"Signboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Dragon Hotel and Warm Lane to its right, and Woodisun Bank creeping inconspicuously down to its left, stood a three-storey building consisting of house and shop, the frontage being in Wedgwood Street. Over the double-windowed shop was a discreet signboard in gilt letters, "D. Clayhanger, Printer and Stationer," but above the first floor was a later and much larger sign, with the single word, "Steam-printing." All the brickwork of the facade was painted yellow, and had obviously been ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the street, behind a doorway, whilst Chauvelin did the same at the other. Rateau, standing in the gutter, appeared once more in a state of hesitation. Immediately in front of him the door of a small cabaret stood invitingly open; its signboard, "Le Bon Copain," promised rest and refreshment. He peered up and down the road, satisfied himself presumably that, for the moment, his pursuers were out of sight, hugged his parcel to his chest, and then suddenly made a dart for the cabaret and ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... stood the limousine, weather-beaten a little and its nickel work dull, but seemingly all right. In the middle of the road stood a chauffeur, his cap pushed back and a hand to his head. As we approached, he looked away from the little writing-block and stared up at the signboard of the inn. When he heard the car approaching, he made for the pavement, turning a puzzled face in our direction. At that moment I heard ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... "Thank you," took the humble payment she tendered, and they let her go; only the big, burly eldest son stood at the door and watched her as she went slowly down the little pathway and out through the creaking gate into the snowy road. She only looked back once, and then she saw that a dingy signboard hung in front of the house. The picture of what was meant for a cow, and had once been white, was depicted on it, and the words "A la Vache Blanche" were clumsily painted underneath. So the house was an inn, evidently, and as Babette read the ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... else to do. Supposing himself Jim's most intimate friend, he is jealous of me as a rival in that capacity; and he has never forgiven the slight put on his establishment in connection with the girls' proposed visit. I partly appeased him by suggesting that he supply the shanty with a new signboard labeled 'Palace Hotel.' Fortunately I don't have to ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... contents of the great hall, and were a fair specimen of what might be found in all the other apartments. The tavern itself, in reference to the obvious pursuit of many of those who made it their home, was entitled "The Golden Egg"—a title made sufficiently notorious to the spectator, from a huge signboard, elevated some eight or ten feet above the building itself, bearing upon a light-blue ground a monstrous egg of the deepest yellow, the effect of which was duly heightened by a strong and thick shading of sable all round ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum." I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. "Strange, is it not," I added, "that a grown man and a soldier should be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evening, tired, and with dusty boots, he found himself in one of the least remarkable streets in Frankfort. That street he was fated not to forget long, long after. On one of its few houses he saw a signboard: 'Giovanni Roselli, Italian confectionery,' was announced upon it. Sanin went into it to get a glass of lemonade; but in the shop, where, behind the modest counter, on the shelves of a stained cupboard, recalling a chemist's ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... surrounded with a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against landing. Weber's land claim—the same that now broods over the village in the form of a signboard—then appeared in a more military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors manned the breastwork at the isthmus—"to protect German property" and its trifling parenthesis, the king of Samoa. Much vigilance reigned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hand, its sides scarred and smashed by shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only shattered walls and heaps of bricks. Over all hangs that curious odour one gets at the Front—a sort of combined smell of burning and decay. A grotesque effect is produced by a signboard hanging outside a ruined tenement and bearing the words: "Delattre, Debitant," or, in other words, "Delattre's Inn." On the right a gunner is standing on what was once a house roof, hacking away at the beams with a pickaxe; he is getting ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... August, and a week or two before Mr. Trapp changed his signboard and resumed his proper business, I was idling by the edge of the Barbican one evening when a boy, whose eye I had blacked recently, charged up behind me and pushed me over. I pretended to be drowning, and sank theatrically as he and half a dozen others, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my eyes to a rose-coloured dawn. We had stopped before a little village inn. A row of pigeons with burnished necks looked down on me from their perch on the signboard above the door; a half-dressed, curly-headed child peeped out of a window from under the eaves, and clapped his hands at the steaming horses: and a young man walked out of the inn with a whip in his hand, and asked if there might be a lady inside the coach ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... now remembered some Dawson acquaintances in town made the fall before while coming down the Yukon River with my brother. To one family of these I made my way. They were in the grocery and bakery business on a prominent corner on First street and their signboard ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... kindly hours of darkness, save for light of moon and star, Hide the picture on the signboard over Doughty's Horse Bazaar; When the last rose-tint is fading on the distant mulga scrub, Then the Army prays for Watty at the entrance of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... so I sent word that I would fix it up; and when I was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it. There was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the Avenue, and I saw right off that it was just a natural signboard. So I called over the boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice little ad ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... helped him on with them, and it turned out that the sleeves were satisfactory also. In short, the cloak appeared to be perfect, and most seasonable. Petrovitch did not neglect to observe that it was only because he lived in a narrow street, and had no signboard, and had known Akakiy Akakievitch so long, that he had made it so cheaply; but that if he had been in business on the Nevsky Prospect, he would have charged seventy-five rubles for the making alone. Akakiy Akakievitch did not care to argue this ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... thought, that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know—and they know we know—that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the signboard of a ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... dark and rugged way soon stopped that. The light was more distant than he had thought. But at last, in the very heart of the forest, he found a house, with lighted candles and loud voices inside it. He looked up to see if there was a signboard. There was none. "Not an inn after all!" said he sadly. "No matter; what Christian would turn a dog out into this wood to-night?" and with this he made for the door that led to the voices. He opened it slowly, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the ladder of fame in this year's beginning of his connection with Froben, he was as yet very thankful to accept any commission, however humble. And as a human document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about the Schoolmaster's Signboard preserved by Bonifacius Amerbach, and now with his collection in the Basel Museum (Plate 3). It is a simple thing, with no pretension to a place among "works of art"—this bit of flotsam from 1516, when it was ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... not an ordinary public house, and beyond the signboard announcement that "Spiritis and aile is retailed here" there was little to indicate its commercial character. The parlour was a large room with a window at each end—one facing the street, the other being so situated that ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... farther side of the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was a little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurance company,—so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock in trade,—sole leather, dry goods, etc.,—that spoke for itself. I stepped inside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when at last he looked ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... back before a signboard on which was a picture of a slender man dressed up in white clothing, very tight, with red and black squares on it; he was leaning against a table; his head and face were a dead white, except for red eyebrows, and a red spot in each cheek, and he had no hair, but a smooth dead-white skin from ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... little less than three hours to that time when the boys reached the little cluster of six houses which comprised West Hill. The signboard had probably told only half the truth in regard to distance—as ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... of trees I espied a twinkling light that upon our nearer approach I saw proceeded from a wayside inn with a great trough of water before it and a signboard whereon, though evening was falling apace, I could ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... excessive thirst, saw a goblet of water painted on a signboard. Not supposing it to be only a picture, she flew towards it with a loud whir and unwittingly dashed against the signboard, jarring herself terribly. Having broken her wings by the blow, she fell to the ground, and was caught ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... carried everywhere with him a volume of Lessing, because the name of Minna occurred in it, and every day when he left the theater he went a long distance out of his way so as to pass a mercery shop, on whose signboard the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... there in that waste about the man with the information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me—it seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots. "We have wronged that man with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... chiseled by a sculptor who never makes a wrong stroke. The face is a truthful record of our vices and virtues. It is a map of life that outlines character so clearly that there is no getting away from the story it tells. The face is a signboard showing which way the man or woman is traveling, which of life's crossroads they are on. The face cannot betray the years one has traveled until the mind gives its consent. The mind is the master. If the mind holds youthful, innocent thoughts, the face will retain a youthful appearance. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a narrow front to the court, the great walls on either side appeared to have squeezed it. The two little windows above, the signboard flat against the wall, and the single door rather suggested a face; and the door, out of the perpendicular, looked strangely like a mouth awry uttering a cry of pain. The building was deep, however, and there was a long, narrow, low-pitched ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... receiving proper attention, madam?' From the first he eschewed the facile trickeries and ostentations which allure the populace. He sought a high-class trade, and by waiting he found it. He would never advertise on hoardings; for many years he had no signboard over his shop-front; and whereas the name of 'Bostocks,' the huge cheap drapers lower down Machin Street, on the opposite side, attacks you at every railway-station and in every tramcar, the name of 'E. Brunt' is to be seen only in a modest regular advertisement on the front page of ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... They are not good likenesses. An English writer says: "As the English, a particularly quick-witted race, tinged with the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in their reputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity the figure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does not resemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that they are ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... a goodly hostelrie, which bore upon its swinging signboard the device of "The Pig and ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... trotted evenly off the bridge, a large and brilliant signboard set in an area of sage-brush challenged the eye. Miss Armitage fluted ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... thought of the dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child following after—a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at ten ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... Sentimental Journey, lies about 18 miles north of York. The hamlet stands on slightly rising ground. At the bottom of the hill is the village smithy, the well, a farm, and facing a big elm tree is the inn, bearing a great hatchment-like signboard showing the Fauconberg arms and motto. The cottages of the villagers are on the slope of the hill, and at the top is the church to which Sterne was appointed vicar in 1760. Close at hand is the quaint seventeenth-century house he occupied. It is a singularly picturesque ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... of crowds on the individual man is to emphasize scareheads and appearances, advertisements, and the huge general showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York is the true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicines straining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowds of men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marble signposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, and the end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves. Men buy space in papers ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... perceives no possibility of putting into use. At one of the new schools in the south, the ignorant child of the mountains at once acquires a knowledge of measurement and elementary arithmetic by laying out a garden, of letters by inscribing his name on a little signboard in order to identify his patch—for the moment private property. And this principle is carried through all the grades. In the Gary Schools and elsewhere the making of things in the shops, the modelling of a Panama Canal, the inspection of industries and governmental ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... simply washing out the sap from its cells. Having ascertained that borax is a solvent for sap, he prepared a number of specimens by boiling them in a solution of borax. For small specimens, this answered well, and a signboard treated in that way (experiment No. 13) was preserved a long time; but when applied to large timber, the process was found very tedious and slow, and no headway has been made in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... that day were more picturesque than they have been for the last two hundred years, though they have shown a tendency in recent times to turn again in that direction. Over Master Clere's door—and over every door in the street—hung a signboard, on which some sign was painted, each different from the rest, for signs then served the purpose of numbers, so that two alike in the same street would have caused confusion. As far as eye could see ran the gaily-painted boards—Blue ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... mounted this horse and rode away from the plowed field wherein nothing grew as yet. As they left the furrows they came to a signboard with writing on it, in a peculiar red ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... ground and half arched over the stream. The road here drew in its shoulders and crept through between the landward extremity of the mill and a little garden enclosure, with a small house and a large signboard within its privet hedge. I was pleased to fancy this an inn, and drew little etchings in fancy of a sanded parlour, and three-cornered spittoons, and a society of parochial gossips seated within over their churchwardens; but as I drew near, the board displayed ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not acquainted with a first-class London tailor. He did not know a great deal concerning clothes, though quite passably well dressed for a provincial, but he knew enough to be sure that it was impossible to judge the merits of a tailor by his signboard, and therefore that if, wandering in the precincts of Bond Street, he entered the first establishment that "looked likely," he would have a good chance of being "done in the eye." So he phrased it to himself as he ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... difficulty was to get it into the van. Messrs. Blake, Johnson and Jones tried alone and failed. For ten minutes they tried alone and failed. Between each attempt they paused to mop their brows and throw longing glances towards the Blue Cow, whose signboard was visible down ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... along the lane until the facade of the building had come into view and they were able to read its signboard: "Ackroyd & Bolt, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... crowing loudly, and there is the bleat of a young calf; pigs are squeaking one against another, and in the midst of the din a dog begins to bark. At the farther corner, where the hedge retreats from its encroachments on the meadow, a grey house comes into view, with a signboard across its upper part announcing that here the tired traveller may ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the Oregon trail turned to Fort Hall and the California dipped southward and wound, a white and spindling thread, across what men then called "The Great American Desert." Two days' journey from Independence this road branched from the Santa Fe Trail and bent northward across the prairie. A signboard on a stake pointed the way and bore the legend, "Road to Oregon." It was the starting point of one of the historic highways of the world. The Indians called it "The Great Medicine Way of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the house was well filled. The signboard bearing the legend, "Standing Room Only" was put out in front to catch a few more. It was such an audience as would make any manager's heart rejoice. The curtain rose promptly on the first act. To say the act went off tamely would be simply admitting the truth. Camille ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... the travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... see, this was King Fisher's corral. There's others around the valley, though I don't know just where. King Fisher reigned nearly twenty years ago. He lived in the building the folks in Rocky Springs use as a Meeting House. He was pretty tough. One of the worst badmen ever hit this part. Had a signboard set up on the trail down from the prairie. He wrote it. 'This is King Fisher's trail, take any other old trail.' I believe most folks used to take 'any other old trail.' There was one feller didn't though. And that was the end of King Fisher's reign. These secret corrals ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... The signboard had said "1 MILE." One hundred miles, one thousand miles; that was what it should have said to be truthful. Galusha plodded on and on, stopping to put down the suitcase, then lifting it and pounding on again. He had ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of which are veritable palaces, and where the ladies are almost bound to change their dress three times a day, there is a hotel of the second and third class; and there is the old inn; the comfortable, hospitable, patriarchal inn, with its Gothic signboard.... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... windows. Women laughing loudly crowded about the doors, and the establishments seemed to be equally divided between saloon-keepers, pawnbrokers, and dealers in second-hand clothes. Luther wondered where they all drew their support from. Upon one signboard he read, "Lodgings 10 cents to 50 cents. A Square Meal for 15 cents," and, thankful for some haven, entered. Here he spent his first night and other nights, while his purse dwindled and his strength ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... way. My friend told all her other "auto" friends, so the country woman has a splendid outlet for her product now. If you live on a good road that is patronized at all by autoists you ought to get your signboard up ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray |
