"Mattress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the bed. She moved, pressing herself against the mattress as if she would rub away, free herself from her loathed self. The sight of her hand was horrible to her, and she covered ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... agony of pain. And the king's officers, who were there, saw a red crooked mark on his side, as if a hair had been pressed deep into it. And they went and told the king, and the king said to them, "Look and see if there is not something under the mattress." So they went and examined the bottom of the mattresses one by one, and they found a hair in the middle of the bedstead underneath them all. And they took it and showed it to the king, and they also brought the man who was fastidious about beds, and when the king saw ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... if they get you, you die. You want to live right. Now listen to me; I got the best brass bed ever a king slept on. Double thickness, heavy brass bed, looks like solid gold. Springs that would hold the schooner, double-thick mattress, sheets and pillows all embroidered like it belonged to a duchess. Fellow was going to be married that I brought it for, but now he's lying up there in Calvary in a bed they dug for him. I'll let you have it cheap—three hundred francs. It's worth ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the letter into his pocket, and drawing a mattress before the door of the loose-box, went fast asleep on it till dawn, when he called a sleepy stable-boy from the rooms above and bade him ride over with the ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... had luxury, too. I had a room with bath. The bath was at the stream some fifty yards away, but such discrepancies are minor affairs in the midst of such big elemental things as were all about me. My mattress was of young cherry shoots, and never did king have a more royal bed, or ever such refreshing sleep. And, while I slept, I grew inside, for the soft music of the pines lulled me to rest, and the subdued rippling ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... over this scene of devastation, his attention was drawn by Mrs. Sheppard towards an appalling object in one corner. This was the body of a man, apparently lifeless, and stretched upon a mattress, with his head bound up in a linen cloth, through which the blood had oosed. Near the body, which, it will be surmised, was that of Abraham Mendez, two ruffianly personages were seated, quietly smoking, and bestowing no sort of attention upon the new-comers. Their ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... came so suddenly that the whole quarter was under water in an hour. The scene was pitiful; for here the Jews live packed like sardines in a box, and being washed out with no warning, were utterly destitute. In one street a man and woman were seen wading up to their waists in water, pushing an old mattress before them, on which were three little children, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... round her little room before she left it. It might not be there when she returned. So she placed Harvey's photograph under her mattress for safety, and rather uncomfortably she laid beside it the small ivory crucifix that Henri had found in a ruined house and brought to her. Harvey was not a Catholic. He did not believe in visualizing his religion. And she had a distinct impression that ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I had really been very fond of most of them, and my heart beat as the sight of them recalled scenes long forgotten, and took me back to childhood and home. There were my little gardening tools, and my slate, and there was the big doll's bedstead, that had a real mattress, and real sheets and blankets, all marked with the letter D, and a work-basket made in the blind school, and a shilling School of Art paint-box, and a wooden doll we used to call the Dowager, and innumerable other ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the folding-doors were thrown open, and two servants appeared, bearing the Baron upon a mattress. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... deep eyes smouldering with introspection, yet radiant with joy. We entered his sitting room, whose whole side opened to the outer balcony first seen from the street. The master braced himself against a worn davenport, sitting on a covered mattress on the cement floor. Yoganandaji and I sat near the guru's feet, with orange-colored pillows to lean against and ease our positions on the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the intercom a voice would cry, "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!" followed by Brian McCune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of known volleyballers. 3. To engage in sexual intercourse; prob. from the expression 'bouncing the mattress', but influenced by Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing me, Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books. Compare {boink}. 4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among {VMS} users. 5. [IBM] To {power cycle} a peripheral ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... on the circumstances, he went upstairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... stomachs of the hunger oedema.... 'You see this child here,' the physician in charge explained; 'it consumed an incredible amount of bread, and yet did not get any stronger. I found out that it hid all the bread it received underneath its straw mattress. The fear of hunger was so deeply rooted in the child that it collected stores instead of eating the food: a misguided animal instinct made the dread of hunger worse than the actual pangs.'" Yet there ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... through the cracks in the attic door, and walked in. To my amazement, the first person I saw was a woman of about thirty-five, in pearl-gray Quaker dress—one of your quiet, good-looking people. She was seated on a stool beside a straw mattress upon which lay a black woman. There were three others crowded close around a small stove, which was red-hot—an unusual spectacle in this street. Altogether a ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... Hemlock is smoother and more flexible; but the spring soon wears out of it. The balsam-fir, with its elastic branches and thick flat needles, is the best of all. A bed of these boughs a foot deep is softer than a mattress and as fragrant as a thousand Christmas-trees. Two things more are needed for the ideal camp-ground—an open situation, where the breeze will drive away the flies and mosquitoes, and an abundance of dry firewood within ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... other than fit sails for the Stygian boat. They had made the bed as different as the vine in summer from the vine in winter. A quilt of red satin lay in the place of the patchwork coverlid. Everything had been changed. He thought the mattress felt soft under him—but that was only a fancy, for he saw before the fire the feather-bed intended to lie between him and it. He felt like a tended child, in absolute peace and bliss—or like one just dead, while yet weary with the struggle to break free. He seemed to recall the content, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... bull's eye lantern, a sense of suffocation and a scream from my wife. A masked burglar was before me, pressing to my face a handkerchief saturated with chloroform, and endeavoring to take from under the mattress a large sum of money which I had ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... here is something," and Willy followed her through a long passage into a room, lighted only by the rays that found entrance through a broken shutter. "Only see this," she continued, laying her hand on a crib burdened with a small mattress and pillow; "here too," and she pointed to a little child's hat that hung over it, from which drooped three small ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... away from Hilton. Edith's tirades became unendurable. I didn't want even to eat her food. The spinet desk, the bureau, the chiffonier, the closet, I cleared of every trace of me. I stripped the bed of its linen and left the mattress rolled over the foot-board in eloquent abandonment. The waste-basket bulged with discarded odds and ends. One had only to look into that room to feel convinced that its occupant had disappeared, like a spirit from a ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... lying luxuriously on a soft mattress, fanned with peacock's feathers, and glittering with rubies and topazes, appeared such a vision as Philammon ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... will then serve the purpose of a sofa as well as a bed. If it is a box couch, further economy will be gained by its use as a place to store the bedclothes. But the simplest of all arrangements is a divan bed, formed of springs and mattress alone, and supported on legs nailed to the corners of the spring-frame. Over it a cover should be thrown during the day, and the pillows in use, if there is not room for them elsewhere, should be slipped into covers ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... the curtains. They seemed to be secure. All the same, there was danger. I was going perhaps to receive a cold shower-bath from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I stretched myself out, to find myself sinking under the floor with my mattress. I searched in my memory for all the practical jokes of which I ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly not! certainly not! Then I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution which I consider ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the state of the attics was even more deplorable, the ceilings of which were so low that the occupants had to stoop continually, while the dormer windows admitted but a small amount of light. A bedstead, with a straw mattress, a rickety table, and two broken chairs, formed the sole furniture of these rooms. Miserable as these dormitories were, the landlady asked and obtained twenty-two francs for them by the month, as there was a fireplace in each, which she always ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... not surprising, for there was twenty-five feet of snow, and when the snow had frozen so that rescuers could travel over the crust, they went up after him. He was lying in one of the bunks of his cabin with a mattress over ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... unable to leave the hard cork mattress on the camp-bed in Fred's tent. They went again to the commandant, this time determined to force ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... in fashion, the right hand fights while the left rules the reins. The truth is, the soldier and the gentleman are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the government of the island. A committee-man properly should be the governor's mattress to fit his truckle, and to new string him with sinews of war; for his chief use is to raise ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... his eyes grew heavier and drowsier, and they forthwith waited upon him until he went to sleep; when Hsi Jen unclasped the jade of spiritual perception, and rolling it up in a handkerchief, she lay it under the mattress, with the idea that when he put it on the next day it should ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... after this, and all hands began overhauling gear to get a mattress upon the hole. Lines were rove and passed under the ship's bilge and keel. These were made fast on deck to the stump of the mizzen mast, and their ends brought to the capstan through snatch blocks. Planks were then strapped loosely on the lines and allowed to run along ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... own mattress," she told him, "or rather one of the hospital ones. He was carried straight into the ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a fertile field for research that if you could possibly accommodate my man and me with board, you may not be conferring a favor only upon me, but indirectly, perhaps, upon the world of science. I have with me my own bath-tub and pneumatic mattress." ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Bram. Run, my lad. Get Van Gaasbeeck's light wagon as you go, and ask your mother for a mattress. Dinna stand glowering at me, but awa' with you. I'll tak' twa o' my ain lads and my ain wagon, and be there instanter. God help ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... killed a man, go into the maquis of Porto-Vecchio. With a good gun and plenty of powder and balls, you can live there in safety. Do not forget a brown cloak furnished with a hood, which will serve you for both cover and mattress. The shepherds will give you chestnuts, milk and cheese, and you will have nothing to fear from justice nor the relatives of the dead except when it is necessary for you to descend to the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... gratings. Some citizens were shot on opening the doors, others in endeavoring to escape. Among other persons whose houses were burned was an old man of 90 lying dangerously ill, who was taken out on his mattress and left lying in his garden all night. He died shortly after in the hospital to which a friend took ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the doctor, when he comes, why it is that the patients always have colds." "Do," said the head-nurse. "What do men understand of such matters? If they knew any thing about them, they would long ago have taken care that the mattress upon which one patient dies should always be changed before another comes in." This quarrel impressed itself upon my memory; and the wish rose in my mind, that some day I might be head-nurse, to prevent such wrongs, and to show kindness ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... expedite the extraction, she drew out an arm and amputated it, and finding the extraction still difficult, she cut off the head and completely emptied the womb, including the placenta. She bound a tight bandage around her body and hid the fetus in a straw mattress. She then dressed herself and attended to her domestic duties. She afterward mounted a cart and went into the city of Viterbo, where she showed her sister a cloth bathed in blood as menstrual proof that she was not pregnant. On returning home, having walked ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and the upper one of these floors, which extends just where the arches of the vaulted root begin to spring from the pillars, is ranged round with the beds of one of the regiments of soldiers. They are small iron bedsteads, each with its narrow mattress, and covered with a dark blanket. On some of them lay or lounged a soldier; other soldiers were cleaning their accoutrements; elsewhere we saw parties of them playing cards. So it was wherever we went among those large, dingy, gloomy halls and chambers, which, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... log, limbs, boughs and browse. Anything small enough for a cow or deer to masticate was browse. And that is just what you want for a camp in the forest. Not twigs that may come from a thorn, or boughs that may be as thick as your wrist, but browse, which may be used for a mattress, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... boughs, do not let large sticks go into the bed: only put in the smaller twigs and leaves. Try your bed before you "turn in," and see if it is comfortable. In a permanent camp you ought to take time enough to keep the bed soft; and I like best for this purpose to carry a mattress when I can, or to take a sack and fill it with straw, shavings, boughs, or what not. This makes a much better bed, and can be taken out daily to the air and sun. By this I avoid the clutter there always is inside a tent filled with boughs; and, more than all, the ground or floor does not mould ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... lawful wife. Poets have paid more attention to the first—maybe they know more about it; the law finds greater employment on the whole in respect to the latter. For me, I admit that it was not till I found myself stretched on a mattress in the kitchen, with the idea of getting a few hours' sleep, that it struck me that Constantine's wife deserved a share of my concern and care. Her grievance against him was at least as great as Euphrosyne's; her peril was far greater. For Euphrosyne was his object, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... room was a stone sarcophagus of the early, broad, flat-topped pattern. In one corner was a two-seated bari, in another a mattress of woven reeds. Leaning against the sarcophagus was a wooden rack containing several earthenware amphorae; on the floor about it was a touseled litter of waxed outer cerements torn from mummies. All these things they observed later. Now their wide eyes were fixed on the top of the coffin. At ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... next prepared. A mattress composed of palm-leaves was covered with native cloth made of the paper mulberry-tree, in the same manner as in Otaheite; the sheets were of the same material; and it appeared, from their crackling, that ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... and Jerry were at the opposite poles of the little family circle. When Oscar retired for the night, he found Jerry not only abed, but asleep, or pretending to be. It was a wonder that both did not tumble out of bed that night; for each slept upon the extreme edge of the mattress, as far as possible from ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... mattress was now brought up, and the captain carried down to his cabin. There was no thought on board now of the pursuers astern, or of possible danger lying ahead. The news that Captain Martin was badly wounded damped all the feelings of ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... manufacture, or in half-gourd shells or calabashes. They sleep in nets of cotton, very large and suspended in the air; and although this may seem a very bad way of sleeping, I can vouch for the fact that it is extremely pleasant, and one sleeps better thus than on a mattress. They are neat and clean in their persons, which is a natural consequence of their perpetual bathing; but some of their habits ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... soon evinced when twenty-six men stretched themselves out on the board floor of the tent for the seeming purpose of sleeping. Extra blankets had been drawn from the quartermaster, which, combined with the blankets the soldier carried in his pack, furnished mattress and coverings for the sweet but hard repose. No blue-print diagram was furnished as to how the sleeping space was to be allotted in twenty-six portions; with the result that one fellow was awakened out of a sweet dream of eating pie and cake, to find ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... tree, and in a few minutes they had procured from this enough firewood to last them out the night. The last task before rolling in for the evening was to get a number of spruce boughs for making the usual mattress for anyone sleeping out in the open in the great ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... broadside on the reef, the waves making a complete breach over her, and leaving her at the merciless sea. Thad uttered an unearthly shriek, and clung to Phil, who, in turn, clung to the iron grating of the companion-way. The cook had secured a mattress, the cabin-boy a door, and Mr. Herdic—but Mr. Herdic was gone; so, too, was Don Casimer, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... between each row. The dimensions of a man's bunk was 6 feet long, 2 feet wide and 2 feet high, and they were arranged in tiers of four, with a four inch board on either side to keep one from rolling out. The Government had furnished no bedding at all. Our bedding consisted of one blanket as mattress and haversack for pillow. The 25th Infantry was assigned to the bottom deck, where there was no light, except the small port holes when the gang-plank was closed. So dark was it that candles were burned all day. There was no air except ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... figure of the child reclines on a pillowed mattress, her hands resting one upon the other near her head. She is simply attired in a frock, below which her naked feet are carelessly placed one over the other, the whole position suggesting that in the restlessness of pain she ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... it your bed-maker had not your room well warmed and dried, mattress dry, etc., before you went up this time? She ought to have had, and should be spoken to about it—i.e. unless you told her not to! in which case it would be very like ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... case we found three pillows and a mattress had got wet. If the wetting is from salt water they will have to be soaked in fresh. The other pillows that got wet have not felt dry since, but still I have had to lie upon them; the deck-chairs are in ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... in the mattress underneath Was to me a ghostly whisper muttered through a phantom's teeth, And the mice behind the wainscot, as they scampered round about, Filled my soul with speechless horror when I'd put the candle out. So I'm deeply sympathetic when some story I have read Of a victim buried living ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... big pile of soft hay-grass in the back part of the cave that Uncle Brownwood used to stuff his mattress with, and Cousin Redfield made for it, and rolled and wallowed in it, thinking, at first, that he was getting off the molasses, but pretty soon finding he was only getting on hay, and really had it all over him so thick that he could not ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... enlivening company of an alarum clock, Jake retired to his couch, which consisted of a flax-stuffed mattress resting on a wooden bedstead, and there he quickly buried himself in a weird tangle of dirty blankets, and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... the blanket which served as a mattress, intending to kill the reptile, when to my astonishment it glided away making its escape into a small opening in the ground directly beneath my bed. The whole matter was explained at once. The snake had probably been ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... to receive a Magic lantern and a Sleight of Hand outfit, Lulu a game of Lawn and Parlor Ring Toss, and a handsome Toilet Case. Grace had the same and beside a brass bedstead for her dolls, with mattress and pillows, and a large and complete assortment of everything needed for making and dressing paper dolls. That ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... regimental, brigade, and division hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... nights, his clumsy wits galloping and frisking under the lash of the alcohol, and fancy himself thrashing his wife, till a sudden frenzy of rage would overcome him, and he would shake all over, rolling upon the bed and biting the mattress. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... listened, there rose a cry so hideous in its character and so belligerent in its tone, that I trembled with fear upon my palm-leaf mattress. It resembled the bellowing of an infuriated bull, but was louder and more penetrating in its effect. The proximity of this animal was indeed unpleasant, for he had planted himself on the river's ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... she found that the day was considerably advanced. June still lay near her, sleeping as tranquilly as if she reposed on—we will not say "down," for the superior civilization of our own times repudiates the simile—but on a French mattress, and as profoundly as if she had never experienced concern. The movements of Mabel, notwithstanding, soon awakened one so accustomed to vigilance; and then the two took a survey of what was passing around them by means of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... robusta. Eucalyptus viminalis. Cupressus macrocarpa (Monterey cypress). Laurestinus. Australian pea vine on the palms. Muhlenbeckia (Australian mattress vine) against the base of Machinery Palace. Honeysuckle against the base of the Varied Industries Palace. Lawson cypress. Libocedrus decurrens (incense cedar). Acacia floribunda. Acacia latifolia. Albizzia lophantha. Abies menzies (fir). Picea ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... sabretasche;" a tambour major without his staff, a cavalry charger without a tail, couldn't be more ridiculous: and there was that old sergeant of the riding-school, "Tronchon," with a beard that might have made a mattress! How the goods of this world are unequally distributed! thought I; still why might he not spare me a little—a very little would suffice—just enough to give the "air hussar" to my countenance. He's an excellent creature; the kindest old fellow in the world. I'm certain ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... need of coolness it was now; the slightest mistake would be fatal. The keys had slipped from the mattress of the divan, and now lay just beyond reach of my fingers. Rapidly I changed my position, and sought, without undue noise, to move ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... to his bedroom and seated him on his bed. It was a little room furnished with the bare necessities. There was a narrow iron bedstead, with a strip of felt for a mattress. In the corner, under the ikons, was a reading-desk with a cross and the Gospel lying on it. The elder sank exhausted on the bed. His eyes glittered and he breathed hard. He looked intently at ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... though the winner, had mounted high into the Major's good opinion, insomuch that when he left the Major at his own room before going to bed, the Major as a special attention, sent the Native—who always rested on a mattress spread upon the ground at his master's door—along the gallery, to light him to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... from his headquarters he used to pitch his tent within the precincts of the most sacred temples, thus making the gods witnesses of the most private details of his life. Among thousands of soldiers, moreover, there was scarcely one that used a worse mattress than Agesilaus. With regard to extremes of heat and cold, he seemed so constituted as to be able to enjoy whatever weather the gods might send. It was a pleasant and enjoyable spectacle for the Greek inhabitants of Asia to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... bedclothes, this is a most important matter in the freezing cold. I advise a Wolseley valise to be got at the Army and Navy Stores, with mattress and pillow and Jaeger bag inside; one should have over one at night the two Service blankets allowed, and one's great-coat. Unless one sleeps on a stretcher, which can't be always got, it is well to cut long grass ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... "is in a little separate chamber of his own. Mr. Jakes, his gaoler, seems an honest fellow. Sir Nicholas hath a little mattress from a friend that Mr. Boyd fetched for him. He has dinner at eleven and supper at five. Sir Nicholas hopes that all are ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... lady's bed. I slept, but for how long I do not know. I was only aware that suddenly I was awake, staring through the tiny diamond-paned window, at the faint white light now breaking in the sky. I could see from my mattress only a thin strip of this light above the heavy mass of dark forest on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... boy was laid upon a mattress, she began to scold at Uncle Richard, but only to be brought up short by the doctor, who sternly bade her be silent, and not interrupt him while he examined Pete and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... bank where the bridle-path to Squattles End was built up, gave way with the horse's feet, and down she went twenty feet, and was under the horse when Miles and I got down to her! We brought her on a mattress to that room, not knowing whether she were alive; and she has never moved out of it! It was agony to her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... newly decorated. If there are only two rooms available, a third room is built for the occasion. The presents, which have been mentioned above, are set out on two trays. Besides these, the bridegroom's clothes are hung up upon clothes-racks. The mattress and bedclothes are placed in a closet. The bride's effects must all be arranged by the women who are sent on a previous day for the purpose, or it may be done whilst the bride is changing her clothes. The shrine for the image ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... nursemaid,—English, at a glance,—arose from her seat in the window and held a cautious finger to her lips. In the middle of a bed that would have accommodated an entire family, was the sleeping Rosemary—a tiny, rosy-cheeked, yellow haired atom bounded on four sides by yards of mattress. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... sailor to the inner cabin, where a mattress lay upon the table, and many appliances, among them a couple of broad bandages of stout canvas, bore witness to the severity of the captain's late illness. The sick man attempted to rise from his chair as he entered, but was evidently very weak, and ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... his bunk mattress wasn't as soft as Ma's eiderdown comforts. He liked everything—until the sergeant had cussed at him ...
— Sonny • Rick Raphael
... if you got two chairs and a hair mattress to take with you. But I always say, Mrs. Katz, I don't blame Mrs. Kaufman herself for what goes on; there's one good woman if ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... wine, after dinner; in a small milk-pot jug of gin-punch, at night. And when I made a temporary table, to hold the little candlestick, of one of my dressing-case trays; cunningly inserted under the mattress of my berth with a weight atop of it to keep it in its place, so that it made a perfectly exquisite bracket; we agreed, that, please God, this should be a joke at the Star and Garter on the second of April eighteen hundred and forty-three. If your blank can be surpassed, . . . believe ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... should not be of feathers, on account of their undue warmth, which causes a sensation of languor throughout the system. A husk or sea-grass mattress, or even a straw bed, covered with a cotton quilt, is far preferable. The bedding should be changed frequently. It is better that the bed should be away from the wall, so as to admit of greater ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... been taken for my sake. Although it was no more than a store cupboard, my wonderful brother had contrived to give it quite an air of coziness. The tiny window was open, and was doing its best to drive out mustiness. A narrow hospital cot stood against the wall, spread with a mattress quite an inch thick, and piled with the luxurious rugs and cushions from the motor car. I was sure Lady Turnour would have preferred my sitting up all night or freezing coverless rather than I should degrade ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... been lieutenant-general in the army. Upon one occasion, after a battle in which he had taken part, one of the Rhingraves who had been made prisoner, fell to his lot. The Duc de Coislin wished to give up to the other his bed, which consisted indeed of but a mattress. They complimented each other so much, the one pressing, the other refusing, that in the end they both slept upon the ground, leaving the mattress between them. The Rhingrave in due time came to Paris and called on ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... home of a young couple. They received the travellers as the patriarchs must have received the guest sent by God. They had to sleep on a corn husk mattress in an old moldy house. The woodwork, all eaten by worms, overrun with long boring-worms, seemed to emit sounds, to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... number of dollars WE have. So, if all these dollars lose 5% of their value, then we can buy a 20 million dollar share of the future with our 21 million dollars while everyone else loses 5% of the money they let sit in pockets, under the mattress, ...
— Price/Cost Indexes from 1875 to 1989 - Estimated to 2010 • United States
... negroes, who kindly took us up with them, on the top of their luggage; and we drove off in state, as much pleased at riding in that novel place as though we were accustomed to ride in wheelbarrows. Miriam was in a hollow between a flour barrel and a mattress; and I at the end, astride, I am afraid, of a tremendous bundle, for my face was down the road and each foot resting very near the sides of the cart. I tried to make a better arrangement, though, after a while. These servants ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... myself on my quilt and leaf mattress, tucking my quilt close about me. The morning was still, warm and cloudy, not a ray of sunshine visible, even for a moment, since sunset ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the confused state of things around him, Guy gathered that he must have reached his resting place under difficulties, his feet reposed luxuriantly on the downy pillows, while his poor head was resting on the spare end of Mrs Best's second worst mattress. That his vest lay in an unpretending heap on the floor, from which his watch had rolled resignedly into an old slipper, did not disconcert him so much as his having left his new gaiters where the household puppy conveniently got at them destroying ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... any news of them, I gave them up for lost, and turned in. Not so Mendouca, he would not give them up; moreover, he refused to leave the deck—declaring that now he had lost his two mates he had nobody on board that he could trust in charge—preferring to have a mattress laid for him upon the skylight bench, where he snatched catnaps between the intervals of wearing ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... though he already had a plan in mind. "If when you first discovered that you were sinking you had thrown yourself sideways, and started to crawl or roll, regardless of how wet you got, you might have made it, for in that way you'd have presented more of your body to the action of the sand. Then a mattress could be made from branches, weeds or any old thing, that would bear the weight of one or two of us. But I've got even a better ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... was a strange funeral. They had arranged mattress and sheet in the bottom of a four-wheeler, and covered him with sheet, blanket, and quilt, though the weather was warm; and over the body, from side to side of the trap, they had stretched the big dark-green table-cloth from Anderson's dining-room. The long, ghostly, white, cleared ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... slept in the garret, upon a wretched straw mattress, whilst the bed-chambers of her sisters were furnished with every luxury and elegance, and provided with mirrors, in which they could survey themselves from head to foot. The amiable creature bore this ...
— Little Cinderella • Anonymous
... as they examined the door lists that they had a mattress that could be spared, or a pillow or two or a pair of ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... professedly for the indulgence of holy sorrow, but usually it is converted into orgies of unholy joy. When an Irish man or woman of the lower order dies, the straw which composed the bed, whether it has been contained in a bag to form a mattress, or simply spread upon the earthen floor, is immediately taken out of the house, and burned before the cabin door, the family at the same time setting up the death howl. The ears and eyes of the neighbours ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... but rolled over to the front of the bed, and Jennie pushed herself to the back of it. There the little creatures lay in silence, each on an edge of the bedstead, and a whole mattress between. Sleep ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... the hall was just striking ten, as Jerome passed through and entered the sick man's chamber. Stretched upon a mattress, with both hands tightly bound to the bedstead, the friendless stranger was indeed a pitiful sight. His dark, dishevelled hair prematurely gray, his long, unshaven beard, and the wildness of the eyes which glanced upon them as they opened the door and entered, caused the faint ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... must be given up; she was not in condition to be brought home, and she reluctantly resigned herself to remain where she was and "convalesce," as she confidently believed, in the spring. Once again came the analogy, which she herself pointed out now, to Heine on his mattress-grave in Paris. She, too, the last time she went out, dragged herself to the Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed to keep her alive. She sunk to a very low ebb, but, as she herself expressed ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... I left home," Darrin informed him. "If I hadn't felt that I could endure a little fatigue, then I'd have remained at home and looked for a job sleeping in a mattress ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... end of the room is a bed. That is to say, a mattress laid on two planks that rest upon a couple of trestles. Over the bed, other boards, with openings between them, support an undesirable heap of linen, clothes and rags. An imitation cashmere, called "French cashmere," protrudes between the boards and ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... hopeful smile. The examination was soon completed, for the room presented no facilities whatever for escape. There was no bed from which to take the sheets and blankets to extemporise a rope. No mattress to throw over the window so as to break a heavy man's fall. No chimney by which to ascend to the roof, no furniture, indeed, of any kind beyond a deal chair and table. The door was of solid ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... floor or mattress, the head unsupported. Relax the muscles all over the body, then inhale deeply with the diaphragm only, raising the wall of the abdomen just below the ribs without elevating either the chest or the lower abdomen. Take about four seconds to inhale, then exhale in twice that length of time, contracting ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... design and cheap material. Underneath it was a large wooden chest or coffer, studded with huge brass nails, clamped with brass, and painted a brilliant green. Near it, touching the canvas wall, was a mattress covered with gaudy rugs that served as ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... appearance, carrying a mattress, which he spread out in the stern-sheets of the captain's boat; two or three chests, and other things belonging to his master, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... knife. He laid his right arm over his throat to save it; but, as he saw the knife coming down, threw his hand across the bed to the right side, and jerked his body over that way just as the knife descended on the mattress within ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... quiet now, sir; I hope he aren't hatching any noo tricks again' us. Tell you what it is; I'm going down to him to-morrow with a mattress to see if I can't smother him down till I've got his shooting irons away. We shan't feel safe till that's done. My word! I should like to chain him up in the cable tier till we could hand him ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... manufacturer many marriage Massachusetts material mathematics mattress meant messenger miniature minutes mischievous Mississippi misspelled momentous month murmur ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... $4 cash in advance to sleep one night in the bartender's bed, he said, and the house was so blamed full that he and his wife had got to wait till things kind of quieted down, and then they would have to put a mattress on the 15 ball pool table and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... between the robes of my floor mattress. Drawing a box to the bedside I again took his hands between mine and prepared ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... of the hotel of the future glowed in his mind he became enthusiastic, and proposed that we should view the apartments. The bedroom we found sufficiently roomy, with both fireplace and one of the two windows bricked up to avoid draughts. The mattress of the bed, it is true, was stuffed with chopped straw, and was not free from suspicion of harbouring rats. But there was a gorgeous counterpane, whose many colours would have excited the envy of Joseph's brethren ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... search for the lost will was in vain. Assisted zealously by Walter Jerrold and May, Mr. Fielding left no corner of the room unexplored. The bed and mattress—the tester and curtains, were turned, shaken, and unfolded. Every drawer and nook was inspected. The shelves of the little closet were removed, and the panel at the back and sides pried off, but in vain; and ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... tray, had also brought Diana's night-gear in a small bundle. As there was no candle in the attic, it seemed wise to disrobe while there was still light enough to see by. The little bed was rather hard, the pillow was a lumpy one, and the spring mattress squeaked when she moved. Diana watched the room grow gradually darker and darker till stars appeared through the skylight. It was a very long time before she slept. The early sunshine, however, woke her in the small hours of the morning. There ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... mantelpiece of white marble and gold. The entrance was through a side door, hidden by a rich portiere of tapestry, and facing a window. Within the horseshoe curve was a genuine Turkish divan, that is to say, a mattress resting directly upon the floor, a mattress as large as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference and covered with white cashmere, relieved by tufts of black and poppy-red silk arranged in a diamond pattern. The headboard of this immense bed rose several inches above the numerous cushions ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... half, in the midst of which a chimney-piece shone of gold and white marble. He had entered by a door on one side, hidden by a rich tapestried screen, opposite which was a window. The semicircular portion was adorned with a real Turkish divan, that is to say, a mattress thrown on the ground, but a mattress as broad as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference, made of white cashmere, relieved by bows of black and scarlet silk, arranged in panels. The top of this huge bed was raised several inches by numerous cushions, which further enriched ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... la gloire—au grabat!" said Cigarette, now grinding her pretty teeth. She was in her most revolutionary and reckless mood, drumming the rataplan with her spurred heels, and sitting smoking on the corner of old Miou-Matou's mattress. Miou-Matou, who had acquired that title among the joyeux for his scientific powers of making a tomcat into a stew so divine that you could not tell it from rabbit, being laid up with a ball in his hip, a spear-head ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... tell who was to occupy the berth! You might have been a fat old lady for anything he knew!" replied Mrs. Beverley, settling herself on the mattress below. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... of little lamps. The odour was sickly, the air dry. The gentleman wondered whether we would have a room. No, we wouldn't; but I bought cigarettes, and we went upstairs to the little dirty bedrooms. The bed is but a mattress with a pillow. There, if you are a dope-fiend, you may have your pipe and lamp, very cosy, and you may lock the door, and the room is yours until you have finished. One has read, in periodicals, of the well-to-do people from the western end, who hire rooms here and come ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... doors! What a wonderful idea!" In the end they decided to sleep on the towers—Mary on the western tower, Ivor on the eastern. There was a flat expanse of leads on each of the towers, and you could get a mattress through the trap doors that opened on to them. Under the stars, under the gibbous moon, assuredly they would sleep. The mattresses were hauled up, sheets and blankets were spread, and an hour later the two insomniasts, each on his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... smashed by his spell of debauch, played a score of parts. First he was aggressive, asserting his rights as a man and the ship's master, and demanding the key of the door. Then he was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that he was glad enough to crawl back on to the mattress of his bunk. Then he was beseeching. And then he began to be troubled with zoological hauntings, which occupied him till the baking air cooled with the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the chimneys were long across the roofs as she laid the mattress down by the coping. The day had been hot with the clear, bright heat of early summer. They sat on the mattress, smoking—an accomplishment Marcella had learnt from him and practised rather tentatively. She talked to him of Lashnagar, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... 'If I can only get rid of this world, it's all I ask,' she said; 'if the other one isn't any better, why, it can't be any worse! Feel under the mattress and you'll find money enough to last three or four years. It's all she'll ever get, for she hasn't a soul now to look to for help. That's the way we human beings arrange things,—we, or the Lord, or the Evil One, or whoever it is; we bring a puzzle into the ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rather fine day, but a demoniac squall rudely sent him below, where he remained until those charming regions of the Equatorial calms were entered. Here a bad likeness—a sort of spoiled photograph—of him again made its appearance, and lay down helplessly on a mattress, or smiled with pathetic sarcasm when food was offered. But soon the calm regions were passed; the Cape of Storms was doubled, and the fierce "south-easters" of the Indian seas were encountered, during which period Mr Hazlit passed away, as one of the things that had been, from ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... "and bind him. Lift the old woman on her mattress, and carry her. If she dies on the road we cannot ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... fixing a mattress and pillows on the floor of a wagonette, and presently a man, who looked like a corpse, was carried out and lifted ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... upon a happy contrivance for keeping out the sun from my tent. I lay my carpet on the sandy floor of my tent, and with my table and the frame of my bed I make a wooden covering over. On the top I place my mattress and thick blankets, I then lay myself down underneath; and am perfectly protected from the sun above, whilst the cool breeze enters at the bottom of the tent. There is, then, not a person in the caravan who suffers so little ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... bed in the barn, thereby nearly scaring the hired man into a fit. Ness ran out of the room in his night dress and raised such a yell that he aroused everybody in the house. He got his shotgun and blazed away at the supposed snake, thereby ruining a blanket, two sheets, and filling the mattress with shot. When he found out how he had been hoaxed he was the most foolish ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... bed again, ripped off the quilt and mattress, and bent her strength to taking apart and folding the iron bedstead. It was really a man's task, but she accomplished it, and carried it into the dressing-room, where she put it against the wall, in a corner. Again she returned ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... said, there is nothing to stir the blood like rifle-fire. Rifle-fire wins or loses decisive actions; rifle-fire sends the heart galloping. At five in the morning of the 9th I turned on my mattress and ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... the monks soon after dropped into silence; but Emily remained at the casement, watching the setting moon, and the valley sinking into deep shade, and willing to prolong her present state of mind. At length she retired to her mattress, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... you are both angels from heaven, coming to spend your time with one so unfortunate as myself! But God in His goodness will requite you. The pain has gone down into my feet to-day, and I had to sit down on a step. Oh, I should like to have some chairs! If I only had an easy-chair! My mattress is so vile too that I am quite ashamed when you come. The whole place is at your disposal, and I would throw myself into the fire if you required it. Yes. Heaven knows it; I always repeat it in my prayers! Oh, kind Lord, grant their utmost desires to these good friends of mine—in the name of the ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... "The mattress on that bed," she whispered, "rests on two iron rods. They are loose and can be lifted. I planned to smash the lock, but the noise would have brought Prothero. But you could defend ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... I cried gratefully, drinking the nice hot coffee, which seemed delicious though there was no milk in it. Then, forgetting I was in the top bunk, I sprang off the mattress on which I had been lying, falling further than I thought, it being quite six feet to the deck below; and, knocking down the good-natured Chinaman, with whom I tumbled over amongst the things scattered ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stopped in a instant, comprehending his brother's request; and, flying back, in and out of the hut as if he had been galvanised, he quickly placed the old door on top of the wheelbarrow as a sort of platform, with a mattress on top. He then lifted Fritz on the superstructure as if he were a child, the excitement having given him tenfold strength; and, wheeling the barrow down at a run, the two arrived on the beach almost sooner than a boat could have pulled ashore from the point where the catastrophe ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... founding, shoemaking, brickmasonry and brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical and architectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, housekeeping, mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture, dairying ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... lending, advising—nothing that could be "farmed out" on a split commission was beneath the notice of Blatch Ferguson, who would have negotiated a deal for a carload of Russian whiskers could he have found a responsible master barber to make the contract with a mattress factory ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... shouting that legend, and calling to him to bring out his gold. 'You ain't poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend. Bring out your gold. Bring out some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil for. Come! It's in the lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open and let's have some!' This, and many offers to lend him a knife for the purpose, exasperated him to such a degree, that the whole day was a succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the boys. Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... bring about her death. The room they gave her was the cell of a mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun's old straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay. Her kinsmen on the morrow had much ado to get in a coverlet and mattress for her use. For her nurse and keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard's, a lay-sister, daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed her; a girl right worthy of her mother, capable of any wickedness, a source of danger to her modesty, perhaps even to her life. They submitted ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... small for him and the loud tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he retreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment. And while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering. And Solomon envies him and cries out: "It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house." And one day during the rainy season the water leaked through the roof of the palace and began ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... as I looked round the room. We would, of course, be lying in the bed when they came to search the room, and even our pillows would not be safe from their touch. Stay! What did the bed clothes consist of? A hasty examination disclosed two blankets and a sheet, and under those the mattress. That mattress gave me an idea. I ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... and Hugh looked perfectly bewildered. In the room he had taken so much pains to have in order; it could not be; and he passed his hand up and down the comfortable mattress, striking it once with his fist, to see if it would sink in, and then, in a perplexed whisper, he asked: "This is her room, you say; but, Mug, where ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... of Saturday the 8th, after the post-mortem, Mrs. Hensman and another woman found between the mattress and the bed a packet of papers. These were also submitted for analysis. One of them contained 35 grains of strychnine; another had crystals of strychnine upon it. There was writing on one of the packets, and it was the handwriting of the prisoner; it said, "Take ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... difficulty the man was carried into a room at the inn, and it being found impossible to carry him upstairs, a mattress was brought down, and he was laid upon it. He groaned slightly upon being moved, tenderly as the men handled him, but remained quite still upon the mattress upon being ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... frame, closely strung lengthwise and across with rimpi, or thin strips of hide, and which, slung to the framework of the interior of the wagon, under the tent, serves as a bedstead. Upon this, if furnished with a mattress, a pillow, and a pair of blankets—as in my own case—it is possible to enjoy a perfect night's rest. The next morning we were all astir with the dawn, and while the "boys" prepared breakfast I made my way down ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... scanty dimensions. The walls were bare; and the damp oozed through chinks and crevices, where the wind met with slight interruption, though it clamoured unceasingly for admission. The only furniture in the apartment was a low bedstead, on which a straw mattress reposed in all the accumulated filth of past ages. A coverlid of coarse woollen partly concealed a suit of bed-linen that would have stricken terror amongst a tribe of Esquimaux. Neither party appeared wishful to tempt the mysteries that were ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... play at marbles on board ship, but one can play WITH them. They had been a great comfort to Dick on the voyage. He knew them each personally, and he would roll them out on the mattress of his bunk and review them nearly every ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... hastened to obey her. The chorus were in the next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows. In the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself just at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same place to watch the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... get him down, Koku!" said Tom, simply. "I will go up on the roof. You had better come, too. Rad, go in the house and get a mattress from the bed. Put it down on the ground where he's likely to fall. ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... very simple and only contained a home made table, chair and bed which were made of the same type of wood and could easily be cleaned by scouring with sand every Saturday. The beds were bottomed with rope which was run backward and forward from one rail to the other. On this framework was placed a mattress of wheat straw. Each spring the mattresses were emptied and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... dawn there was a noise in my room. I roused, my hand on my skean. Someone or something was fumbling under the mattress where I had thrust Evarin's bird. I struck out, encountered something warm and breathing, and grappled with it in the darkness. A foul-smelling something gripped over my mouth. I tore it away and struck hard with the skean. There was a high shrilling. The gripping filth loosened and fell away ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... as you please. Yes, in Egypt I suffered from fever something like typhus. They left me for dead, as after a battle, in the most wretched and frightful of native villages. No doctors, who might, perhaps, have cured me, not a bed, not even a mattress. My servants, believing me past hope, abandoned me—or rather, for I prefer your Parisian word—cast me adrift—there is no other expression. There I was, stretched out on a heap of damp straw—in ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie |
