"Wainscot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blue-bottle chances, in his bouncing random flight, to get entangled in the glutinous meshes, he shakes and roars, and blusters so loudly, until he breaks away, that the spider affrighted, invariably takes advantage of his long legs to scamper off to his sanctum in the cracked wainscot—like some imbecile watchman, who fearing to encounter a tall inebriated bruiser, sneaks away with admirable discretion to the security of his snug box, praying the drunkard may speedily reel ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... being ended, an air of calm composure reigned around my "Father's Fireside." He seated himself in his arm-chair, while my mother busied herself in preparing tea, and each little one took his appointed place around the oval wainscot table. The turf fire burned cheerily on the hearth. The tea-kettle gave out its hissing sounds, indicative of comfort; and the solitary candle diffused light on the fair young faces which brightened ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... as the footsteps died away; he listened, but again the stillness was profound. He felt his way to the secret door; the wainscot screen stood ajar. It was plain that some one had come to the Rat's-Hole only to discover that the key of the outside door was missing. Constans realized that he, too, had missed something—his chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... proportions are disposed can hardly be appreciated by the eye. The width of the nave from shaft to opposite shaft is 32 feet 8 inches: of the aisles, from the shaft to the wall, 16 feet 2 inches, or allowing 2 inches for the thickness of the modern wainscot, 16 feet 4 inches, half the breadth of the nave exactly. The intervals between the shafts are exactly one fourth of the width of the nave, or 8 feet 2 inches, and the distance between the great piers which form the pseudo-transept ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... his genealogy, which, emblazoned with many an emblematic mark of honour and heroic achievement, hung upon the well-varnished wainscot of his hall. The nearest descendants of Sir Hildebrand Waverley, failing those of his eldest son Wilfred, of whom Sir Everard and his brother were the only representatives, were, as this honoured register informed him ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... indeed, which we might, if we had room, speak of at large, and divert you too with the Relation, such as my Lady Hatt's Devil in Essex, who upon laying a Joiner's Mallet in the Window of a certain Chamber, would come very orderly and knock with it all Night upon the Window, or against the Wainscot, and disturb the Neighbourhood, and then go away in the Morning, as well satisfied as may be; whereas if the Mallet was not left, he would think himself affronted, and be as unsufferable and terrifying as possible, breaking the Windows, splitting the Wainscot, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... dreamy house, The door upon the hinges creaked, The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... days the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining-room were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or chimney piece was of marble. A slab of common freestone, and fire-irons which had cost from three to four shillings, were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best apartments were ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... secret matters which they had no intention of imparting to her. A woman has a faculty about such things which corresponds to scent in the terrier; the little mystery is there—the small rodent lurks behind the wainscot; she is consumed with a desire to get at it—to worry its life out; and if it refuse to leave its hiding-place she cannot rest and be satisfied. It was her nature; and though she asked no questions, knowing that her husband was not to be caught in that way, he did not fail ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... had spoken, he fell back from the position he occupied in the centre of the room, to one of its sides, where, leaning his body against the wainscot, he stood a silent observer ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sounds were beginning; but though we generally yielded to him we COULD not give our attention to anything but these. There was first a low moan. 'No great harm in that,' said Griff; 'it comes through that crack in the wainscot where there is a sham window. Some putty will put a ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are mistaken—'twas but the wind in the old wainscot. (Aside.) He is quite capable of destroying that innocent child; but, old and attached servant as he is, there are liberties I still know how to forbid. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... Cowper's sofa, while the virtuoso threw himself carelessly into Rabelais's easychair. Casting my eyes upon the opposite wall, I was surprised to perceive the shadow of a man flickering unsteadily across the wainscot, and looking as if it were stirred by some breath of air that found its way through the door or windows. No substantial figure was visible from which this shadow might be thrown; nor, had there been such, was there any sunshine that would have ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... drowned the Cats, and poisoned the Rats. The latter have revenged 'emselves by dying behind the Wainscot, which makes the lower Part of the House soe unbearable, 'speciallie to Father, that we are impatient to be off. Mother, intending to turn Chalfont into a besieged Garrison, is laying in Stock of Sope, Candles, Cheese, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... occupied, filled with ghastly fears and fancies. He did not dare to put out the light, and yet its faint glimmer only made the darkness more horrible. He did not dare to look behind him, though he knew that there was nothing there. He trembled at the scratching sound in the wainscot, though he knew that it was only mice. A sudden light on the window, and a distant chorus, did not make his heart beat less wildly from being nothing more alarming than two or three noisy students going home with torches. Then his ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... bade me sit on the floor and draw my boots. I did it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... having my servants here allowed me, to read nightly an hour to me after supper, it fortuned that Fulcis, my then servant, reading in the Christian Resolution, in the treatise of Proof that there is a God, &c., there was upon a wainscot table at that instant three loud knocks {513} (as if it had been with an iron hammer) given; to the great amazing of me and my two servants, Fulcis ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... for the things this very night when he drops in. Hark! ain't that a sort of rumbling in the wall? I hope there ain't any oven next door; if so, I shall be scorched out. Here I am, just like a rat in the wainscot. I wish there was a low window to look out of. I wonder what Doctor Franklin is doing now, and Paul Jones? Hark! there's a bird singing in the leaves. Bell ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... confidential, and hitched it away again, as not being able to make up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the day he cruised completely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than once went ashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... passengers aboard that must not be forgotten—the rats! I used to have a horror of rats, but here I soon became used to them. The first night I slept on board I smelt something very disgusting as I got into my bunk; and at last I discovered that it arose from a dead rat in the wainscot of the ship. My nose being somewhat fastidious as yet, I moved to the other side of the cabin. But four kegs of strong-smelling butter sent me quickly out of that. I then tried a bunk next to the German Jews, but I found proximity to them was the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... curiously at the secret cupboard. After a few moments she bent over, lifted and replaced the panelling and passed her slim hand over the wainscot, thoughtfully. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... odd capability of running round a room on the edge of the wainscot, a strange power of holding by the foot: an art which, in lower life, might have been serviceable to him in the showing it. And Anthony, likewise, amongst better and more brilliant qualifications, had the reputation ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... most old houses, began to echo and answer in my ears a medley of infinite small stirrings and whisperings. Now out of the distance an old timber would relax its fibers, or a scurry die away behind the perishing wainscot. But amid and behind such sounds as these I seemed to begin to be conscious, as it were, of the lightest of footfalls, sounds as faint as the vanishing remembrance of voices in a dream. Seaton was all in obscurity except his face; out of that his ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... item is one of the most interesting. It ought to be read in conjunction with an earlier item in the same will, in which special directions are left to the executors not to pull down or to deface any manner of wainscot or glass in or about the house of Slyfield. For the end of the Slyfield family as a power in Surrey came with bitter suddenness. Henry, the Sheriff's eldest son, succeeded his father in 1590, and died in 1598. He was succeeded by his son Edmond, who had been left one ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... respective rooms. I thought, I must acknowledge, that they went to bed rather too early at my friend's. I had no wish to sleep; I therefore examined my room, which was charming. It was completely hung with an old figured tapestry framed in gray wainscot. The bed, draped in dimity curtains, was turned down and exhaled that odor of freshly washed linen which invites one to stretch one's self in it. On the table, a little gem dating from the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, were ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... austere man will be wondred at. How will those solemn looks appear to me; and that severe face, that speaks chains and shackles? Now I take him in the nick, e're I have done with him, he had better have stood between two panes of Wainscot, and made his recantation in the Market, than hear me ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was suggested by the Undine of De La Motte Fouque. In his next novel, The Fortunes of Nigel, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch—not one bounce on the drum of Tedworth—not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch in the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightly from his imagination. Apparitions—such as the Bodach Glas who warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in Waverley, or the wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on the battlefield in The ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... breastwork, rampart, battlement, bulwark, parapet, fortification. Associated Words: mural, murage dado, buttress, coping, intramural, wainscot, alcove, niche, abutment, pointing, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... spite of his courage, that something strange was about to take place. At last he thought that the best thing to do was, first of all to light up the family room; and then to find some place in which to hide himself. As soon as he had lighted all the candles, he moved two planks out of the wainscot at the end of the room, and creeping into the space between it and the wall, restored the planks to their places, so that he could see plainly into the room and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... she was pretty, and sleek, and all that; And she purred in the softest tone, He wished to make her his own. This man by prayers, by tears, By sorcery and charms, Changed pussy to a woman fair, And took her in his arms. But in the wainscot soon a rat Made itself manifest, And very soon the pussy cat, Could still no longer rest. Her foolish husband who believed That nothing had of cat remained, And as his wife had her received— Was, now, I warrant, somewhat pained. Next time the vermin came, Pussy was surer of her game— For having ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... were soon brought forward in support of this accusation. In the Tuileries, behind a panel in the wainscot, there was a hole wrought in the wall, and closed by an iron door. This secret closet was pointed out by the minister, Roland, and there were discovered proofs of all the conspiracies and intrigues of the court against the revolution; projects with the popular leaders to strengthen the constitutional ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... Endymion, 'how I wished something would happen—anything to stir us out of this statuesque, sleeping-beauty state of being. I verily believe the spiders are all asleep in the ivy, and the mice behind the wainscot, and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William. Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their sabres and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries were made which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the old mansion of one Roman Catholic family was discovered a commission signed by James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was strictly searched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his servants that no arms ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fine old iron trellis-work on the outside of the windows gave a wonderfully mediaeval look to the apartment. There was, moreover, a magnificent bay window, which formed a little room of itself, besides a second room much less, which, with carved wood wainscot and ceiling, could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... hiding-place, reached by lifting a sheet of lead on the roof. A tattling young woman told the story upon oath, describing a staircase that descended to a little room with a fireplace, a bed, and a few chairs, with a door in the wainscot that opened to a place full of arms. Unfortunately, both history and tradition are silent concerning any shelter offered by Worksop Manor to ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... confidant of the little events of his life, for his seat was close to her counter. He played dominoes, the only game he was capable of understanding. When his partners did not happen to be present, he usually went to sleep with his back against the wainscot, holding a newspaper in his hand, the wooden file resting on the marble of his table. He was interested in the buildings going up in Paris, and spent his Sundays in walking about to examine them. He was often heard to say, "I saw the Louvre emerge from its rubbish; ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... carle led him into the house; and if it were goodly without, within it was better. For there was a fair chamber panelled with wainscot well carven, and a cupboard of no sorry vessels of silver and latten: the chairs and stools as fair as might be; no king's might be better: the windows were glazed, and there were flowers and knots and posies in ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... said the Cobbler, 'Some bones, my pretty Sue; I'm tired of my lonesome with heels and soles, Springsides and uppers too; A mouse in the wainscot is nibbling; A wind in the keyhole drones; And a sheet webbed over my candle, Susie, —- Grill ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch. One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short, purple hand, in which he brandished a long ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and liv'd in it, till his Labour got him a more fashionable Mansion. He afterwards became a noted Man, in his Country, for Wealth and Conduct. One of these sorts bears a white Tulip; the other a party-colour'd, mottled one. The Wood makes very pretty Wainscot, Shingles for Houses, and Planks for several Uses. It is reckon'd very lasting; especially, under Ground, for Mill-Work. The Buds, made into an Ointment, cure Scalds, Inflammations, and Burns. I saw several Bushels thereon. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... of words about nothing at all, ... this—but I am like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the mouse in the wainscot. Be as forbearing as you can—and believe how profoundly it touches me that you should care to come here at all, much more, so often! and try to understand that if I did not write as you half asked, it was just because I failed at the moment to get up ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... by the logs in my chamber, Deserted, decrepit - Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot Of friends I ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... here Jane, the housemaid, shone pre-eminent. She would sit there and discourse by the hour of lonely and deserted houses, long silent galleries, down which misty shapes had been seen to glide in the pallid moonlight, gaunt and ruinous chambers, the wainscot of which rattled, and the tattered tapestry of which swayed and rustled mysteriously; gloomy passages through which unearthly sighs were audibly wafted; dismal cellars, with never-opened doors, from whose profoundest recesses came at dead of night the muffled sound ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... it; but when they entered, she knew it as one from the hall into a passage, which, with what it led to, being gone, the inner had become an outer door. A quantity of sand was heaped up in the hall, and the wainscot was wet and swelled and bulging. They went into the dining-room. It was a miserable sight—the very picture of the soul of a drunkard. The thick carpet was sodden—spongy like a bed of moss after heavy rains; the leather chairs looked diseased; ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... at Strawberry Hill are two wainscot chests or boxes, the larger marked with an A, the lesser with a B:- I desire, that as soon as I am dead, my executor and executrix will cord up strongly, and sell the larger box, marked A, and deliver it to the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour, to be kept by him ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... had nothing to apprehend from a chance of my escaping from a castle, which was vigilantly guarded, and the nearest terrace of which rose over a perpendicular rock; he shewed me also,' continued Du Pont, 'a door concealed in the cedar wainscot of the apartment where I was confined, which he instructed me how to open; and which, leading into a passage, formed within the thickness of the wall, that extended far along the castle, finally opened in an obscure corner of the eastern rampart. I have ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... it away again, as not being able to make up his mind how to begin. In the course of the day he cruised completely around the parlor in that frail bark, and more than once went ashore against the wainscot, or the closet door, in a very ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... were coming in pursuit of me, and I was obliged to retire through yards and gardens to a house more remote, where I remained until 4 o'clock, by which time one of the best finished houses in the Province had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings, and splitting the doors to pieces, they beat down the partition walls; and although that alone cost them near two hours, they cut down the cupola or lanthorn, and they began to take the slate and ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in talk with his Emily; she before him; he standing in an easy genteel attitude, leaning against the wainscot, listening, smiling, to her prattle, with looks of indulgent love, as a father might do to a child he was fond of; while she looked back every now and then towards me, so proud, poor dear! of being ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... only used with reference to the top of a room—the ceiling. It is an old English word, and means overlaid or lined with wood, wainscot, or plank, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was not likely to alarm anybody with the noise she made. After a great many little faint raps, which, if anybody heard them, might easily have been mistaken for the attacks of some rat's teeth upon the wainscot, Ellen grew weary of her fruitless toil of standing on tiptoe, and resolved, though doubtfully, to go round the house and see if there was any other way of getting in. Turning the far corner, she saw ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... being supported by square, fluted columns. In this smaller hall a simple, though only a molded cornice in harmony with that of the main hall suffices. Unlike the plain dado of the main hall, however, elaborated only by a molded surbase and skirting, a handsome paneled wainscot runs around the staircase hall and up the stairs. The spacing and workmanship displayed in this heavily beveled and molded paneling could hardly be better. At the foot of the flight, on the landing and at the head of the stairs, the ramped surbase with its dark wood cap, corresponding to the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... cups, occasional laughter, and other noises. I dreamed, I know not what absurdities; suddenly a solemn swelling chorus of countless voices gently interrupted my slumbers—the room was filled with light, and the sun on high was beginning to begild an irregular parallelogram in the wainscot, when I started up, and hastily drew on some clothes. Going out to the makaa, I perceived yesterday's assembly of merry-making peasants quadrupled in number, and all dressed in their holiday costume, thickset on their knees down the avenue to the church, and following a noble old hymn, I sprang ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again Dapples the apples ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom door—all stand revealed more clearly ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... toll-house with my fiddle. The clouds were scudding across the sky; time was passing—and I could not get away. Ah, but my heart was sore; I did not know what to do. And if the leaves rustled outside, or a rat gnawed behind the wainscot, I fancied I saw the old woman gliding in by a secret door and creeping softly through the room, with that long ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... this last particular, I learned by the sequel of the story, when the spark, proud of his acquisition, came to me, that he had been peeping about in the cabin whilst his mother was packing the chests, and seeing a small brass knob in the wainscot, took it for a plaything, and pulling to get it out, opened a little door of a cupboard, where he had found some very pretty toys that he positively claimed for himself, among which were a small plain gold ring, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... indolent man; but whom, unless he has been slandered, his lady's influence involved in some political matters which had been more wisely let alone. She was a woman of high principle, however, and masculine good sense, as some of her letters testify, which are still in my wainscot cabinet. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... inhabitants of the castle. The mouldering tapestry, which, in his father's time, had half covered the walls of this stately apartment, and half streamed from them in tatters, had given place to a complete finishing of wainscot, the cornice of which, as well as the frames of the various compartments, were ornamented with festoons of flowers and with birds, which, though carved in oak, seemed, such was the art of the chisel, actually to swell their throats and flutter ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was still exhaling vigorously at a hole in the wainscot, behind which he fancied he had detected a sound. With the chance of a mouse on the horizon he became like Gamaliel, and cared for none of these things. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... in height, and the heavy, whitewashed beams made it look still lower. In the narrow space between the ceiling and wainscot, the wall was covered with an old-fashioned paper, florid of design, and musty of odor. On the mantel-shelf stood two brass candle-sticks with snuffer and extinguisher. As Flint stared idly at them, wondering what varied scenes their candles had ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... are very funny: "In the search," says the document, "first observe the parlour where they use to dine and sup; in the last part of that parlour it is conceived there is some vault, which to discover, you must take care to draw down the wainscot, whereby the entry into the vault may be discovered. The lower parts of the house must be tried with a broach, by putting the same into the ground some foot or two, to try whether there may be perceived some timber, which if ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced at least three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus mention is made of "squared ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... John Pope Hennessy imagines that the preliminary investigations may be traced much farther back. Ralegh quotes in his book Peter Comestor's Scholastica Historia, an abstract of Scripture history, which has been found, with other remnants of an old monastic library, in a recess behind the wainscot of Ralegh's bedroom, next to his study in the house at Youghal. Mr. Samuel Hayman, the historiographer of Youghal, writing in 1852, states that the discovery was made a few years before, and that the books had probably ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... quite, A noisy man is always in the right; I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair, Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare; And when I hope his blunders are all out, Reply discreetly, To ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... tired of rushing about through the old passages and rooms, and often came upon strange discoveries. Things hidden away for years and forgotten, doors which had remained unopened, or perhaps even had been mistaken for a part of the wainscot for generations. These discoveries were somewhat awe-inspiring, and the game not unfrequently became what the children called 'Treasure-hunting.' They generally managed to keep together on such occasions; it was too uncanny to be alone in those ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... ha! These forms are air—mere counterfeits Of my imaginous heart, as are the whirling Wainscot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... low room with a wainscot of dark walnut, and a single lamp upon the table gave it shadows rather than light. He had just time to notice that a girl and a man were bending over the table in the lamplight, to recognise with a throb ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... converted into something between a shop and a private house, and which a red lamp, projecting over the fanlight of the street door, would have sufficiently announced as the residence of a medical practitioner, even if the word 'Surgery' had not been inscribed in golden characters on a wainscot ground, above the window of what, in times bygone, had been the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the gilt-labelled ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... enter the large vestibule, the salon lies to your right; it contains four windows, two of which look into the yard, and two into the garden. Ceiling and wainscot are paneled, and the walls are hung with seventeenth century tapestry—pathetic evidence that the room had been the object of the late owner's aspiration, and that he had lavished all that he could spare upon it. The great roomy armchairs, covered with brocaded damask; the old fashioned, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... must once have been the principal house in the parish, though now it is so much gone to decay. Old Dr. Plank, the President of Magdalen, used to come thither in Farmer Colson's time. What used to be the principal room has a short staircase leading to it, and in the wainscot over the fire- place is a curious old picture, painted, I fancy, between 1600 and 1700, showing a fight between turbaned men and European soldiers, most likely Turks and Austrians. It is a pity that it cannot tell its history. The moat goes all round the house, garden, ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no easy matter to teach them to Kate," said Lady Humbert with a smile. "She has all the spirit of Wyvern and Trevlyn combined. She will be a stanch protector for thee, Dowsabel, if thou art troubled by strange noises in the wainscot, or by the barking of the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 'prentice fops, 300 To Fanny come, with the same view, To find her false, or find her true. Hark! something creeps about the house! Is it a spirit, or a mouse? Hark! something scratches round the room! A cat, a rat, a stubb'd birch-broom. Hark! on the wainscot now it knocks! 'If thou 'rt a ghost,' cried Orthodox, With that affected solemn air Which hypocrites delight to wear, 310 And all those forms of consequence Which fools adopt instead of sense; 'If thou 'rt a ghost, who from the tomb Stalk'st sadly silent through this gloom, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the door, and crossed to the stairs. There he stopped. From his pouch he had drawn a fine length of whipcord, attached at one end to a tiny bodkin of needle sharpness. That bodkin he drove into the edge of one of the panels of the wainscot, in line with the topmost step; drawing the cord taut at a height of a foot or so above this step, he made fast its other end to the newel-post at the stair-head. He had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that the performance of it ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... high chimneypiece; the blue-and-white Dutch tiles, with queer squat figures of Flemish citizens on foot and on horseback; the candles burning dimly on the spindle-legged table—two poor pale flames reflected ghastly in the dark polished panels of the wainscot; the big open Bible on an adjacent table; the old silver tankard, and buckhorn-handled knives and forks set out for supper; the solemn eight-day clock, ticking drearily in the corner; and amid all that sombre old-fashioned comfort, gray-haired Matthew ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... interior was visible, save the grim and ascetic faces of the monks who sat nearest to the centre of illumination. Their features, in deep masses of alternate light and shadow, looked as if carved out, hard and immovable, from the oak wainscot. Occasionally, a dull roll of the eye relieved the oppressive stillness, and the gazer would look out from the mystic world he inhabited, through these loop-holes of sense, into the world of sympathies and affections, with which he had ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... worn-out, fretting charge in through the great draughty porch, and was led up the old shallow oak stairs to a big panelled room, clean and scantily furnished, where the rats ran about behind the wainscot, and a rain-laden branch of monthly rose went tap, tap against the window, and a dog howled all night long, I thought we had come to a miserable place at the end of the earth. I thought so still ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... November 1244 Henry issued a writ enjoining "the clerks of the works at Windsor to work day and night to wainscot the high chamber upon the wall of the castle near our chapel in the upper bailey, so that it may be ready and properly wainscoted on Friday next [the 24th occurring on a Tuesday, only two days were allowed for the task], when we come there, with boards radiated ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... little noises of the night outside, the drip from the eaves slow and deliberate, the rustle of released leaves, and even the gentle thud on the lawn from the yew branches—all these helped to emphasize the stillness. It was not like the murmur of day; it was rather like the gnawing of a mouse in the wainscot of some ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... his eyes half-closed, he was coddling himself in the coziest corner of a dainty boudoir. The panel-mirrors which surrounded him, majestically duplicated on every side his enormous person; bags filled with gold covered the table; around him, the furniture, the wainscot, the doors, the locks, the mantel-piece, the ceiling were gilded; so was his coat. I do not know but that his brain was gilded too. He was calculating the issue of a little business affair which could not fail to bring him a few thousand louis; and was even deigning to smile over ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... oaken mantel glowing, Faintest light the lamp is throwing On the mirror's antique mould, High-backed chair, and wainscot old, And, through faded curtains stealing, His dark sleeping ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... but as warm and as comely, and so frequent change, too, as is every jot as good for the master, though not for the tailor or valet-de-chambre; not such a stately palace, nor gilt rooms, nor the costlier sorts of tapestry, but a convenient brick house, with decent wainscot and pretty forest-work hangings. Lastly (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with that which I love most in both conditions), not whole woods cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain or cascade gardens, but herb and flower and fruit ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... you are come in, Mr Henry," said the cross old woman, "what for do you no tak up your candle and gang to your bed? and mind ye dinna let the candle sweal as ye gang alang the wainscot parlour, and haud a' the house scouring to get out ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... unaccustomed intrusion; nimble spiders, paralysed by the taper's glare, checked the motion of their hundred legs upon the wall, or dropped like lifeless things upon the ground; the death-watch ticked; and the scampering feet of rats and mice rattled behind the wainscot. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and I, beginnin' to feel more comfortable and at home like, was walkin' about the room lookin' at this thing and at that. There was pretty old china things on the cupboard, and pictures again the wall; and there was a door open in the wainscot, and I sees a queer old leathern jacket, wi' straps and buckles to it, and sleeves as long as the ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... answered the serving-man. "I chanced to be in the little chamber beyond the wainscot with others waiting to escort the Abbot home, and heard them all, and afterward I and they put our marks upon the writing. As I am a Christian man that is so, though, master, this is not the place that I should have chosen to speak ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... the ear, Like water rushing through a weir; Oft interrupted by the din Of laughter and of loud applause, And, in each intervening pause, The music of a violin. The fire-light, shedding over all The splendor of its ruddy glow, Filled the whole parlor large and low; It gleamed on wainscot and on wall, It touched with more than wonted grace Fair Princess Mary's pictured face; It bronzed the rafters overhead, On the old spinet's ivory keys It played inaudible melodies, It crowned the sombre clock with flame, The hands, the hours, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was still one remaining. "It consisted," says he, "of a plank of stone of about six inches in thickness, and in its other dimensions equalling the size of an ordinary door, or somewhat less. It was carved in such a manner as to resemble a piece of wainscot: the stone of which it was made was visibly of the same kind with the whole rock; and it turned upon two hinges in the nature of axles. These hinges were of the same entire piece of stone with the door, and were contained in two ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and tender asked: "Are you awake, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of transferring the seat of imagination from the head to the heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the floor in an ague, is highly Shakesperesque, and, as the Courier is made to say at page 3 of the Opinions, "is worthy of the best days of that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr. Stephens has so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... ragged crowd; lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law, and that grand divine thing which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that caused by a mouse nibbling at the wainscot; and I venture to say so much in a tone ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... timber...is light, close, and durable, and promises to stand against the effects of worms on the bottoms of vessels. I had a boat built of this wood which proved it to be good...this wood has much the resemblance of wainscot with us. ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... and makeshift, varnish and gilding upon worm-eaten furniture, and mouldering wainscot, was that same Ancien Regime. And for that very reason a picturesque age; like one of its own landscapes. A picturesque bit of uncultivated mountain, swarming with the prince's game; a picturesque old robber schloss above, now in ruins; and below, perhaps, the picturesque ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... drew his description of "Laconia" in Arcadia. The buildings, particularly their window-heads, are ornamented with the tracery peculiar to Kent. The great hall, the earliest of these buildings, has a characteristic open-timber roof, while its minstrel-gallery, fronted by a wainscot screen, is ornamented with the badge of the Dudleys, the "bear and ragged staff." Within these halls are the family portraits of a noble lineage. Of Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sidney and heiress of Sir John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... dark in the village street, and the darkness seemed only the greater for a light here and there in an uncurtained window or from an open door. Into one such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw within a charming genre picture. In a room, all white wainscot and crimson wall-paper, a perfect gem of colour after the black, empty darkness in which I had been groping, a pretty girl was telling a story, as well as I could make out, to an attentive child upon her knee, while an old woman sat placidly dozing over the fire. You may be sure I was not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will I now have recourse to such a fallacious expedient. Yet she sleeps in the same chamber with me; and ought I not to beware of inspiring perfidy with projects? 'Tis true my slumbers are broken, my nights restless, and the cracking of the wainscot is as effectual in waking me as a thunder-clap could be. I am resolved, however, to take the key out of the door, and either hide it or hold it all night in my hand. Mischief is meant me, or why am ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... head; and in each of them place a transparent glass, surrounded with a frame, like a common mirror. Behind this partition place two mirrors, one on the outward side of each opening, inclined to the wainscot at an angle of forty-five degrees; let them both be eighteen inches square; let all the space between them be enclosed by boards or pasteboard, painted black and well closed, that no light may enter; let there ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creaked; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the moldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peered about. Old faces glimmered through the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. She only said, "My life is dreary, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... numerous visitors.[21] In this first room you observe a few of the very choicest productions of the burin, from the earliest periods of the art, to the more recent performances of Desnoyer, displayed within glazed frames upon the wainscot. It really makes the heart of a connoisseur leap with ecstacy to see such Finiguerras, Baldinis, Boticellis, Mantegnas, Pollaiuolos, Israel Van Meckens, Albert Durers, Marc Antonios, Rembrandts, Hollar, Nanteuils, Edelincks, &c.; while specimens of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... remnant of the broken woodwork of the chair. The silk handkerchief, red and yellow, he gathered into a loose pad in his left hand for his cheek and temple to rest on. His face was thus supported by his hand and arm, while the side of his head touched and rested against the wainscot ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... gilding, decorated with rude paintings and horrible statues of saints in coloured wood, paved in the Arabic style with enamelled faience laid out in various mosaic designs, and provided with a fountain or marble conch; the pretty church, unfortunately without an organ, but with wainscot, confessionals, and doors of most excellent workmanship, a floor of finely-painted faience, and a remarkable statue in painted wood of St. Bruno; the little meadow in the centre of the cloister, symmetrically planted with ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... endeavouring to seem pleasantly at ease, though she, too, was beginning to feel a certain amount of alarm at these strange beings' persistent discussion of the inhabitants of the wainscot. "Do you allude to any ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... a sufficiently pleasant cell in the Beauchamp Tower, furnished with straw mats underfoot, and straw hangings in place of a wainscot; his bed stood in one corner, with his crucifix and beads on a little table beside it, and his narrow window looked out through eleven feet of wall towards the Court and the White Tower. His books, too, which his servant, John Wood, had brought from Chelsea, and which had not yet been taken ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... were to cast away a Rope; he's such an Airie, thin unbodyed Coward, that no revenge can catch him: I'le tell you Sir, and tell you truth; this Rascal fears neither God nor man, he has been so beaten: sufferance has made him Wainscot: he has had since he was first a slave, at least three hundred Daggers set in's head, as little boys do new Knives in hot meat, there's not a Rib in's body o' my Conscience that has not been thrice broken with dry ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Garnache in a body, with wild shouts and fierce mockery, and he hurriedly fell on guard and gave way before them until his shoulders were against the wainscot and he had at least the assurance that none could take him in the rear. Three blades engaged his own. Fortunio had come no farther than the doorway, where he stood his torn cheek drenched in blood, watching the scene the Marquise beside him, and Tressan standing ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... lawyers of the last century; and there were old pier-glasses to reflect them, as well as the little satin-wood tables and the sofas resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief against the dark wainscot This was the physiognomy of the drawing-room into which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive him, who were also old-fashioned, and of a faded but genuine respectability: Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's white-haired mother, befrilled and kerchiefed ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... to order her to lay it down. Poor Helen, who was not more than three years old, did not immediately obey him. He suddenly started up; and with eyes and face flaming with rage, he caught hold of her and dashed her poor little head, with all the strength he possessed, against the wainscot. His father, who was writing, had scarcely observed what was going on, till Helen's screams drew his attention. What a sight met his eyes, when he looked towards where his children stood! Helen lying on the carpet, her head streaming with blood, and William standing beside her, silent, and ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... back! disregard me! Look! that last arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently I did not see the feather ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... figure is that of Sir Baldwin, who was 'of so undaunted resolution,' says Prince, 'that, for the honor and liberty of a royal lady in a castle besieged by infidels, he fought a combat with a Sarazen; for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford-hall doth plainly show); whom yet he vanquished and rescued the lady.' Sir Baldwin's name must have been woven in many a romance and ballad in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... pronunciation of it, according to the standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired. The table and chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot. The windows were high in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which they looked. The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge of the great world outside of Hampton, together ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... friend, who therefore having spoken to him in vain, drew nearer to him, and began to pull him by the sleeve. Frederick, angry, and out of patience with these interruptions, suddenly turned round, and gave Marcus such a push, that he sent him reeling across the room, and he at last fell against the wainscot. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... restaurateur. All the rooms but one in this house were preoccupied, on the day of our visit, in consequence of which we were obliged to dine in the former little bed room of the queen, where, like the idalian goddess, she used to sleep in a suspended basket of roses. The apertures in the ceiling and wainscot, to which the elegant furniture of this little room of repose had once ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Presidents and Governors looked down at him from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Brother company!' And so saying, he seized me with one hand, slapping me on the face with the other,'—clenched as a fist (POING),—'several blows; one of which struck me on the temple, so that I fell back, and should have split my head against a corner of the wainscot, had not Madame de Sonsfeld caught me by the head-dress and broken the fall. I lay on the ground without consciousness. The King, in a frenzy, was for striking me with his feet; had not the Queen, my Sisters, and the rest, run between, and ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... related by a correspondent of one of the English newspapers: "This morning," says he, "while reading in bed, I was suddenly interrupted by a noise similar to that made by rats, when running through a double wainscot, and endeavoring to pierce it. The noise ceased for some moments, and then commenced again. I was only two or three feet from the wall whence the noise proceeded; and soon I perceived a great rat making his appearance at a hole. It looked about for awhile, without making any ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... Jervas, Pope's teacher in painting—a bad artist, but a kindly man—tells Pope on August 20, 1714, of a conversation with Addison. It would have been worth while, he says, for Pope to have been hidden behind a wainscot or a half-length picture to have heard it. Addison expressed a wish for friendly relations, was glad that Pope had not been "carried too far among the enemy" by Swift, and hoped to be of use to him at Court—for Queen Anne died on August 1st; the wheel had turned; ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... partly modernized by the late Mme. Sechard; the walls were adorned with a wainscot, fearful to behold, painted the color of powder blue. The panels were decorated with wall-paper —Oriental scenes in sepia tint—and for all furniture, half-a-dozen chairs with lyre-shaped backs and blue leather ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was suddenly checked by observing the reeve of the forest peeping from behind the wainscot, and earnestly regarding the miller, and he called the attention of the latter ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "is a large Hall, called the Frater-house, finely wainscotted on the North and South sides; and in the West and nether Part thereof, is a long Bench of Stone in Mason-work, from the Cellar Door to the Pantry or Cove Door: Above the Bench is Wainscot Work two Yards and a Half high, finely carved, and set with imboss'd Work in Wainscot, and gilded under the carved Work. Above the Wainscot was a large Picture of our Saviour Christ, the blessed Virgin ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... in Urrard, Perchance in midnight gloom Thou'lt hear behind the wainscot Sounds in that haunted room, It is a thought of horror, I would not sleep alone In the haunted room of Urrard, Where evil deeds ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... by two windows on the street and finished with a wainscot painted gray, was so damp that the lower panels showed the geometrical cracks of rotten wood when the paint no longer binds it. The red-tiled floor, polished by the old lady's one servant, required, for comfort's sake, before each seat small round mats of brown straw, on one of which the abbe ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... house—not a thing left but some empty Bottles that were overlooked and the Family Pictures, which I believe are framed in the Wainscot. [Going.] ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... madhouse. His derangement had exhibited itself in a religious way: he insisted upon people kneeling down along with him in the street and praying. During his confinement, writing materials were denied him, and he used to write his poetical pieces with a key on the wainscot. Thus, 'scrabbling,' like his own hero, on the wall, he produced his immortal 'Song to David.' He became by and by sane; but, returning to his old habits, got into debt, and died in the King's Bench prison, after ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... enough of it, but there had been one scene near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes in the evening dusk the walls of her attic to see whether there too verses ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... against which stood out a great gilt rosette. The mighty pilasters, whose gilded capitals supported the vaulting, were of many-veined dark yellow marble, polished and gleaming like the slabs of pale yellow marble which panelled the interspaces. The high-moulded wainscot was of red and green porphyry, somberly smooth and shining. Against it, below the wall-panels, were set great chests of carved and gilded wood, while about the bases of the pilasters were placed groups ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... themselves in, the moment they had dispatch'd their Suppers: In order to this, on a Time, this Servant, call'd Nicolini, with a piercing Instrument of Iron, and the Assistance of an Artificer, ingeniously made a Communication for the Sight into the next Room, by working a small Hole through the Wainscot, opposite to the Bed, in the Chamber wherein the two Masculine Ladies accustom'd to solace themselves. At the next Meeting, Nicolini, to his no small surprise, had a Prospect of the two Females embracing each other, with a succession of Kisses of no short Duration. After this they both ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... alone, I often skate upon it. But as I do not wish to see my less sure-footed friends disposed about it in writhing attitudes expressive of agony and broken bones, I usually keep it covered, up to a yard's breadth from the dark-carved wainscot, with a velvety carpet, which was woven for me at Wilton, and represents the casting scene in the 'Song of the Bell.' The window curtains are of velvet, of just the shade of purple that nestles in the centre of the most splendid kind of fuchsia, and have an Etruscan border and heavy fringes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are the stones and plaster of the partition wall which fell in at the great shock." "Have you had an earthquake?" blazed up my uncle, now fairly in a rage. "No, not an earthquake, worshipful Herr Justitiarius," replied the old man, grinning all over his face, "but three days ago the heavy wainscot ceiling of the justice-hall fell in with a tremendous crash." "Then may the"—— My uncle was about to rip out a terrific oath in his violent passionate manner, but jerking up his right arm above ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... necessitated in the English temper merely by the general domestic use of wood instead of marble. In that old Shakesperian England, men must have rendered a grateful homage to their oak forests, in the sense of all that they owed to their goodly timbers in the wainscot and furniture of the rooms they loved best, when the blue of the frosty midnight was contrasted, in the dark diamonds of the lattice, with the glowing brown of the warm, fire-lighted, crimson-tapestried walls. Not less would ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... will come." Again the silence was broken, this time by a strange hurrying, rustling sound behind the wainscot, followed by ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the drawing-room after this. It was half-past six, and we were to dine at seven. The drawing-room was a long room, with five windows opening on to the terrace, an old-fashioned- looking room with panelled walls and a fine arched ceiling. The wainscot was painted white, with gilt mouldings, and the cornice and architraves of the doors were elaborately carved. The furniture was white-and-gold like the walls, and in that spurious classical style which prevailed during the first French Empire. The window-curtains and coverings of ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... search the house. It was thrown open to me. There were no forbidden drawing-rooms now; I prowled about as I pleased. If the doors were shut, I might scratch as long as I liked; nobody answered. If open, I walked round and round the room, brushing the wainscot with my tail. There were no china ornaments to be thrown down now, and I might whisk it about as I would. Formerly I had often wished for free entrance to those rooms; now I should have welcomed a friendly ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... the chambers of the tower is the following sentence, carved on the frieze of the wainscot:—"In the yeire of owre Ld. MDLV. was this howse buyldyd, by Sir Wyllyam Ingilby, Knight, Philip and Marie ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... signals, and frequently putting his fingers on his lips, as if enjoining silence. There was now no time to be lost in rousing the family, and all the haste that could be made was scarcely sufficient to hurry the venerable man from his bed, into a small recess behind the wainscot of an adjoining room, which was concealed by a bed, in which a lady, Miss Gordon of Towie, who was there on a visit, lay, before the soldiers obtained admission. A most minute search took place. The room in which Lord Pitsligo was concealed did not escape: ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... red leaf withered and the green leaf grew. Decay and dolor settled on the Hall. The wind went howling in the dismal rooms, Rustling the arras; and the wainscot-mouse Gnawed through the mighty Garnauts on the wall, And made a lodging for her glossy young In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat-of-mail; The griffon dropped from off the blazoned shield; The stables rotted; and a poisonous vine Stretched its rank nets across the lonely lawn. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... which the sun shone hot upon, was glazed, and looked very well, perfectly white, and painted with blue figures, as the large China ware in England is painted, and hard as if it had been burnt. As to the inside, all the walls, instead of wainscot, were lined with hardened and painted tiles, like the little square tiles we call galley- tiles in England, all made of the finest china, and the figures exceeding fine indeed, with extraordinary variety of ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... marble: if of polished mahogany, no soap must be used. When these are all clean and arranged in their places, the housemaid should scrub the floor where it is not covered with carpet, under the beds, and round the wainscot. She should use as little soap and soda as possible, as too free a use of these articles is liable to give the boards a black appearance. In the country, cold soft water, a clean scrubbing-brush, and a willing arm, are all that are required to make bedroom floors look white. In winter it is not advisable ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... different, not like the fragmentary inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after all. There it was again. Where ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... he has come, By Charon kindly ferried, To tell me of a mighty sum Behind my wainscot buried? There is a buccaneerish air About that garb outlandish— 70 Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, 'My name ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... better of it, though it would have been impossible to catch cold on such a stifling night I heard every clock strike in Westminster and London. It was light at five, yet the night seemed endless. I would have welcomed even a mouse behind the wainscot. Priscilla is an odious tyrant," making a face at the easy-tempered gouvernante sitting by; "she won't let me have my dogs ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... wall papers. Leather (used with paneling or above wainscot), modern tapestries, fabrics of all kinds are suitable for covering dining-room walls. If low, the ceiling should never be dark, since this makes the room appear still lower. (A breakfast room done in lacquer ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... plucky guest, who sees a ghost, and knows it is a ghost, and watches it, as it comes into the room and disappears through the wainscot, after which, as the ghost does not seem to be coming back, and there is nothing, consequently, to be gained by stopping awake, he goes ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... a certain amount of wetting and slopping, the dryness of the rest of the sacristy, and particularly the idea of its dryness (so necessary where precious stuffs and metal vessels are kept) had to be secured not merely by covering a piece of wainscot and floor with tiles, but by building the whole little enclosure (all save the marble trough) of white and coloured majolica, which seemed to say to the oaken and walnut presses, to the great table covered with vestments: "Don't be afraid, you shall not feel a ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He went into the corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that of the drawing-room; there was no sound, and on turning ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... these intervals, I heard a scratching sound—just such a sound as a mouse makes behind the wainscot. I had not noticed it before, and it caused me nothing but irritation now, for when a man is wakeful, such sounds, however slight they may be, become magnified to his overstrung nerves. I endured the sound for a time; then shooed to scare the gnawing ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush, like a beggar? Get you to church and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is: this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... chairs were scarce, and only the master of the house or his distinguished guest was accorded the privilege of being seated in them. The earliest chairs were cumbersome, being fashioned of oak with solid square backs, often panelled, and thus were known as "wainscot chairs." The seat was of wood and the bracing beneath made this article of furniture exceedingly substantial. Later in the century, a variety of chairs found their way to Virginia, caned chairs, leather chairs and Turkey-work chairs. The latter were those upholstered ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... step to obey, and kicked against something which rattled as it flew forward, and struck the wainscot board, while the next moment a dim, blue spark of light in a ground-glass burst into a flame, and lit up a dingy-looking, old-fashioned surgery just as the kneeling girl ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... of England. With the help of Camden and Sir Henry Spelman he obtained nearly a thousand volumes of records and documents; and these he arranged under a system, by which they are still cited, in fourteen wainscot presses marked with the names of the twelve Caesars, Cleopatra, and Faustina. He was so rich in State Papers that, as Fuller said, 'the fountains were fain to fetch water from the stream,' and the secretaries and clerks of the Council were glad ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... and water pipes are run in wall spaces, so as to be accessible. The rooms are ventilated through the hollow columns of the kiosks, and each is provided with an electric fan. They are heated by electric heaters. The woodwork of the rooms is oak; the walls are red slate wainscot and Keene cement. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... Each plant set neere to him long flourisheth; The heavie-headed plane-tree, by whose shade The grasse grows thickest, men are fresher made; The oak that best endures the thunder-shocks, The everlasting, ebene, cedar, boxe. The olive, that in wainscot never cleaves, The amourous vine which in the elme still weaves; The lotus, juniper, where wormes ne'er enter; The pyne, with whom men through the ocean venture; The warlike yewgh, by which (more than the lance) ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker |
