"Wainscot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the front door, and knocked; but as she could only just reach the high knocker, she 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, and 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 a long, low ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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. ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... structure and the beauty of the situation, the Prince, having proceeded down a long corridor, opened the door into a small chamber, which he introduced to Vivian as his cabinet. The furniture of this room was rather quaint, and not unpleasing. The wainscot and ceiling were painted alike, of a light green colour, and were richly carved and gilt. The walls were hung with green velvet, of which material were also the chairs, and a sofa, which was placed under ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... coachman stopt; she look'd, and swore The rascal had mistook the door: At coming in, you saw her stoop; The entry brush'd against her hoop: Each moment rising in her airs, She curst the narrow winding stairs: Began a thousand faults to spy; The ceiling hardly six feet high; The smutty wainscot full of cracks: And half the chairs with broken backs: Her quarter's out at Lady-day; She vows she will no longer stay In lodgings like a poor Grisette, While there are houses to be let. Howe'er, to keep her spirits up, She sent for company to sup: When all the while you might ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... have a brain to play on, like the musician with a piano. Now we have to do as well as we can without any such mechanical advantage as a brain of cellular tissue"—here he suddenly took the form of a white lady with a black sack over her head, and disappeared in the wainscot. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... restless-patterned 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 is very effective, however, if not too low.) A single large rug, ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... 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, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... within the 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, He cometh not," ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... my journal; there was nothing more to add, and so, sanding the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola, where it should soon ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... arched doorway, and two windows protected by thick iron bars. Nothing could be more simple than the interior of this quiet dwelling, as was sufficiently shown by the furniture of a pretty large room on the ground floor. The walls of this apartment were lined with old gray wainscot; the tiled floor was painted red, and carefully polished; curtains of white calico shaded ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... again as I did, had it not been for her brother. He was to go to school, in about three days time, so was determined to have one more good piece of fun (as he called it) before he went. He procured a squirt, and filled it full of ink; he then bored a hole in the wainscot of the room where he was, quite through into the room where I was. All things being prepared, he waited till his sister came to let me out, which, as soon as she had done, he let off the whole in my face; at least attempted to do it, for I believe Sally and I were pretty equal ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous
... 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 History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... 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 of the heart the play of the light ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... square hall, 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
... 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
... boards, to which are fastened about twenty small tablets provided with hooks, from which are suspended the telephones. The latter are connected with the underground conductors by extensible wires which project from the wooden wainscot of which we have just spoken, so that it is very easy for the auditors to put the telephones ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soothed her, and hoped that Jean's compassion might be as strong as her own. Had she not been taken up with Perine, she would have more quickly caught the impatient scratching like a mouse in the wainscot, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... 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 ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... candles burned longer in the castle itself, where the Earl had been giving a banquet to his guests, of the best that his estates could afford. Nevertheless, it was yet long before midnight when the cheep of the mouse in the wainscot, the restless stir or muffled snore of a crowded sleeper in the guardroom, was the only sound to be heard from dungeon to banner-staff of the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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 it to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... became audible to them, as if it breathed. They heard the delicate fall of the ashes on the hearth, and the flame of the lamp jerking as the oil sputtered in the burnt wick. Their nerves shook to the creeping, crackling sounds that came from the wainscot, infinitely minute. A tongue of fire shot hissing from the coal. It seemed to them a violent and terrifying thing. The breath of the house passed over them in thick smells of earth and must, as the fire's heat sucked ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... 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 rooms 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 a chimneypiece was of marble. A slab of common free-stone and fire irons which had cost from three to four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best-apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a desperate yawn, while Lesbia smiled her languid smile over 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 the horses in ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... further back! disregard me! Look! that last arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently I did not ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Just about. A horrid little mouse that keeps scratching at the wainscot and creeping about the room ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... their absence to examine more minutely the ruins of Waverly Hall. The thickness of one of the remaining walls struck him as singular; it was an abutment behind the chimney of what had been the banqueting-room, the wainscot of which was left in this place entire. Sedley inspected every pannel, and at last found one which slided, and afforded him an entrance into a small but perfect apartment, lighted from the ceiling, and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... antiquities, I sat down upon 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 ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will indeed be more elegant; though that is to be rather plain than rich, as well in its wainscot as furniture, and to be new-floored. The dear gentleman has already given orders, and you will soon have workmen to put them in execution. The parlour-doors are to have brass-hinges and locks, and to shut as close, he tells them, as a watch-case: "For who knows," said he, "my dear, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... broad. It was wainscotted to the height of four feet from the ground, probably with oak, but the wood had been so larded with dark blue paint that its texture could not be discovered. Above this wainscot the walls were covered with a fascinating paper. The background of this was a greenish-blue, and upon it a party of red-coated riders in three-cornered hats blew large horns while they hunted a stag. This pattern, striking enough in itself, became immeasurably ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... so at least the Columbus people proudly thought. The structure, five stories in height, and of imposing proportions, stood at one corner of the central public square, where were the Capitol building and principal stores. The lobby was large and had been recently redecorated. Both floor and wainscot were of white marble, kept shiny by frequent polishing. There was an imposing staircase with hand-rails of walnut and toe-strips of brass. An inviting corner was devoted to a news and cigar-stand. Where the staircase curved upward the clerk's desk and offices had been ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... thought 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 in my room ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... — N. base, basement; plinth, dado, wainscot; baseboard, mopboard^; bedrock, hardpan [U.S.]; foundation &c (support) 215; substructure, substratum, ground, earth, pavement, floor, paving, flag, carped, ground floor, deck; footing, ground work, basis; hold, bilge. bottom, nadir, foot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that so by a mechanical process, if in no other way, the flesh might be subdued. The beds of the monks were arranged along the walls of the dormitory, at regular intervals; and in some monasteries a wainscot partition separated the sleepers from each other, thus making for each a little cubicle, with a low door leading into it. The broad passage, running from end to end, between the sleeping-places in the dormitory was strewn ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... is marvellously well preserved. The panelled wainscot, about three feet high, is of chestnut. A magnificent Spanish leather with figures in relief, the gilding now peeled off or reddened, covers the walls. The ceiling is of wooden boards artistically joined and painted and gilded. The gold is scarcely noticeable; it is in the same condition as that ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles from Arbraeth (Aberbrathock), the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom where the mason-work ceases to be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the people's provisions, ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... son was lying half-asleep upon his bed, with wise dreams coming and going under the circle of his gold crown, when a mouse ran out of the wainscot and came and jumped up upon the couch. The poor mouse had turned quite white with fear and horror, and was trembling in every limb as it cried its news into the king's ear. 'O king's son,' it said, 'get up ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... He plucked forth his revolver with quivering fingers, levelled it at his guest, and pulled upon the trigger. The bullet sang across the room, passed through armchair and screen into the wainscot beyond. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... 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 ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... perpetuate The tuneful Strains and witty Flights, Of him that Studies while he sh - - ts) Decree all Landlords, thro' the Nation, Shall lay (on Pain of Flagellation) In some meet Corner of their Dark Hole A cuspidated Piece of Charcoal; Or, where the Walls are cas'd with Wainscot, A Piece of Chalk with equal Pains cut; That those who labour at both Ends, To ease themselves, and serve their Friends, May not, reluctant, go from Sh - - t, And leave no Relict of their Wit, For want of necessary Tools To impart the Proles of their ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... complete without the rats. In stories of ghosts and murderers they scamper through the echoing rooms, and the gnawing of their teeth is heard behind the wainscot, and their gleaming eyes peer through the holes in the worm-eaten tapestry, and they scream in shrill, unearthly notes in the dead of night, while the moaning wind sweeps, sobbing, round the ruined turret towers, and passes ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... here—this nineteenth century Monsieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable as his ancestor of the Grand Siecle had been passionate and turbulent. After living in the Comte (La Franche Comte) like a wood-louse in the crack of a wainscot, he had married the heiress of the celebrated house of Rupt. Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman's coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles are Swiss) ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... what soothsayers I would consult?" . . . "The little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in my wainscot; the bird in frost and snow that pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of Glory, and of infirmities. A message went to his grand house in Pall Mall, and he presently waited on my Grandmother. He was closeted with her for an hour, when the tap of my Grandmother's cane against the wainscot summoned Mistress Talmash, and she, doing her errand, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 our own ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... to is that caused by a mouse nibbling at the wainscot; and I venture to say so much in a tone of the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... 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: Miss Gordon's bed was carefully examined, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Cloysters," says our authority, "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 Mary, and S. John, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... such an immense number of closets, and closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries of "Rinaldo Rinaldini." Beside which there are immensely curious bits of old furniture—so black and heavy, and with such curious carving!—and you think of the old wainscot in the "Children of the Abbey". You think you will never tire of rambling about in its odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have to tell of it when you go back to ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... enthusiasm 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her sister, she found her standing by the deep recessed window, the curtains of which were drawn back, resting her head on her hand against the wainscot, and gazing abroad into ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... harmless, if you are not, the consequences be upon your own head." As he spoke he pointed the pistol at her heart. With a courage worthy a better cause, she darted by him and tried one or two of the wainscot panels as if seeking a private spring, which Davy who, was fully awake by this time perceiving, sprang up, and caught hold of her, grasping her tightly; she wrestled with him with the strength of a lioness, and but for papa's help, she ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... 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 his head and taking off his fox-skin cap with his left, he ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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 boards from the roof, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... garden toward the high-road, to see if I were not coming from the 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 ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... taste and feeling for Gothic architecture. The old apartments, splendid enough in extent and proportion, are paltry in finishing. Instead of being lined with heart of oak, the palace of the British King is hung with paper, painted wainscot colour. There are some fine paintings and some droll ones; among the last are those of divers princes of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of which Queen Charlotte was descended. They are ill-coloured, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... which belonged to the box, as they were now of the box itself; two or three common books of practice; a jar of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom, a carpet trodden to shreds but still clinging with the tightness of desperation to its tacks—these, with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the smoke-discoloured ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were among the most prominent decorations of the office of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... few upper panes of old stained glass; the faded familiar pictures on the wall; these all awoke in him memories of his earliest years. In the corner of the room, hardly to be distinguished from the wainscot, was the high narrow door communicating with his mother's chamber, through which he had often, how often! seen her come in softly, on tiptoe, to take a look at him. His own children, too, had slept there; and it was here that he had last seen his little son and daughter before ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... unknown shade—that wandering of the spirit—whither?—that cold, cold creeping dread—of what? As he entered the house, he met his confidential servant. He gave him orders respecting the flight of the morrow, and then retired into the chamber where he slept. It was an antique and large room: the wainscot was of oak; and one broad and high window looked over the expanse of country which stretched beneath. He sat himself by the casement in silence—he opened it: the dull air came over his forehead, not with a sense of freshness, but, like the parching atmosphere of the east, charged with a weight ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... after all, a great bore. No person will be admitted into my sanctum, and I can have the door locked during my absence. 3dly, I expect Mr. Bullock here every day, and should be glad to have the drawings for the dining-room wainscot, as he could explain them to the artists who are to work them. This (always if quite convenient) would be the more desirable, as I must leave this place in a fortnight at farthest,—the more 's the pity,—and, consequently, the risk of blunders will be considerably ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and pulled up his pantaloons, and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic loins; anon he gave it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window or wainscot, expressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a laundress's bill instead—made a dart at Blomfield's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a right line ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... my wainscot last night, and plunged me in horrible dilemma: for I am equally idiotic over the idea of the creature trapped or free, and I saw sleepless nights ahead of me till I had secured a change of ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... a little mouse," he thought to himself, as though he were seeing her for the first time, "preparing to run off into the wainscot" He was conscious, too, of her quiet clothes and shy preoccupied timidity—all of it he seemed to see for the first time, a disguise for some purpose as secret, perhaps, as ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Whether we may not, for the same use, manufacture divers things at home of more beauty and variety than wainscot, which is imported ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... with an oak wainscot; and whenever in summer months the air is sharp enough, as on the present occasion, a fire helped to light it up; which fire, being chiefly wood, made a pleasant broad flicker on panel and ceiling, and yet did not make the room ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... looked round the old wainscot walls with unusual interest; she thought it would be a fine thing to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I, but 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
... stately and well-ordered a home as theirs, the old castle still testifying to the love of beauty in its ancient owners." Dudley's excuse was, however, accepted, "that it was for the warmth of his house, and the charge was but little, being but clapboards nailed to the wall in the form of wainscot." ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... heard," continued Conrad, "or read of those wonderful persons, or, as you have been such a great traveller, have you yourself never stumbled upon such, whose eyes can pierce through a board, through wainscot and wall, nay down into the depths of the earth and into the heart ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... 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 those who were present prevented him. They ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... she contrived not to drink any of it, though she pretended to do so; and she was wakeful enough in the morning, and saw her husband passing out through a panel in the wainscot, though she kept her eyelids nearly closed. The next night she got a few drops of the sleepy posset that she saved the evening before put into her husband's night drink, and that made him sleep sound enough. She got up after midnight, passed through the panel, and found a beautiful brown bear's ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... for though there were now no bedesmen, and the houses themselves were fallen to decay, yet the little hall in which the inmates had once dined was still maintained, and served for our schoolroom. It was a long and lofty room, with a high wainscot all round it, a carved oak screen at one end, and a broad window at the other. A very heavy table, polished by use, and sadly besmirched with ink, ran down the middle of the hall with benches on either side of it for us to use; and a high desk for Mr. Glennie stood ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... 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 holes ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... 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
... little live lady mouse, and made a courtesy to the tailor! Then she hopped away down off the dresser, and under the wainscot. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... the savage world which it had been the pride of the naturalist's life to collect. Close where I stood yawned the open jaws of the fell anaconda, its lower coils hidden, as they rested on the floor below, by the winding of the massive stairs. Against the dull wainscot walls were pendent cases stored with grotesque unfamiliar mummies, seen imperfectly by the moon that shot through the window-panes, and the candle in the old woman's hand. And as now she turned towards me, nodding her signal to follow, and went on up the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... These forms are air—mere counterfeits Of my imaginous heart, as are the whirling Wainscot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... next him. The greater part read the newspapers, and no one ever disturbs another. The room is commonly on the ground floor, and you enter it immediately from the street; the seats are divided by wooden wainscot partitions. Many letters and projects are here written and planned, and many of those that you find in the papers are dated from some of these coffee-houses. There is, therefore, nothing incredible, nor very extraordinary, ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... habit of screaming when she saw a spider, an earwig, a beetle, a moth, or any kind of insect; and the sound of a mouse behind the wainscot of the room made her suppose she should die with fright. The persons with whom she lived used to pity her for being afraid, and that made her fond of the silly trick, so that she became worse daily, and kept the house in a constant tumult and uproar: for she would make ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... Three tall brass candlesticks shed a smoky light upon smoky walls, of what had once been sea-blue, covered with sailor-scrawls of foul anchors, lovers' sonnets, and ocean ditties. On one side, nailed against the wainscot in a row, were the four knaves of cards, each Jack putting his best foot foremost as usual. What ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Panelling. Wainscot of Fifteenth Century, with addition circa late Seventeenth Century, fitted on to it in angle of room in the Church House, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... 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
... 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, Butter, Salt, Sugar, Raisins, Pease, and Bacon; ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... a correct copy of the inscription. Part of these lines, in raised letters, now form a pannel in the wainscot at the end of the right-hand gallery, as the church is entered from the street. The mural monument of the Taylor's, composed of lead, gilt over, is still preserved: it is seen in Hogarth's print, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... infamous sharpers and noble cullies." The rake has lost all his recently acquired wealth, pulls off his wig and flings himself upon the floor in a paroxysm of fury and execration. In allusion to the burning of White's in 1733, flames are seen bursting from the wainscot, but the pre-occupied gamblers take no heed, even of the watchman crying "Fire!" To the left is seated a highwayman, with horse pistol and black mask in a skirt pocket of his coat. He is so engrossed in his thoughts that he does not notice the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... kind of camorra. Get a shyster; fight the devil with fire. What can a gentleman do in a justice's court? If the rats are behind the wainscot, don't stick your own hand into ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... come." Again the silence was broken, this time by a strange hurrying, rustling sound behind the wainscot, followed by a ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... 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 of being amongst the best dancers of the age. In a political line, perhaps, he ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... world,—that such a strange life was a part of the life, which seems to us who are living it now, so passionless and commonplace. It is only when I stand amid ruined castles, that look at me so mournfully, and behold the heavy armour of old knights, hanging upon the wainscot of Gothic chambers; or when I walk amid the aisles of some dusky minster, whose walls are narrative ofhoar antiquity, and whose very bells have been baptized, and see the carved oaken stalls in the choir, where so many generations of monks have ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... requisites of their art, seem to have an unfortunate knack at preserving likenesses. Heads powdered even whiter than the originals, laced waistcoats, enormous lappets, and countenances all ingeniously disposed so as to smile at each other, encumber the wainscot, and distress the unlucky visitor, who is obliged to bear testimony to the resemblance. When one sees whole rooms filled with these figures, one cannot help reflecting on the goodness of Providence, which thus distributes ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 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 adhered, are ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... furniture would derive but little pleasure from a minute description of my simple dwelling. It is dear to me for the same reason that they would hold it in slight regard. Its worm-eaten doors, and low ceilings crossed by clumsy beams; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, and gaping closets; its small chambers, communicating with each other by winding passages or narrow steps; its many nooks, scarce larger than its corner-cupboards; its very dust and dulness, are all dear to me. The moth ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... he looked out at the hole for the neck. There was a strong plank in front of the floored space, and against this he pressed his feet. The door- fittings were all broken off from the outer door, but there was a hurdle set up instead, and roughly secured. The wainscot that had once stretched across the hall was all broken down, both above and below the cross-beam. The beds were all pulled out of their places, and everything was ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... intense deep blue, 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 of settees and armchairs, similarly carved and gilded and ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Architecturally, this is an interesting interior; but the traveller who has not time to spend in musings will fail to see it in its original intention;—cold, severely plain, heavy, with perhaps too many arch-lines, but sober and simple. A futile wooden wainscot now surrounds the church and breaks its wall space, liberal coats of whitewash conceal the building material, and taking from the church the severity of its stone, give it an ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... of the earliest repairs of the Temple Church is given in "The New View of London": "Having narrowly escaped the flames in 1666, it was in 1682 beautified, and the curious wainscot screen set up. The south-west part was, in the year 1695, new built with stone. In the year 1706 the church was wholly new whitewashed, gilt, and painted within, and the pillars of the round tower wainscoted with a new battlement ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... we began to chat and smoke, which reminded me of those gulping mouths under the wainscot, and I leaned down to catch a glimpse of their rows of black fangs, thinking to ask Edmund for further explanation about them; but the sight gave me a shiver, and I felt the hopelessness of trying ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... inspection, that a flue could be run through the closet in your room into the rear one of the west chimneys. She thinks the hall must be freezing cold in winter, and caught eagerly at my idea that a blazing fire at one end would lighten the sombre effect of the oaken wainscot and lofty ceiling. I proposed to tear down the panelling, but she was horrified at the thought. I could not take more pride and interest in preserving the antique character of the home of my forefathers than does she. She ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... 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 ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... materials of which it is composed. I was told that it was "the Imperial Library in miniature,"—but with this difference, let me here add, in favor of Moelk—that it looks over a magnificently wooded country, with the Danube rolling its rapid course at its base. The wainscot and shelves are walnut tree, of different shades, inlaid, or dovetailed, surmounted by gilt ornaments. The pilasters have Corinthian capitals of gilt; and the bolder or projecting parts of a gallery, which surrounds the room, are covered with the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... recently 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 drawers and bottles ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... queer, quaint, picturesque room!" she went on, looking about her. "I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the wainscot, and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the ribs—nothing but ribs and darkness—I should think that ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 all are out, Reply discreetly, "To ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Hilliard and two Olivers or Oliviers, a father and son of French extraction, and by a Swiss named Petitot. A collection of miniatures by the Oliviers, including no less than six of Venitia, Lady Digby, had a similar fate to that of Holbein's drawings. The miniatures had been packed in a wainscot box and conveyed to the country-house in Wales of Mr Watkin Williams, who was a descendant of the Digby family. In course of time the box with its contents, doubtless forgotten, had been transferred to a garret, where it had lain undiscovered for, it has been supposed, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... the dark wainscot and timbered roof, The long tables, and the faces merry and keen; The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof, The Dons ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... last I could see him, and it was one of those spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing, his elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw his body forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his bent head. His hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders and hanging about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of the great men of the time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... for awhile I made my investigation. The angle of the room at the right side of the window was cut off by an oblique turn in the wainscot. I examined this carefully, and, on pressure, a small bit of the frame of the woodwork slid aside, and disclosed a key-hole. On removing my finger, it shot back to its place again, with a spring. So far I had interpreted my instructions successfully. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... may be hung against a wainscot, a small plummet affixed to it, and a line drawn at the precise spot it falls to. The plummet will be found to rise before rain, and fall when ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... do with was Vango's Spirit Thought Institute in St. Paul. I've told you before how ashamed I am of that. I left because there's some kinds of work I won't stand for. Well, he used a ceiling trap for his materializin'; though the wainscot is a sight better and more up-to-date in my experience. When he let it drop careless, in practicing before the seance, it used to make a noise like that. I fell asleep by-and-bye; and out of my dreams, which was troubled and didn't bring nothing definite, I got the general impression ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... lighted 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 ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... building; the operations, furthermore, implying 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 ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... 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, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... edition retracts his alteration, and maintains pannell'd to be the right reading, being a metaphor taken, he says, from a pannel of wainscot. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... ejaculation of "O heavens! I'm undone," suffered him, after a faint struggle, to make a lodgment upon the covered way of her bed. Her honour, however, was secured for the present, by a strange sort of knocking upon the wainscot, at the other end of the room, hard by the bed in which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... consider the difference 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 an Italian look with a grateful regard on the hill summits, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... constrained manner, sought their 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 ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... hall of the company. It consisted of a parlour (36 ft. by 14 ft.), with three chambers over it. The east side with fan glasses overlooked the garden, 72 ft. in length by 21 ft. wide. The west side was lined with wainscot. The actual hall adjoined, a fine room 30 ft. by 25 ft., with a gallery at the nether end, with a little parlour at the west end. A room for the Bedell, a kitchen with a vault under it, larder-rooms, buttery, and a little house ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 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
... in a little alcove near the fireplace. Before the oysters arrived, and Martin Cortright appeared to fill the fourth seat, she had completely relaxed, and was beaming at the brass jugs and pottery beakers ranged along a shelf above the dark wainscot, and at the general company, while the warmth from the fire logs gave her really a very pretty colour, and she began to question Martin as to who all these people, indicating the rapidly filling-up tables, were. But Martin ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... highly developed. His visible visits to the mess are rarer, but we overhear his conversation in his tunnels that open on our shelves, the patter of his pink feet across the canvas overhead, and the muscular squirming of his body in some tight place about the sandbag wainscot. Like a friendly dog he trots about your dug-out by night, bumping with trustful carelessness against the fragile legs of your rustic bed. You hear him crooning to himself or a pal, in his content—a placid, complacent little sound very different from the grating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... unaccountable noises after dark—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... amusement, hide-and-seek. They never 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
... otherwise an 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
... There is a sentinel stands at his door; and he has a few servants to wait on him. I was treated in a large dark lower room, which has but one small window. There were about 200 muskets hung up against the walls, and some pikes; no wainscot, hangings, nor much furniture. There was only a small old table, a few old chairs, and 2 or 3 pretty long forms to sit on. Having supped with him I invited him on board, and went off in my boat. ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... put into order, and secured in excellent wainscot presses, by order of the house of peers, in the year 1719 and 1720. Attendance is given at this office, and searches may be made from seven o'clock in the morning to eleven, and from one to five in the afternoon, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... and long and lofty. Its wainscot was somberly stained. Above the wainscot, the dull tapestried walls reached to a ceiling richly panelled. The center of this dark setting was a long table, glittering with china and crystal, bright with silver and ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... feet 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 ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... house that lay just on the skirt of the forest, so that there were woods on one side and fields on the other. She had a comfortable home behind the wainscot in the forester's dining-room, right under the window. And the window looked out on the woods; and then down at the bottom of the wall there was a very tiny hole, which the house-mouse was just able to squeeze through, so that she could slip into the woods and ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... be 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 Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... strong aversion to what was in his mind to do, and stood for a moment, listening intently, as though he expected to hear some sound. But the room was still, except for the faint biting of some small creature in the wainscot. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... marble, and fluted pilasters painted with ultramarine and veined with gold[914]. The Vicar of Leeds, writing to Ralph Thoresby in 1723, tells him that a pleasing surprise awaits his return, 'Our altar-piece is further adorned, since you went, with three flower-pots upon three pedestals upon the wainscot, gilt, and a hovering dove upon the middle one; three cherubs over the middle panel, the middle one gilt, a piece of open carved work beneath, going down towards the middle of the velvet.' If, however, the reader cannot ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... tree of 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 (and, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... On the hall wainscot just opposite hung his horse-pistols; and when he saw them, and that wasn't for a while—for though he was looking straight at them, he was staring, really, quite through the dingy wooden panel at quite other objects three hundred miles away—when he did see ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... door were driven hard home into the wainscot; the wedges underneath were tightly fixed. The bed, with bedding complete, was drawn against the entry. A second line of defence was thrown up of chairs, chest of drawers, book-case, and wash-stand. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... that! He retired—call it 'sulked in his tent,' if you like. His wife had to share his fortunes. He being slighted, she necessarily was shadowed. For a while she bore it contentedly enough; then began her mousy scratches to get into the room off the wainscot, without blame from him; she behaved according ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are stags' horns nailed up in it. When the door opens, you find yourself in the entrance-hall, which is, in fact, a complete museum of antiquities and other matters. It is, as described in Lockhart's Life of Scott, wainscoted with old wainscot from the kirk of Dumfermline, and the pulpit of John Knox is cut in two, and placed as chiffoniers between the windows. The whole walls are covered with suits of armor and arms, horns of moose deer, the head of a musk bull, etc. At your left hand, and close to the door, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... as the noise of a mouse in a wainscot. Jovannic wanted not so much to think as to dwell in the presence of his impressions. Those ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... 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 Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... the house with her face upon her folded arms, as she stood leaning against the wainscot, more audibly exprest her grief than any of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... as still as the mice in the old wainscot when they smelt Miss Latournelle's cat, whilst the ladies were in the parlour, for our teachers insisted on our being quiet; but as soon as we saw the coach bowling away, we all began to chatter, and to speak our thoughts concerning the occasion ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... stealthy steps and suppressed breath. The room was closely curtained, and a couple of night-lights shed their feeble and uncertain rays upon the objects within it. The height of the apartment, and the absorbing complexion of the dark oaken wainscot, here and there concealed by falls of tapestry, served to render such an illumination extremely inefficient. But Conrad knew that this must be the chamber of death, even before he was able to distinguish that an apparently light and youthful figure lay stretched ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... that said these words, and put them in the fire and burn them.—This terrified me greatly, and I was entirely broke of swearing.—Soon after this, as I was placing the china for tea, my mistress came into the room just as the maid had been cleaning it; the girl had unfortunately sprinkled the wainscot with the mop; at which my mistress was angry; the girl very foolishly answer'd her again, which made her worse, and she call'd upon God to damn her.—I was vastly concern'd to hear this, as she was a fine young lady, and very good to me, ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... is. It IS so absurd to be an engaged orphan and it IS so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about after one, like mice in the wainscot; and it IS so ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... was sent to Henry-street for some Madeira that Miss Burns fancied. On her return, not seeing the lady on the sofa, where an hour previous she had left her, she looked round the room and discovered her doubled up in a corner of the room with her face towards the wainscot, while Mr. Angus was asleep sitting in a chair covered by a counterpane. The evidence was most conflicting. Several witnesses declared Miss Burns was not pregnant, others that they believed she was. The medical ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... "caught". "But if I were," she says, "do you know what soothsayers I would consult?... The little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... bon gout. As she affected not the grandeur of a state with a canopy, she thought there was no offence in an elbow-chair. She had laid aside your carving, gilding, and Japan work as being too apt to gather dirt. But she never could be prevailed upon to part with plain wainscot and clean hangings. There are some ladies that affect to smell a stink in everything; they are always highly perfumed, and continually burning frankincense in their rooms. She was above such affectation, yet she never would lay aside the use of brooms ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... 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 ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... 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 ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... old inn-parlour Swimming with faces in a mist of smoke That up-curled, blue, from long Winchester pipes, While—like some rare old picture, in a dream Recalled—quietly listening, laughing, watching, Pale on that old black oaken wainscot floated One bearded oval face, young, with deep eyes, Whom Raleigh hailed ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... "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 struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... 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 ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Owen, wife of Judge Owen of the ——th District Court, was looking just at twilight of a June evening; but something in that picture, or its surroundings, did not seem to please her; for her comely though matronly face was drawn into an expression of displeasure, and the little mice about the wainscot, if any there were, might occasionally have heard her foot patting the floor with ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford |
