"Piece of furniture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Our work will make such a litter, and I should like things to be as tidy as possible. I am thinking," she continued, "we might have mother's great carved wardrobe in the recess behind the door. It is really a magnificent piece of furniture, and in a work-room it would not be so out of place; we could hang up the finished and unfinished dresses in it out of the dust. And we could have the little drawing-room chiffonnier between the windows for our pieces, and odds and ends in the cupboards. It ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... sin; and He knows that human being will suffer eternal agony? Why not leave him in the unconscious dust? What right has an infinite God to add to the sum of human agony? Suppose I knew that I could change that piece of furniture into a living, sentient human being, and I knew that that being would suffer untold agony forever. If I did it, I would be a fiend. I would leave that being in the unconscious dust. And yet we are told that we must believe such a ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... none in all that country poorer than Snowflower and her grandmother. A cat and two hens were all their live stock. Their bed was dry grass, and the only good piece of furniture in the cottage was a great armchair with wheels on its feet, a black velvet cushion, and many strange carvings of flowers and fairies ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... birthday, and makes them all scream and weep with joy. '"Hark ye, bursch!" exclaimed Jonas, who regarded him with fatherly delight, "thou seem'st to me almost too learned, too refined, and too elegant for Veit Jordan. What turner has cut so neat a piece of furniture out of so coarse a piece of timber?"' His stay, however, was short. M. and Mme Bellarme (his employer at Paris) 'had been loth, almost afraid, to let him go. The feeble state of health of the former ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... His rooms were provided with all those distinguished comforts and elegancies proper to a success that may any moment be interviewed. Needless to say, the walls had been decorated by Mr. Whistler, and there was not a piece of furniture in the room that had not belonged to this or that poet deceased. Priceless autograph portraits of all the leading actors and actresses littered the mantelshelf with a reckless prodigality; the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... proposed extension of meaning or not. According to the famous expression of Luther, 'Words are living creatures, having hands and feet.' When they cease to retain this living power of adaptation, when they are only put together like the parts of a piece of furniture, language becomes unpoetical, in ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... asked the old man, rising and selecting a chair at the opposite side of the table, and calmly lighting a fresh cigar, while he swung one leg across the corner of the solid piece of furniture. ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... star of honour, unless tampered with by fraud, would naturally be maintained in its original form. The setting of a necklace will probably be altered from generation to generation. The one, like a picture or a precious piece of furniture,—" ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... their vain struggle, and relied on theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives. This is the most remarkable fact that we have had occasion to notice; and yet we challenge the candid reader to call it in question. Now, as there cannot be any MORAL SELECTION in a mere dead piece of furniture—as the umbrella cannot be supposed to have an affinity for individual men equal and reciprocal to that which men certainly feel toward individual umbrellas—we took the trouble of consulting a scientific friend as to whether there was any possible ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... asleep in the squire's arms till his grandfather grew tired, and laid him down on the sofa: the large square-cornered yellow sofa upon which Mrs. Hamley used to sit, supported by pillows in a half- reclining position. Since her time it had been placed against the wall, and had served merely as a piece of furniture to fill up the room. But once again a human figure was lying upon it; a little human creature, like a cherub in some old Italian picture. The squire, remembered his wife as he put the child down. He thought of her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "caught hold;" and between them they managed to drag the cumbrous piece of furniture sufficiently far out of the recess in which it stood for the boy to slip behind. The half-high wainscoting had in one place dissolved partnership with the wall; and obeying an impulse for which he could never account, Aubrey dived behind, fishing out, among several odd leaves and dilapidated ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the operator took the sack in the tips of his fingers, and holding it aloft, walked up the runway to the stage where a cord hung from a screw-eye fastened in the ceiling above. The other end of the cord was attached to a piece of furniture on the stage. The manager now attached the black bag containing the envelopes to the end of this string, and then taking the other end, drew the bag up to the ceiling near the screw-eye, where it remained in ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... shuddered at the first hint, she received of her sister's desire to possess this piece of furniture; because she knew it was not to be purchased; and the lady's character, which was none of the most amiable in point of humanity and condescension, forbad all hopes of borrowing it for a season: she ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in an old piece of furniture that was a chest of drawers above and a bedstead below, and produced two little bundles, which she handed to her brother and sister. 'Mended and made up?' Clennam heard the sister ask in a whisper. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... notice of distraint on Frau Willmers, but had found her door locked. Suddenly he catches sight of the cupboard which seems familiar to him, whereupon he hurriedly leaves to convince himself that the valuable piece of furniture has been removed from Frau Willmers'. Meanwhile the Burgomaster arrives to ask for Gertrude's hand. He first tells her of Bertel's suit, and is rather taken aback upon the widow advising him to accept Bertel as a ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... an aggressive movement towards the divan which nothing could check. That piece of furniture was not exactly in the line of the open door. But Madame Leonie, coming back wrapped up in a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adele to hide her incriminating hair under, had a swift impression of her brother getting ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... withdrawing the senses and the powers of the soul from everything disturbing the soul's converse with God; in guarding against any too absorbing interest in worldly affairs, so that the mind is unmanageable and cannot be fixed on sacred things. St. Francis of Assisi, working at a piece of furniture before saying Terce, was, during the saying of that hour disturbed by the thought of his manual work. When he re-entered his cell he took the bit of work and threw it in the fire saying, "I wish to ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... hardly bothering to note its alien qualities. His body seemed to fit into the piece of furniture, as though it had ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a piece of furniture made of curly walnut which stood in the corner of the room. There were several books on the top of it—Gospel Tunes—Moody and Sankey, a Methodist Episcopal hymn book, and a glass case containing ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... conscience allowed him to take himself to his chamber. He was a man of no pursuits in his own house. But from ten in the morning till five, or often till six, in the evening, his mind was active in some work. It was not now all law, as it used to be. In the drawer of the old piece of furniture which stood just at the right hand of his own arm-chair there were various books hidden away, which he was sometimes ashamed to have seen by his clients,—poetry and novels and even fairy tales. For there was nothing Mr. Wharton could not read in his chambers, though there was ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Roth himself nor his worthy better half, formerly saleswoman in a shop, possessed the slightest knowledge of the art of manipulating such an instrument. But there was a story connected with this showy piece of furniture—a story that even now, years after the events themselves occurred, brought tears of rage to the eyes of the "Vice." To the young corporal of his own squadron who on Sunday afternoons strummed on the piano, he used to say in pathetic accents, that those "one year's volunteers"[9] had treated him ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... one edge to a depth of 1 in. and gather it at that point, also the lower edge when necessary. Sew on to the covered cardboards. Fasten them to the sides of the tray and basket with the smallest upholsterers' tacks. The product of your labor will be a very neat and useful piece of furniture. —Contributed by ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... pipes in the rack or to remove spurs and physical culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care upon a cannon ball, an antiquated eighteen or twenty-pounder, which reposed—most useful piece of furniture—in the middle of the hearth-rug, or to see to the comfortless electric radiator that took the place of a grate, I let these things be, and concentrated my attention on his papers which lay loose on desk ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... be beautiful, Nan, because it will be penetrated with the touch of your hand. Every piece of furniture will glow with that radiance. Gold and precious stones can have no such lustre. See, here I have planned to place your piano. There will be no music on earth like the songs those throbbing strings shall make to my soul when they quiver beneath the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... woman in the world, Roberto!" And she really felt herself to be so. Thoughtful love could have devised nothing more likely to bridge pleasantly and surely over the transition between the past and the coming life. Every fresh piece of furniture unpacked was a new wonder and a new delight. With her satin skirts tucked daintily clear of soil, and her mantilla wrapped around her head and shoulders, she went from room to room, interesting herself in every strip of carpet, and every yard of drapery. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... pattern. The rag carpet was put down, and the braided rugs laid on it. The old bedstead was set up in one corner and, having been well cleaned and polished with beeswax and turpentine, was really a handsome piece of furniture. On the washstand Sara placed a quaint old basin and ewer which had been Grandma Sheldon's. Ray had fixed up the table as good as new; Sara had polished the brass claws, and on the table she put the brass tray, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that she wasn't drunk, that she was sick, and that she prayed the Almighty on her knees to strike her dead if she had a bottle in the house. Aye, and the very stool she knelt on would be a wine case with a red cloth stuck to it with a few gilt-headed nails to make it look like a piece of furniture. Next day she would laugh at me for believing her, and ask me what use I supposed there was in talking to her. How she managed to hold on at the theatre, I dont know. She wouldnt learn new parts, and stuck to old ones that ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... I don't even want to. If you'd come back raving about a piece of furniture or a jewel or a picture, I should have been interested. But a shawl... A shawl leaves ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... amazing. Mr. Prohack had always been interested, not only in pictures, but in furniture. Pictures and furniture might have been called the weakness to which his circumstances had hitherto compelled him to be too strong to yield. He knew a good picture, and he knew a good piece of furniture, when he saw them. The noble mansion was full of good pictures and good furniture. Evidently it had been the home of somebody who had both fine tastes and the means to gratify them. And the place was complete. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and strong enough to support the roof of a cathedral. On one side two windows opened upon the gallery and court and looked out upon the Cove, on the other side stood a cabinet. It was the most striking piece of furniture in the room, of enormous dimensions and beautifully carved on the doors of the cupboards below and on the top-pieces between the mirrors were lion's heads of almost life-size. Opposite the heavy door, by which they had entered, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... turkeys as a child, but as for hogs and cattle, she did not remember them running wild. She had heard of conjuring, but she did not know how it was done—never saw anybody who had been conjured—yet she had seen ghosts two or three times. One night she saw a light waving up against a piece of furniture, then come towards her, then flicker about the room, but she wasn't able to see anybody holding the light. She had heard of headless men walking around, yet had never ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was calm again—upon the surface. True to her word, Grandmother refused to communicate directly with Rosemary. She treated the girl as she might a piece of furniture—unworthy of attention except ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Madame Jenny Cadine just finishing dinner, for she played that night in an afterpiece at the Gymnase. Having presented Gazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in order to leave them alone together, made the excuse of looking at a piece of furniture in another room; but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in the actress's ear: "He is Leon's cousin, a manufacturer, enormously rich; he wants to win a suit before the Council of State against his prefect, and he thinks it wise ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... the piece of furniture in which they were hidden is not an ancestral possession. I bought it at second hand—you see it's old—the other day in the King's Road. Obviously the man who sold it to me sold me more than he meant; he had no idea (from his own point of view it was stupid of him), that there ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... new. By four o'clock not a cobweb or a speck of dust was to be seen in either room. Lloyd sat down to wait for Mrs. Perkins's return. She felt that it was safe to breathe now, and she did not have to sit gingerly on the edge of the chair. Every piece of furniture had been washed and rubbed. She could keep her promise about the pie very comfortably now. Everything smelled so clean and wholesome to her that she was sure that Mrs. Perkins would notice the change ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... London the writer had an opportunity of witnessing a performance of this kind. There was a young boy who seemed to have this peculiar power. A queer old desk had come into the house from Italy, and as it was a valuable piece of furniture, the owner was anxious to learn its pedigree. Without having examined the desk beforehand in any way the boy, during one of his trances, said that in a certain place a secret spring would be found which would open an unknown drawer, and behind that drawer ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... knowledge had rendered him inaccessible to other kinds. He took upon himself to send for Nick without speaking to Mrs. Lendon, whose influence was now a good deal like that of some large occasional piece of furniture introduced on a contingency. She was one of the solid conveniences that a comfortable house would have, but you couldn't talk with a mahogany sofa or a folding screen. Chayter knew how much she had "had" from her brother, and how much her two daughters had each received ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Dorothea. She turned upon her victim a face full of uncanny suggestion. Divested of its perpetual smile, it seemed to Jennie as unfamiliar as a room from which an accustomed piece of furniture had been moved. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... best represent that magnificent chamber. We merely stipulate for a round table in the middle, with some glasses and cigars arranged upon it; and the editorial sofa elegantly hemmed in between that stately piece of furniture and the wall. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... and green, and there was a cuckoo on the top; it had heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with its shining brass plate went to and fro with a 'tick! tick!' But it was not that he looked at; no, it was his mother's spinning-wheel, which stood directly under the clock; this was the dearest piece of furniture in the whole house for the boy; but he dared not touch it, for if he did, he got a rap over the fingers. While his mother spun, he would sit for hours together looking at the buzzing spindle and the revolving wheel, and then he had his own thoughts. Oh! if he only durst spin that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... left that holy, consecrated spot, and bent their steps back to the only place more consecrated still; where he had rendered up his spirit; and where memories of him haunted each common, rude piece of furniture that their eyes fell upon. As the woman of the house opened the door, she pulled Libbie on one side, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... When Gladstone, just the other side of the Table, was thundering his protests, Disraeli became absolutely statuesque, eyed his opponent stonily through his monocle, and then congratulated himself, in a kind of stage drawl, that there was a "good broad piece of furniture" between him and the enraged Leader of the Opposition. But when it was his turn to simulate the passion which the other felt, he would shout and wave his arms, recoil from the Table and return to it, and act his ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... packing, and the resources of the guest-room should be equal to any such emergency, even though only a part of the provision is required in any one case. A neat, close cabinet, with a closet beneath and shelves above, is a desirable piece of furniture. In the closet the bath-tub can be stored, and bath-brushes, "loofahs," and sponges can be hung up while the shelves may hold a supply of toilet sundries; for example, a flask of bay rum, and one of violet-water; a bottle of spirits of ammonia, a bottle of alcohol, a spirit lamp and curling ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... in the stock list contained in the description of each piece of furniture illustrated in this book call for material mill-planed, sanded and cut to length. If the workman desires to have a complete home-made article, allowance must be made in the dimensions for planing and squaring the pieces. S-4-S and S-2-S are abbreviations for surface four sides ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... was to hide behind a piece of furniture in the corridor and there remain until the attendant had locked the doors of the rooms and gone to bed. I had even advanced so far in my plan as to select a convenient nook within twenty feet of my own room. Should the attendant, when about to lock the door, discover ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Lytton was hung with white from top to bottom, and every piece of furniture looked as if the cold wing of death had touched it. A white satin gown, which had come from London for Rachael six years before,—just too late, for she never went to a ball again,—was taken from her mahogany press and wrapped about her wasted body. Her ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and his wife in a little comfortable country house, overlooking the sea, sitting in a small summer-house on wheels, exactly like a bathing machine. I found her rather pretty, extraordinarily cold and composed, a mere piece of furniture, talking broken English. Through eight months in the year they live in this country place. She never reads, never works, never talks, never gives an order or directs anything, has only a taste for going to the theatre (where ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the floor rose up and hit him on the nose, but the polished boards, so bright that he could see his face in them, fell back politely, leaving Swipes standing, looking helplessly about him. Every piece of furniture, bed, bureau, table and chairs, flew around and around him in the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): "You'll need it, believe me." I found my stick, at which "piece of furniture" they amused themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring at the mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the whole business unaided on my back. Two new guards—or rather gendarmes—were now officially put in charge of my person; and the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... with them. We may not be conscious of all this, but the mechanical tendency of the age has a firm grip upon society at large. We habitually look at the mechanical side of things by preference to any other. Everything is done mechanically, from the carving on a piece of furniture to the arrangement of the social system. It is the mechanism that must be considered first, and the spirit has to be fitted to the mechanical exigencies. We enter into the mechanism of it instead of into the Spirit of it, and so limit the Spirit and refuse to let it have its ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... up a sword. It was one of his favorite rapiers. Sometimes people came out of the books—sometimes shadowy forms came back to claim the weapons that had been theirs—and Cleggett fought them. There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in the place. He bent the flexible blade in his hands, tried the point of it, formally saluted, brought the weapon to parade, dallied with his imaginary opponent's sword for ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... afterward when Katy left him for a moment he noticed the well-worn carpet, the six cane-seated chairs, the large stuffed rocking chair, the fall-leaf table, with its plain wool spread, and, lastly, the really expensive piano, the only handsome piece of furniture the room contained, and which he rightly guessed must have ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Tib came from under a piece of furniture, where he had apparently been lying, and rubbed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... me ask you one question. Why should you, no matter how tired you are, spring eagerly forward to prevent your sister from lifting a piece of furniture, or carrying a trunk upstairs? Why not let her do it? I can imagine your look of indignant surprise. "Why? because she is a woman! It would nearly kill her!" Exactly so; but you will swing the burden on your broad, strong shoulders, bear it to its destination, and the next minute run ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... and Dixie, aided by the fumbling hands of her mother, was washing and drying the few dishes and putting them away in the safe with perforated tin doors, which was the chief piece of furniture in the room, when the front gate opened and closed with a metallic click of the latch, and a visitor hurried along the little gravelled walk to the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Sonata tinkled away; the waltz crashed. Although young men still went in and out, they walked as if keeping engagements. Now and then there was a thud, as if some heavy piece of furniture had fallen, unexpectedly, of its own accord, not in the general stir of life after dinner. One supposed that young men raised their eyes from their books as the furniture fell. Were they reading? Certainly there was a sense of concentration in the air. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... own apartment. She locked the door behind her, drew a bunch of keys from her bosom, and turned towards a cabinet of singular shape and Italian workmanship which stood in a corner of the apartment. It was an antique piece of furniture, made of some dark oriental wood, carved over with fantastic figures from Etruscan designs by the cunning hand of an old Italian workman, who knew well how to make secret drawers and invisible concealments for things dangerous ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... custom with girls who have been brought up with maids to dress and undress them, she flung her clothes upon a chair in a disorderly heap, and was no more embarrassed at being naked before Martha than if Martha had been a piece of furniture. ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... of the difference of the rooms; the one we were in reminded me of a lizard! The walls were faint gray, and every piece of furniture was covered with plain yellow chintz, while the carpet was a pale green. She replied that she always moved from her winter parlor to this summer room on the twenty-second day of April, which had fallen the day before, for ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... incessant doling out of cash, he did not have recourse to the checkbook. In one of his salons the Nabob kept a commode, an ugly little piece of furniture representing the savings of some concierge; it was the first article Jansoulet bought when he was in a position to renounce furnished apartments, and he had kept it ever since like a gambler's fetish; its three drawers always contained two hundred thousand francs in current ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... flight of fancy, Mr Swiveller was assisted by a deceptive piece of furniture, in reality a bedstead, but in semblance a bookcase, which occupied a prominent situation in his chamber and seemed to defy suspicion and challenge inquiry. There is no doubt that by day Mr Swiveller firmly believed this secret convenience to be a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... disagreeable tricks which many children practice even in families counted well-bred. Such, for example, are drumming with the fingers on some piece of furniture, or humming a tune while others are talking, or interrupting conversation by pertinacious questions, or whistling in the house instead of out-doors, or speaking several at once and in loud voices to gain attention. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of his equipment, and that which has procured him such a retinue of little ragged and shouting boys, is his saddle. This extraordinary piece of furniture, which cost the owner five thousand dollars, is entirely covered with velvet, richly embossed in massive gold; he sometimes appears with another, inlaid with ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Nigel's spirit, and he lay for some time in peaceful oblivion, when a rattling crash awoke him. Sitting up he listened, and came to the conclusion that the professor had upset some piece of furniture, for he could hear him distinctly moving about in a stealthy manner, as if on tip-toe, giving vent to a grumble of dissatisfaction every now ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... draped in cool-colored chintz, where once Gabriel Bennet and Abel Newt had seen Hope Wayne, on the table where books had lain like porcelain ornaments, lay a strange piece of furniture, long, and spreading at one end, smelling of new varnish, studded with high silver-headed nails, and with a lid. It was lined with satin. Yes, it was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... dating back sixty or seventy years, but nobody could ever find the papers; and I felt sure that they must be hidden away in some secret drawer. The brass handles and trimmings were blackened, and the wood looked like ebony. I wanted to climb up and look into the upper part of this antique piece of furniture, and it seemed to me I could at once put my hand on a package of "papers ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and the rabble dispersed, I followed the discomfited adventurer at a distance, who, leaving the town, went slowly on, carrying his dilapidated piece of furniture, till coming to an old wall by the roadside, he placed it on the ground, and sat down, seemingly in deep despondency, holding his thumb to his mouth. Going nearly up to him, I stood still, whereupon he looked up, and perceiving I was looking steadfastly at him, he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the words as if they had been read to her: 'Lots of men have killed themselves for women, but to die of a broken heart proves a great deal more. Few women have inspired such a love as that.... If it were known—if—she pushed the thought angrily aside as one might a piece of furniture over which one has stumbled in the dark. It was shocking that thoughts should come uncalled for, and such thoughts! the very opposite of what she really felt. That man had been very good to her; she had liked him very much. It was shocking that she had been the cause of his death. It ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Here, facing a high blank wall, are four or five very dreary houses. She entered one of these, put down her wet umbrella in the shabby little hall, and opened the door of a barely furnished room, the walls of which were, however, lined with books. Beside the fire was the one really comfortable piece of furniture in the room, an Ikeley couch, and upon it lay a very wan-looking invalid, who glanced up with a smile of welcome. "Why, Erica, you are home ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... with fierce persistency, and though it seems as if she must succumb, her compact frame, strengthened by generations of healthful toil, possesses an endurance which in the end must prevail over the paroxysmal rage of John Kurt. When the combatants part there is not a whole piece of furniture in the room. John Kurt retires a conquered man. But with cowardly viciousness he locks the door and leaves his wife for hours despairing, while he himself goes to a dinner-party. There he is stricken down ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... look was gentler and he might do better if he could lessen the distance between them and take her hand; he feared he had been painfully matter-of-fact. Perhaps he was right, but the table stood in the way, and if he moved round it, she would take alarm. It was exasperating to be baulked by a piece of furniture. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... in others not so quick to foresee and ward off, not so skilful to allay it. Fleda seemed to have intuition for the one and a charm for the other. To her there was pain in every parting; her sympathies clung to whatever wore the livery of habit. There was hardly any piece of furniture, there was no book or marble or picture, that she could take leave of without a pang. But it was kept to herself; her sorrowful good-byes were said in secret; before others, in all those weeks, she was a very Euphrosyne light, bright, cheerful of eye, and foot, and hand a shield between ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... difficulty in prising open the casement. His companions were not long in joining him. Once inside the house they made their way with great caution. They had no means of striking a light, and were forced to grope about with their swords in front of them to prevent their touching any piece of furniture, till at last they discovered the door. It was not fastened, and passing through, and, as before, feeling the floor carefully as they went, they presently found ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... put on a pair of dark mauve gloves, secured a thick veil to her bonnet; and before leaving the room she double-locked the secretaire, with a hopeful expression on her face which seemed to say that that much worried piece of furniture would at last be able to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and every piece of furniture in it, were cleaned; even the cobwebs and dust were cleared away, and the sofa and table brought from the corner to the centre of the room; the melancholy little prisons were removed; and when Amine's work of neatness was complete, and the sun shone brightly ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... two small drawings of cabinet-handles in Figs. 14 and 15, part of the elaborate fittings of a piece of furniture which occupied the place of honour in the state-rooms of the wealthy, and upon which the art of the day was generally lavished with a most liberal hand. Ivory, ebony, and the rarest woods were employed in their construction, occasionally plaques of lapis lazuli, or coloured marbles, were ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... way of symmetry, was another piece of furniture, somewhat similar in shape, where the countess kept her books, papers, and jewels. Antique chairs covered with damask, a large and greenish mirror, made in Venice, and richly framed in a sort of rolling toilet-table, completed the furnishings of the room. The floor was covered with a ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... long festoons of dried apples. In one window stood the good dame's rocking-chair, with its gay patchwork cushion; and her Bible, spectacles, and work-basket lay on the window-seat beside it. In another was a huge leather arm-chair, which Hilda rightly supposed to be the farmer's, and a wonderful piece of furniture, half desk, half chest of drawers, with twisted legs and cupboards and pigeon-holes and tiny drawers, and I don't know what else. The third window Hilda thought was the prettiest of all. It faced the west, and the full glory of sunset was now pouring through ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... of his first entrance, however, he entirely overlooked one important piece of furniture—namely, a small boy with long lank hair and pale blotched face, who was sitting on a low stool near the window, greedily devouring the contents of a pink-covered periodical. This young gentleman, on becoming aware ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... marks of usage. The book looked as if it had been bought 'on a visit to London' some seventy or eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten and suffered to lie away out of sight. There was an old, delicate, lingering odour about it, such an odour as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a century or more. The end-papers, inside the binding, were oddly decorated with coloured patterns and faded gold. It looked small, but the paper was fine, and there were many leaves, closely covered ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... the instant he lay still in bed after the shuffling process known generally as "cuddling down." And he knew that it was approaching because of the assistance the hall clock brought to his bewildered ears. For the hall clock—a big, dignified piece of furniture with a deep note—happened just then to strike the hour of two in the morning, and there was a considerable interval between the two notes. He first heard the step far below in the act of leaving the flagged hall for the staircase; then the clock drowned it with its first stroke, and perhaps ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... by the fire or lying prone in bed. This is exactly what a child cannot do, or does not do, at least, when he can find anything else. He works all with lay figures and stage properties. When his story comes to the fighting, he must rise, get something by way of a sword and have a set-to with a piece of furniture, until he is out of breath. When he comes to ride with the king's pardon, he must bestride a chair, which he will so hurry and belabour and on which he will so furiously demean himself, that the messenger will arrive, if not ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... approvingly. It was a curious, hexagonal chamber, with an oak-beamed ceiling, curving into a dome. The walls were hung with a wonderful tapestry of a soft, rich colour, and every piece of furniture in the room was of the Louis Quinze period. There was scarcely a single anachronism. The Martin de Vaux of forty years ago had been an artist, and a man of taste; and when he had brought home his bride, a duke's daughter, he had spent a small fortune on this apartment. Since then it had always ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... motion was partly rotary, from left to right. He particularly noticed that the girl's feet did not touch the frame, and that, when it was repulsed, she seemed drawn irresistibly after it, stretching out her hands, as if instinctively, towards it. It was afterwards remarked, that, when a piece of furniture or other object, thus acted upon by Angelique, was too heavy to be moved, she herself was thrown back, as if by the reaction of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... that I fully recognized my obligations to the King. "I only object to being buffeted around like a piece of furniture." ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them. He attempted to introduce us to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called "banana," but had to give it up for the time being. After the meal, he had better luck with a curious piece of furniture on runners, which he called "rocking-chair." There were five of us newcomers, and we found five different ways of getting into the American machine of perpetual motion, and as many ways of getting out of it. One born and bred to the use of a rocking-chair ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... it's very cold," said Lars Peter—"we might just as well have kept the new piece of furniture in ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... time seated on the table again. Mr Brick also took up a position on that same piece of furniture; and they fell to drinking pretty hard. They often looked at Martin as he read the paper, and then at each other. When he laid it down, which was not until they had finished a second bottle, the colonel asked him what ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... dwelling for gymnastic purposes, but I soon found that her home gymnasium meant household duties. She said one could scrub the table and obtain the best exercise for arms and chest, and at the same time produce an article or piece of furniture which would be a delight to the eye in its whiteness and brightness. She said that in scrubbing the floor one obtained very much the same movement that would be given in the gymnasium, while at the same time the exercise would conduce not only to the personal advantage but ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... account throw yourself, or allow others to throw themselves, from the window. If no assistance is at hand, and you are in extremity, tie the sheets together, and, having fastened one end to some heavy piece of furniture, let down the women and children one by one, by tying the end of the line of sheets round the waist and lowering them through the window that is over the door, rather than through one that is over the area. You can easily let yourself down ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... of his neighbors may be taken as the standard, and how else do we measure elegance or style? It had occupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a "toilet," which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail (from which hung a bunch of seed onions,) and the smoked outline of something which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far from the same width. In front of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... mosaic in the Tomb of Galla Placida in Ravenna, representing St. Lawrence, cheerfully approaching his gridiron, with the Cross and an open book encumbering his hands, while in a convenient corner stands a little piece of furniture resembling a meat-safe, containing the Four Gospels. The saint is walking briskly, and is fully draped; the gridiron is of the proportions of a cot bedstead, and has a raging fire beneath it,—a gruesome suggestion of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... was a spectacle of gravity when posed in a chair. He established himself on the edge of that piece of furniture, and for all the employment he gave its back it might as well have been a stool. Mr. Gwynn maintained himself bolt-upright, chin pointed high, with a general rigidity of attitude that made one fear he had swallowed the poker as a preliminary to the interview, and was bearing himself in accordance ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... old and rather dilapidated, and as yet it contained but one piece of furniture, a cheap washstand bureau. Some of the young men were putting new panes of glass into the windows, others were papering the walls with odds and ends, which had been donated. Sister Jennie Cloninger was busy scraping an old bathtub with a piece of glass, preparatory to painting it, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... them, and before noon every handsome piece of furniture from all over the house had been placed in our suite; flowers were everywhere, and servants fairly swarmed at ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... value, and he who advertises an unheard of bargain has generally set a trap for the unwary. One class of goods in the window marked a certain price, an inferior class on the bargain counter at the same figure. You bargain for a piece of furniture at a surprisingly low figure; when it is delivered you have every reason to suppose that it is like what you bought in appearance alone. A roll of cloth marked "all wool," it is half cotton, and the rest shoddy. The business lie, though found so often, is never the friend of merchant ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... worse had come to pass between him and the master of the house. For Sipiagin, Nejdanov had become simply a piece of furniture, or an empty space that he quite ignored. These new relations had taken place so quickly and unmistakably that when Nejdanov pronounced a few words in answer to a remark of Anna Zaharovna's, Sipiagin looked round in amazement, as if wondering where ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... has made a hundred trips to the new abode, each time laden with some heavy piece of furniture or package of goods. How will Mrs. Corkey get there, when Corkey has been up and down the docks from the north pier to the lumber district on Ashland avenue, and ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... remaining piece of furniture was a queer kind of book-shelf nailed against the wall. It was fully five feet long and protruded a foot out above his bed. In its thirty-odd pigeonholes was jammed a collection of stuff that was evidently the accumulation of years. There were scores ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... Estelle, give you the history of this great arm-chair, the only historical piece of furniture in our house? The heavy oak frame was carved by an imprisoned poet. They took away his pen, and in larger lines he carved this chair. Heavily moulded Sphinxes form its arms; the strong legs and feet of some wild beast its support; the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... care whether we die to-day or to-morrow? Souvent femme varie! Just now you seemed so anxious,—besides, if one belongs to the Cause one knows what to expect." Emile strolled towards the uncomfortable piece of furniture by the window, that purported to be an armchair, and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... argued, on the part of the person making it, a desire of attracting his attention. Herrera rose from his seat, and obeying a sort of instinct or impulse, for which he would himself have had trouble to account, masked the lamp behind a piece of furniture, and hastening to the window, which opened inwards, cautiously unlatched it. A man, whose features were unknown to him, was supporting himself on the ledge outside, his legs gathered under him, and nearly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... up a ladder—not a staircase, mind!—to the sleeping deck. There we see two long rows of chests, which represent the wardrobe, chest of drawers, washing place, private locker, every piece of furniture, in fact, which a naval ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... very entrails of the sofas, and from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made one's head ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her proceedings, and to find that every nook and corner and individual piece of furniture was something else besides what it pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and place of secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was its least ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the house without once looking up, without noticing any one who passed her. She brushed by Mrs. Wragge in the passage as she might have brushed by a piece of furniture. She ascended the stairs, and caught her foot twice in her dress, from sheer inattention to the common precaution of holding it up. The trivial daily interests of life had lost their hold ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... prick than he bucks down, and flings me over his head into the mire. I get up and look about me; there stands the donkey staring at me, and there stand the whole gipsy canaille squinting at me with their filmy eyes. 'Where is the scamp who has sold me this piece of furniture?' I shout. 'He is gone to Granada, valorous,' says one. 'He is gone to see his kindred among the Moors,' says another. 'I just saw him running over the field, in the direction of ——, with the devil close behind him,' says a third. In a word, I am tricked. I ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of the king, who favoured sir Thomas Lyttleton; but his majesty's speech was received with universal applause. It was so much admired by the well-wishers to the revolution, that they printed it with decorations in the English, Dutch, and French languages. It appeared as a piece of furniture in all their houses, and as the king's last legacy to his own and all protestant people. In this celebrated harangue, he expatiated upon the indignity offered to the nation by the French king's acknowledging ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... prudish Anglo-Saxon races seem to agree to regard her as of a more spiritual, more ethereal and less earthly a nature. Yet it is only a fiction after all. Violet was a living woman, a creature of flesh and blood who was not content to be a chattel, a household ornament, a piece of furniture. It was not to be wondered at that she longed to enter into woman's kingdom, to exercise the power of her sex to sway the other and to experience the thrill of the realisation of that power. Often in her loneliness ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... of the kind when I saw the skeletons. Carefully, boys; let us remove this piece of furniture. Undoubtedly, we are in pirates' lair, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... 'force' was much greater and more active than before, probably because of the psychic's growing confidence. A small table floated in the air 'while we watched it in amazement,' he says. One levitation lasted long enough to count fifty. 'We all had time to observe that the piece of furniture was quite isolated,' he adds. Furthermore, a big black hand came from the curtain and touched Madame Bottazzi on the cheek, and frightened her from her place ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... extraordinary. A strange gentleman picked up a piece of mother's mirror, which was as thick as his finger, saying, "Madame, I should like to keep this as a memento. I am about to travel through Mississippi, and having seen what a splendid piece of furniture this was, and the state your house is left in, should like to show this as a specimen ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... be conducted precisely on the same plan as her own. Before long, she brought a little pianoforte and set it up in my drawing-room. I thought it rather hid the pretty paper, but it was a handsome piece of furniture. ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... in appearance, on a near approach it proved hut ill adapted to domestic comfort. In short, it was a mere shell, recently built, and still unfinished. It was open all round, and tufts of grass were growing here and there under the very roof. The only piece of furniture was the "stocks," a clumsy machine for keeping people in one place, which, I believe, is pretty much out of date in most countries. It is still in use, however, among the Spaniards in South America; from whom, it seems, the Tahitians have borrowed the contrivance, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... what I mean about the ladder," went on the detective; "it's the only old piece of furniture here and the first thing that caught that cockney eye of mine. But there is something else. That loft up there is a sort of lumber room without any lumber. So far as I can see, it's as empty as everything else; and, as things are, I don't see the use of the ladder leading to it. It seems to ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... it unfastened, locked it with a bitter imprecation on his brother-janizary's carelessness. This done, he followed the course which Jack had just taken. As he crossed the cellar, he passed so near to Jack who had concealed himself behind a piece of furniture that he almost touched him. It was Jack's intention to have knocked him down with the iron bar; but he was so struck with the janizary's looks, that he determined to spare him till he had ascertained his purpose. With this view, he ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in good spirits, and had it placed in his cabin. It was hardly a pleasant piece of furniture for his visitors to be confronted with, so he was prevailed upon to have it put below until it was required. A few more raging battles, and a few more years of momentous anxieties, and the prodigious hero was to become its occupant. It seems to have been landed ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... but it was tight, and it held upwards of thirty gallons. These stone vessels were a great gratification to me—so much so, that at times I forgot my humility and was unduly vain of them. Truly, they were more elegant to me than was ever the costliest piece of furniture to any queen. Also, I made me a small rock vessel, containing no more than a quart, with which to convey water from the catching-places to my large receptacles. When I say that this one-quart vessel weighed all of two stone, the reader will realize that the mere gathering ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... never should think that," said she. "Being with two women so very beautiful as my mother and Annie so much makes me quite sure that nobody is thinking of me. It is only sometimes that I feel a little like a piece of furniture, only chairs can't walk into rooms." She ended with a girlish laugh. Then her face suddenly sobered. "Doctor Elliot, I want you to tell me something," said she. "Uncle Tom wouldn't if I asked him, and I don't dare ask him anyway. Do you think mother ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... my revery by hearing George call in a low voice to Frances, telling her to fasten the ends of the leathers to a bedpost or a heavy piece of furniture, and asking her if she could come down hand under hand. She answered that she could and took the end of the reins from Betty. After a minute or two spent by Frances back in the room, she reappeared, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major |
