"Petticoat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... satisfaction in wearing the bisque cloth?" But your ears are as stone to her blandishments! As a traveling suit, bisque-colored cloth had not been serviceable! Black lace with a cerise velvet under petticoat might be effective at Armenonville, but it had seemed queer, to say the least, at the tennis match in August. No, you are at last immune from any of those sudden attacks of new fashion fever that result in loss of judgment. You open your little book ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... youngster!" said the mate. "Take my advice: go back to your mother, give my compliments to the old lady, and tell her to take a turn or two of her petticoat strings round you, belay them to the leg of a chair, and keep you safe moored there for half a dozen years to come!" This advice elicited a fresh peal of laughter. I felt humiliated at this rough bantering, and ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... this tumbling and toiling, and bother and confusion that never ceases, has made me so old, that you would scarcely know me again. On the right side of my head the hair is all gray; my teeth break and fall out; I have got my face wrinkled like the falbalas of a petticoat; my back bent like a fiddle-bow; and spirit sad and downcast like a monk of La Trappe. I forewarn you of all this, lest, in case we should meet again in flesh and bone, you might feel yourself too ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust the important charge, the petticoat. Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale." —RAPE OF ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... low doorway, and seated himself beside a small deal table which, although destitute of a cloth, was thickly covered with ink-stains. The Malay rover was clad in a thin loose red jacket, a short petticoat or kilt, and yellow trousers. A red fez, with a kerchief wound round it turban fashion, covered his head. He was a well-made stalwart man, with ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... dear," said Mrs. Baxter, biting her thread. "Reliability. I shall finish this petticoat to-morrow unless I have to drive with Lady Richard. You don't want him to be original, or to do much, except his confirmations and so on, of course; but you do want to be sure that he won't fly out at something or somebody. Dan got a reputation for not being quite reliable. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... old gossip in one of my tales,—a much-babbling Widow Sertingly. 'Sho!' they all said, that 's old Deacon Spinner, the same he told about in that other story of his,—only the deacon's got on a petticoat and a mob-cap,—but it's the same old sixpence.' So I said to myself, I must have some new characters. I had no trouble with young characters; they are all pretty much alike,—dark-haired or light-haired, with the outfits belonging to their complexion, respectively. I had an old ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... I am! I don't know the dates, to be sure. But I have the feeling of the period. For me, the Revolution means a bosom swelling with pride under a crossed neckerchief, knees enjoying full freedom in a striped petticoat, and a tiny blaze of colour on the cheek-bones. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was—petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... naturally enough under the maternal control. Between her own inclinations and her mother's ideas of maidenly culture a great contest immediately arose. Her mother could not understand why her daughter should prefer the violin to the piano, and the masculine trousers to the feminine petticoat. In fact, she did not understand Ida, and it may be assumed that Ida ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... a bird's wing to make a river-boat of a ship, and a dead, dead shame to shorten sails till it looks like a young gal dressed in breeches or any other onnatural thing—for a sailing-ship and a full-flowing petticoat always rise up in a true man's mind together—God bless them both, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the Towers all the rest of her life? You make as much work about my coming for you, as if you thought I had. Make haste now, and get on your bonnet. Mrs. Brown, may I ask you for a shawl, or a plaid, or a wrap of some kind to pin about her for a petticoat?' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I said, gazing in wonder at her ball-gown—pale turquoise silk, with a stomacher of solid brilliants and petticoat of blue and silver. "Elsin, I think I never saw so beautiful a maid in all my life, nor a beautiful gown so ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... she stripped off the white frock, hat, and tippet. The rest of the things shared the same fate, and she was compelled to put on some old rags which the inhuman creature took out of a bag she carried under her petticoat; then, taking a bottle of liquid from the same place, she instantly began washing Eliza's face with it, and, notwithstanding all her remonstrances, cut her beautiful ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... kind Lizzie dressed herself in her best; a soiled pink silk shirtwaist with elbow sleeves, a spotted and torn black skirt that showed a tattered orange silk petticoat beneath its ungainly length, a wide white hat with soiled and draggled willow plume of Alice blue, and high-heeled pumps run over on their uppers. If she had but known it she looked ten times better in the old Madonna shawl she had worn to Michael's ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... it, as 'spring-bedding,' in every British garden. The heath is almost hidden, in places, by the large white flowers and trailing stems of the sage-leaved Cistus. Delicate purple Ixias, and yet more delicate Hoop-petticoat Narcissus, spring from the turf. And here and there among furze and heath, crop out great pink bunches of the Daphne Cneorum of our gardens, perfuming all the air. Yes, we are indeed in foreign parts, in the very home of that Atlantic ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... brother was among the young men who helped to give her an ovation at the opera. A few days afterwards he went to breakfast at a place near Woolwich. There he saw the princess, in a gorgeous dress, which was looped up to show her petticoat covered with stars, with silver wings on her shoulders, sitting under a tree, with a pot of porter on her knee; and as a finale to the gaiety, she had the doors opened of every room in the house, and selecting a partner, she galloped through them, desiring all the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... thirty, two of them under twenty, only one unmarried, none of them avowedly interested in either of the two officers slowly approaching. No one of them, however, neglected a sweeping glance at her draperies or some slight readjustment of pose or petticoat. Possibly the formality would have been equally observed had they ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... we met a woman who was very poor, and eighty- eight years old. I gave her a warm petticoat, and the tears rolled down her old cheeks, and she shook my hands and prayed God to bless me: ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... drawn on her silken hose and garter, Her crimson petticoat was kilted high, She trod her way amid the bog and brambles, Until the fairy-tree she ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... six foot two, and Isabella quite six foot, and broad in proportion. They were dressed almost alike, and at a little distance, but for the lady's scanty petticoat, it would have been ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... any chance of escape. It seems that, soon after her last marriage, she discovered that her husband had only made her his wife with the object of possessing himself of her property, and, alarmed at the idea of losing everything, she plaited some of her jewels in her hair and others in her petticoat. But she little anticipated what was in store for her, although she had already become suspicious of her husband's intentions towards her. His plans, however, were soon executed; for one morning, under the pretence of taking her for a drive, he carried her away altogether: ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... had been at her toilette, which was only partly completed. Instead of her silk gown she wore a short red petticoat and gray jacket. The front of her wig was carefully dressed, but a loose braid fastened by a string dangled gracefully at her back. She stood upon ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... which is drawn a cloth jacket, ornamented with a multitude of silver buttons; round the neck goes a stiff ruff of velvet, figured with silver lace, and a silver belt, often beautifully chased, binds the long dark wadmal petticoat round the waist. Sometimes the ornaments are of gold instead of silver, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... they put on a fair corset of pure silk camblet; above that went the petticoat of white, red tawny, or gray taffeta. Above this was the cotte in cloth of silver, with needlework either (according to the temperature and disposition of the weather) of satin, damask, velvet, orange, tawny, green, ash-colored, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... broad-brimmed hat, trousers of red serge, and a piece of leather tied with strings for a shoe—a coarse kind of moccasin. The women, though sad-looking and mournful, had rather agreeable features, without much expression. They wear a bodice and petticoat of somber vadmel. When unmarried they wear a little brown knitted cap over a crown of plaited hair; but when married, they cover their heads with a colored handkerchief, over which they ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... into the field she said to herself, "Shall I eat before I cut, or sleep first before I cut?" She determined to eat, and soon became so sleepy over her meal that when she began to cut she knew not what she was doing, and cut off half her clothes—gown, petticoat and all. When, after a long sleep, Catherine awoke, she got up half-stripped, and said to herself, "Am I myself? or am I not? Ah! I am not myself." By and by night came on, and Catherine ran into the village, and, knocking at her husband's window, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental, somewhat sheepish eyes. "Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in a petticoat?" ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... pursuit foaming at the mouth, and howling dismally, whilst his red eyes gleam like burning coals. As he gains on her, she casts behind her her gown, and bids him tear that. He seizes the gown and rives it to shreds, then again he pursues. This time she casts behind her her apron, next her petticoat, then her shift, and at last rums much in the condition in which she was born. Again the were-wolf approaches; she bounds out of the forest into a hay-field, and hides herself in the smallest heap of hay. Her father enters the field, runs howling about it in search ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... sort at Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's women, with its broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the petticoat; and seemed literally framed in the unsashed window. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... up with a poor Irishwoman, trudging along with a bundle at her back. She had a gray shawl over her head, and a crimson madder petticoat; so you may be sure she came from Galway. [Footnote: Galway is a county in the western part of Ireland. The dress here described was the characteristic dress of the peasants of that county.] She had neither shoes nor ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... throng of men and women amongst whom they were threading their way. The attitude of her sex towards Berenice was in a certain sense a paradox. She was distinctly the most talented and the most original of all the "petticoat apostles," as the very man who was now walking by her side had scornfully described the little band of women writers who were accused of trying to launch upon society a new type of their own sex. Her last ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the flames, but of the smoke and glare," replied Fink; "if they light up our windows, our men will aim still worse. One good thing for us is that the gentlemen on the English saddles, who head the enemy, have never stormed any but a petticoat fortress before. We will bring all our men to the front, and leave only two or three sentinels behind; we will trust ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... circumstances!—And how would they look upon me, thought I to myself, when they should come to be threadbare and worn out? And how should I look, even if I could purchase homespun clothes, to dwindle into them one by one, as I got them?—May be, an old silk gown, and a linsey-woolsey petticoat, and the like. So, thought I, I had better get myself at once equipped in the dress that will become my condition; and though it may look but poor to what I have been used to wear of late days, yet it will serve me, when I am with you, for a good holiday and Sunday suit; and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... that the women appear to have lost the decency he describes them to possess; for there were several whom curiosity and the novelty of our arrival had brought down to see us, naked to the hips, which alone supported a petticoat or wrapper of blue cotton ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... my lord, those people never want to dress—shoes and stockings, a coat and waistcoat, a gown and a cap, a petticoat and a handkerchief, are all they want—fire, to be sure, in winter—then all the rest is merely ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... but not without looking round several times. When she thought I was far enough off, she came out of the water; bending down and turning her back to me, she disappeared in a cavity in the rock, behind a petticoat that was hanging up in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... flesh formed a little pad, as one might call it, above her shoes. Two ear-drops, worth about three-thousand francs each, adorned her ears. She wore a lace cap with pink ribbons, a mousseline-de-laine gown in pink and gray stripes with an edging of green, opened at the bottom to show a petticoat trimmed with valencienne lace; and a green cashmere shawl with palm-leaves, the point of which reached the ground as ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... postponed as long as possible in such establishments, in which he doffed the petticoat—a moment, by the way, in which the obstinate and masterful spirit of the ungentle sex often begins to show itself in nurseries of a far more polished description;—from that moment may Jesse's wanderings be said to commence. Disobedience ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... petticoat is warmer," cried Alice, hastily divesting herself of a flannel garment of bright scarlet, the brilliant beauty of which had long been the admiration of the entire population of Sandy Cove. The child spread it over the seaman's ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... to be. But subconsciously within her was the feeling that she was not really meant to be denied the joy of luxuries. That instinct showed itself in many little ways. She was sometimes extravagant—bought a silk petticoat when a cotton one would have done just as well, but, oh heavens! it was cheap! You would scarcely have thought it possible to buy silk petticoats at the price. And no doubt the appearance of the silk was only superficial. But it gave her a great ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... experiments have called forth the exercise of highly inventive faculties in their very inception. Investigation and experiment have been a consuming passion, an impelling force from within, as it were, from his petticoat days when he collected goose-eggs and tried to hatch them out by sitting over them himself. One might be inclined to dismiss this trivial incident smilingly, as a mere childish, thoughtless prank, had not subsequent development as a child, boy, and man revealed a ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the latter for the male portion of their retinue and guests of that sex and another for the women members. It was a rare thing to see a woman about the Maxwell premises, though there were many. Occasionally one would hear the quick rustle or get a hurried view of a petticoat (rebosa) as its wearer appeared for an instant before an open door. The kitchen was presided over by dark-faced maidens bossed by experienced old cronies. Women were not allowed in the dining rooms during ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... his threats, she put off somewhat of her clothes and he said to her, "Doff the rest," with many menaces; while she removed each article slowly and kept saying, "O my son, thou hast disappointed my fosterage of thee," till she had nothing left but her petticoat trousers Then said she, "O my son, is thy heart stone? Wilt thou dishonour me by discovering my shame? Indeed, this is unlawful, O my son!" And he answered, "Thou sayest sooth; put not off thy trousers." At once, as he uttered ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... witnessed a couple of months before on the entry of the troops from the Crimea,[203] when the Zouaves, as they marched past, pleased Dickens most. "A remarkable body of men," he wrote, "wild, dangerous, and picturesque. Close-cropped head, red skull cap, Greek jacket, full red petticoat trowsers trimmed with yellow, and high white gaiters—the most sensible things for the purpose I know, and coming into use in the line. A man with such things on his legs is always free there, and ready for a muddy march; and might flounder through roads two feet deep in mud, and, simply by changing ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me—"Stap my vitals, Tam! thou art a very impudent person;" [3] and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... beginning of The Young Chevalier. I am afraid my touch is a little broad in a love story; I can't mean one thing and write another. As for women, I am no more in any fear of them; I can do a sort all right; age makes me less afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in fear of grossness. However, this David Balfour's love affair, that's all right—might be read out to a mother's meeting—or a daughters' meeting. The difficulty in a love yarn, which dwells at all on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clothes; and as this lady was extremely vain and fond of dress, she would absolutely appear in the height of fashion. The Sunday after her ball, whilst she had still the remains of a bad cold, she positively would go to church, equipped in one petticoat, and a thin muslin gown, that she might look as young as her daughter Jessy. Every body laughed, and Jessy laughed more than any one else; but, in the end, it was no laughing matter; Mrs. Bettesworth "caught her death of cold." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... players came down to Ealing Fair. She sat in a great chair by the fire-corner; in her lap was a spaniel-dog that barked furiously; on a little table by her was her ladyship's snuff-box and her sugar-plum box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-coloured brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of Banbury Cross; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with great gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels; and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and left the manager and the music to make the best of it. My father, who could hardly believe his eyes, was convinced when he saw my confusion. I ran into the dressing-room, where, before I had time to divest myself of Apollo's crown and petticoat, I was accosted by my enraged parent, and it is quite impossible for me to describe (taking my costume into consideration) how very much like a fool ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... port of natives of Old England; all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two hack settlers, negotiating sales of timber, from forests where axe had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying, with lofty grace, to the punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far from an old mansion, that stood somewhat back from the pavement, surrounded ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with time, he could not aspire. True, he had rivals; true, there were men who could supplant him without putting any great strain upon their powers; true, there were others with more family influence, especially of that petticoat influence which had been known to carry so much weight in high and authoritative quarters; but he had confidence in himself, in his ability, his star—the last named of which had the merit of ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... seven years old he began to study with the teacher of his sisters, which was convenient and agreeable, but meant the addition of another petticoat. The fineness of his feelings, his fear of having wounded any comrade, which were later to inspire him in so many touching actions, were the result of this feminine education. His walks with his father, who already gave him much attention, brought ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... but that Gwen and Miss Grahame were in a like plight, the latter in addition being embarrassed by a rent skirt, which she was fain to hold together as she crossed the doorstep. Once in the house she made short work of it, finishing the rip, and acquiescing in the publicity of a petticoat. It added to Aunt Constance's perplexity that the carriage and James appeared in as trim order as when they left the door three hours since. These hours had been eventful to her, and she was really feeling as if the whole thing ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fantastically; the general in a dressing-gown with gold embroideries and tassels; Sergius wore a black hooded coat; Lina a warm hare-skin jacket, and Katerina, the eldest—the moustached guardian—a man's thick overcoat, a petticoat and felt shoes. On all were jewels—rings, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... women of Otaheite. The pau is another dress very frequently worn by the younger part of the sex. It is made of the thinnest and finest sort of cloth, wrapt several times round the waist, and descending to the leg, so as to have exactly the appearance of a full short petticoat. The hair is cut short behind, and turned up before, as is the fashion among the Otaheiteans and New Zealanders; all of whom differ, in this respect, from the women of the Friendly Islands, who wear their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... and square shoulders, and well-made backs and legs, which showed the strength possessed by them. They were pleasant-looking people. The men wore a short kilt, with a poncho over their shoulders; the women, a petticoat ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... greatest scamp in the province. He was a dirty creature, his breast was uncovered, his eyes were bloodshot, his hair was rough and curly, his face yellow; he was dressed in a ragged shirt and a straw petticoat. He would have been called a horrible old man in his tattered straw hat. This Coimbra was the confidant, the tool of Alvez, an organizer of raids, worthy of commanding ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... his horse loose, and, leaping over the wall, ran to her. She now first bursting into tears, told him how barbarously she had been treated. Upon which, forgetting the sex of Goody Brown, or perhaps not knowing it in his rage—for, in reality, she had no feminine appearance but a petticoat, which he might not observe—he gave her a lash or two with his horsewhip; and then flying at the mob, who were all accused by Moll, he dealt his blows so profusely on all sides, that unless I would again invoke the muse (which the good-natured reader may think a little too hard upon her, as she ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... police with information as to the convict's disposal of his stolen property. In his zeal he had even gone so far as to play the role of an accomplice of Peace, and by this means discovered a place in Petticoat Lane where the burglar got rid of some of ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... indirect light above it. The artist was busy in the barber shop near-by. Admirable opportunity. I mounted the throne and fell to. The first thing I saw was a quaint Japanese woodcut of a buxom maiden washing garments in a rapidly purling stream. She was treading out a petticoat with her bare feet, presumably on a flat stone. In a black storm-cloud above a willow tree a bearded supernatural being, with hands spread in humorous deprecation, gazes down half pleased, half horrified. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... young girl, but as well formed as a young person of seventeen; yet she had scarcely completed her fourteenth year. The snow of her complexion, her hair as dark as the raven's wing, her black eyes beaming with fire and innocence, her dress composed only of a chemise and a short petticoat which exposed a well-turned leg and the prettiest tiny foot, every detail I gathered in one instant presented to my looks the most original and the most perfect beauty I had ever beheld. I looked at her with the greatest pleasure, and her eyes rested upon ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lace scarf, and green silk hood, and my petticoat with the border newly purfled. Hark! 'Tis the bell for prayers. Be quick with my pantofles:—not those, wench—the yellow silk with silver spangles. Now my rings and crystal bracelets. I would not miss early matins to-day for the best ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... out of jail again, sir?" "Yes, madam; when she came to her trial the judge acquitted her. 'So now,' she said to me, 'the quilt is MY own, and now I'll make a petticoat of it.' Oh, I loved ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... looked inexorable, as women do just before they relent. Said she: "Oh, I don't know. By the time I get through trying to convince a bunch of customers that T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoat has every other skirt in the market looking like a piece of Fourth of July bunting that's been left out in the rain, I'm about ready to turn down the spread and leave a ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Tokaido and Nakasendo, of Lake Biwa and Hakone, it does not follow that either is inaccurate. But truly this is a new Japan to me, of which no books have given me any idea, and it is not fairyland. The men may be said to wear nothing. Few of the women wear anything but a short petticoat wound tightly round them, or blue cotton trousers very tight in the legs and baggy at the top, with a blue cotton garment open to the waist tucked into the band, and a blue cotton handkerchief knotted round the head. From the dress no notion of the sex of the wearer could ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... made the great discovery, that she loves; and she has made her first step into the gay world; and now she comes back to her retirement to think the whole over by herself. It seems a dream to her, that she who sits there now reeling yarn in her stuff petticoat and white short-gown is the same who took the arm of Colonel Burr amid the blaze of wax-lights and the sweep of silks and rustle of plumes. She wonders dreamily as she remembers the dark, lovely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Susan, of Princeton, Maine, are experts at this work.] And this dress she shaped like those worn of old. [Footnote: This remark indicates the lateness of the Micmac version of this very old myth.] So she made a petticoat and a loose gown, a cap, leggins, and handkerchief, and, having put on her father's great old moccasins,— which came nearly up to her knees,—she went forth to try her luck. For even this little thing would see the Invisible One in the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... When did a boy of twenty ever want to play cards within sound of the rustle of a petticoat?—and such ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... he was a girl, thought him very modest and timid, because the lad, doubting the language of his eyes, kept them always cast down; and when Bertha kissed him on the mouth, he trembled lest his petticoat might be indiscreet, and would walk away to the window, so fearful was he of being recognised as a man by Bastarnay, and killed before he had made love to ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... officers' swords—yes, at least a dozen—frying pans and saucepans. Old clothes were needless to say, a prominent feature. Here you might suit yourself with a bald-looking sealskin, a red flannel petticoat, a soiled evening gown on graceful lines, or a widow's bonnet. Here also were black costumes (dripping beads), broken feathers, and hopeless hats. Old furniture had several stands and was an important department. Grandfather clocks, sideboards, chairs (Chippendale or otherwise), ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Etticote, In a white petticoat, With a red nose; The longer she stands, The shorter she ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... pair of coarse cloth trousers, as her own dress would have been torn to pieces before she had got half a mile through the bush; these were surmounted by a tight spencer she had herself manufactured out of a man's waistcoat, and a dimity petticoat, which buttoned up to her throat, and was fastened in the same way at ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... beads, long and short, with the indispensable talismans. The body dress is a Tobe or loin-cloth, like that of the men; but under the "Namba," or outer wrapper, which hangs down the feet, there is a "Siri," or petticoat, reaching only to the knees. Both are gathered in front like the Shukkah of the eastern coast, and the bosom is left bare. Few except the bush-folk now wear the Ibongo, Ipepe, or Ndengi, the woven fibres and grass-cloths of their ancestry; amongst the hunters, however, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... ever preaching morality to the youngsters, but he is a sly fellow in the main. Do you observe how fond he is of the cross roads above this valley? Now, if I were to halt the troops twice in the same place, you would all swear there was a petticoat in the wind." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... state. It must be confessed that when he wrote it (June 30th, 1807) his experience was not extensive. He left England when he had been a husband only a few weeks; but the passage is interesting as conveying to his wife what his conception of the ideal relation was: "There is a medium between petticoat government and tyranny on the part of the husband, that with thee I think to be very attainable; and which I consider to be the summit of happiness in the marriage state. Thou wilt be to me not only a beloved wife, but my most dear and most intimate ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... built of wood; but the materials had undergone the plane, as well as the axe and the saw. It was painted white, and the windows not only had sashes, but these sashes were supplied, contrary to custom, with glass. In most cases the aperture where glass should be is stuifed with an old hat or a petticoat. The door had not only all its parts entire, but was embellished with mouldings and a pediment. I gathered from these tokens that this was the abode not only of rural competence and innocence, but of some beings raised by education and fortune ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... into gold;" and he hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... side. We invited some friends over from La Chatre, and made fools of ourselves in a hundred thousand ways; as, for instance, dressing up as peasants in the evening and disguising ourselves so well as not to recognize each other. Madame Duplessis was charming in a red petticoat; Ursule, in a blue blouse and a big hat was a most comical fellow; Casimir, got up as a beggar, had some halfpence given him in all good faith; Stephane, whom I think you know, as a spruce peasant, made believe to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... down, giving her attention to an inch of kilted silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... stepped into the room in silence, threw herself on a chair, and crossed her legs. In her lace and velvet, with a good display of smooth black stocking and of snowy petticoat, and with the refined profile of her face and slender plumpness of her body, she showed in singular contrast to the big, black, intellectual satyr by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... XV., vicious, selfish and incapable, always tied to the petticoat and caprices of some new mistress, and the unfortunate Nicholas II., well-intentioned, and almost fanatically religious, the affectionate father and the devoted husband, no comparison is possible, except as regards their limitations for the ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... descend from their mourning-coaches and relax their venerable knees. These members alone still testify to the traditional splendour of the princes of the Church; for as they advance the lifted black petticoat reveals a flash of scarlet stockings and makes you groan at the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... experienced a sort of delirium of movement once the swing of the melody took hold of her, and at such moments, despite her uncommon size, the woman became animated with a wild dignity and grace. Now, with head thrown back and face uplifted, her crimson petticoat flashing in the firelight, she danced like something wild, till she could dance no more, and Done took her in his arms and half carried her to the log, where he fanned her gallantly with his cabbage-tree, while the audience cheered again ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the gold rings in his ears danced, and then he went up the little ladder through the hatchway, to stand half out for a few minutes giving orders, while we had a good look at the lower part of his person, which was clothed in what would have been a stiff canvas petticoat, had it not been sewn up between his legs, so as to turn it into the fashion of a pair of trousers, worn over a pair ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... noontide, she having come forth her chamber in a white petticoat, with her hair twisted about her head, and being in act to wash her hands and face at a well that was in the courtyard of the mansion, it chanced that Calandrino came thither for water and saluted her familiarly. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... after our arrival, that we were all invited to witness a play called "Adam and Eve." Eve was personated by a pretty young girl known as Dolores Gomez, who, however, was dressed very unlike Eve, for she was covered with a petticoat and spangles. Adam was personated by her brother—the same who has since become somewhat famous as the person on whom is founded the McGarrahan claim. God Almighty was personated, and heaven's occupants seemed very human. Yet the play was pretty, interesting, and elicited universal applause. All ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... on the threshold looking round, and I saw that she had a shawl on her head and a milk-pitcher in her hand, and that her feet and ankles were bare. There was a great rent in her coarse stuff petticoat, and the hand which held the shawl together was brown and dirty. More I did not see: for, supposing her to be a neighbour stolen in, now that the house was quiet, to get some milk for her child or the like, I took no farther heed of her. I turned to the fire again ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... sorely lugg'd and torn, It does your visage more adorn 170 Than if 'twere prun'd, and starch'd, and lander'd, And cut square by the Russian standard. A torn beard's like a tatter'd ensign, That's bravest which there are most rents in. That petticoat about your shoulders 175 Does not so well become a souldier's; And I'm afraid they are worse handled Although i' th' rear; your beard the van led; And those uneasy bruises make My heart for company to ake, 180 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of burning curiosity. The widow's little feet tripped quickly, her long black skirt swung out; as she turned the corner there was not only a sudden revelation of her pretty ankles, but, what was more startling, a dazzling flash of frilled and laced petticoat, which at once convinced every woman in the room that the act had been premeditated for days! Yet even that criticism was presently forgotten in the pervading intoxication of the music and the movement. The younger people fell into it with wild rompings, whirlings, and clasping of hands ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... reached Mr. Ambrose's pretty old red brick house, when he found himself face to face with the vicar's wife. She presented an imposing appearance, as usual; her grey skirt, drawn up a little from the mud, revealed a bright red petticoat and those stout shoes which she regarded as so essential to health; she wore moreover a capacious sealskin jacket and a dark bonnet with certain jet flowers, which for many years had been regarded by the inhabitants of Billingsfield ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... sank into it, clasping her two hands behind her head and gazing at the ceiling, her thoughts wandered in dreams—a crowd of little ambitious thoughts passed through her brain like drifting clouds across the sky—and while with the top of her foot she again beat her nervous march on the hem of her petticoat, her lips, the lips whose fever had been taken away by Vaudrey, still preserved the strange turn of the corners that indicated the unsatiated person who sees, however, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... me the familiarity of the King. In the middle of the night, Madame came into my chamber, en chemise, and in a state of distraction. "Here! Here!" said she, "the King is dying." My alarm may be easily imagined. I put on a petticoat, and found the King in her bed, panting. What was to be done?—it was an indigestion. We threw water upon him, and he came to himself. I made him swallow some Hoffman's drops, and he said to me, "Do not make any noise, but go ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bought in a great store of bread, salt, meat, and stock-fish: item, of clothes, seeing that I provided what was needful for us three throughout the winter from the cloth-merchant. Moreover, for my daughter I bought a hair-net and a scarlet silk bodice, with a black apron and white petticoat, item, a fine pair of earrings, as she begged hard for them; and as soon as I had ordered the needful from the cordwainer we set out on our way homewards, as it began to grow very dark; but we could not carry nearly all we had bought. Wherefore we were ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... need it for your shoulders, you need it for your legs; for being without hose, and with nought but those sandals, you must be freezing. We will walk up and down here, for a bit, and do you wrap it round your legs, like a Highlander's petticoat. When we have tired ourselves, we will lie down and try to get a sleep, for ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... not like the dusky ghosts that wander through the pale-blue mists of Bloomsbury. Here comes a buxom water-carrier, in her orange petticoat and sage-green shawl, who has the two copper cans at the end of the long piece of wood poised on her shoulders, pretty nearly filled to the brim. Then a couple of the gayer gondoliers in white ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... you see,' said Mr. Beverly. 'Deducting the tax, there you are scaled down again.' He pencilled some swift calculations. 'There,' said he. And I nearly understood them. 'Now I'm not here to stop your buying that sort of petticoat and canary-bird wafer,' continued Mr. Beverly. 'It's the regular trustee move, and nobody could criticise you if you made it. It's what I call thoughtless safety, and it brings you about 3 1-2 per cent, ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... the cup he held in his hand on the ground, and as it broke into small fragments, with a crash, it spattered Hsi Hseh's petticoat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... it, and in case the Queen might ask questions and laughingly desire to see her latest present from home, she slit off the sailcloth, which she hid in the coffer, and, unfolding the coil of rope, she wound it round and round her body, under her satin petticoat. Luckily she was tall, and very slender, and no one, unless they examined her very closely, would notice the difference in her figure. Then, taking up a great duffle cloak which she used when riding out in dirty weather, she made her way to ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... wore de Yankee flag under her dress like a petticoat when de 'federates come raidin'. Other times she wore it top de dress. When dey hears de 'federates comin' de white folks makes us bury all de gold and de silver spoons out in de garden. Old massa, he in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... all their fine linen; and nothing but dress was talked about for days together. "I," said the eldest, "shall put on my red velvet dress, with my point-lace trimmings." "And I," said the younger sister, "shall wear my usual petticoat, but shall set it off with my gold brocaded train and my circlet of diamonds." They sent for a clever tire-woman to prepare the double rows of quilling for their caps, and they purchased a quantity of fashionably cut patches. They called ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... valuable as any that had swum the stream. This thought was put into her head by seeing something occasionally flap out upon the surface of the muddy water, as if it were spread out below. It looked to her like the tail of a coat, or the skirt of a petticoat. She was just about to fish it up with her paddle, when it occurred to her that it might be the clothing of a drowned person. She shrank back at the thought, and in the first terror of having a dead body so near her, called Oliver's name. He did not hear; ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... kilts, and trousers underneath. And Grandma was telling me this morning that as soon as Daddy was out of her sight he would take off his kilt and go about in his blouse and trousers. So probably he considered the kilt a petticoat ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... lie down between two warriors, contrived to loosen her thongs and make her escape. She struck for the canebrake, then for the river, and to conceal her trail resolved to descend it. It was deep wading, and the current was so rapid she had to fill her petticoat with gravel to steady herself. She soon, however, recovered confidence, returned to shore, and finally reached the still smoking homestead about dark next evening. A few neighbors well armed had just buried the dead; the last ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... but orris-root; but she puts it everywhere about her—in the hem of her petticoat, in the lining of her dress. She lives, one might say, in the middle of a sachet. The thing that will please me most when I am married will be to have no limit to my perfumes. Till then I have to satisfy ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Commandments, though the clergyman had not gone to the altar, and once in the course of the sermon, Captain Carbonel was impelled to stand up and look over the edge of the pew, when he beheld a battle royal going on over a length of string, between a boy in a blue petticoat and one in a fustian jacket. At the unwonted sight, the fustian-clad let go, and blue petticoat tumbled over backwards, kicking up a great pair of red legs, grey socks, and imperfect but elephantine ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wear Kid's new pearl necklace and pink scarf, and my silk stockings and slippers—if you can get 'em on—and I think Conny left a lace petticoat that came back from the laundry too late ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... cheeks. The ladies have generally interesting countenances, with good eyes and teeth, and a profusion of black hair. The walking-dress of females of all ranks is the saya y manto. The saya consists of a petticoat of velvet, satin, or stuff, generally black or of a cinnamon tint, plaited in very small folds. It sits close to the body, and shows the shape to advantage. At the bottom it is so narrow that the wearer can only make ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... quivered as she said it, she busied herself in taking down her hair to brush for the night. Her sleeves were tight and hindered, and she took off her dress and folded it across the back of a chair carefully, and finished braiding her hair in her petticoat. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... her head. The style of her clothes was slightly behind the fashion, just enough to suggest conservatism and age. She carried a little silver-bound bag in one nicely gloved hand; with the other she held daintily out of the dust of the platform her dress-skirt. A glimpse of a silk frilled petticoat, of slender feet, and ankles delicately slim, was visible before the onslaught of the wind. Jane Carew made no futile effort to keep her skirts down before the wind-gusts. She was so much of the gentlewoman that she could be gravely oblivious ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I sold a yellow and white Damask, lin'd with a Cherry and blew Sattin, and a Goslin green Petticoat to Mrs. Winifred Widgeon i'the Peak, that marry'd Squire Hog o' Darby,—'twas her ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... said to her, "Undress yourself—I allow you." Then Talia began to undress, and as she took off each garment she uttered an exclamation of grief; and when she had stripped off her cloak, her gown, and her jacket, and was proceeding to take off her petticoat, they seized her and were dragging her away. At that moment the King came up, and seeing the spectacle he demanded to know the whole truth; and when he asked also for the children, and heard that his stepmother had ordered them to be ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... "Mackenzie," for which we had been steering all the morning, was six miles further on; so that when we left them about 2 o'clock (amidst many expressions of regret; they repeated to us several times how delighted they were seeing ladies, not having seen a petticoat since they came up last spring), we had to wander many a mile before finding either the ford or the farm. As it was, we mistook the ford and had to cross and recross the river three times, which we, in our buggy, didn't at all appreciate; the banks were so steep we felt we ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... that shine like silver; they are the herring, petit Jacques, it is of those that we live a great deal. Down zen come ze women to ze shore and zey—they—are dressed beautiful, ah! so beautiful! A red petticoat,—sometimes a blue, but I love best the red, striped wiz white, and over this the dress turned up, a la blanchisseuse. A handkerchief round their neck, and gold earrings,—ah! long ones, to touch their neck; ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... go to market in the moon, And buy some dreams together, Slip on your little silver shoon, And don your cap and feather; No need of petticoat or stocking— No one up there ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... women of Bundelkhand wear the same costume, a full loin-cloth, as those of the Jubbulpore district. North of the Jumna an ordinary petticoat is generally worn. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... you I was devilish lucky not to strike myself. When I entered this apartment I shone "with all the pomp and prodigality of brandy and water," as the poet Gray has in another place expressed it. Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy- piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle—not a man, sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I am sure. Temulentia, quoad me ipsum, brevis colligo est. I sit and eat, sir, in a London fog. I should bring ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the logs that were brought to us, as we soon discovered, were not the soft wood grown for consumption in Parisian hotels; the logs that warmed our toes in Orelay were dense and hard as iron, and burned like coal, only more fragrantly, and very soon the bareness of the room disappeared; a petticoat, as Doris had said, thrown over a chair gives an inhabited look to a room at once; and the contents of her dressing-case, as I anticipated, took the room back to one hundred years ago, when some great ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... deliberately, one dainty, slippered foot, with its crossed black ribbons about the slender ankle, just leaving the stair below, and showing the arch of the aristocratic instep. Her gown was blue and she held it back just enough for the stiff white frill of her petticoat to peep below. Well she read the admiration in the eyes below her. Admiration was Kate's life: she thrived upon it. She ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... not, nor wrong yourself, To make a bondmaid and a slave of me; That I disdain; but for these other gawds, Unbind my hands, I'll pull them off myself, Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat; Or what you will command me will I do, So well I know ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... says, that the woman seemed to be habited in a brown coloured petticoat, waistcoat, and a white hood; such a one as his wife's sister usually wore, and that her countenance looked extreamly pale and wan, with her teeth in sight, but no gums appearing, and that her physiognomy ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... pp. 89, 194 (really 'chief, principal,' from shero, 'head'); sicovar, 'eternally' (si covar ajaw, p. 90 'so the thing is'); sos, 'who' ( 'what's'); talleno, 'woollen, flannel' (mistaking talleno chofa, p. 93, 'under-skirt' for 'flannel petticoat'), etc. Perhaps the most amusing instance of all is the word hinjiri in 'Lavengro.' When Mrs. Herne hanged herself, Petulengro says that she 'had been her own hinjiri,' {0z3} and the word is explained by Professor Knapp as the feminine of hinjiro, 'executioner,' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Miss Ethel if I threw anything up at her window," said Caroline, speaking quickly. "I didn't know if it might give her a turn, after that fall of hers. And you can't waken Mrs. Bradford. She wraps her head up in her petticoat and ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... I knows all that; but that lace was a heap more valuable than that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she passed a feather duster over the table and rolled ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... caressingly about her neck and carried to Alden a subtle fragrance of another sort. Her turquoise-blue silk kimono, delicately embroidered in gold, was open at the throat and fastened at the waist with a heavy golden cord. Below, it opened over a white petticoat that was a mass of filmy lace ruffles. Her tiny feet peeped out beneath the lace, clad in pale blue silk stockings and fascinating Chinese slippers that turned up at ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... telling himself that, there came to the door a loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door, Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in a petticoat ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of family life struck Mr. Twist with a sudden great impatience. After that large life over there in France, to come back to this dreary petticoat lying, this feeling one's way about among tender ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... time the dance, in its twisting and turning, disclosed a soiled stocking, the typical Jewish features of a street pedlar of sponges, red fingers protruding from black mitts, a swarthy moustached face, an under-petticoat soiled with the mud of night before last, a second-hand-skirt, stiff and crumpled, of flowered calico, the cast-off finery of some ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Petticoat-patriots sans bas, and Sans-culottes, Rampant in rags and hunger-toothed uproar Paris the proud. With Jacobin clubs they club The head of France till all her brains are out. Hired murder hunts in packs. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... with Japan, had been held, not unjustly, to blame for the disasters of the war, and even before its conclusion the young emperor was adjured by some of the most responsible among his own subjects to shake himself free from the baneful restraint of "petticoat government," and himself take the helm. In the following years a reform movement, undoubtedly genuine, though opinions differ as to the value of the popular support which it claimed, spread throughout the central and southern provinces ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it into careful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothes closet. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. And then, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue bird machine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinct footsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... had nothing to do but politely show them in, and gasped next moment with upraised arms over what was nearly a fall in crockery. When Janet sped to the door her "spleet new" merino dress fell, to the pulling of a string, over her home-made petticoat, like the drop-scene in a theatre, and rose as promptly when she returned to slice the bacon. The murmur of admiration that filled the room when she entered with the minister was an involuntary tribute to the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... you are! Take the fifty crowns in the first instance, and write the memoirs. When you have finished them, you will decline to publish them in your aunt's name, imbecile! Madame de Montbauron, with her hooped petticoat, her rank and beauty, rouge and slippers, and her death upon the scaffold, is worth a great deal more than six hundred francs. And then, if the trade will not give your aunt her due, some old adventurer, or some shady countess ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... petticoat for that truth. If thou hast most of these phrases, let me die but I could give away all my wardrobe, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... or if those you send are not what they ought to be, I think the desk will cry shame upon you. And if you ever go an hour with a hole in your stocking, or a tear in your dress, or a string off your petticoat, I hope the sight of your work-box will ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... mentions the Buraet women as wearing two tails, and fillets with jewels, and the men as having one queue only.] When in full dress, the woman's costume is extremely ornamental and picturesque; besides the shirt and petticoat she wears a small sleeveless woollen cloak, of gay pattern, usually covered with crosses, and fastened in front by a girdle of silver chains. Her neck is loaded with silver chains, amber necklaces, etc., and her head adorned with a coronet of scarlet cloth, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to bed at first candlelight as though I were a babe; she maketh me to wear a woollen petticoat in winter-time, though I was not brought up to't; and she will never let me drink more than one mug of cider at a sitting, and I nigh eighty, and needing on't ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... penetrebla. Pest pesto. Pester enui, turmenteti. Pestiferous pesta. Pestilence pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. Pewter stano. Phantom apero, fantomo. Pharmacist farmaciisto. Pharmacy (place) farmaciejo, apoteko. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... holds his own at lessons, I trow; but he pretends to have such a horror of us wild Irish, and to wonder not to find us eating potatoes with our fingers, and that I don't wear a petticoat over my head instead of a bonnet, in what he calls the classical Carthaginian ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chill to the very marrow of the bones. Often in mid-winter the scant-skirted French calico gowns were made with short elbow sleeves and round, low necks, and the throat and shoulders were lightly covered with thin lawn neckerchiefs or dimity tuckers. The flaunting hooped-petticoat of another decade was worn with a silk or brocade sacque. A thin cloth cape or mantle or spencer, lined with sarcenet silk, was frequently the only covering for the shoulders. In examining the treasured contents of old wardrobes, trunks, and high-chests, and in reading the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... see your minister's wife in your mornin' cap, nor your petticoat neither for that matter," said Grandma to herself, looking down at her short gown. So she concluded to put on her Sunday-go-to-meeting gown, as she called her best dress. This took her so long, because ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... either a little boy or little girl in which to play. Even when they are older and a skirt distinguishes the girl, bloomers or knickerbockers of the same material beneath, approach the ideal of dress for comfort, health and decency more nearly than white petticoat and drawers. Indeed, the skirt is best when it is a part of a blouse, which is also a suitable dress for a boy. A child should never be tortured with a large or stiff hat. The heads of children come up to the middles of men and women, and such a hat ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... furniture much too big for it; a huge chest of drawers, of oak with brass fittings; a broken-down couch as big as a bed, covered with a dingy shawl, a man's greatcoat, a red flannel petticoat; a table cumbered with the remains of wretched meals never cleared away, and the poor cooking utensils ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... talk, and several members threatened to resign. At the evening session J. S. Morton, W. E. Moore, A. F. Salisbury and L. L. Bowen came into the House and proposed to present General Larimer with a petticoat, which did not tend much to allay the excitement. The General, of course, was justly indignant at such treatment, as were also the other members. The proposal was characteristic of the prime mover in it, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... drew our swords and arched a way for her, and she picked up her silken petticoat and ran under, laughing, one hand pressed to her ears to shut ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... has sloped perhaps I may sail in consort. The walks won't be swept, of course, and that dainty scarlet petticoat will look ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... absurd for them to dress up as we do. The king's dress on grand occasions was a crown of gay-coloured feathers, and a sort of Scotch kilt of the same material, with a cloak over his shoulder. The queen also wore a petticoat, and so did little Chickchick, but not a rap else, nor did they seem to think it was necessary. The king's name was Rumfiz, and her majesty was called Pillow. They were an amiable couple, and remarkably fond of each other. When I observed ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... last evening I caught one of the slaves just as he was going to work on the branches; but how could I get at the black rascal through the thorns? It was to make a peep-hole for curious eyes, or for spies, for the Patriarch knows how to make use of a petticoat; but I will be even with them! Do you go on, pray, as if you had seen and heard nothing; I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with all my Heart, and every thing else that daggles a Petticoat; except four generous Whores, with Betty Sands at the Head of 'em, who were drunk with my Lord Rake and I, ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... down for Mr. Alden's tray," she announced primly, "if he should speak will you call me?" Felicia nodded. She stitched steadily. She was putting new rows of lace on a torn petticoat, and so intent was she in joining the pattern of the lace that she forgot to watch Babiche. That inquisitive one was exploring, sniffing cautiously as she approached the invalid's bed but a second later she was trotting hastily back ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... "I'll take off my petticoat and put it on this ice-pile. We can see it from there, and when we get back here ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... room in dainty lace petticoat, and little else, was young Beryl, superintending her aunt's feverish struggles with paint and powder-jars, frocks, petties, silk stockings, socks, and wraps, snatching these articles from a voluminous wardrobe and tossing them, haphazard, into a monumental dressing-basket, already half-full ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... as well as literature, how often have we risen from those tables, to pursue together the not too swiftly flying petticoat, through the terrestrial firmament of shining streets, aglow with the midnight sun of pleasure, a-dazzle with eyes brighter far than the city lamps—passionate pilgrims of the morning star! Ah! we ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne |
