"Oilcloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sudden, from out the spacious halls of which they had caught a glimpse on arriving, brisk steps began to come towards them over the oilcloth—at first as a mere tapping in the distance, then rapidly gaining in weight and decision. Laura's palpitations reached their extreme limit—another second and they might have burst her chest. Cousin Grace ceased to giggle; ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the poor boys still more when he got to the back passage leading to the pantry, where there was no carpet at all, only oilcloth. He pattered along as fast as he could; there was no sound to be heard but the ticking of the clock, and Baby wondered that he had never noticed before what a loud ticking clock it was; it did not come into his head that it was very late for none of the servants ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... shining through the paste; then they wiped it off with a dry cloth. "If this was all rubbed a little every single day," said the aunt, "it would never be such hard work. I should say that this nickel had been just a little bit neglected lately, but see how bright we have made it! Now for the oilcloth on the floor." ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... causes paralysis. Don't sit on rubber or on oilcloth unless covered, and never put rubber next to ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... nodded but made no remark by way of comment. Some time later he sat up at the oilcloth-covered table talking quietly with Frank McLowery. And Brenckenridge saw McLowery scowling. Then he felt reasonably sure who had stolen that blooded animal and who was going to bring it back to Tombstone ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... but he was putting the earnestness and passionate devotion of his whole being into it. His shiny, oilcloth grip, with the roguish tip of a discarded collar just peeping out at the side, was up in the iron wall-pocket of the car. He also had, in the seat with him, a market basket full of misfit lunch and a two-bushel bag containing ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... bland twilight of closed Venetian blinds a handsome fire flared loudly, throwing changing shadows upon the ceiling, and a deep, glowing light upon the red panels of the wardrobe. So the room fixed itself for ever on their minds. They noted the crude colour of the Brussels carpet, and even the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... as usual, alone in the big raftered dining room after the ranch hands had gone, the lame German cook for the camp wagons hobbling in and out with the dishes. Stage had passed long since and the mail lay at her place, where the German had spread a white square above the oilcloth of the long bench table; but letters and papers ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... room was precisely like those Bob remembered from recollections of the river camps of his childhood. There were the same long tables covered with red oilcloth, the same pine benches worn smooth and shiny, the same thick crockery, and the same huge receptacles steaming with hearty—and well-cooked—food. Nowhere does the man who labours with his hands fare better ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... fish, and made a spring for the one Bert had caught. But the fish was wet and slippery, and no sooner had Snoop pounced on it with her claws than the fish slid across the deck of the houseboat. Snoop slid after it, just as she often slid across the kitchen oilcloth, when she sprang for a piece of string that Flossie or Freddie would pull along to make the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... letter from Sylvester M. Schessler, Genoa, Ohio. To keep scionwood I place sticks, such as elder, on a cement floor, lay the scions crosswise on these, cover them with sawdust and throw an oilcloth over this. In May I graft by the slotbark method nailing the scion and tying with string or rubber bands and wax with Acme Grafting Compound put on cold. I cover with a two pound paper sack and later stake up the new growth. I like ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... small cheap lay figure of a horse, of a table and something of grey wax partially covered with a cloth, and of scattered drawings. There was a gas stove in one corner, and some enameled ware that had been used for overnight cooking. The oilcloth on the floor was streaked with a peculiar white dust. Ewart himself was not in the first instance visible, but only a fourfold canvas screen at the end of the room from which shouts proceeded of "Come on!" then his wiry black hair, very much rumpled, and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... bread restaurants. We, at length, turned down a pair of stairs that led to a basement and I found myself in an eating-house somewhat better than those I had seen in passing; but that did not mean much for its excellence. The place was smoky, the tables were covered with oilcloth, the floor with sawdust, and from the kitchen came a rancid odor of fish fried over several times, which almost nauseated me. I asked my companion if this was the place where we were to eat. He informed me that it was the best place in town where a colored ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... gradually settling on the pipes, window ledges, &c., may become very hot, when the slightest friction might cause explosion. It is on this account that this house should be very carefully swept out every day. It is also very desirable that the floor of this house should be covered with oilcloth or linoleum, as being soft, it ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... had recovered from the first shock of horror and disappointment, he set himself to efface the stains with which the statue and the oilcloth were liberally bespattered; he was burning to find out what had happened to make such desperadoes abandon their design at the point ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... came into the yard. He had an oilcloth pack full of tablecloths, napkins, towels, suspenders, lead pencils, laces, overalls, mirrors, combs—a lot of things. And he threw his pack down and opened it up. Grandpa was carryin' slop to the pigs. It was awful hot; you couldn't hardly breathe—except when you got in front of the cellar ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... I felt a little curious to know what was in the big old Gipsy dame's basket, for I had an idea one or two hair-brushes, combs, laces, and other small trifles which lay on the top of a small piece of oilcloth covering the inside of the basket had, by their greasy appearance, done duty for many a long day. I told the old Gipsy dame that I was going home the next day, and should like to take a little thing or two ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... whom they saw climbing over the rocks. He wore his oilcloth blouse and his gay helmet, and soon they could hear his rude voice singing and see the waving of ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... meal times, when Gissing sat at the dinner table surrounded by the three puppies in their high chairs, with a spindrift of milk and prune-juice spattering generously as the youngsters plied their spoons. Fuji had arranged a series of scuppers, made of oilcloth, underneath the chairs; but in spite of this the dining-room rug, after a meal, looked much as the desert place must have after the feeding of the multitude. Fuji, who was pensive, recalled the five loaves and two fishes that produced ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... with pale, desperate eyes. She clapped her hand across her face and then took it away again, and said softly: "What is it, dear?" But he had sunk into a stupor, and had dropped his protruding gaze on the pattern of the oilcloth on the floor, which he was tracing with the toe of his boot. She could get nothing out of him. He obviously did not want her to stay two or three days with him, as she had proposed to do, but, on the other ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... small dining-room opening directly out of the kitchen, where three tiny little children were playing, the youngest, who could not have been more than eighteen months, crawling about on the floor. Upon the ragged oilcloth which covered the table, Zilah noticed two pairs of men's gloves, one gray, the other yellow, and a heap of soiled white cravats. Upon a wooden chair, by the open door of the kitchen, was a tub full of shirts, which the young woman had doubtless been washing ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... attaching to its limpid threads those sharp, brilliant blades of light which justify the proverb "It rains halberds;" the young verdure of the Champs-Elysees, the clumps of dripping, rustling rhododendrons, the carriages drawn up in line on the avenue, the oilcloth capes of the coachmen, all the splendid accoutrements of the horses to which the water and the sunbeams imparted vastly greater richness and effect, and everywhere a gleam of blue, the blue of the sky, smiling in the interval ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... for you and Frank." Lorraine sat down and folded her arms on the oilcloth-covered table. "Dad, ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... two-thirds o' the stock is represented in me an' Mac an' accordin' to your rulin' the majority's got the decidin' vote, we ups an' smothers his offer. Lemme see, now," he continued, and got out a stub of lead pencil with which he commenced figuring on the white oilcloth table cover. "We paid twenty dollars for them two derelicts an' a dollar towage. That's twenty-one dollars, an' a third o' twenty-one is seven, an' seven dollars from twenty-five leaves eighteen dollars comin' to you. Here's your eighteen ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... bunk-house, they saw a long table covered with white oilcloth and a line of bunks built in two tiers against the wall opposite the door. A big stove stood at one end, and there were pegs for saddles, bridles and ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... at the extreme end of the long, oilcloth-covered table, on which a straggling army of salt and pepper shakers, catsup bottles, and divers commercial condiments seemed to pause in a discouraged march. A plague of flies was on everything, and the food was a threat to the hardiest appetite. One man summed up the steak with, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... beyond that a huge, white marble, glass-walled natatorium. The swimming pool is fifty feet by one hundred; on three sides is just a narrow shelf-like walkway, but the fourth is wide and is furnished as a room with lounging chairs upholstered in white oilcloth. Opening out of this are perfectly equipped Turkish and Russian baths in charge of the best ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... crunched under her foot as she drew a chair to the table. On the frayed oilcloth, a supper waited. She attempted the cold beans, thick with grease, but gave them up, and buttered a slice ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... man made up bread in an oilcloth (and every Morgan's man had one soon after they were issued to the Federals); another worked up corn-meal into dough in the scooped-out half of a pumpkin; one baked bread on a flat rock, another on a board, while a third had twisted his dough around his ram-rod; ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... was an oil stove—Jane had sold the old one—a large quantity of canned goods, potatoes and other vegetables, all of which they planned to stow in the front of the houseboat under oilcloth. Here also was stowed a huge sea chest that had belonged to Jane's great-grandfather. It was supposed to be water-tight and in this the Meadow-Brook Girls decided to place all their extra clothing. A rag carpet was found that answered very well to cut up into rugs to lay ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... cities; and I think it is very probable that Mrs. Gam's account of the young Haggartys who carried out the medicine is perfectly correct, for a lad in the 120th made a caricature of Haggarty coming out of a chemist's shop with an oilcloth basket under his arm, which set the worthy surgeon in such a fury that there would have been a duel between him and the ensign, could the fiery doctor have had ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the passage were two doors, one of which was padded and covered with oilcloth. On the other side, the passage was separated from the hall ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... seventy miles wide by three hundred long where you could not find solid camping ground the size of your foot. What did we do? That is where the uses of a really expert guide came in; we moored our canoe among the willows, cut willows enough to keep feet from sinking, spread oilcloth and rugs over this, erected the tents over all, tying the guy ropes to the canoe thwarts and willows, as the ground would not ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... we'd finished our shopping, we met Master Jervie at Sherry's. I suppose you've been in Sherry's? Picture that, then picture the dining-room of the John Grier Home with its oilcloth-covered tables, and white crockery that you CAN'T break, and wooden-handled knives and forks; and fancy the ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... had been covered with something smooth, linoleum or oilcloth, and then thoroughly waxed, for after the play was over, the place was to be cleared ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... displayed none of the signs of easy comfort which had charmed Hyacinth in the Quinns' house. The floor of the square hall was covered with a cheap, well-worn oilcloth. Its walls were damp-stained, and the only furniture consisted of a wooden chair and a somewhat rickety table. In the middle of the wall hung a large olive-green card with silver lettering. 'Christ is the unseen Guest in this house,' ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Connecticut; and at its close he was escorted to his hotel by a procession of the local Republican club, at the head of which marched a few of its members bearing torches and wearing caps and capes of glazed oilcloth, the primary purpose of which was to shield their clothes from the dripping oil of their torches. Both the simplicity and the efficiency of the uniform caught the popular eye, as did also the name, "Wide-Awakes," applied to them by the "Hartford Courant." The example found quick imitation ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... appears in the distance, placarded on the background of sandbags like a new poster. Nothing has changed in Pepin either, whom we can just see taking a stroll—we can tell him behind by his red-and-white squares of an oilcloth draught-board, and in front by his blade-like face and the gleam of a knife in his cold gray look. Nor has Volpatte changed, with his leggings, his shouldered blanket, and his face of a Mongolian tatooed ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside lodging-houses. On a chair—a shiny leather chair, displaying its horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner—stood a black despatch case. This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a bottle of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were dry-goods, groceries, hardware, boots and shoes, window-glass, rope and twine, and even candy of a very poor sort. Hanging from the ceiling of this queer warehouse were sides of smoked meat, strings of onions, oilcloth suits, and other things that were designed for the comfort or convenience of the officers and soldiers, and were not provided by ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... said to have been introduced into England in the 16th century by refugees from France and the Netherlands. It is used chiefly for curtains, linings, &c., and sometimes, in the lighter makes, for clothing. Table baize is a kind of oilcloth used as a cheap and easily-cleaned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... that Mark Trefethen rented from the company and called his home. The room into which Peveril was ushered was scrupulously clean and neat, but seemed to him painfully bare and cheerless. It was lighted by a single, unshaded lamp, that stood in the middle of an oilcloth-covered table laid for supper. Half a dozen cheap wooden chairs and a sewing-machine of inferior grade completed its furnishing. The new-comer had only time for a single glance at these things as he entered the door, before his recent acquaintance of the train, who now seemed almost ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... but all signs failed. After a long time the floor covering of the hall was taken up, and there was the letter, 'safe and sound;' the unfortunate carrier had thrust it under, instead of over, the oilcloth. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... neighbor and a two days' trip to town." She stared straight ahead as though visualizing the picture. "He'll build a log house with a slat bunk in one end and set up a camp-stove with cracked lids in the other. There'll be a home-made table with a red oilcloth table cover and a bench and a home-made rocking chair with a woven bottom of cowhide for me. He'll buy a little bunch of yearlings with his savings and what he can borrow and in the spring I'll herd them off the poison while he breaks ground ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... a March day, at the corner of the Rue du Quatre-Septembre and the Rue Richelieu. I was walking along quickly, with a bundle of papers under my arm, on my way back to the office where I was head clerk. Suddenly a dressmaker's errand-girl set down her great oilcloth-covered box in my way. I nearly went head first over it, and was preparing to walk around it, when the little woman, red with haste and blushes, addressed me. "Excuse me, sir, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... smoke, a violent odour, arose into the sunlight, mingling with the dust which was raised by the continuous tramp of the promenaders. Rows of people, moreover, were waiting at each cantine, so that each time a party rose from table fresh customers took possession of the benches ranged beside the oilcloth-covered planks, which were so narrow that there was scarcely room for two bowls of soup to be placed side by side. And one and all made haste, and devoured with the ravenous hunger born of their fatigue, that insatiable appetite ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... white mosquito netting in his belt, draped it jauntily, and appeared ready to do the "waiting." Walter was frying bacon and eggs on the oil stove. Jack threw dishes at the oilcloth-covered table in imitation of a game of quoits, and he rarely missed the mark. They were about to have breakfast, and in spite of the difficulties encountered in the way of modern improvements omitted in the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... a cramped little room with a breadth or two of worn oilcloth on the floor. Two or three shelves, set across the dingy window, supported a range of glass jars filled with nutmegs and orris-root. On the tilted flagging, outside, the tops of a row of blue gasoline barrels held each a half-pint of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... threatening during the night, suddenly became calm and fine, as if to corroborate the statement of the waiter of the Fortress Hotel in regard to its uncertainty; but knowing men in oilcloth sou'westers and long boots gave it as their opinion that the weather was not to be trusted. Fortunately for the traveller, it remained trustworthy long enough to serve his purpose. The calm permitted his boat to go safely alongside of the ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... insurance agent. "Don't know how it would work. Found my wife nailing oilcloth with it ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from Nan's room with his big basket, and the two boys went down the street carrying the basket between them. As soon as its contents had been arranged as attractively as possible on the clean white marbled oilcloth with which the stand was covered, and the coffee made and ready to serve, Theo handed Jimmy two dollars in dimes, nickels and pennies, to make change, and set off with the box of paste in his pocket, and the roll of rags ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... set a hot glass upside down on the oilcloth table cover, the oilcloth bulges up into it when the hot air and steam shrink and leave a partial vacuum within ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... on until we arrived as close to them as we could go without leaving the trail. We called a halt, turned our mules loose, then spread out the oilcloth that I used to feed the mules on, and scattered a little of the grain we had left on the cloth. The strange mules saw it, and came running to get a feed of grain. We got hold of the ropes that were on the necks of four of the mules and tied ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... passed. Another spring was nearly gone. One Monday morning of that May, the month of new growths and of old growths with new starting-points on them, Ambrose Webb was walking to and fro across the fresh oilcloth in his short hall; the front door and the back door stood wide open, as though to indicate the receptivity of his nature in opposite directions; all the windows were wide open, as though to bring out of doors into his house: he was much more used to the former; during married ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... took in the ugly house-front with its soiled "Kensington" curtains—its door ajar showing worn oilcloth in the hall. ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... Chinaman sprawled while two or four sweating coolies bore him up hill. The chair is rigged between a pair of long bamboo poles and consists of two sticks swung by ropes on which is piled a heap of bedding. Overhead a light bamboo frame supports a piece of yellow oilcloth, which completely shuts in the occupant, except from the front ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... misery, Birotteau fell to examining attentively the broad green lines painted on the oilcloth which, from custom immemorial, Mademoiselle Gamard left on the table at breakfast-time, without regard to the ragged edges or the various scars displayed on its surface. The priests sat opposite to each other in cane-seated arm-chairs on either side of the square table, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... the harbour. In this store, filled up to the ceiling with rope, twine, hemp and tow, he had a small room with a creaking glass door. In this room stood a big, old, dilapidated table, and near it a deep armchair, covered with oilcloth, in which Mayakin sat all day long, sipping tea and always reading the same "Moskovskiya Vedomosty," to which he subscribed, year in and year out, all his life. Among merchants he enjoyed the respect and reputation of a "brainy" man, and he was very fond of boasting of the antiquity ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... also numerous gentlemen of a Comanche-like physiognomy, who wore ordinary dress, but were distinguished by flower wreaths in lieu of hat bands. Here and there Chinese women loafed about, wearing trousers of a kind of black oilcloth, and leading Chinese babies dressed in more colors than Joseph's coat—grass-green, black, azure, and rose. In the background several army wagons were filled with officers in uniform and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... against the mud which oozes from the ground, against the cold, an emanation from the infinite which is all-pervading." The soldiers uncouthly rigged out in skins, rolls of blanket, ... cardigans, and more cardigans, squares of oilcloth, fur caps, ... hoods of tarpaulin, rubber, weatherproof cloth ... look like cave men, gorillas, troglodytes. One of them, while digging, has turned up an axe made by quaternary man, a piece of pointed stone with a bone handle, and he is using it. Others, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... must leave Dauger, but has forbidden even his lieutenant to speak to that prisoner. This was an increase of precaution since 1682. He wishes to take the captive to the Isles, but how? A sedan chair covered over with oilcloth seems best. A litter might break down, litters often did, and some one might ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... temperature of his shop and thus prevent drafts from chilling the dough. This box is just an ordinary cracker box with the lid hinged on it. It is then lined with thick asbestos paper on the inside and then covered with oilcloth on the outside. The bowl with the dough is then placed in the box to retain its temperature and to be free from drafts while it rises. In cold weather this box can be heated by placing a warm iron in it when starting to mix the dough, and then removing ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... The kitchen in reality consisted of a mess-room downstairs with a dormitory overhead; the actual kitchen was in a lean-to behind. When the six men had seated themselves at the long trestle covered with oilcloth, the cook entered with a steaming bowl ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... talking about how near sunset and their bedtime had come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogether spring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allan forgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certain degree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolled up so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseen though it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too, enjoyed having a change from a couch in ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... small shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... everything in vain,—Indian matting was as hot as woolen blankets. At last I laid a piece of oilcloth on my bed, without even as much as a sheet over it, and though I could not sleep, obtained as much relief from the heat as to be able to lie still. It ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... beguiled so much time, that Flint was late to breakfast. His fellow-boarders, a pedler and a fisherman, had gone about their business, and he sat down alone at the oilcloth-covered table, and twirled the pewter caster while he waited for his egg to be boiled. It was one of his beliefs that a merciful Heaven had granted eggs and oranges to earth for the benefit of fastidious travellers who could wreak their appetites ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... there was a dressmaker in the room, with an assistant, and servants brought a number of big bandboxes with lids covered with black oilcloth; and Angela's maid was there, too, and they tried one thing after another on her, ready-made garments for the first hours of mourning. Then they were gone, and she was dressed in black, and the room was filled with the unmistakable odour of black crape, which is not like anything ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... these were in our way. Underneath there was an old boat-cloak, whitened with sea-salt on many a harbour-bar. My mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us, the last things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like papers, and a canvas bag, that gave forth, at a touch, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up to him as simply as a child, and put her hands in his, and as I closed the door Max took her in his arms. The peacock screen fell at my feet, the ivory fan and a hideous little Chinese god rolled noisily on the oilcloth. I smiled as I picked them up. My dear Max and his Lady of Delight were together at last. I felt as though my ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... wriggling his toes on the oilcloth. Mrs. Egg felt entirely comfortable and real. She could hear the cook snoring. Behind her the curtain of the pantry window fluttered. The cool breeze was pleasant on her neck. Adam licked the spoon and said, "Back in a minute, Mamma," as he ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... near them be kept well turfed, it will add very much to their agreeable appearance. The walls should often be cleaned and white-washed, to promote a neat look and pure air. The floor of a kitchen should be painted, or, what is better, covered with an oilcloth. To procure a kitchen oilcloth as cheaply as possible, buy cheap tow cloth, and fit it to the size and shape of the kitchen. Then have it stretched, and nailed to the south side of the barn, and, with a brush, cover it with a coat ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his mother, and facing the wife, who had a small, fretful child in her arms. At Howard's left was the old man, Lewis. The supper was spread upon a gay-colored oilcloth, and consisted of a pan of milk, set in the midst, with bowls at each plate. Beside the pan was a dipper and a large plate of bread, and at one end of the table was ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... oilcloth that covered his wagon, and in a minute any quantity of knives, scissors, little guns, puppets, soldiers of wood and lead, cologne bottles, cakes of soap, pictures, a thousand dazzling things were exposed to the admiring view of all the men, women and children in the town. ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... landlady will say, when she finds how we've invaded her pantry," continued Helena, carefully arranging the coarse stone-china upon the oilcloth covered tables. She had begun very reluctantly but found that the labor was a delightful relief from worry, and, with the good sense she possessed, now went on with it as painstakingly as if she expected a fashionable and critical company. Indeed, ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the shelves were draped in it. Cold struck up through the shining, clammy surface underfoot so that while Sheila's face burned from the heat of ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... weakness. Almost instantly, therefore, that sandwich was but a memory, a fading taste in about twenty beaks and two mouths. But still the window stood open, and the air danced, and the white reflections of the ship-like clouds lay on the oilcloth floor. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... opened the front door the tepid smell that gushed out to greet him was the smell of a cheap boarding house too, if you know what I mean—a spilt-kerosene, boiled-cabbage, dust-in-the-corners smell. Once upon a time the oilcloth upon the floor of the entry way had exhibited a vivid and violent pattern of green octagons upon a red and yellow background, but that had been in some far distant day of its youth and freshness. Now ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... helmets, if you may call them so, on their heads. At his side each wore a kind of leather case attached to a wide bronze belt. In these cases they carried something like a revolver, and each had, besides, a little book with black oilcloth covers. ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... child taken her hand from the cold metal, when the shadow of a man crossed the drawing-room window, and his measured step sounded along the oilcloth in the hall. The door was unfastened, and the Mayor himself stood in the opening. The child lifted her eyes, and saw standing before, or rather above her, a tall man with light hair turning grey, and a cast of features remarkable only ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... was not much gayer. The front hall, with its steep, narrow stairway, and floor-covering of highly ornate landscape oilcloth, was in a perpetual twilight. An occasional glint from white woodwork, or the gold molding of a picture, strove in vain to dispel the gloom. The parlor, at the right of the hall, was sepulchral with its window cracks stuffed with paper, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... Gables in the evening and found Marilla and Anne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The floor oilcloth must be spread at the side of the bed which is made up for the confinement, and should extend slightly under ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... diamond pattern in its doors, and taken therefrom a soup-plate and cup and saucer. Paying no attention to his mother's reference to a delayed meal, he ladled out of the big saucepan, with a cracked cup, a plate of the steaming soup, and carried it carefully to an oilcloth-covered table, on which was a lamp and glass pitcher, some unwashed dishes left from the last meal, a broken doll, and a child's shoe. Putting down the plate of soup, he came back to the stove and poured out a ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... that it will be 6 in. longer than the distance across the window, then cut a groove in it to insert the rib. Sew the pieces of oilcloth so that they will just fit over the ends of the roller. When this is done lay the curtain across the groove, then press the rib and curtain into the groove and push the oilcloth bands over ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Kitchell showed him his bunk with its "donkey's breakfast" and single ill-smelling blanket. It was located under the companionway that led down into the cabin. Kitchell bunked on one side, Charlie on the other. A hacked deal table, covered with oilcloth and ironed to the floor, a swinging-lamp, two chairs, a rack of books, a chest or two, and a flaring picture cut from the advertisement of a ballet, was the room's inventory in the matter of furniture ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... reversed; the bar-room became the annex. The hotel grew as Kitty's power developed. Good food temptingly served brought many to the house who had no interest in the annex. Her pies made the table famous and were among the many things that rendered it easy to displace the brown marbled oilcloth with white linen, and the one roller towel for all, with individual ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sabres bright and glistening and dangling at their sides, came at a canter, all seeming anxious to get over and meet the death and desolation awaiting them. Long trains of ordnance wagons, with their black oilcloth covering, the supply trains and quartermaster departments all following in the wake of their division or corps headquarters, escorts, and trains. All spread out over the hills and in the gorges lay men by the thousands, awaiting their turn to move. Not a shot nor shell to mar or disturb ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... all, these accounts of the Schmitt household had seemed like a tale from the Arabian Nights. Once his father had sent him there to get fifty cents from thrifty and industrious Bill, and Tom remembered the shiny oilcloth on the kitchen floor, the snowy white fluted paper on the shelves, the stiff, spotless apron on the buxom form of Mrs. Schmitt, whom Mr. Schmitt had ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... opened the door of Sarah's bedroom. Sarah was unquestionably very ill. Sarah had been quite right in telegraphing so peremptorily to Hilda; and if she had not so telegraphed she would have been quite wrong. On the previous day she had been sitting on the cold new oilcloth of the topmost stairs, minutely instructing a maid in the craft of polishing banisters. And the next morning an attack of acute sciatica had supervened. For a trifling indiscretion Sarah was thus condemned to extreme physical torture. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... ordered that the stranger be shown in at once. A tall man, wrapped in a long coat of yellow oilcloth, dripping rain, was brought into the room. He held a faded blue cap in his hand, and the general noticed that the hand was sinewy and powerful. The front of the coat was open a little at the top, disclosing ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes. He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilcloth like goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach, awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along the shore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... quite wet, Christopher; be sure to put on your hat and fasten the oilcloth over your shoulders when you go back to the barn. You are so reckless that you make me uneasy. Why, the rain has soaked entirely through ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the canvas, which forms the basis of oilcloth, has been covered with paint of one uniform tint, the remainder of the processes which it passes through, are a series of copyings by surface printing, from patterns formed upon wooden blocks very similar to those employed ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... cane or canvas deck-chairs, and others of the Windsor pattern common to the barrack-room. Arms and accoutrements are in rude racks against the corrugated-iron-panelled walls; a trestle-table covered with oilcloth runs down the middle. It is lighted by a couple of acetylene lamps hanging by their chains from iron bars that cross the trench above, and there is another lamp, green-shaded, upon a bare deal table that stands, strewn with papers, against the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... well quit, for once, of restoration. No one cares for this sculpture; and if Florence would only thus put all her old sculpture and painting under her feet, and simply use them for gravestones and oilcloth, she would be more merciful to them than she is now. Here, at least, what ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... door, and Douglas Stone walked down the narrow passage, glancing about him in some surprise as he did so. There was no oilcloth, no mat, no hat-rack. Deep grey dust and heavy festoons of cobwebs met his eyes everywhere. Following the old woman up the winding stair, his firm footfall echoed harshly through the silent house. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when she was plum happy. Then she went on to tell as she washed the dishes and Nancy and Rosie dried them and Lizbeth packed them off to the cupboard, about the strange man. 'He laid powerful admiration on our little girls.' Levicy was wipin' off the oilcloth on the table with her soapy dish rag. 'He had them line up in a row to see which was tallest, whilst I set him a snack. "Shut your eyes," sez he, "and open your mouth." They did, and bless you, Captain Anderson, what did he do but put a sil'er dollar ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... ship. Immediately all hands were astir on board and they used the small line to haul in the heavier hawser with the basket. Before long the basket returned and one of the sailors, a very handsome, slender man, with an oilcloth hood, was safe on land. He was plied with questions by the inquisitive spectators, while the basket made another trip to fetch the second man, then the third, and so on. All were rescued, and as Effi walked home with her husband ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... father and mother, long gone over "to the majority," and the exquisite old ivory beauty of a beautiful grandmother—such ghosts rose and faced the woman as she stepped into the room where they had moved in life, the room with its loveliness marred by two long tables covered with green oilcloth, by four rows of cheap chairs, by rows and rows of boxes on shelves where soft and bright and dark colors of books had glowed. She felt often that she should explain matters to the room, should tell the walls which had sheltered peace and hospitality that she had consecrated them to yet higher service. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... times most of the flies were on the ceilings. The restaurant Gray entered was about what he had expected; along one side ran a quick-order counter at which were seated several customers; across from it was an oilcloth-covered table, perfectly bare except for a revolving centerpiece—one of those silver-plated whirligigs fitted with a glass salt-and-pepper shaker, a toothpick holder, an unpleasant oil bottle, and a cruet intended for vinegar, but now filled with some mysterious embalming fluid acting as a preservative ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... more of King till supper was called. At Pochette's you sit down to a long table covered with dark-red mottled oilcloth and sprinkled with things to eat, and watch that your elbow doesn't cause your nearest neighbor to do the sword-swallowing act involuntarily and disastrously with his knife, or—you don't eat. Frosty ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... into some grudging semblance of welcoming a visitor. The more cultured ladies of Melbury Park in discussing it had called it "artistic, but slightly bizarre," a phrase which was intended to combine a guarded appreciation of novelty with a more solid preference for sanitary wallpaper, figured oilcloth and paint of what they called ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... side door, dumped out the treasure-box, ran into the house, and quickly returned with a hammer and some tacks, then fell swiftly to ripping the oilcloth that covered the box which stood against the wall to serve as a handy wash-stand for use by dusty travellers before dining. The two boxes were of the same size and shape, and she draped the treasure chest with the cloth, tacked it in ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... wounded severely at Gaines's Mill. Bellot had a big quart cup in which we boiled soup, and coffee when we had any, or burnt-bread for coffee when the real stuff was lacking. Flour and bacon were issued to the men. We kneaded dough on an oilcloth, or gum-blanket as the Yankee prisoners called it, and baked the dough by spreading it on barrel-heads and propping them before the fire. When these boards were not to be had, we made the dough into long slender rolls, which, we ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... and she commenced a detailed and careful search. The kodak told no tales, nor the snowshoes. The fishing-rod was only explanatory to the extent of being too light and small for a man, and the basket's only contents were two pieces of oilcloth, apparently designed to keep wet plants from ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... like I wasn't worth taking no notice of. But it kind o' soaked in, too. She and the perfessor must of talked it over. Fur the next day I seen her spreading a oilcloth on the hall floor. And then James comes a buttling in with a lot of sand what the perfessor has baked and made all scientific down in his labertory. James, he pours all that nice, clean dirt onto the oilcloth and then Miss Estelle sends fur ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... for the manufacture of all sorts of things. If you were to see the acts passed by the legislatures of the states between 1808 and 1812, you would find that very many of them were charters for iron works, paper mills, thread works, factories for making cotton and woolen cloth, oilcloth, boots, shoes, rope. ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... weak to leave his bed, the cold sponge may be given on a large rubber sheet or oilcloth covered with an old blanket, which should be placed on the bed before the pack is applied. After removing the pack, put a blanket over the patient to prevent chilling and wash quickly but thoroughly first the limbs, then chest and stomach, then the back, drying ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... had his room assigned to him, he at once began a minute examination of it. He found a window looking on the small courtyard, two doors, a bed, a chest, two chairs, a jar, a broom and duster; further, a shelf in the corner covered with oilcloth, on which stood a glass, a tin basin, a clothesbrush and a New Testament. He felt the stout bedclothes, tried the brush on his hat, held up glass and basin critically to the light, sat down experimentally on both the chairs, and decided that all was satisfactory ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the centre of the floor and looked about her. There was a square of oilcloth in front of each article of furniture and a drawn-in rug beside the single four poster, which was covered with a fringed ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a jigger or mizzen; but, notwithstanding, she looked well at a distance, and though incapable of progressing very fast through the water, she could stand a pretty heavy sea. We were badly off, how ever, with regard to camp gear, having neither tent nor oilcloth to protect us should it rain—indeed, all we had to guard us from the inclemency of the weather at night was one blanket each man; but as the weather had been fine and settled for some time back, we hoped to ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... there was only one lamp, and that was swung over the table, looking in all its smoky smelliness as if it had hung there for ages without a scrubbing. The table was covered with dirty dishes scattered upon an oilcloth spread. The room smelled of fish, tobacco, and coal-oil, and we were obliged to go to the door now and then for fresh air. There was no fire, nor heat, neither was there a place for any. Rows of berths in two tiers lined each side ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... a fair assortment of cooking utensils. Of these some belonged to the bothy, while others were the private property of the tenants. A tin "pan" and "pitcher" of water stood near the door, and the table in the middle of the room was covered with oilcloth. ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... stood the ancient town house, with arches where the country folk came at the spring and autumn hiring fairs. Dickson rang the antiquated bell, and was presently admitted to a dark hall floored with oilcloth, where a single gas-jet showed that on one side was the business office and on the other the living-rooms. Mr. Loudon was at supper, he was told, and he sent in his card. Almost at once the door at the end on the left side was flung open and a large ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... reading, and by skipping many a paragraph which was pure description, the oilcloth table was a lonely island inhabited by no human being, the morris chair was the good ship stranded, with all on board lost except Crusoe and Johnnie, who, while the seas dashed over them, roaring, breathlessly salvaged for their future use (Johnnie's ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... man's face peering round the oilcloth hood of the cart was darkened by a sudden cloud as he caught the words. His stern lips closed. He muttered something inaudible to Mrs. Thornburgh and whipped up his horse again. The cart started off, and Mrs. Thornburgh was left staring into the receding eyes of 'Jim the Noodle,' who, from his seat ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... oilcloth on her kitchen to save the floor, and oilcloth mats to save the oilcloth; yet Jerry's boots had to be taken off in the shed, and he was required to walk through in his stocking feet. She blackened her stove three times a day, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... take my breakfast now, if you please," he said as he sat down at one end of the long, oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Hicks brought him his coffee and cakes, and then stood, with her hands upon a chair back, and watched him with a frank delight in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... his staring out of the window, past the lady's profile, might have offended her. So, with a cough which was meant to serve as an apology for the unintentional rudeness, he turned his face away, and continued his gloomy revery among the odd patterns of the oilcloth on the floor ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... tin basin, and above it hung a long narrow mirror. On the back of the door was a towel-rack. The floor was made of white pine and was spotlessly clean. In the center of the room stood the table, with a cover of red oilcloth. Some chairs were placed about the table, but our host quickly hauled them out for us. He opened his storeroom and told us to "dish in dirty-face," and help ourselves to anything we wanted, because we were to be his "somebody come" ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... painter gave her a brush and sufficient wood-stain to freshen up all the woodwork of the store. Miss 'Rill came and helped her clean the place and kalsomine the walls and ceiling. A storekeeper gave her enough enameled oilcloth to cover neatly the long table. Hopewell Drugg furnished bracket lamps, and gave her the benefit of the wholesale discount on a hanging lamp and reflector ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... both of the Mills boys vaguely if they ever had owned such a piece of property, but they had not, and when old Cove told him that he had not either, he had contented himself and carried it about with him somewhat elaborately wrapped up and tied in an old piece of oilcloth and in his inside jacket pocket for safety, with a vague feeling that some day he might find the owner or return it. He was never on specially good terms with the Millses. Indeed, there was always a trace of coolness between them and him. He could not give it to ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and colourless lips Mrs. Tucker, with the help of her maids, cut away the oilcloth that bound the pack together, and disclosed the face of a short sturdy man, it was the face of the late coachman, Timothy Smith! With one voice they cried aloud as they ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... of boots for Paul, A school-cape for Marie, Handkerchiefs for Fritz with his name embroidered on them in red cotton, Stockings for Emma, A warm hood for Gretchen, An oilcloth pinafore for Karlchen, who had a special talent for getting dirty, And lastly ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... and looked at her until the food was all on the table. He was breathing unnaturally, and his jaws were set hard together. When she pushed a box up to the table and sat down upon it, and rested her elbows on the oilcloth and looked straight at him with her chin nested in her two palms, he drew a long breath, hunched his shoulders with some ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... and hunched with a younger Kantor over an oilcloth-covered table, hunched himself still deeper in a barter for a large crystal marble with a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... with the shoemaker, aunt Milly went, in the afternoon, to visit a sister of hers who lived several miles out in the country. During her absence, which lasted until nightfall, uncle Wellington went uptown and purchased a cheap oilcloth valise from a shrewd son of Israel, who had penetrated to this locality with a stock of notions and cheap clothing. Uncle Wellington had his purchase done up in brown paper, and took the parcel under his arm. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... came a ring at the bell, and I let in a man with a slouch hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of his coat turned up. He was soaking wet, the water oozing from his shoes and slopping the oilcloth in the hall where he stood. I ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... larger crowd could be accommodated, but the long autumn shadows warned them that twilight was approaching long before they started it, so consequently they had to go back without seeing that task accomplished. The curtains had been put on the windows, white oilcloth had been tacked on the board tables, and a mirror, if you please, was hung over the tin wash basin just inside the door. Hooks made of crooked branches were fastened upon the logs on which to hang coats and haversacks. The place had really undergone ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... Renaissance period, a table and chairs which dated from the reign of Louis XIII, an enormous bedstead, style Louis XIV, and a very handsome wardrobe, Louis XV. In the middle of these venerable old things a white porcelain stove, and the little toilet-table, covered with a pretty oilcloth, seemed out of place and to mar the dull harmony. Curtained with an old-fashioned rose-coloured chintz, on which were bouquets of heather, so faded that the colour had become a scarcely perceptible pink, the enormous bedstead preserved ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... railing. Then followed four or five cars looking very much like stage-coaches, each having three compartments, with doors on each side. The last car was a high, open-railed van, in which the baggage of the whole train was heaped up and covered with oilcloth. How strange a train of this sort would look beside one of our modern express-trains, with its huge engine, and its sleeping, dining, and ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... a passing glance at her household arrangements, I saw through the open door of an apartment back of the dining-room a light shower of plaster fall to the ground, marking the oilcloth that covered the floor, and for one instant sending out into the hall a puff of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... think it is a moose. I am not at all sure, although I have been told more than once. Over another door is a large clock, such a one as one finds in a broker's office with us. The floor is covered with what is called oilcloth—I wonder why: it certainly is not the least like cloth—very new and excessively shiny. It has a conventional pattern in black and white, and when the sun shines on it, it quite dazzles ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... a cold winter night, and the snow and sleet beat against the windows. He looked about the ugly room: at the washstand with its square of oilcloth in front and its detestable bowl and pitcher; at the rigors of his white iron bedstead, with the valley in the middle of the lumpy mattress and the darns in the rumpled pillowcases; at the dull photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on the ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... or two. She then got the provisions out of the sleighs, and before the three men returned from looking after the horses she had laid out a meal on the well-kept deal table, which she had Covered with an oilcloth. The tea had been made by this time, and the four steaming pannikins filled with the dark, amber-hued nectar looked truly tempting. The rude benches were drawn close to the table, and the room assumed anything ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... into a little low, dark room that smelled of all the pies ever baked and several dishes besides. There were several oilcloth-topped tables scattered about, and one or two patrons were eating. As Bob and Betty entered a great gust of laughter came from a corner table where a group of men ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... the Julesburg Short line, and told the hotel clerk that he had just returned from Europe, and was on his way across the continent with the intention of publishing a book of international information. He handed an oilcloth grip across the counter, registered in a bold, bad way and with a flourish that scattered the ink all over ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... orders to make use of the straw that had been spread thickly upon the floor at one end. He and his assistants had thus far been able to attend to all the cases with reasonable promptness; he had requested Mme. Delaherche to furnish him with another table, with mattress and oilcloth cover, for the shed where he had established his operating room. The assistant would thrust a napkin saturated with chloroform to the patient's nostrils, the keen knife flashed in the air, there was the faint rasping of the saw, barely audible, the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... we had left the car. The place seemed uninhabited with all the blinds closed. But through one uncovered window I saw a room full of chatting soldiers. We went to pay our respects to the colonel in command, and found him and his staff around a table covered with oilcloth in the main living-room of a villager's house. He spoke of his men, of their loyalty and cheerfulness, as the other commanders had, as if this were his only boast. These French officers have little "side"; none of that toe-the-mark, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and took her place at the table with its white oilcloth cover, and a snowy napkin neatly smoothed under the ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... portraits might be ostentatiously displayed. As to pianos, there never was but one in the house; and a billiard-table would have been considered as the last refuge of human depravity. In sitting-rooms and bedrooms and passages there was a great deficiency of carpets and of oilcloth. But furniture was furniture then, and could stand a good deal of wear and tear; while as to the spare bed in the best room, with its enormous four posts and its gigantic funereal canopy and its heavy curtains, through which no ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the road were the lines of the Seventieth Indiana, their colors, furled in oilcloth, lying horizontally across the forks of two stacks of rifles. Under them lay the color guard; the scabbarded swords of the colonel and his staff were stuck upright in the ground, and the blanket-swathed figures of the officers in poncho and havelock ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, a number of pendent shades which jump and rattle whenever the waiter scurries across the shabby oilcloth with a trayful of glasses (the glasses looking like a flock of birds roosting by the seashore), and a selection of oil paintings. In short, there are certain objects which one sees in every inn. In the present case the only outstanding feature of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in a row on the oilcloth-covered table and stood over them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the blade got fairly into them, they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound. He gave us knives, but no plates, and the top of the table was soon swimming ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... the living room in order to reach his door. I would invariably cling to the newel post while I contemplated the perils of the situation, complicated by the fact that the literal first step meant putting my bare foot upon a piece of oilcloth in front of the door, only a few inches wide, but lying straight in my path. I would finally reach my father's bedside perfectly breathless and having panted out the history of my sin, invariable received the same assurance that if ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams |
