"Parlour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the guidance of their conduct. Now what we are at present in search of, is an exercise applicable to reading, as well as to observation;—to the school, as well as to the play ground or the parlour;—and to knowledge whose use may not be required at the instant, as well as that to which ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... and died early.... Mr. Brooke has acted wisely in allowing Mr. Robertson to speak so fully for himself, and in blending his letters with his narrative, and arranging them in chronological order. These letters are in themselves a mine of intellectual wealth. They contain little of table-talk or parlour gossip: but they abound with many of his best and most ripened thoughts on multitudes of subjects, political, literary, and scientific, as well as theological. We wish we could present our readers with extracts from them; but even if we had space, it ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Edward Franklin the tawdry hotel parlour on the morning after the ball at Ellisville was no mere four-square habitation, but a chamber of the stars. The dingy chairs and sofas were to him articles of joy and beauty. The curtains at the windows, cracked and seamed, made to him but a map ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... quiet assurance of success in his profession was scoffed at with incredulity not altogether unpardonable. In the encounter that Felix had the misfortune to witness, since it took place in his own office-parlour, he could not help thinking that Edgar, with his perfect temper, unfailing courtesy, calm self-respect, and steady sense of honour towards the young lady, showed himself the true gentleman in contrast with the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she was refused admission on account of her tender years. But she had resolved to go, and go she would; she laid siege to the schoolmistress, to the vicar, who told me how day after day she would come to the door of the vicarage, and the parlour-maid would come rushing into his study to announce, "Miss Mab to speak to you Sir," and how he would talk seriously to her, and then tell her to run home to her mother and be a good child. But it was all in vain, and in the end, because of her importunity ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... that many people in England are not daunted but depressed by the military successes of the enemy. Our soldiers in the field are not depressed. But we who are kept at home suffer from the miasma of the back-parlour. We read the headlines of newspapers—a form of literature that is exciting enough, but does not merit the praise given to Sophocles, who saw life steadily and saw it whole. We keep our ears to the telephone, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... was drawing to a close. The little shops were putting up their shutters; lights were beginning to twinkle in parlour windows; a solemn hymn arose in the old Moravian chapel, and its echoes stole out through the dark entry that opens into the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Cynthia's manner which Lila did not appear to share. The girl, dressed daintily in a faded muslin, with an organdy kerchief crossed over her swelling bosom, flashed upon Carraway's delighted vision like one of the maidens hanging, gilt-framed, in the old lady's parlour. That she was the particular pride of the family—the one luxury they allowed themselves besides their costly mother—the lawyer realised upon the instant. Her small white hands were unsoiled by any work, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... your feelings, Mrs Burton"; and Miss Anna Maria, who was fond of laughing, said something which made her laugh, and then she laughed herself, so that with between crying and laughing we all entered the cottage and were conducted into the parlour, on one side of which sat old Mrs Schank in a high-back chair, and in a very high cap, and looking very tall and thin and solemn, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... is," replied Mildred; "but it does not signify now. Look how the water is pouring out of the parlour-window. The meal and grain must have been wet through long ago. Is not that a pretty waterfall? A waterfall from our parlour-window, down upon the tulip-bed! ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... of which this text speaks. And God knows, and we each for ourselves know, how much and how sore our need is of such a union. 'One thing have I desired, that will I seek after; that I, in my study; I, in my shop; I, in my parlour, kitchen, or nursery; I, in my studio; I, in my lecture-hall—'may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.' In our 'Father's house are many mansions.' The room that we spend most of our lives in, each of us, at our tasks or our work-tables may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to dissipate his wages. "Guess I'll have to paint this town red," was his hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little parlour behind Black Tom's public-house, with a select corps of old particular acquaintances, all from the South Seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Katharine!" and she entered, saying meekly to Petruchio, "What is your will, sir, that you send for me?"—"Where is your sister and Hortensio's wife?" said he. Katharine replied, "They sit conferring by the parlour fire."—"Go, fetch them hither!" said Petruchio. Away went Katharine without reply to perform her husband's command. "Here is a wonder," said Lucentio, "if you talk of a wonder."—"And so it is," said Hortensio; "I marvel what it bodes."—"Marry, peace it bodes," said Petruchio, "and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... a happy diversion was made by the lemon-crested cockatoo, who, by reason of his highly respectable deportment and polished manners, had been made free of our parlour, and could hop in and out from the shop when the mood seized him, through a small trapdoor or porthole, originally constructed for a window, and which served 'Ally Sloper' as a means of intercommunication between ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure, there may be days when the diarist will be quite delighted with a hideous picture, because it affords some chronological clue, or new point of comparison. "This dates such ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... this however I cannot speak of my own knowledge, having been almost constantly from home, arranging my private affairs. I have understood that many persons have called under the above circumstances, and have written notes in the parlour, and others have waited there, in expectation of seeing me, and then gone away; but I most positively swear that I never saw any person at my house resembling the description and in the dress stated in the printed advertisement ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... in conformity with our appointment, we were introduced into the breakfast parlour by Mr. Wardrope, one of the acting partners, to his lady and sister, who received us with engaging ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... medical pupils for procuring subjects, associations of country gentlemen for keeping fox-hounds, book societies, benefit societies, clubs of all ranks, from those which have lined Pall-Mall and St. James's Street with their palaces, down to the Free-and-easy which meets in the shabby parlour of a village inn. Is there a single one of these combinations to which Mr. Gladstone's argument will not apply as well as to the State? In all these combinations, in the Bank of England, for example, or in the Athenaeum club, the will and agency of the society are one, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the fine house you'll live in. Think on the grand parlour that you'll sit in all the day with a servant to wait on you and naught but Sunday ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... made, I daily carried on my business; eighteen days I allowed for enlarging my cave, that it might serve me, not only for a warehouse, but kitchen, parlour, and cellar. I commonly lay in the tent, unless the weather was rainy that I could not lie dry. So wet would it be at certain seasons, that I was obliged to cover all within the pale with long poles, in the form of rafters, leaning against ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... contributed classic literature to our book-shelves. He worked hard—wrote thirty-five books. There is genius in hard work alone. I have often thought that women pursue more of it than men. They work night and day, year in and year out, from kitchen to parlour, from ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... said the spider to the fly. "That is not quite original," the latter made reply. "If that's the way you plagiarize, your fame will be a fib— But I'll walk into your parlour, while I pitch into your crib. But before I cross your threshold, sir, if I may make so free, Pray let me introduce to you my friend, 'the wicked flea.'" "How do you?" says the spider, as his welcome he extends; ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... penetrate so far that we can bait our horses at a little inn which reminds me of the inns near our country home. I see the same sanded parlour, decorated with the same old sporting prints, furnished with the same battered, deep-coloured mahogany table, and polished elm tree chairs, that I remember in our own village inn. Clara, also, finds bits of common, out of doors, that look like our common; and trees that might have been transplanted ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the ordeal, but in the end I persuaded her to accompany me to the cedar parlour, where the Lady ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... who was engaged in hanging out the weekly washing in the small garden, was all sympathy at the sight of the young lady's wounded wrist, and invited them into the parlour and provided the basin of water and other accessories for which Anstice asked with a cheerful bustle which took no account of ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to our work on board—days when we rowed the big boat through the Narrows to Port Stanley and idled about the 'town,' while the Old Man and Mr. Fordyce were transacting business (under good conditions) in the bar-parlour of the Stanley Arms. We made many friends on these excursions. The Falklanders have warm hearts, and down there the Doric is the famous passport. We were welcome everywhere, though Munro and I had to do most ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... a tiny and spotless parlour, with woolwork footstools, where after a moment or so they were joined by Miss Redstone, the little old lady whom Janet had seen at the window, but whose face ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved, as none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice than a singing-bird. Thus he would play outside a house, wherein he espied a sideboard of plate, and at last, bidding his playmate flutter through an open window into the parlour, he would follow upon the excuse of recovery, and, once admitted, would carry off as much silver as he could conceal. None other ever attempted so graceful an artifice, and yet Audrey's journey to Tyburn is even more memorable than the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... in mourning who received him in the front parlour was, alas! but the sorry shadow of Avice the Second. How could he have fancied otherwise after twenty years? Yet he had been led to fancy otherwise, almost without knowing it, by feeling himself unaltered. Indeed, curiously ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... to the left, once to the right, walked along two sides of a square, in the middle of which groups of tame-looking trees stood in respectable captivity behind iron railings, and rang at his door. A parlour-maid opened. A fad of his wife's, this, to have only women servants. That girl, while she took his hat and overcoat, said something which made him look at his watch. It was five o'clock, and his wife not at home. There was nothing unusual in that. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... another invitation." She looked disappointed, and a little inclined to pout, but she waved her hand as she ran down the steps and joined the group of lace and flowers now fluttering down the side-walk towards the ice cream parlour. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... drawing-room of this tempting white house sat Mrs Grey and her eldest daughter, one spring evening. It was rather an unusual thing for them to be in the drawing-room. Sophia read history and practised her music every morning in the little blue parlour which looked towards the road; and her mother sat in the dining-room, which had the same aspect. The advantage of these rooms was, that they commanded the house of Mr Rowland, Mr Grey's partner in the corn, coal, and timber business, and also the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... him. Now the long-desired moment of escape was at hand, no one thought of repose. The little vessel in which he intended sailing lay dry upon the shore, the tide being at low water. The king and his friends, the merchant, the captain, and the landlord, sat in the well-lighted cosy parlour of the seaport inn, smoking, playing cards, telling stories ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the need which developed it has disappeared. The houses are persistent in type and nearly always of wood. The principle doorway opens into the living room, usually of a good size. It is kitchen, diningroom, parlour, often even workshop. In this chamber cooking, sewing, repairing of tools, all the varied family activities, take place. One large guest chamber or two small bedrooms open off it. In the corner there is a rude staircase ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... vigour. He spits at home and abroad, by night and by day, awake and asleep, in company and in solitude, for his own amusement and the edification of a spitting community; on the freshly-painted or scoured floor, on the clean deck of a ship or steam-boat, on parlour floors—covered whether with ingrained Brussels, Wilton, or Turkey—even there he voids his rheum; upon the unabsorbent canvas, so that one may see, where numbers congregate, the railway cars to run in more ways than one; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom," continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Look quick, girls!' cried Lavinia, as a carriage stopped at the door, and a rushing sound, as of many agitated skirts, was heard in the hall. Three heads peeped from the window of the blue parlour, and three pairs of curious eyes were rewarded by a sight of the ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... indifference and the self-absorption of his father, Virginia had never discovered. For years she fought against admitting the discord between them. Then, at last, on the occasion of a quarrel, when it was no longer possible to dissemble, she followed Oliver into his study, which had once been the "back parlour," and pleaded with him to show a little patience, a little sympathy with his son. "He's a boy any father would be proud of——" ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... strange medley of sketches, paintings, fans, embroideries, and porcelain was hung, nailed, pinned, or stuck against the wall; finally the domestic altarpiece, the mystical Corot landscape, was hoisted to its place over the parlour fire, and then all was over. The setting sun streamed softly in at the windows, and peace reigned in that redeemed house and in the heart of ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Malkiel the Second, "since Jellybrand's has betrayed me Jellybrand's must abide the consequences. Show this gentleman and me to the parlour." ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... procured him to be admitted a King's scholar in Westminster school[1]; his early inclination to poetry was occasioned by reading accidentally Spencer's Fairy Queen, which, as he himself gives an account, 'used to lye in his mother's parlour, he knew not by what accident, for she read no books but those of devotion; the knights, giants, and monsters filled his imagination; he read the whole over before he was 12 years old, and was made a poet, as immediately as a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... provided they can be sure of safety, is being carried on keenly, and at present it is doubtful which side will have a majority. I do not, however, believe that the majority of any Council returned will consent to accept Lord Kimberley's proposal as it stands; to walk into a parlour in which the spider is so very obvious, and to deliberately undertake the guardianship of all the Imperial interests in South-Eastern Africa. If they do, they will, in my opinion, deserve ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... with chapels and lodgings within the same; the workhouse, with another house adjoining to the same; the convent kitchen; the library; the old hostery; the chamberer's lodgings; the new hall; the old parlour adjoining to the Abbot's lodging; the cellarer's lodging; the poulter house: the gardner; the almary, and all other houses and lodgings not otherwise reserved," were "deemed to be superfluous" and were committed to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... of nasturtiums over to Troop's eighteen-hundred-dollar, white house, with a retired dory full in the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea plunder. There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved. Cheyne addressed himself to her, and ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... weather, in autumn chiefly, do I see those spiders shooting out their webs and mounting aloft: they will go off from your finger if you will take them into your hand. Last summer one alighted on my book as I was reading in the parlour; and, running to the top of the page, and shooting out a web, took its departure from thence. But what I most wondered at, was that it went off with considerable velocity in a place where no air was stirring; and I am sure that I did not ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... willing, and in a few minutes we were seated in the snug cottage parlour with the window open, and the scent of the roses brought in by the breeze off ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... he knew that the driver, who gave his name as Taylor, would be more likely to talk freely in an office where he could not be overheard than he would do on the cab-rank with his fellow-drivers crowding him, or in an hotel parlour where ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... old 'umbug?" asked Mrs. Postwhistle, who was partial to the air, leading the way into the parlour. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... father and mother; these two are John's. His sitting-room is the best in the house. The place is altogether too big for comfort. Our little parlour at Winchester was twice as snug ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have been intended to him, and that, perhaps, in what had been said of his father's debts and distress, there might be more truth than he was aware of. Prudently, therefore, controlling his feelings, and commanding himself, he suffered Mr. Mordicai to show him into a parlour to settle his friend's business. In a few minutes the account was reduced to a reasonable form, and, in consideration of the partner's having made the bargain, by which Mr. Mordicai felt himself influenced in honour, though not bound in law, he undertook to have the curricle made better ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... a beautiful griskin broiled to perfection, and water boiling on the hot turf fire in a saucepan. The teapot having taken to leaking, as Biddy said, she had made the tea in the potheen jug. I was just about to follow my uncle's example, when there came a rap at the outside door of the paved parlour ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Hamilton, instantly penetrating at once the truth, that either the report had reached Lady Helen, or she had received the intelligence direct from her daughter; and anxious to escape the curious eyes of the domestics, who were in the hall, she hastily yet kindly drew the weeping Lilla to the nearest parlour, and, closing the door, succeeded in hearing all she desired. Lilla said, her mother, only an hour before, had received a letter from Annie, briefly announcing her marriage, and informing her they intended very shortly to embark ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... colour best suits the roots; put water enough in to cover the bulb one-third of the way up, less rather than more; let the water be soft, change it once a week, and put in a pinch of salt every time you change it. Keep the glasses in a place moderately warm, and near to the light. A parlour window is a very common place for them, but is often too warm, and brings on the plants too early, and causes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... right-hand side of the hall he ushered Claude into the parlour, which he had turned into a study. The dining-room and kitchen were on the left. Upstairs, his mother, who was now altogether bedridden, occupied the larger room, while he and his wife contented themselves ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... value of such things, than to the interest with which I myself regarded them. But the conversation turning on my family, who were old proprietors in the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, gradually excited some interest in my mind and when I retired to my solitary parlour, the first thing I did was to look for a pedigree or sort of history of the family or House of Croftangry, once of that Ilk, latterly of Glentanner. The discoveries which I made shall ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Nether Stowey is a very modest inn, the entrance paved with flag-stones, the only public room a low-ceiled parlour; but its merits are far beyond its pretensions. We lunched there most comfortably on roast duck and green peas, cherry tart and cheese, and then set out to explore the village, which is closely built along the roads whose junction is marked by ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... called a successful young man. He was not either wild or remarkably stupid, as the world goes; his mother knew him to be a dear domestic fellow, who would play the flute or dominos for weeks of evenings in her back-parlour. He had taken one prize at college and sundry at school; had the reputation of being almost a beau, and, at least in Westbourne society, half a wit; and was a tall, fair-faced, lathy young man, dressing well, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it is to have worth. This is the strong point, for our critic, of Browning's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... time their brother Branwell was either at Bradford or at Haworth, dreaming of greatness, and drinking at the "Black Bull". The "Black Bull" stands disastrously near to the Parsonage, at the corner of the churchyard, with its parlour windows looking on the graves. Branwell was the life and soul of every party of commercial travellers that gathered there. Conviviality took strange forms at Haworth. It had a Masonic Lodge of the Three Graces, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... contrived to live? and whether The fourteen Murphys all pigged together? The wages per week of the Weavers and Skinners, And what they boiled for their Sunday dinners? What plates the Bugsbys had on the shelf, Crockery, china, wooden, or delf? And if the parlour of Mrs. O'Grady Had a wicked French print, or Death and the Lady? Did Snip and his wife continue to jangle? Had Mrs. Wilkinson sold her mangle? What liquor was drunk by Jones and Brown? And the weekly score they ran up at the Crown? If the cobbler could ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... George wrapped in his plaid beside the brier bush whose roses were no whiter than his cheeks, Kirsty was already installed as comforter in the parlour, and her drone ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... winter came, all these pleasant walks were over. The poor birdie began to droop; it was impossible to keep him warm, though he often crept under the parlour fender, to get as close to the fire as possible; and in spite of all that loving care could do, before the end of the year his bright little life had been lived, and all his clever tricks, and airy flights and loving ways ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... among the Cliff House pupils, the motherless daughter of a clergyman-friend of Miss Frederick's, had for some time taken notice of Marcella, and at length won her by nothing else, in the first instance, than a remarkable gift for story-telling. She was a parlour-boarder, had a room to herself, and a fire in it when the weather was cold. She was not held strictly to lesson hours; many delicacies in the way of food were provided for her, and Miss Frederick watched over her with a quite maternal solicitude. When winter came she developed a troublesome cough, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with suits belonging to the Pilot, they were shown into the parlour, where they sat with their host upon oak chairs round a battered, polished table, with no cloth ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... funeral being the Sabbath, nothing that touched on business was referred to. On the following morning, however, "the friends" assembled early in the parlour, and an excuse for being a little pressing was made, on the ground that so many present had so far to go. The deacon had probably made a remove much more distant than ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... even on the floor. An officer in buff and blue came out of the room, glanced keenly at us, made a slight though courteous inclination, but instead of coming forward to greet us turned into another room on the right, which was a parlour. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... except the incompetence of the architect who had made one house out of three; it was just an empty, unemployable room. The building had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where, behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window and a door that led directly by two steps into the street. A strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard. Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it was reserved for the passage of the dead—a grim arrangement, which, strange to say, finds no place in any one of the sisters' stories. We enter the house, and the door on the right leads into Mr. Bronte's study, always called the parlour; that on the left into the dining-room, where the children spent a great portion of their lives. From childhood to womanhood, indeed, the three girls regularly breakfasted with their father in his study. In the dining-room—a square and simple room of a kind common enough in ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... fancy for parlours with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... school at dinner-time on the day following, Dick found Frank Hardy sitting in the parlour holding his mother's hand. Mrs. Hardy and Harry were also there, and a few people were loitering about the front, having called to congratulate Frank Hardy on his release; for Frank had been given a free pardon in the Queen's name for the crimes it was ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... so fortunate, and a new one was erected, thus described in 1708: "a noble structure built with fine bricks and richly furnished, the hall with right wainscot, and the great parlour with odoriferous cedar." It has been much altered, a new front being added in 1791, and redecorated a hundred years later. The company can boast of many noble and distinguished members, amongst whom we find Edward III. and his Queen, the Black Prince, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... what's the waking to be? Is it the madhouse or the ground? She spoke of the madhouse, and who'll deny, with reason? There was air for a man in the heights and no parlour plants. I walked forty miles to Cardiff Fair and didn't dance like this. Take bread when you've no meat, and, by thunder, I'll fill ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... 15, at two in the morning, a party of masked moonlighters visited the cottage of Mrs. Breens, of Raheenish, and having fired two shots through the parlour window, shattering the woodwork by way of letting the widow know they were there, fired a third through her bed-room window to expedite the lady's movements. Almost paralysed with fear, she parleyed with the besieging force, which, by ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... air of comfort than Owen expected to find. In the oak panelled parlour into which Mr Fluke led him a cheerful fire burned brightly, although the spring was well advanced, while a white cloth was spread ready ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... and presenting himself before the palace of Eglon in the attitude of a prophet, announced that he had a secret errand to the king, who thereupon commanded silence, and ordered his servants to leave him with the divine messenger in his summer parlour. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was, one evening, sitting at the window of the parlour of the new mill-house, she saw a dark-bearded soldier-like man looking up at the house, as if surprised at its appearance. The stranger passed through the wicket; Mary could sit quiet no longer. She rose and opened the front door: "James, James, is ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... was sitting alone in the parlour, and suddenly there rushed upon his shattered mind a feeling akin to the restlessness which so often, in his younger years, had driven him out among the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... bitter hate of one who had read society novels, and yearned for Grosvenor Square and butlers and a general atmosphere of soft cushions and pink-shaded lights and maids to do one's hair. She hated the cheap furniture of the little parlour, the penetrating contralto of the cook singing hymns in the kitchen, and the ubiquitousness of her small brother. He was only ten, and small for his age, yet he appeared to have the power of being in ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... of brick, stuccoed without, and with sash-windows, so as to have a light agreeable appearance. The plan of their internal construction is much the same in the whole. On one side of a narrow passage into which you enter from the street, you have a parlour, and a little farther on, a large long room, lighted from an inner court, as is mentioned in the text. The rooms in general are badly furnished, and are floored with dark-red stones. The upper rooms are laid out like the under ones; Few of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... answerable; but this much I know, that the feast was actually prepared, though, instead of being devoured by American officers, it went to satisfy the less delicate appetites of a party of English soldiers. When the detachment sent out to destroy Mr. Maddison's house, entered his dining parlour, they found a dinner-table spread, and covers laid for forty guests. Several kinds of wine in handsome cut-glass decanters were cooling on the sideboard; plate-holders stood by the fire-place, filled with dishes and plates; ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... tightly-braced Captain Cluffe of the same corps, and little dark, hard-faced, and solemn Mr. Nutter, of the Mills, Lord Castlemallard's agents, came in, and half a dozen more, chiefly members of the club, which met by night in the front parlour on the left, opposite the bar, where they entertained themselves with agreeable conversation, cards, backgammon, draughts, and an occasional song by Dr. Toole, who was a florid tenor, and used to give them, 'While gentlefolks strut in silver and satins,' or 'A maiden of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... boys: how they had entered Dame Bakewell's smallest of retail shops, and purchased tea, sugar, candles, and comfits of every description, till the shop was clear of customers: how they had then hurried her into her little back-parlour, where Richard had torn open his shirt and revealed the coils of rope, and Ripton displayed the point of a file from a serpentine recess in his jacket: how they had then told the astonished woman that the rope she saw and the file she saw were instruments for the liberation of her son; that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had been pronounced by the chaplain the lady withdrew to her parlour, the two boys, each with an obeisance and request for permission, departed for an hour's recreation, and Dr. Woodford intimated that he wished for some conversation with his host ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interview with the Rajah of Mysore, who insisted on showing me all his wardrobe, and his picture gallery. He has six or seven coloured English prints, not much inferior to those which I have seen in the sanded parlour of a country inn; "Going to Cover," "The Death of the Fox," and so forth. But the bijou of his gallery, of which he is as vain as the Grand Duke can be of the Venus, or Lord Carlisle of the Three Maries, is a head of the Duke of Wellington, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... household, and winnows his corn in the night, lest, as the chaff thrown upon the water showed plenty in Egypt, so his carried by the wind should proclaim his abundance. No painting pleases him so well as Pharaoh's dream of the seven lean kine that ate up the fat ones, that he has in his parlour, which he will describe to you like a motion, and his comment ends with a smothered prayer for a like scarcity. He cannot away with tobacco, for he is persuaded (and not much amiss), that 'tis a sparer of bread-corn, which he could find in his heart to transport ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of his father's debts and distress, there might be more truth than he was aware of. Prudently, therefore, controlling his feelings, and commanding himself, he suffered Mr. Mordicai to show him into a parlour, to SETTLE his friend's business. In a few minutes the account was reduced to a reasonable form, and, in consideration of the partner's having made the bargain, by which Mr. Mordicai felt himself ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... is well enough pleased with them at this moment. But alas! we feel that ere the sun sets they will have incurred his wrath. Presently Lady Noble will have finished her genial inspection, and have sailed back, under convoy of the mother and the grown-up daughter, to the parlour, there to partake of that special dish of tea which is even now being brewed for her. When the children are left alone, their pent excitement will overflow and wash them into disgrace. Belike, they will quarrel ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... sent with a note to the Abbey House. She rang the bell but no one came, for Mr. Knight was out walking with his pupils and Mrs. Parsons and the parlour-maid were elsewhere. Tired of waiting, she wandered round the grey old building in the hope of finding someone to whom she could deliver the letter, and came to the refectory which had a separate entrance. The door was open and she peeped in. At first, after the brilliant sunlight without, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... driver with whom I had the debate already recorded, but it had been impossible to obtain a room for me anywhere. Mr. Valkenburgh's own house was crammed to the roof with closely laid strata of guests, from the American reporter under the roof to the cavalry officer in the front parlour. There was nothing for it but to be bedded out—a severe infliction in some parts of Ireland. The polite hotel-keeper finally bethought him that in the house of a widow, who had only four officers of Hussars staying with her, a stray ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... past her, and looking first into the parlour and then into the kitchen. 'Is she upstairs, ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... moment the parlour-maid appeared in the door that opened from the garden: Paraday lived at no great cost, and the frisk of petticoats, with a timorous "Sherry, sir?" was about his modest mahogany. He allowed half his income to his wife, from ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... Shakespeare and Byron among the poets, Bulwer, Dickens, and James among the novelists, appear pretty regularly,—the poets being enriched with notes and illustrations. Other writers and miscellaneous novels find republication in the 'Parlour Library of Fiction,' with so rigid an application of economy that for two shillings we may purchase a guinea and a half's worth of the most popular romances at the original price of publication. Besides the works ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... pitch outside the 'Aymarket Theatre. You don't often see four such beauties together, and all with as much as they could carry, save only Chris, who is too leary a cove to drink when there's somethin' goin' forward. For my part, I showed 'em into the parlour, not 'cos they was worthy of it, but 'cos I knew right well they would start bashin' some of my customers, and maybe get my license into trouble if I left 'em in the bar. I served 'em with drink, and stayed with 'em just to see that they didn't lay their 'ands on the stuffed parroquet ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of these false explanations of the nature of my future service, we were rung for down again, and I was reintroduced into the same parlour, where there was a table laid with three covers; and my mistress had now got with her one of her favourite girls, a notable manager of her house, and whose business it was to prepare and break such young fillies as I was to the mounting block; and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... medium of one's love of the ludicrous as through that of one's interest in the romance of adventure. Those who are acquainted with Egypt will see in him one of the types of naif, delightful children of the Nile, whose decorous introduction into the parlour of the nations of to-day is ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... and we lost no time in hastening to the house where out countryman had resided. We were kindly received by an old man, who conducted us over the mansion. It consisted of four apartments on the ground-floor—an entrance hall, a drawing-room, a sitting parlour, and a bed-room, with a spacious closet annexed. They were all simply decorated: plain green-stained walls, marble tables on either side, a large myrtle in the centre, and a small fountain beneath, which could ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... feel that there had always been Conneely's Hotel in Killesky. If the old people remembered Julia Dowd's little public-house with its thatched roof, the low ceiling and the fire of turf to which you could draw a chair while you had your drink, the little parlour beyond which was reserved for customers of a superior station, they did not talk ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... before we could see our surgeons at the Convent. The nuns took us into a little parlour and left ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... a horse and hang it behind the house door was considered to bring good luck to the household, and protection from witchcraft or evil eye. I have seen this charm in large beer shops in London, and I was present in the parlour of one of these beer shops when an animated discussion arose as to whether it was most effective to have the shoe nailed behind the door, or upon the first step of the door. Each position had its advocates, and instances ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... at Westminster, and was slowly returning to my 'parlour near the sky,' in Plowden Buildings, in no very enviable frame of mind. Another added to the long catalogue of unemployed days and sleepless nights. It was now four years since my call to the bar, and notwithstanding a constant attendance in the courts, I had hitherto failed in gaining ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... in the drowsy parlour, the humming afternoon coming in at the door, 'the blue fly' singing on the hot pane, dreaming all kinds of gauzy-winged dreams, while my body absorbed ham sandwiches and some excellent ale. Of course I did not leave ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Ladies are going to make their Visits, their pretty Favourites are too apt to follow them from the Parlour to the Street Door; and if their Guardians and Trustees are not sufficiently upon the watch, a Person under pretence of wanting Alms, shall not only mump Money, but carry off their Ward ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... ill-built house, near one of the town gates—a lonely and deserted situation, as the gate led to no highway. When we went into the parlour I was astonished to see the double grating with bars so thick and close together that the hand of a girl of ten could scarce have got through. The grating was so close that it was extremely difficult to make out the features of the persons standing on the inner side, especially as this was only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Hence the enormous growth of the Kodak school of romance—the snap-shots at everyday realism with a hand camera. We know how it is done. A woman of forty, stout, plain, and dull, sits in an ordinary parlour at a tea-table, near an angular girl with a bad squint. "Some tea?" said Mary, touching the pot. "I don't mind," replied Jane in a careless tone; "I am rather tired and it is a dull day." "It is," said Mary, as her ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the window of the Wrackgarths' parlour was that colossal statue of Commerce which rears itself aloft at the point where Oodge Lane is intersected by Blackstead Street. Commerce, executed in glossy Doultonware by some sculptor or sculptors unknown, stands pointing her thumb over her shoulder towards the chimneys of far Hanbridge. When ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... in their search for motives. The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell over me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streets east and west in solitary leisurely walks without chart and compass. Till I began to write that novel I had written nothing but letters, and not very many of these. I never made a note of a fact, of an impression, or of an anecdote in my ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... hill, where the dead Trappists are laid to rest, shows visitors round the little chapel, and may talk with them freely so long as they remain in the cemetery. The monk in charge of the distillery also receives visitors and converses with them. So does the monk in charge of the parlour at the great door of the monastery. He sells the souvenirs of the Trappists, photographs of the church and buildings, statues of saints, bottles of perfumes made by the monks. He takes the orders for the wines made at ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... news of a decade came to Eden Valley. The Haunted House—we did not need to be told—was Marnhoul, a big, gaunt mansion, long deserted, sunk in woods, yet near enough to the Cairn Edward road to be visible in stray round towers and rows of chimneys, long unblacked by fire of kitchen or parlour. It had a great forest behind it, on the verges of which a camp of woodcutters and a rude saw-mill had long been established, eating deeper and deeper in, without, however, seeming to make any more difference than a solitary mouse ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... particulars were given of the peculiar way in which correspondents addressed their envelopes to the Post Office, Bristol. Since that publication was issued, other peculiar instances have occurred. The following are cases of the kind, viz.:—The Head Postmaster (Master's Parlour). The Honourable The Postmaster. Postmaster Number 58 (in answer to query on Form "Postmasters No. 58"). Master, ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... his eyesight began to fail him, he employed boy-readers, one of whom read him the whole of the Tichborne trial. One summer night in 1889 I sat and smoked with this boy, a pleasant young man, in the bar-parlour of the Bull Hotel. He told me how Mr FitzGerald always gave him plenty of plum-cake, and how they used to play piquet together. Only sometimes a tame mouse would come out and sit on the table, and then not a card must be dropped. A pretty picture! In the bar-parlour sat ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... breakfast, I was told off to act as an office orderly to Captain Davies, the Inspector of Ordnance, an all-day job, but otherwise with possibilities in it, I judged. Found the office, swept it out, and dusted and tidied things. Parlour-maid's work is nearly new to me (I have only cleaned windows before, in barracks at St. John's Wood), and I found myself trying to remember what I used to see Mary doing in the flat. I fancy my predecessor must have been ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... no sooner informed he was there, than he came into the parlour with a countenance, which had in it all the marks of good humour and satisfaction; Horatio, said he, after having made him seat himself, I doubt not but you think me your enemy, after the treatment ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... to have science, or physiology, or anything up-to-date here," said Cicely, as, in company with the rest of the third form, she took possession of the panelled parlour that was to ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... tempting and antagonistic, attractive and repellant. But after one look had been exchanged between her and Van Shaw she changed her position on the cot so that she was partly hidden from him by a lamp which stood on one corner of the little parlour ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... of beauty was certainly remarkable—given, it must be confessed, to a certain amount of fluctuation—and she danced divinely, which gift must not be counted as a parlour-trick; she was slow in her movements and quiet in her manner until she talked of horses or anybody she loved; then her great eyes would flash and her laugh ring out, also she would gesticulate as her mother ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... Mary was struggling, her head held down, she couldn't help thinking, "So that's the way he does it," and felt, I think, as feels the fly who has walked into the parlour. The next moment she heard a sharp voice, "Here—stop that!" and running ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... who had been so recently translated from the kitchen to the parlour, pricked up her ears at this, not doubting that the letter would contain something very grand and wonderful, and exclaimed, "Gude safe's, let's hear't—I'm unco fond to ken about London, and the king and the queen; but I believe they are ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... to go ashore every night to foregather in some hotel's parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque Cicero, lying on the other side of the Circular Quay. Late at night I would hear from afar their stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument. The mate of the Cicero was seeing ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... here the frame for Wolsey, and to-morrow morning Kirgate will place him in it; and then I shall begin pulling the little parlour to pieces, that it may be hung anew to receive him. I have also obeyed Miss Agnes, though with regret; for, on trying it, I found her Arcadia(703) would fit the place of the picture she condemns, which shall therefore ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Humour, who, despising the Name of an Author, never printed his Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass. He had a very good Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined ... which did not receive some Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to make ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... to show her real temper. She could not bear the pretty little girl, because her sweet obliging manners made those of her own daughters appear a thousand times the more odious and disagreeable. She therefore ordered her to live in the kitchen; and, if ever she brought any thing into the parlour, always scolded her till she was out of sight. She made her work with the servants in washing the dishes, and rubbing the tables and chairs; it was her place to clean madam's chamber, and that of the misses ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... face, topped by a white cap, came into view through the narrow slit in the curtained glass half of the door, and swam towards them in the interior gloom after the manner of the head of a materialized ghost in a spirit medium's parlour. The door opened, and the apparition appeared in the flesh, looking at them with stony eyes. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... that everybody in the neighbourhood has been backing Pudding down to their last spoon. That looks as if word had been passed round that it was going to win." The racing man passes out and looks in at the "Pink Elephant" to see if his friend is there. He is seated at a little table in an upstairs parlour with four others, all drinking whisky and exchanging tips. They belong to the most credulous race of men alive. They are all believers in what is called information, and information is simply the betting man's name for gossip. The friend is speaking in a low ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... angels' ears. Public affairs, except as they touch upon me, and so turn into private, I cannot whip up my mind to feel any interest in, I grieve, indeed, that War and Nature and Mr. Pitt, that hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should have conspired to call up three necessaries, simple commoners as our fathers knew them, into the upper house of luxuries,—bread and beer and coals, Manning. But as to France and Frenchmen, and the Abbe Sieyes and his constitutions, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... small boy. Let thus much suffice for the physiology of our subject. We proceed to record its history, as it may be read by any one of the inhabitants who chooses to spend the waking hours of a single day in perusing it from his parlour window. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... I pieced together of the village ghost as the little inn-keeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in the parlour of the inn. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... RITCHIE stands with his dashed Memyrandum. A look In his heye seems to tell me that he too enjoys bringing BUMBLE to book, As the Times—I'm serprised at that paper!—most pleasantly puts it to-day. My friend BONES the Butcher too! Moses! wot would my old parlour-chum say If he saw me a nailing a Notice—but no, that's too horrid a dream. I must be a 'aving a Nightmare, and things cannot be wot they seem. I could do with mere Laws—bye or hother-wise—Hacts, jest like Honours, is easy, But this Memyrandum of RITCHIE's queers BUMBLE, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various |
