"High-backed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house Pete asked for the master. The English footman, in scarlet knee-breeches, left him to wait in the stone hall. The place was very quiet and rather cold, but all as clean as a gull's wing. There was a dark table in the middle and a high-backed chair against the wall. Two oil pictures faced each other from opposite sides. One was of an old man without a beard, but with a high forehead, framed around with short grey hair. The other was of a woman with a tired look and a baby on her lap. Under this there was a little black picture ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... only a memory but the enduring impress of personality. The house was full of Ediths. There was one at the table, another at the piano, one leaning against the mantel with hands clasped behind her, another in a high-backed rocker, leaning back against a dull green cushion, and one upon the stairway, ascending with light steps that died away with the closing of a door, or descending with a quick rustle of silken skirts that presently merged into ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... just where to find the right kind of tea-room. He ushered them into the place, and found a table in a secluded nook, with a fountain playing nearby over ferns, and ivy climbing over a mimic pergola. There were not many people eating, for it was past one o'clock. There were little round tables with high-backed chairs that seemed to shut them off in a ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... on the sickles could be heard clinking musically in the still heavy air. Two or three old women alone stood in their porches, with their sun-bonnets over their neat white caps, gossiping as they knitted, and speaking an occasional word to an old, old man who sat in a high-backed chair basking in the sun. The children were all down in the meadow below, the little maids mostly sitting in the shade and making nosegays of forget-me-nots; while every boy that could walk, and some of the maids also, were paddling in the little stream ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... tiny two-roomed frame structure that bore his painted sign was nothing more or less than a loafing place for him and his rheumatic friends, and a place in which the owner could spend the heat of the day in a position of comfort to his stiff leg—that is to say, asleep in a high-backed office chair, his feet propped upon his desk. It was here that Tom could usually be found, and when one of those hateful statements arrived from the East he merely roused himself, put on his wide gray hat, limped around to the bank, and pledged ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a queer figure, that old man, in the high-backed, high-fender sleigh. On his head was a tall peaked fur cap, with a barred coon tail flopping at its apex. A big fur coat, also covered with coon tails, made the man's figure almost Brobdingnagian in circumference. It was ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... in a high-backed Windsor chair at the door of his house, smoking. Before him the road descended steeply to the harbor, a small blue patch of which was visible from his door. Children over five were at school: children under that age, and suspiciously large for their years, played about in careless ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... was also to belong to the daughter of the house, was white, shiny tile from floor to ceiling, and it contained every conceivable device known to the mind of a modern plumber that makes for comfort in a bath-room. Could Elinor have but glimpsed the high-backed tin tub in which Arethusa had bathed all of her life ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... without knocking, as was her wont, and walked into the young doctor's office, where she beheld, not the fair, feminine face of the rightful proprietor, but the ugly, rhubarb-colored visage of the village apothecary, Dr. Potipher, ensconced in the high-backed cushioned chair, fast asleep. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... those so often described as being 'wide enough to drive a carriage and pair up,' with massive oak posts and balustrades. The walls are covered with tapestry, given to the house by 'The Merry Monarch,' after his visit. An oak chest or two, and some high-backed chairs on the landings, picture to one a suitable habitation for a ghost. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I had no belief in ghosts, and commenced an investigation of ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... changes, during which Marguerite took off her matron's coat and Mr. Prince gently hung it up for her, they all sat down near to one another and near the unlighted stove. The studio seemed to be precisely as of old, except that it was very clean. Marguerite, in a high-backed wicker-chair, began slowly to remove her hat, which she perched behind her on the chair. Mr. Prince produced a tin of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... that afternoon, she went into her father's room. His recovery had progressed well enough to permit the departure of Miss Perry; and Adams, wearing one of Mrs. Adams's wrappers over his night-gown, sat in a high-backed chair by a closed window. The weather was warm, but the closed window and the flannel wrapper had not sufficed him: round his shoulders he had an old crocheted scarf of Alice's; his legs were wrapped in a heavy comfort; and, ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... to-day. One after the other, hands folded behind them, they had marched to the door. Then delightful sounds—the scuffling of feet, stifled screams, gigglings and low buzzings of talk—had stolen over the partition that separated the cloak-room from the class-room, and Elizabeth, sitting on the high-backed form, with all the other empty forms in front of her, nibbled ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... long dining room in the wake of Madam and the few returned teachers a veritable march of triumph. The feeling that the curtain had gone up on an interesting play in which she was chief actor came back stronger than ever when she took her seat in one of the high-backed ebony chairs, with the carved griffins atop, and unfolded her napkin in the gaze of a long line ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... appear to notice that there was anything different about her. Everything went on just as usual, just as it had so often done before. She sat on one side of the table and poured out the tea, and Uncle Joshua in his high-backed elbow chair on the other, with his red-and-white handkerchief over his knees, his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and a well-buttered slice of toast in his hand. He never talked much during his meals; partly because he was used to having them alone, and partly because ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... to my recognition in every part of the room. The tender moonlight streamed slanting into the corner in which Mary and I used to nestle together while Dame Dermody was at the window reading her mystic books. Overshadowed by the obscurity in the opposite corner, I discovered the high-backed arm-chair of carved wood in which the Sibyl of the cottage sat on the memorable day when she warned us of our coming separation, and gave us her blessing for the last time. Looking next round the walls of the ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... personality of the owner. On an oak table near the window were spread some papers and account-books concerned with the estate—with which she had sought to beguile the time of waiting. She led the way towards this, and, sinking into the high-backed chair that stood before it, she looked up at him expectantly. She was pale, there were dark stains under her eyes, and wistful lines had crept into the sweet face of that ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... will be told in good time. The parlour suited its name anyway better far than it would that of "drawing-room," which would be given it nowadays. There was a round table in the middle; there were high-backed mahogany chairs against the wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been very good to be so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... laden with oatcakes and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily-painted canisters disposed along its ledge. The floor was of smooth, white stone; the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green: one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade. In an arch under the dresser reposed a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer, surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies; and other dogs haunted ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... trepidation I entered yet another room on the same floor, but it was dusty and neglected—a kind of sitting-room, or perhaps boudoir, for there was an old-fashioned high-backed piano in it. Yet there was no sign that anybody had entered there for weeks—perhaps for months. In the sunlight, I saw that there were cobwebs everywhere. Surely it was a very strange house. It struck me that its owner had ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... the peat-fire glow red by the contrast. Over the fire, from a great chain, hung a three-legged pot, in which something was slowly cooking. Between the fire and the sun-spot lay a cat, content with fate and the world. At the corner of the fire sat an old lady, in a chair high-backed, thick-padded, and covered with striped stuff. She had her back to the window that looked into the court, and was knitting without regarding her needles. This was Cosmo's grandmother. The daughter of a small laird in the next parish, she had started ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... stood waiting in the cool, high-ceilinged hall, he was struck by the quiet of the place. It had an air of waiting. What for? There was a high walnut hat-rack with a mirror and a marble slab with a card tray on it, and two high-backed chairs, likewise black walnut and elaborately carved and atrocious, and in the dim recesses of the stair a horsehair sofa, all just as they had been for years. They were mute but they seemed expectant. What could they be ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... furnished, but the few objects it contained, the carved table, the high-backed chairs and the chiselled bronze brazier, bore the stamp of the time when art had not long been born again. On the walls there were broad tapestries of bold design, showing green forests populated by all sorts of animals in stiff attitudes, staring at one another in perpetual ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... end lay hawk's jesses, and hoods, and bells, and other apparatus of the gentle sport of heronry. A long massive oak table, with a side board of the same wood and style of construction, and numerous high-backed chairs, completed the furniture of the room, while at the inner end was a huge fire-place, with a mantel-piece high above it, and carved oak seats on either side. The hall was used generally for banquets and other entertainments; smaller ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... had some public ceremony in view, of a penitential nature. They were by no means early, and the girl was disagreeably aware of a little rustle of eagerness and curiosity as she took her seat, and was glad to have fairly gained the shelter of the high-backed pew as she bent her head. But Miss Prince the senior seemed calm; she said her prayer, settled herself as usual, putting the footstool in its right place and finding the psalms and the collect. She then laid the prayer-book on the cushion beside her and folded her hands in ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the clock, and the lamentations of the hound without, were not the only sounds that disturbed the night. Before the empty fireplace, in a high-backed, cane-bottomed chair, slept an old negress, with head bowed, moaning and muttering as she slept. She was bent and ashen with age, and her brown skin sagged in long wrinkles from her face and hands. On her forehead, reaching ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... mysterious gallery, looking as it must have looked for two centuries at least, you felt an involuntary shiver, as of warm, human, daily life brought suddenly into contact with the pale ghosts of the past. You could not escape the haunting thought that these oaken tables were dined at, these high-backed chairs sat upon, these black-framed, dirt-obscured portraits gazed at and admired by people, once flesh and blood like yourself, who had become skeletons—nay, mere dust, centuries before you were born. Also, that other people would be dining, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... a courteous host. His lodgers occupy the comfortable seats, whilst he perches himself on the edge of a straight high-backed chair and converses with us, not lighting his pipe until urged, then deprecatingly smoking in little smothered puffs. I feel convinced that Jones thinks that Massachusetts shoe-hands are a grade higher in the social scale than ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... refused to stay in the bedroom after she had come to her senses. She had insisted that she could not breathe, and that she was cold and must go back to the kitchen. Her mother and Mrs. Jake had wrapped her in blankets and drawn the high-backed wooden rocking chair close to the stove, and here she was just established when Mrs. Martin opened the outer door. Any one of less reliable nerves would have betrayed the shock which the sight of such desperate illness must have given. The pallor, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... young ladies was sitting upon one leg in an easy-chair, with the other foot dangling, the forehead against the back, and the arm of the chair used as a desk! How was she to know that this only meant that he had once had the misfortune to express his disapproval of the high-backed long-legged school-room chairs formerly in fashion? In fact, Kate could hardly be forbidden anything without her replying that Papa or Mary ALWAYS let her do it; till at last she was ordered, very decidedly, never again ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intervals of the deep-rolling organ. All the monks of San Augustin, with their white hoods and sandalled feet, and carrying lighted tapers, were ranged near the altar. All the male relatives of the family, dressed in deep mourning, occupied the high-backed chairs placed along one side of the church, the floor of which was covered with a carpet, on which various veiled and mourning figures were kneeling, whom I joined. The whole service, the chanting, the solemn music, and the prayers, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... hung rusty skull-caps, breastplates, two-handed and single-handed swords, maces, halberts, and arquebusses, with chain-shirts, buff-jerkins, matchlocks, and other warlike implements, amongst which were several shields painted with the arms of the Asshetons and their alliances. High-backed chairs of gilt leather were ranged against the walls, and ebony cabinets inlaid with ivory were set between them at intervals, supporting rare specimens of glass and earthenware. Opposite the fireplace, stood a large clock, curiously ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was of the same material as the chair to which I was strapped, viz. ebony inlaid with ivory. This furniture was scanty. There was a heavy table in one corner of the dungeonesque place, on which were a number of books and papers. Before this table was a high-backed, heavily carven chair. A smaller table stood upon the right of the only visible opening, a low door partially draped with bead-work curtains, above which hung a silver lamp. On this smaller table, a stick of incense, ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... bring him here! Chick, chick, churr! Mister Red-squirrel, we'll 'give you a few,' as Jared used to say. On that knot in the green hemlock, he sits with his tail spread out over his head, for all the world like a young miss in a high-backed, old-fashined easy-chair. Well, we wont harm him, for the sake of the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... carpet had half rotted away, occupied an alcove at one end; upon it four or five wooden stools were placed; one of these was overturned; on another a violin in its baggy green baize cover was lying. Straight high-backed chairs were pushed against the walls on either side; in front of an open fireplace with a low wooden mantel two small cushioned divans were drawn up, with a claw-footed table between them. A silver salver filled with tall glasses ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the rich hues of the curtains, the artistic character of the Japanese screens and Oriental embroideries, the exquisite landscape-paintings on the walls, were compatible with grave deficiencies in the list of more ordinary articles of furniture. There were two or three picturesque, high-backed chairs, made of rosewood (black with age) and embossed leather, but the rest of the seats consisted of divans, improvised by ingenious fingers out of packing-boxes and cushions covered with Morris chintzes; or brown Windsor chairs, evidently imported straight from the kitchen. A battered ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... her chair, a soft flush on her thin, high-bred face. Her figure, in a beautiful gown of beryl plush embroidered with gold, seemed artistically designed for the carved, high-backed chair in which she sat, and both her companions were too appreciative to lose the grace ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... she had been used to take the big, high-backed chair at the head of the table, and spreading out her books, refuse to cast so much as a look at the sunny world without; but after four or five mornings so spent she gave in suddenly and betook herself to the little ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... away the Atlas mountains rear their heads of lasting snow, And seem like old men grouped around in high-backed chairs of space; And they bathe their feet like children in the brooks that run below, Or smoke their pipes in silence till the clouds obscure ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... the sergeant, he had not slept for three days, and was too utterly tired out to be of any assistance. He had done what he could, and had now to await developments. The fire was good, and he had dropped, at the rancher's request, into a comfortable high-backed chair in a corner, ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... get out at the back in case of need. So she led the way down the corridor and through the living-part of the house, and we passed several rooms, and one little parlour lined with shelves and musty books. The blinds were pulled, but let enough light in to show a high-backed horsehair chair that stood at the table. In front of it lay an open volume, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, that I had often seen on Maskew's nose; so I knew it was his study, and that nothing had been moved since last he sat there. Even now I trembled to think ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset, that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mild and moonlight splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... where she had sat for thirty years. Her high-backed rocker, with its cushion of copperplate patch and its crocheted tidy, stood always by a southern window that looked out on the river. The river was a sheet of crystal, as it poured over the dam; a rushing, roaring ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... round the room on wooden chairs, and Miss Polehampton occupied a high-backed, cushioned seat at a centre table while she read the portion of Scripture with which the day's work concluded. Near her sat the governesses, English, French and German, with little Janetta bringing up the rear in the draughtiest place ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... door was shut between Mynheer Von Stroom and the object of his terror, the little man slid off the table to the high-backed chair near it, shook out the damaged curls of his wig, and replaced it on his head; pulled out his ruffles, and, assuming an air of magisterial importance, struck his cane on the deck, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... took Edward by the arm, and, lighted by the servant, they passed through several lofty rooms, which were very handsomely furnished, although in an old-fashioned style, with faded Flemish carpets, large chandeliers, and high-backed chairs: everything in keeping with what the youth had already seen in the castle. Here were the ladies of the house. At the other end of the room, by the side of an immense stove, ornamented with a large shield of the family arms, richly emblazoned, and crowned by a gigantic Turk, in a most ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... just roofed in and not yet portioned into rooms, was hastily prepared as an audience chamber by clearing it of litter, and spreading at the upper end a large green rug belonging to Edward Winslow, and various cushions and mats, while a high-backed settle in the place of honor covered with some scarlet broadcloth cloaks stood ready to receive the king and the governor in equal honor. Everything being thus in readiness, Samoset and Squanto were dispatched with a courteous message to the king as the Pilgrims chose to translate the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... roots" for firewood; and the people, having tranquilly supped and soused their faces in their water-pails, slowly donned their Sunday clothes. This ceremony was common to all; but here divergence set in. The grey Auld Licht, to whom love was not even a name, sat in his high-backed arm-chair by the hearth, Bible or "Pilgrim's Progress" in hand, occasionally lapsing into slumber. But—though, when they got the chance, they went willingly three times to the kirk—there were young men in the community so flighty that, instead of dozing at ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... his high-backed chair, the grotesque carved back of which terminated in a mitre, before a fire where two or three large logs were reduced to one red glowing mass of charcoal. At his elbow, on an oaken stand, stood the remains of a roasted capon, on which his reverence ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... in the evening, Annie, with much ceremony, led me to the high-backed arm-chair, which she called the Speaker's Chair, and placed before me the small travelling desk, in which she knew my manuscripts were kept. I unlocked it, and soon found the scroll of which I was ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... cigarettes and returned to the court. The gentleman declared to the presiding justice that he was chosen foreman, and stepping over the feet of each other, the jury again seated themselves in the two rows of high-backed chairs. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and then looked at Senator North deep in the chair where she had so often imagined him, and forgot their existence. This was her hour—her first, at least—and visions of pneumonia and possible consumption should not mar it. She sat opposite him in a straight dark high-backed chair, and she was quite aware that she ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... prevails among members is another marked feature during the debates. The bewigged and berobed Speaker, seated in his imposing high-backed chair, seems rather to be retained in his place out of due deference to time-honored custom than because a presiding officer is necessary to preserve proper decorum. To be sure, demonstrations of applause at a good bit, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... halted for similar entertainment before the door of his mansion. Thence, through Upton village along the lane to the Thornleigh Arms; then the dinner—mirth and jollity lasting till evening. Old Bob, with knotted hands clasping the wooden arms of his high-backed chair, saw it all in fancy, his memory conjuring up each detail of the well-known scenes. He could see the grassy fields and the hedges white with bloom; he could smell the fragrance of the trampled earth; he could feel the sunshine and the brisk air; and then the warmth, the ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... a high-backed rocker toward the fire and Madame Bernard leaned back luxuriously, stretching her tiny feet to the blaze. She wore grey satin slippers with high French heels and silver buckles. A bit of grey silk stocking was ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... began to wonder whether the message the Church called revelation was not, after all, as vain as 'laughter over wine'; and as he looked on the frowning galleries and the distant corners of the chapel, gloomy and fearsome—the high-backed pews, peopled with shadows thrown from the waning lights—he felt the force of the words of one of his masters: 'What shadows we are, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... "Little Pedlington," a delightful specimen of Pickwickian humour, and which ought to be better known than it is. "There now," said Daubson, the painter of "the all but breathing Grenadier," (alas! rejected by the Academy). "Then get up and sit down, if you please, mister." "He pointed to a narrow high-backed chair, placed on a platform; by the side of the chair was a machine of curious construction, from which protruded a long wire. 'Heady stiddy, mister.' He then slowly drew the wire over my head and down my nose and chin." Such was the ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... not many people in the car, and they were absorbed in their own books, gossips, or naps. Only a few head-tops showing above the high-backed seats, and no eyes ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... wooden boxes, each holding half a hundred-weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room occupied by some higher official of the Customs, because a large leathern armchair stood behind the table, with other high-backed chairs scattered about. A net hammock was swung under one of the beams—for the official's afternoon siesta, no doubt. A couple of candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a dim reddish light. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... opened onto the terrace further along swung inward and a middle-aged man in evening attire stepped into the room. Perry, in spite of his former assurance, drew back into the shadow of a high-backed chair, stepping on Wink's foot and bringing a groan from that youth. The newcomer, however, evidently failed to hear Wink's protest, for, closing the window behind him in a stealthy manner, he crossed the further end of the library and paused beside a huge stone fireplace. Wink and Ossie ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... simpler sort the only requirements are a high-backed chair or settee, a table for cartes de visite, an umbrella receptacle, and a mirror wall hanger with hooks for the use of guests. The time-honored halltree is no more, and long may it rest in peace. If there had been no other reasons for its passing, its abuse in the average household made ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... into the garden during the afternoon, and sat on a high-backed chair in the shade of the old brick wall, with eyes half closed and a smile hovering about her lips. The wall was curtained with canaryensis, virginia creeper rich in autumn tints, ivy, and giant nasturtiums. Great sunflowers grew up against it, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... art in the castle," Janet's scowling face under cover of the high-backed chair stopped his lordship's impetuosity, "hast a frock, Kate? thou shalt go to the chest and find for thee some bright thing and I will send from Crandlemar a woman to help thee with thy attire. Angel will come to take thee to see the jewels, and thou shalt have those thou carest to ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... she half saw Fraulein Pfaff, sitting as if enthroned on a high-backed chair in front of the centremost of the mirrors filling the wall spaces between the long French windows, signal to her, to come to that side ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... losses by the dishonesty of the croupiers; for, although there is a person expressly employed to watch them, who sits in a high-backed chair behind the dealer, yet they are such practised escamoteurs, that they will secrete a piece of gold without his seeing it. One fellow was detected at Baden-Baden, who had carried on a system ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... high chimney with roughly fluted wooden jambs, an iron pot filled with potatoes was suspended over a fire, where a long branch was burning, or rather smoking. The only articles of furniture were two high-backed arm-chairs, covered with a plain-colored stuff, of which it was impossible to guess the original color; a large table, half covered with an unbleached linen table-cloth in which a loaf was wrapped, the other half being strewed ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to market on their own legs, and very long, feeble legs they were, for a more unsightly beast than a Breton pig was never seen out of a toy Noah's ark. Tall, thin, high-backed, and sharp-nosed, these porcine victims tottered to their doom, with dismal wailings, and not a vestige of spirit till the trials and excitement of the day goaded them to rebellion, when their antics furnished fun for the public. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the divan filling the bay-window. The only light was under a shaded globe on the central table, leaving the main apartment in shadows, but the windows had their heavy curtains closely drawn. The sole occupant was a man in evening dress, seated in a high-backed leather chair, facing the entrance, a small stand beside him, containing a half-filled glass, and an open box of cigars. Smoke circled above his head, his eyes upon me as I entered. With an indolent ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the pony I had been thrown upon is worthy of description. It was in reality the wooden frame of a very high-backed saddle, like a Mexican saddle. From the highest point of the back five or six sharp iron spikes stuck out horizontally. As I sat on this implement of torture, I was not actually sitting on the spikes, but the spikes caught me in the back just ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... of the quaint and queer by its jumble of cracked and ancient porcelain, old-fashioned brasses and small articles of more or less valuable bric-a-brac. Inside, the three small rooms are crowded with sets of delft and willow china, old candlesticks, clocks, andirons, fenders, high-backed chairs and the like. The whole aspect of the place is shabby and dingy, and the antique furniture has no chance of showing either its worth or its dignity amid such surroundings; yet the traffic which goes on in this "curiosity-shop" has already brought a respectable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to see her. So when more than five minutes had passed and no Dave reappeared, I proposed that Dolly and I should go up to look for him, and we went, Aunt Maria following in our wake, to cover contingencies. She went back, after introducing me to the very sweet old lady in a high-backed chair, who comes in as the explanation of the beginning of this illegible scrawl. How funny children are! I do believe Uncle Moses was right when he said that Dave, if anything, preferred his loves to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... protected by well-fastened screens or by slats of wood. Beds afford a good place for a romp or play, but high-backed chairs should be placed at the side to prevent a fall. A strap across the waist should be fastened to the sides of the carriage to prevent falling out. Everything possible should be done to prevent falls. Outdoor hammocks are exceedingly dangerous for the baby. Never leave a child in one unguarded. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... certitude that this mother, refused in her heart to give her son up after all. It was more than Rachel's inconsolable mourning, it was something deeper, more inaccessible in its frightful tranquillity. Lost in the ill-defined mass of the high-backed chair, her white, inclined profile suggested the contemplation of something in her lap, as though a beloved head ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... good miles from the village made illustrious by being the abiding-place of Mr Pecksniff, when he stopped to breakfast at a little roadside alehouse; and resting upon a high-backed settle before the fire, pulled off his coat, and hung it before the cheerful blaze to dry. It was a very different place from the last tavern in which he had regaled; boasting no greater extent of accommodation than the brick-floored kitchen yielded; but the mind so soon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... her guests in two wide, high-backed chairs, rang for tea, and began to question Lionel about affairs in the High Valley, while Imogen, still under the influence of surprise at finding herself calling on these strangers, glanced curiously at the younger ladies of the party. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... book, he stole round behind a high-backed chair, which was placed against the table. Fanny was so engaged with her bird that she did not see him. Rising up suddenly with the book in his hands, the cruel boy let it fall directly down on the little bird. Perhaps he ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... sitting by the fire, her white gossamer shawl about her spare shoulders, rose from her high-backed chair and, laying aside her knitting-needles and wools, greeted the musician with as much cordiality—and it must be confessed with as much ceremony—as if she had not seen him a dozen times that week. One of the charms of the Horn ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... former Spanish owner still told the tale of coaches before the colonnade outside and of hidalgo guests within the great house. There was the stately sofa of honor flanked by throne-like armchairs, with high-backed ones next in line, all once of bright crimson satin and now frazzled and stained. The inevitable mirror leaned from its inevitable place over the sofa, but it was cracked and the gilt of the heavy frame had tarnished to red. At the other end of the sala, a considerable journey, there ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... down and listen. She did not even turn around when the kind lady behind them dropped a peppermint over the high-backed pew for her. She was very much afraid of the tithingman, who sat on a high seat. He had a long rod with a hard knob on one end and a squirrel's ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... beseeching me to attend to his wound. I placed my hand under his chin, looking into his eyes an almost instantaneous glance revealed the fact that he was in no immediate danger, and in response to appeals from Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris, who were standing by the high-backed armchair in which President Lincoln sat, I went immediately to their assistance, saying I was a United States army surgeon. I grasped Mrs. Lincoln's outstretched hand in mine, while she cried piteously to me, "Oh, Doctor! Is he dead? Can he recover? Will you take charge of him? Do what ...
— Lincoln's Last Hours • Charles A. Leale
... in her fortune. She sat before the fire dreaming for a few minutes, then she wandered over the old house from room to room; and every room had its memories and associations for her. In the library she could almost fancy that her father was sitting in the high-backed chair which was still drawn up in its place to the table; and she went and sat in it and touched with reverent, loving hand the books and papers over which he had been wont to bend. She stood before his portrait and gazed at it with tear-dimmed ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... town stood the old church, antiquated in its appearance, but venerable and holy in its associations. In that old-fashioned church have been settled three successive ministers of the gospel. In those high-backed, square pews were other generations wont to sit. Those pastors and their flocks now sleep in the grave. Their sons occupy their places in the sanctuary, and another herald of the cross proclaims to them the word of life. It was in this pleasant place, which I have briefly described, ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... Haley therefore slowly and discontentedly returned to the little tavern, to ponder further what was to be done. The woman opened to him the door of a little parlor, covered with a rag carpet, where stood a table with a very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank, high-backed wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colors on the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly-smoking grate; a long hard-wood settle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... asked for it; but she had to tell him that she had lost it years ago; and then he asked if he might take her photograph as she sat there in her high-backed chair. Drusilla was a little awed by this very confident young man, so she sat still while he took her photograph, and then when he was ready to depart, she ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... beef, and other hearty viands upon it, over which two foaming tankards of ale seemed mounting guard. Travellers of inferior order were preparing to attack this stout repast, while others sat smoking and gossiping over their ale on two high-backed oaken seats beside the fire. Trim housemaids were hurrying backwards and forwards under the directions of a fresh, bustling landlady; but still seizing an occasional moment to exchange a flippant word, and have a rallying laugh, with the group round the ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... far end of the table sat Gwendolyn's father, pale in his black dress-clothes, and haggard-eyed; at the near end sat her mother, pink-cheeked and pretty, with jewels about her bare throat and in her fair hair. And between the two, filling the high-backed chairs on either side of the table, were strange ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... night-scene was to me, I saw beside it another scene: a great panelled room, a grim old woman in a high-backed chair, and, restless on a stool at her feet an extraordinary little nephew with masses of auburn hair and with tiny hands clasped in supplication—'Tell me more, Aunt ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in that high-backed green chair, with his eyes glued to his shoes, and holding his hat and cane in front of him like breastworks, as if he were preparing to repel an attack. He didn't look very approachable, but I boldly accosted him and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He stood up and stammered and blushed ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... to red Martian custom, was triangular, for there were three in our family. Carthoris and I presided in the centre of our sides of the table—midway of the third side Dejah Thoris' high-backed, carven chair stood vacant except for her gorgeous wedding trappings and jewels which were draped upon it. Behind stood a slave as in the days when his mistress had occupied her place at the board, ready to do her bidding. It was the way upon Barsoom, so ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... looked so gingerly and inhospitable, that we felt an absolute relief when we could fairly get out of it, and take a place by the wide old fireplace, in the common living room, comfortably ensconced in a good old easy, high-backed, split-bottomed chair—there was positive comfort in that, when in the "parlor" there was nothing but restraint and discomfort. No; leave all this vanity to town-folk, who have nothing better—or who, at least, think they have—to amuse themselves ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... however, the moment that she drew her high-backed oak chair up to the table that Evan had reserved in a little alcove near the fireplace. Before the oysters arrived, and Martin Cortright appeared to fill the fourth seat, she had completely relaxed, and was beaming at the brass jugs and pottery beakers ranged along a shelf above the dark wainscot, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... in his high-backed chair, and placed the light upon the table in such a manner as fully to reveal the pale agitated features of his son. Had a stranger at that moment entered the cottage, he might for the first time have perceived the strong family likeness that existed between them. The same high features, the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... other portraits, a careful observer would have promptly distinguished and reunited them, so pronounced were the family features common to them all. The furniture of the room was not unworthy of these proud defunct ones. High-backed chairs and enormous armchairs, dating from the time of Louis XIII; more modern sofas, which had been made to harmonize with the older furniture, filled the room. They were covered with flowered tapestry in thousands of shades, which must have busied the white hands of the ladies ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... stairs to the garret, where, in the warm, dusty air that smelled of hot shingles and lavender, she went poking about, seeking the roll of flannel that Mrs. Crawford assured her was there. She could find everything else in the world—old clocks, spindle-legged chairs, a high-backed, mahogany sofa, and a spinning wheel. At last she discovered what she needed in a box far under the eaves, but in pulling it out so that she could raise the lid, she knocked down a row of pictures that leaned against it. She bent to pick them up and set them in order again, then stopped to stare ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... drinks in tall glasses—a litter of cigarettes on smoking-stands, magazines and newspapers on the stone floors, packs of cards on a small table. Oscar, hunched up in a high-backed Chinese chair, was white and miserable. George looked bored ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... feet long and thirty feet wide. The ceiling was covered with quaint figures in fresco, the walls were paneled with oak, and high-backed, stolid-looking chairs stood around. On one side was the fire-place, so vast and so high that it seemed itself another room. It was the fine old fire-place of the Tudor or Plantagenet period—the unequaled, the unsurpassed—whose day has long since been ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... robbed of its furniture. A high-backed chair and reading-desk of black walnut were the only pieces in sight. White roses were there in profusion but not ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... the dining-room, a quaintly attractive apartment where candle-light illumined the bare mahogany of the round table laid with a large square of linen at his place and set with delicate ancient china and silver. Ellen Lessing was already there in a high-backed chair opposite the one set for him, a figure to which his eyes were again drawn irresistibly and upon which they continued to rest as ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... white with suspense. Her dread of the impending interview was like a physical illness. She sat in a high-backed chair, hands along the arms, head resting back, eyes half-closed, in that perfect stillness of which the animal and the savage are alone entirely capable. There were many gifts that Joan had brought from the seventeen ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... apartments differed much from those generally favoured by young men of rank and fortune. On the one hand, it had none of that affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... My uncle's terror nearly culminated at this point, for he believed it was drawing near him with an evil purpose. But it was not so; for the soldier, over whom twenty years seemed to have passed in his brief transit to the dressing-table and back again, threw himself into a great high-backed arm-chair of stuffed leather at the far side of the fire, and placed his heels on the fender. His feet and legs seemed indistinctly to swell, and swathings showed themselves round them, and they grew into ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... way within, and placed an easy chair for Mr. Gordon under the large hurricane lamp that hung from the low ceiling, and cast its yellow light about the room. The skipper glanced rapidly at the dark, old-fashioned furniture, at the high-backed chairs, cushioned with the skins of seals, the strong teak-wood sideboard, and the heavy round table, upon which stood a quaint Dutch spirit bottle and a couple of horn drinking cups. He looked at the several pictures of ships battling with terrible storms, and at the pensive porcupine ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... of the furniture in 'the White Parlour,' as it is still called, is of historic value and interest. To take but one example. A low, high-backed chair, covered with petit point embroidery, is believed to have been the prie-dieu on which the Princesse de Lamballe knelt during the whole of the night preceding her terrible death. In a document which was sold with the chair in 1830, her ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... main hall branched off on either side the long series of state-rooms, poorly furnished with high-backed chairs and long queer Venice glasses, when first I came to the property; but afterwards rendered so splendid by me, with the gold damasks of Lyons and the magnificent Gobelin tapestries I won from Richelieu at play. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... few minutes Jacob was ushered up by Agatha into Miss Judith Villiers's apartment. The old lady was about fifty years of age, very prim and starched, sitting in a high-backed chair, with her feet upon a stool, and her hands crossed before her, her black mittens reposing upon her ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... filled by colored bird pictures. The Doctor's desk stood in front of one window, heaped with papers and books; down the middle of the room were low book-cases standing back to back, and where these ended, before the hearth, was a high-backed settle, almost as long ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... joined the conclave. His heart and soul were in this new land and her advancement, but his wife demanded his company most of his evenings. She sat in her high-backed chair wrapped in furs listening to his reading aloud or appearing to, though she often drowsed off. But there was another who drank in every word, if she did not quite understand. The wide stone chimney gave out its glowing fire of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... disappeared from the window, and Alfy soon heard sounds, as though the bath were being brought along. It was a somewhat high-backed sitz bath, which had seen some ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes |
