitting. A strip of faded calico lay upon her lap, and now and then she would put a stitch in it, but oftener she raised it to her face and wiped away the tears that were constantly falling. Her grandmother seemed troubled and sad as the doctor looked thoughtfully upon her, and when he asked ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... to know everything. In all the glory of its newness Emmy Lou brought her Second Reader to school. Hattie was scandalised. She showed her reader soberly encased in a calico cover. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... girls—modest, rosy, bright-eyed school-girls, such as you are a-thinking of—are scarce as hen's teeth in this great city, and not to be found in profuseness anywhere. They went out with pink calico sun-bonnets, and ain't likely to come in again yet awhile, I tell you! Republican institutions can be carried to a great extent; and our young ones have found it out, and trample down all the good, wholesome old fashions before their ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the world would have been utterly changed; but Antony might equally have been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves, yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have thought her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Town mean enough not to. By Easter Day, in that Southern region, the new grass was well started, and grass gave a beautiful yellow color to the eggs boiled with it. Onions colored them a soft, pale green, and logwood, black; but the most esteemed egg of all was a calico-egg. You got a piece of new calico from your mother, or maybe some of your aunts, and you got somebody (most likely your grandmother, if she was on a visit at the time) to sew an egg up in it; and when the egg was boiled it came out all over the pattern of the calico. My ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Poor, in Boston, in 1784; a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1786; a sea captain in 1789, and was afterwards a merchant of Boston. He, with his brother Appleton, was one of the first to introduce into New England the art of printing calico,—producing a coarse blue and red article on India cotton. Their place of business was at the corner of Buttolph Street. Captain Prentiss' residence was in a stone house, near the head of Hanover Street, the ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... coming a step forward and clasping her hands, "do you mean to say I must attend the ball in a calico dress after all? But I'm going, nevertheless, if I dance ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... which escaped from the knot at her neck, and stuck out there and dangled about her face in spite of the attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb holding its main strands together. The lankness of her long figure showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment; and her large features were respectively lank in their way, nose and chin and high cheek bones; her eyes wabbled in their sockets with the sort of inquiring laughter that spread her ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... differed widely from that of the English. Their first step was to compel the natives to embrace Christianity. Their second to make of them docile and obedient laborers, raising spice and other products, for which they received in payment calico, beads, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... moustache was attached. The other cheek was adorned with red and blue paint. The hair was twisted into a high peak and further decorated with the wings of a seagull. A man's hair-seal waistcoat trimmed with red flannel hung from the shoulders and from this streamed yards of brilliant colored calico strips ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... possesses those elements of character which lead them to pursue with zeal and courage things they have been taught to regard most creditable, is capable of being civilized. We now pay the Indian for his lands in agricultural tools, in muskets and powder, in blankets and cheap calico— and in education; but the smallest item is education. If half the money which the government is liable to pay for Indian troubles during the last year, could be appropriated to a proper system of education, we should hear of no more serious Indian wars. But I have not time to pursue the subject. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... dancers, they were of various kinds and sorts. The women had that air which gave them the stamp of a quarter; they wore loose blouses, tucked in plaid skirts, or dark blue skirts, or multi-coloured calico skirts (if you have seen the lithographs of Steinlen you may reconstruct the picture with no difficulty) and they danced in that peculiar fashion so much in vogue in the Northern outskirts of Paris. The men seized them tightly and they whirled to the inexorable music when it was ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... she didn't mean to send them home; and O, how I loved her. It seemed to me I loved her for the first time in my life, for I never knew before how good she was, or how beautiful! Her head was tied up in a handkerchief, and she wore a faded calico dress and a tow apron, but I thought she looked like an angel. I lay flat at her ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... girls must meet as often as we can, during the coming week, to make aprons and neckties out of print. Only one apron and one necktie is to be alike, and Walt Haley and Mr. Dilloway are going to give us as much calico as we need." ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... "Six calico shirts, twenty-four francs; as many linen shirts, forty-eight francs; let us say seventy-two. That makes four hundred and sixty-eight francs altogether.—Say five hundred, including cravats and pocket-handkerchiefs; a hundred francs ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... there is some chemical which prevents the portions printed from taking the dye, consequently these remain white or a different color. This is called the "resist" process. Another process is to first dye the cloth and then print on some chemical which, when the calico is steamed, discharges the color. This is called the "discharge" process. Sometimes this weakens the goods in the places where the color ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... far as I am aware. But a drink on the sly could always be had at one of the hard-goods stores, in the back office behind the pile of metal saucepans; or at one of the dry-goods stores, in the little parlor in the rear of the bales of calico. At the present time I believe that there are two or three open bars in Salt Lake, Brigham Young having recognized the right of the "Saints" to "liquor up" occasionally. But whatever other failings they may have, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... snarling as a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect lionne in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks (under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,—in short, all the domestic ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... would be a part of her wedding finery. She put on her Indian gala dress of beaded buckskin with the colored porcupine quills—and then she smiled cunningly and drew a dress of red-and-blue striped calico over her head and settled the folds of it about her with little, smoothing pats, so that the two white women, Rosemary and Jean, should not notice any unusual bulkiness ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... a bundle, tied up with a piece of chimney line, or window line in the cover of a calico ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... from two comedians in calico, beating each other about the body, he rose with an audible "Pish!" and made his way out. He stopped in the street to scribble on his card, "Will you see me?—G. F." and took it round to the stage-door. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a parcel, wrapped up carefully in doeskin to protect it from the appleseeds; and turned foolish in the face, as bits of ribbon and calico fell out upon ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... which sent her six feet into the air the Calico Cat landed four-square in Mr. Peaslee's chicken-yard, almost on the back of the dignified rooster, which fled with a startled squawk. She dodged like lightning across the chicken-yard, between cackling and clattering hens, went up the wire-netting walls, leaped ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... false conclusions, and sentimental twaddle. These facts teach us that to-day we find women engaged in the following occupations, among others:—in cotton, linen and woolen weaving; in cloth and flannel making; in mechanical spinning, calico printing and dyeing; in steel pen and pin making; in the preparation of sugar, chocolate and cocoa; in manufacturing paper and bronzes; in making glass and porcelain and in glass painting; in the manufacture of faience, majolica ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the missionaries by letting the word slip out that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue. Promptly the missionaries would buy the lives of the victims with stick tobacco, fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads. Natheless the chiefs drove a handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus live meat. Also, they could always go ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... poetical idea of "sweet simplicity" always and everywhere. Not that the rich gown is in itself objectionable, or the inexpensive dress intrinsically beautiful. It is not invariably true that "beauty unadorned is most adorned." It is not true that a "simple calico" is more charming than a sheeny silk, nor is cotton edging to be compared with ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... parasol was a big paper box. Mell lifted the lid. A muff and tippet lay inside, made of yellow and brown fur like the back of a tortoise-shell cat. These were beautiful, too. Then came rolls of calico and woollen pieces, some of which were very pretty, and would make nice doll's ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... moment, there arrived at the bottom of the inside steps, a small girl, very black, very solemn, and very erect, with her hands folded in front of her very straight up-and-down calico frock, her features expressive of a wooden stolidity which nothing but a hammer or chisel could alter, and with large eyes fixed upon a far-away, which, apparently, had disappeared, leaving the eyes in ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... Miss Hepzibah herself was not a pretty picture. She was a woman of thirty-five or thereabouts; with a thin, brown, hard-looking face; sharp, twinkling gray eyes; and a long, grim, resolute mouth. She wore a short skirt of dark material, a lilac calico jacket, and a huge white apron. On ordinary occasions her head was adorned by a cap of fearful workmanship and dimensions, but in the heat of her work she had thrown it off, and her scanty brown hair was fastened tightly back in a ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... him. With one half of her attention upon the white cotton socks she was knitting for her spouse and the other half on the gate of her small garden through which her "chile" would come, she sat in her doorway awaiting him. She was splendidly arrayed in her new purple calico and a big white apron, just from under the iron. Her gayest bandanna "hankercher" covered her tightly "wropped" locks from view and the snowiest of "neckerchers" was crossed over her ample bosom. Her kind, black countenance was soft with thoughts ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... thought my courage revived. I heard voices in the next room, the pounding of a flat-iron, and a frequent step across the floor. I gave a loud rap. The door opened, and Eleanor herself appeared. She had on a spotted calico gown, with a string of gold beads around her neck. She held in her hand a piece of fan coral. I felt myself turning all colors, stammered, hesitated, and believed in my heart that she would think me a fool. Very likely she did; for I really ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... centuries of washing had polished and rounded them exquisitely. These pebbles always played an important part every winter evening, for with the greatest regularity the old people would put them into the chimney-place where a wood fire blazed and crackled; afterwards they slipped them into calico bags of a flowered pattern, also brought from the Island, and took them to bed where they served to keep their feet warm ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the fragrance of the evergreen and eyed the candy longingly. The distribution of presents was not to come off until after the cantata. They peeped out at the sea of faces in front of the brown calico curtains separating the stage and dressing rooms ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... heard the story of spinning on the Commons, for her own grandmother had told it. But she had an idea that the world would go on rather than retrograde. For now they were turning out cotton cloth and printing calico and making canvas and duck, and it was the boast of the famous Constitution that everything besides her armament was made ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... her. She had lived among people, and had learned something of their gait and carriage. Money we know will do almost everything, and no doubt money had had much to do with this. It is very pretty to talk of the alluring simplicity of a clean calico gown; but poverty will shew itself to be meagre, dowdy, and draggled in a woman's dress, let the woman be ever so simple, ever so neat, ever so independent, and ever so high-hearted. Mrs. Stanbury was quite alive to all that her younger daughter was losing. Had she not received two offers of marriage ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings in the room, washing out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't no cinch even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked a gay bird like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen you begin to fade like a piece of calico, just like my ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... washing dishes. On her feet she would barely have reached the rim of the great dish-pan, but on the soap-box she did very well. A grimy calico apron trailed to ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... were falling from my lips, we approached the end of our journey, the Roslin Inn house heaving in sight, at the door of which me and Peter louped out, an hostler with a yellow striped waistcoat, and white calico sleeves, I meantime holding the naig's head, in case it should spend off, and capsize the concern. After seeing the horse and gig put into the stable, Peter and I pulled up our shirt necks, and after looking at our watches, as if time was ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... does not allow the colour of the eyes or of the eyebrows to be seen, but in order to prevent the costume from hindering the movements of the mask, he must not wear anything underneath, and in winter a dress made of light calico is not particularly agreeable. I did not, however, pay any attention to that, and taking only a plate of soup I went to Muran in a gondola. I had no cloak, and—in my pockets I had nothing but my handkerchief, my purse, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was organized in Manchester, one of the new industrial cities dominated by modern ideas, crowded with factories, and populous with laboring men and women, a fit center for such an agitation as was to precede the downfall of the tax on food. In Manchester, too, in the person of a calico-printer named Richard Cobden, the agitation found its mainspring and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... only by payment of various useful articles that we secure any service done or purchase any native produce. Money is unknown. Fruit and vegetables, figs, fish, crabs, fowls, we buy with iron tools, pieces of calico, and the like; and if our supply of these gives out, we have to draw upon the store of things needed by ourselves; and blankets and hardware come to be minus. Then, forgetting this, which it is easy to do, all the world without is a world of glorious beauty. How I wish I could shew it to you! These ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... completely removed by placing about a stone weight of it in any convenient vessel, pouring over it a quart of boiling water, and mixing thoroughly the fluid and solid. In an hour or two the whole is to be thrown upon a filter made of calico, when the water will pass through the filter, carrying with it all the impurities, and the purified salt, in fine crystals, will remain upon the filter. The solution need not be thrown away: boiled down to dryness it may be given as salt to cattle; or, if added in solution to the dung-heap, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... obeyed, Bryda and Betty seating themselves on either side of their grandfather, while Dorothy Burrow stood before him, her stout red arms uncovered, her elbows stuck on either side of her thick waist, and the frills of her big calico cap blown ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... fire. Arrowhead and Chingachgook crawled to the cover, and lay in wait like snakes, with their arms prepared for service, while the wife of the former bowed her head between her knees, covered it with her calico robe, and remained passive and immovable. Cap loosened both his pistols in their belt, but seemed quite at a loss what course to pursue. The Pathfinder did not stir. He had originally got a position where he might aim with deadly effect through the leaves, and where he could watch the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendurable—in the opinion of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in old age the scrupulous neatness which had characterized her youth, when promoted to the post of seamstress and ladies' maid, she had ruled the servants' realm at "Elm Bluff" with a sway as autocratic as that of Catherine over the Muscovites. Her black calico dress, donned as mourning for her master, was relieved by a white apron tied about the ample waist; a snowy handkerchief was crossed over the vast bosom, and a checked white and black turban skilfully wound in intricate folds around ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... pushed forward and took their seats, until at last— Could that be Nan? Poor Patty's cheeks burned with mortification as she saw her pressing eagerly forward among the rest, her freckled face beaming with satisfaction. Instead of the beautiful blue dress, she had on a faded calico, considerably outgrown, and her coarse every-day boots with copper tips, half laced up, and much the worse for wear. But, in striking contrast, the blue bow was perched proudly on the top of her head. Then she had forgotten her pocket-handkerchief, and poor Patty ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... after the chapel, which is small, and by no means striking, into which I was led, was the ancient refectory, where there were some hundreds of criminals, condemned for several years to close imprisonment, or the galleys, weaving calico. I never in my life saw so many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... adjoining the mill, a performance not at all surprising when it is remembered that up to this time the greater part of his life had been spent in the open air, and that his still growing muscles must have eagerly welcomed tasks like this, which gave him once more the exercise that measuring calico and weighing out groceries failed to supply. Young Lincoln's bodily vigor stood him in good stead in many ways. In frontier life strength and athletic skill served as well for popular amusement as for prosaic toil, and at times, indeed, they ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... yard, spinnin' rooms, weave room, blacksmith shop and shoe shop. Dere was wild turkeys on de place, deer in de cane brakes and shad in de Catawba River. De Indians fetch their pots and jars to sell, and peddlers come to big house wid their humps on their backs and bright yards of calico and sich things de missus lak to feel and s'lect from. I see money then, but I never see a nigger wid money in his ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... cowardly, mean, and avaricious. Cowardly, because they persistently refused the duel. Mean, because all classes worked, and there seemed among them no arrogance of birth. Avaricious, because they crouched to the planters with calico and manufactures, or admired their bullying for the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... a green calico bag, and, emptying the contents into her hand, picked out from among brass buttons and bits of broken glass a silver coin, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... never need care for any American opinion" (and Warren studied her face, as the fine silhouette was illumined by the nearby deck light), "for in my country a princess is recognized whether she wear ermine robes, or a calico shirtwaist and a ragged skirt. You see,—a republic is at least well illuminated. We're not afraid of the light!... However, I imagine that your title will be changed before another year, and in that case you will have no ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... own making, capable of turning shafts of from 3 to 6 inches diameter; and they hired a strong Irishman to drive the wheel and assist at the heavy work. Their first job was the erection of a cullender, and their next a calico-polishing machine; but orders came in slowly, and James Lillie began to despair of success. His more hopeful partner strenuously urged him to perseverance, and so buoyed him up with hopes of orders, that he determined to go on a little longer. They then ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of calico, a pot of red wagon paint, and a pretty gal and make a show to fill any theater on Broadway for six months—if I'm let alone," answered Mr. Rooney, with the assurance that moves mountains. "That Lindsey is one good actor with ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... door but Betsey Ann, looking the picture of happiness, and dressed very neatly in a clean calico dress, and white cap and apron. Betsey Ann's slipshod shoes and her rags and tatters were things of the past; she looked an entirely ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... proud boast of an enlightened country, a free press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious." Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history of David without ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... platform of her new kitchen stoop. The bright flood of May-morning sunshine completely enveloped her girlish form, clad in a simple, fresh-starched calico gown, and shone in golden patches upon her light-brown hair. She had a smile on her face, as she looked down at the milk boy standing on the bottom step—a smile of a doubtful ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... only I've tried to tell one and I don't recollect that he ever did that. . . . Humph! . . . A suit of clothes. . . . Four hundred dollars. . . . Solomon in all his glory would have looked like a calico shirt and a pair of overalls alongside of me, eh? ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have given Heaven to get earth. Is that a good bargain? Is it much wiser than that of a horde of naked savages that sell a great tract of fair country, with gold-bearing reefs in it, for a bottle of rum, and a yard or two of calico? What is the difference? You have been fooled out of the inheritance which God meant for you; and you have got for it transient satisfaction, and partial as it is transient. If you are not Christian people, you have to buy this world's wealth and goods at the price of God and of your own souls. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... comfortable. The house lies at the west end of the town. It is one room inside, but has, I believe, a separate cooking shed. In the verandah in front is placed a table, an ivory bundle chair and a gourd of water, and I am also treated to a calico tablecloth, and most thoughtfully screened off from the public gaze with more calico so that I can have my tea in privacy. After this meal, to my surprise Ndaka turns up. Certainly he is one of the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... have been safe for a very child. Half the peasantry had come in from the outlying environs of Villette, and the decent burghers were all abroad and around, dressed in their best. My straw-hat passed amidst cap and jacket, short petticoat, and long calico mantle, without, perhaps, attracting a glance; I only took the precaution to bind down the broad leaf gipsy-wise, with a supplementary ribbon—and then I felt ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... sung,—"Sleep, little one, like a lamb in the fold,"—and she had answered that she "couldn't be sleepy, athout auntie would hurry quick to come in with a drink of water," there was a strange arrival. Nathaniel, the waiting man, ushered into the parlor a droll little old woman, dressed in a short calico gown, with gay figures over it as large as cabbages; calf-skin shoes; and a green pumpkin hood, with a ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... over the top of all. Sleep was out of the question, even for the weary seamen; the groans and cries were most heartrending. The doctor and his assistant were up all night attending to the poor captives. At Majunga calico was purchased to clothe them. In the morning they went through the same cleansing process as the night before, when the warm sun, and decks washed down, made things look more cheerful. The dhow having been ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... cash-box in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was "capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward into ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... sewn together, with a small outlet at the top); for it we pay twopence, which is equal to more than a shilling in London. The water that he brings he pours into a large earthern jar, which keeps it cool, and to it is attached over the mouth of the jar a sieve which is made of thick unbleached calico: if this were not done, hundreds of little red worms would get into the jar, because the water in Palestine is full of them. A law was made by the Jews that to drink water that had not been passed through a sieve was a sin; and, as little children are taught not to ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... a comprehensive answer than at first you might believe. Visitors at Mackinac, Traverse, Sault Ste. Marie, and other northern resorts are besought at certain times of the year by silent calico-dressed squaws to purchase basket and bark work. If the tourist happens to follow these women for more wholesale examination of their wares, he will be led to a double-ended Mackinaw-built sailing-craft with red-dyed sails, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... calico sunbonnet surmounted the cap with the explanatory ruffle. She carried a fan of turkey feathers, and with appropriate gesticulation, it aided in expounding to Mrs. Dicey the astonishing news that Nate had found a gold mine on vacant land, and had ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... millions of Americans buy and use more than five hundred millions of Asiatics —buy and use more than all of China, all of India and all of Africa. One civilized man has a thousand times the wants of a savage or of a semi-barbarian. Most of the customers of England want a few yards of calico, some cheap jewelry, a little powder, a few knives and a few ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... it'll do no harm." Hutchinson began to chuckle. "They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin' round th' village with a calico banner with 'Vote for T. Tembarom' painted on it, to show what they ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... more economical in the end. As an instance of the solid comfort of these apparently frugal folks, let me mention their homespun linen sheets. My hostess showed me some coarse bed-linen lately woven for her in the village. Calico sheets, she said, were much cheaper, but she preferred this durable home-spun even at three times the price. An old woman in the village still plied the loom, working up neighbours' materials at ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the broad toe of his boot between door and jamb. His elbows and shoulders did the rest, and he backed in, dragging Mr. Crymble, and paid no attention whatever to a half-dozen vigorous cuffs that Mrs. Crymble dealt him from behind. He doubled Mr. Crymble unceremoniously into a calico-covered rocking-chair, whipped off the hard hat and hung it up, and took from Mr. Crymble's resisting hands the little valise that he had clung to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... up an auction block before the door of the hotel and auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn't we?" suggested Helen, who had been rummaging in her bag. "Here, Bella! If you want a shirt-waist to take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one. One of mine. And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy's did. She wears ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... was just out of linsey-woolsey dresses and wore trousers buttoned to a calico waist, she began preparing him for college. The old lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. And the Harvard man she saw in her waking dreams, she created ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... at now, Christie," he went on swiftly. "But you don't need to be afraid. I'm going to be a friend to you, and you can be mighty glad you got rid of Willoughby so easily. Why, I can buy you diamonds where he couldn't give you a calico dress. Come on, let's stop this foolishness. I took a liking to you back there in the stage, and the more I've thought about you since the crazier I've got. When I succeeded in pumping Willoughby dry, and discovered you wasn't ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of Rhodes to the strips of red and green and pink calico banding his arms, their fluttering ends very ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... price of its oil except when compelled to do so by competition. The largely increased output of crude oil, the improved methods of refining, the greatly lowered cost of transportation would have lowered the price of coal oil without the philanthropy of the Standard Oil Company. Iron, steel, calico, woolen goods and a thousand other commodities have within almost the same period suffered much larger reductions than coal oil. But even if the Standard monopoly had voluntarily lowered the price of its products, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... that exists is entirely in provisions, principally in ghaseb, or millet, which is imported from Damerghou. The system adopted is entirely one of barter—the Aghadez money consisting of turkedi,[8] or dark-coloured cotton for female clothing made in Soudan, Egyptian leather for sandals, English calico, white shawls, cloves, pepper, pearls, &c. All these objects are imported, the only manufactures of Aghadez being leather-work (sandals and saddles) and coloured mats. I do not know what materials are used in tanning. The Fezzanee gets assistance, according to my fighi, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller comes spielin' ghost stories and tryin' to make up, and dat's why she won't listen to no soft-soap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a bunch o' calico in de hot-house. She side-stepped in to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy, and make a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Line, playing with his Yard-stick, and perhaps about to take the measure of an unmade piece of calico; when Mabel, with a wild cry of joy, sprang from a small boat to his side. The meeting was too much. They divided a good square faint between them this time. At last Philander found his utterance, and said, "Do they think of me at Home, do they ever ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... death by years of neglect, sprang to life for an instant in this cry of agony. She dropped on her knees beside the bruised body, wiping the blood from his face with the sleeve of her nightdress. A dark red stain spread over the coarse, common calico. And she kissed passionately the bleeding lips, heedless of the sour smell of alcohol that tainted his breath. The bricklayer groaned feebly. With a sudden movement she stripped the coat from her shoulders, and covered him as if to protect him from ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... walls. To and fro went Martha Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre house—her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with as little reck as may be conceived of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... affords a fine study of the 'dirty picturesque,' with clothes mostly home-made; sheepskin cloaks; fustanellas or kilts, which contain a whole piece of calico; red leggings, and the rudest of sandals; Turkish caps, and an occasional pistol-belt. The Palikar still struts about in all his old bravery; and the bourgeois humbly imitates the dingy garb of Southern Italy. The people have no taste for music, no regard for art, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... primly over the back. The high bed and bureau and a shining mahogany table suggested an era of "plain living" far, far remote from the day of Turkish rugs and Japanese bric-a-brac, and Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves. He passed whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... over the captain which I could see he found it impossible to resist. Donna Isabel had once more resumed her feminine attire, having stitched together for herself a wardrobe from the ship's stores of cloth and calico, and Hartog begged from me three of the rubies which I had found in the Valley of Serpents, which he presented to her, and which she wore sewn on to a black ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... the ins and outs of it. I believe he's to be one of Mr Palliser's private secretaries if he becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps he doesn't tell;—only I think he does all the same. He always calls me Lady Glen-cowrer. He comes out of Lancashire, and made calico as long as he could get any cotton." But this happened in the bedroom, and we must go back for ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... moved silently down the avenue passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes passing over everything to which the man's hook ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... visiting each other's houses. Every girl had her album in which her friends wrote their names, and usually they were able to contribute an original stanza; or, if not, a line from the hymn-book, or a sentiment from the school reader or Bible. They dressed in calico in summer and in winter linsey-woolsey, and wore at their work ample aprons of osnaburg, a small checked blue and white cloth. Vice was unknown; at least the annals record no ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... A new calico dress of a blue ground, with a bright yellow vine rambling up its lengths, adorned her round, plump figure; her glossy black hair was plaited, and surmounted with a huge red bow, the ends of which fluttered out bravely; as she stepped ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... meeting. He and his daughter spent a great part of the afternoon in arranging the platform and decorating the back wall with a Union Jack, two or three strings of cardpaper-flags that had not seen the light since Coronation Day, and a wall-map of Europe with a legend below it in white calico letters upon red Turkey twill,—"DO GOOD AND FEAR NOT." It had served to decorate many occasions and was as appropriate to this as to any ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... are the itinerant vendors of hot foods and confections. Stove, fuel, supplies and appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a bamboo pole. The mother in Fig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue and white calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing of this calico by the very ancient, simple yet effective method we witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This art, as with so ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He had red hair and small, twinkling, grey eyes, and—what often goes with such things—the expression of a born comedian. He was dressed in a ragged, well-washed print shirt, an old black waistcoat with a calico back, a pair of cloudy moleskins patched at the knees and held up by a plaited greenhide belt buckled loosely round his hips, a pair of well-worn, fuzzy blucher boots, and a soft felt hat, green with age, and with no brim worth mentioning, and no crown to speak of. He swung ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... this nauseous wrapping-gown, therefore pray get me another suit with all possible expedition; for this is my eternal aversion.—[Exit TAILOR.] Well but, Tam, you don't tell me what has driven you to Scarborough.— Mrs. Calico, are not you of my mind? Semp. Directly, my lord.—I hope your lordship is pleased with your ruffles? Lord Fop. In love with them, stap my vitals!—Bring my bill, you shall be paid to-morrow. Semp. I humbly thank your ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... his miraben, an' you can rikker him bissin', or chiv him apre a wardo, an' jal andurer an' kek jin it. An' dovo's what the Rommany chal kaired to the baulor, pash the sim kris; an' as he bissered it avree an' pakkered it adree a gunno, he penned shukkar adree the baulor's kan, "Calico tute's rye hatched my bavol, an' the divvus I've hatched tute's; an' yeckorus your rye kaumed the kris would del mandy kushti bak, and kenna it has del mengy kushtier bak than ever ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... Seacove, and though Biddy was in a great hurry to get to Pier Street, she was rather interested in the other shops also. At the draper's, Mrs. Vane made some small purchases, as to which Alie showed great concern. One was of pretty pink glazed calico and of some other shiny stuff called 'chintz'—white, with tiny lines of different colours; she also bought some red cotton velvet and neat-looking white spotted muslin, and several yards of very narrow ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins. With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand—a narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy—he cleared ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... front. He also stopped with putty the worst gaps between the slabs. At Ocock's Auction Rooms he bought a horsehair sofa to match his armchair, a strip of carpet, a bed, a washhand-stand and a looking-glass, and tacked up a calico curtain before the window. His books, fetched out of the wooden case, were arranged on a brand-new set of shelves; and, when all was done and he stood back to admire his work, it was borne in on him afresh with how few creature-comforts ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... exaggeration by the snowy white turban wound about his brow. His eyes, by contrast, were singularly light. He wore over his white shirt a long green tunic of very light silk, woven along its edges with arabesques in gold; a pair of loose calico breeches reached to his knees; his brown muscular calves were naked, and his feet were shod in a pair of Moorish shoes of crimson leather, with up-curling and very pointed toes. He had no weapons other than the heavy-bladed knife with ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... both patrols were in position, and they signified this to Mr. Elliott by holding up their patrol flags. Chippy had made the flag for the Ravens, and made it very well too, cutting the raven out of a scrap of an old green curtain, and stitching it on to a piece of calico. When the umpire saw the patrol flags raised above the gorse clumps which hid the patrols, he blew a long blast on his powerful ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... rear, while he looked on beseechingly and helpless. Then he would try the other side, still failing to swing himself into the saddle. He would grow more and more flustered. His wife, in her clean muslin cap and spotless calico wrapper, with her little lads and lasses—one, two, three—would then step out on the pavement to give cautious advice. The would-be Yeoman would become more and more nervous, while his comrades rode by with jeering glances, and the passengers stood still. Little ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... draper's is not usually counted an interesting kind of shop by children—she was much entertained by watching and listening to the conversation of the farmers' wives and others over their purchases. The way they tugged at merino, and rubbed calico between their fingers to see that there was not too much 'dressing' in it, made her feel as if it would be very difficult indeed to be sure of a 'genuine article,' as the shopman called all his ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers very much down at the heel, and pink ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... Peter's head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech's sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly's ghost, whenever I come upon him thus unobserved. To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown—unheard-of garment in these days—but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald men would have the cap black—but then most bald men have not Peter's ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... themselves up like logs of wood or trusses of hay before a row of lurid lamps, to admire some painted men and women mincing up and down the stage, or peer through two telescopes at forests of painted calico and moons cut out of pasteboard, or listen to hackneyed airs which have been sung and resung a hundred times—worn up, in short, like ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... squirrel. Her breathing was soft, though she had come down a steep mountainside, and as fragrant as the breath of the elder bushes that dashed the banks with white sprays of blossom. She brought with her to the greens and grays and browns of the woodland's heart a new note of color, for her calico dress was like the red cornucopias of the trumpet-flower, and her eyes were blue like little scraps of sky. Her heavy, brown-red hair fell down over her shoulders in loose profusion. The coarse dress was freshly briar-torn, and in many places ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, in the fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her white throat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calico over her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in the presence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... all washed her face slowly and with a methodic thoroughness which characterized her—having lived for ten full years with no realization of hours and minutes as a measure for her actions. She dried her face quite as deliberately upon her starched calico apron. Then she spent a few minutes trying to catch a baby trout in her cupped palms. Never had Billy Louise succeeded in catching a baby trout in her hands; therefore she never tired of trying. Now, however, that rash promise nagged at her and would ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... came through by stage. I'll never forget the morning the first stage train came. Men had use for their money then, though many of them used gold weighed out in little scales. Flour was a dollar and a half a pound, calico fifty cents a yard, and eggs five dollars a dozen. Shoes were priceless. One man bought a pair for thirty dollars. I remember that Robert and I wanted to give our neighbor's little girl a birthday present. After ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... her heels, passed Ann Gossaway's cottage the next morning on her way to the post-office—her daily custom—the dressmaker, who was sitting in the window, one eye on her needle and the other on the street, craned her head clear of the calico curtain framing the sash and beckoned ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... my belt, extracting fresh cartridges. We sank, breathing hard. Her eyes were wide, and bluer than any deepest summer sea; her face aflame; her hair of purest gold—and upon her shoulder a challenging oriflamme of scarlet, staining a rent in the faded calico. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... saying a good deal. He was about twenty-five years old. I can see him now in my mind's eye, with his torn and patched trousers held to his form by a pair of suspenders made out of sheeting, with his calico shirt as dirty and black as the earth, and his uncombed hair sticking through the holes in his old battered hat. In winter I used to pity him, for his shoes were so old and worn out that he must have suffered in the snow and slush; yet Joe had a jovial, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... little baroness, what had become of you? Where were your long soft muslin petticoats and your fine white satin corsets? Where were your transparent linen chemisettes? Mme. General had coarse petticoats of starched calico. Mme. General wore such a corset! Mme. General had such a crinoline! My poor skirts of lace and satin were abominably stiffened and tossed about by the hard crinoline hoops. As to the basque, the strange thing happened ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... neighbouring farm for milk. He heard her quick step on the shingle, and he stood still in the middle of the floor to meet her. She had on a short dress of pink calico and a square of blue-and-white-plaided flannel thrown over her head. She came in like the breath of the spring Sabbath. Her face was rosy, her lovely lips slightly apart, her blue eyes dewy and soft and bright and brimming with love. She lifted her ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr |
