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More "Petticoat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was, in truth, very good, no one either at Manor Cross or in Brotherton or any of the parishes around ever doubted. She knew every poor woman on the estate, and had a finger in the making of almost every petticoat worn. She spent next to nothing on herself, giving away almost all her own little income. She went to church whatever was the weather. She was never idle and never wanted to be amused. The place in the carriage which would naturally have been ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... man was a jackanapes, or, as the saying goes, under petticoat government. Every thing his wife said was sacred. Had he obeyed the voice of his heart the poor old man might perhaps have said something, but now the hen had begun to crow in the house, and the rooster was of no consequence; yet, if he had thought of opposing them, ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... they assisted in dressing her the next morning, and set out along with her all their skill and dexterity were requisite to reduce her shape into some kind of symmetry; but, having at last pinned a small cushion under her petticoat on the right side, to counteract the untoward appearance the little infant occasioned by throwing itself on the left, they almost split their sides with laughter, assuring her at the same time that ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Madame Terrier, and his brother-in-law took him away. They crossed Paris peaceably, and without any other adventure than an imprudence committed by Preveraud, who, seeing that the shaft-horse of a wagon had fallen down, threw aside his muff, lifted his veil and his petticoat, and if Terrier, in dire alarm, had not stopped him, he would have helped the carter to raise his horse. Had a sergent de ville been there, Preveraud would have been captured. Terrier hastened to thrust Preveraud into a carriage, and at nightfall they left for Brussels. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... went off to their work, Mrs. Torney and Geraldine fell upon the breakfast dishes, and Julia went upstairs. She found the little Anna dreaming by a sunny window, one stocking on, one leg still bare, and her little petticoat hanging unbuttoned. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... box, brought thence her store, laid it on the other, took both up, closed her hands over them, shook them together, murmured over them, like an incantation, the words, "It's nae mair mine, an' it's nae mair thine, but belangs to a', whatever befa'," and put all in her pocket under her winsey petticoat. Thence, for a time, the invalids wanted, nothing—after the moderate ideas of need, that ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... out of him, the poor child! But I wisht it was home in his own house he was to be," she replied, raising her skirt, and stuffing the purse into a large pocket that hung round her waist over a red flannel petticoat; "han't he ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... lacking in virtue. Yet he has a passionate relish for radishes and honey. Once he also possessed a friend named Pelagea Antonovna. Do you know Pelagea Antonovna? She is the woman who always puts on her petticoat ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... before beginning, a foot tub, warm soft towels, warm water, castile soap, olive oil or vaselin, small squares of muslin or linen, dusting powder, a dressing for the navel and clothing, the latter consisting of a diaper, a flannel band, a shirt, long woolen stockings, a loose long sleeved flannel petticoat and a simple soft white outside garment, the two last, long enough to more than cover the feet. The infant should be wrapped in flannel and only the part which is being bathed at the moment should be exposed. The eyes are first bathed separately and with different cloths, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... please you," says I, yet upon my knees and stooping to view them 'neath her petticoat, "though now I see I might better them by trimming and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... your fellowmen that you can cure them of all the ills that flesh is heir to! But I'll tell you what I have noticed, old man, and what others beside me have noticed. We miss you up in town. You never come to the Club now. The men say you must be ill, or married, or breaking up, or under petticoat government—all stuff and nonsense, you know; but that is what ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... reached Mr. Ambrose's pretty old red brick house, when he found himself face to face with the vicar's wife. She presented an imposing appearance, as usual; her grey skirt, drawn up a little from the mud, revealed a bright red petticoat and those stout shoes which she regarded as so essential to health; she wore moreover a capacious sealskin jacket and a dark bonnet with certain jet flowers, which for many years had been regarded by the inhabitants of Billingsfield as the distinctive badge of ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... which was chastened very delicately by a certain hesitation in her looks when she spoke, being able to understand us but imperfectly. They were both exceedingly desirous to get me what I wanted to make me comfortable. I was to have a gown and petticoat of the mistress's; so they turned out her whole wardrobe upon the parlour floor, talking Erse to one another, and laughing all the time. It was long before they could decide which of the gowns I was to have; they chose at last, no doubt thinking that it was the best, a light-coloured ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... have done with politics. Old Marlborough has at last published her Memoirs; they are digested by one Hooke, (494) who wrote a Roman history; but from her materials which are so womanish, that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown and petticoat with them. There are some choice letters from Queen Anne, little inferior in the fulsome to those from King James to the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... will upset the whole work to which I have devoted near twenty years," he muttered, "if I find not the means to quiet his half-wit tongue. Between priest and petticoat, it be all but ruined now. Well then, so much the sooner must I act, and I know not but that now be as good a time as any. If we come near enough to the King's men on this trip south, the gibbet shall have ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... basket-hilt sword. The action at the tilt-yard you may be sure won the fair lady, who was a maid of honour, and the greatest beauty of her time; here she stands the next picture. You see, sir, my great-great-great-grandmother has on the new-fashioned petticoat, except that the modern is gathered at the waist: my grandmother appears as if she stood in a large drum, whereas the ladies now walk as if they were in a go-cart. For all[69] this lady was bred at court, she became ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... as well formed as a young person of seventeen; yet she had scarcely completed her fourteenth year. The snow of her complexion, her hair as dark as the raven's wing, her black eyes beaming with fire and innocence, her dress composed only of a chemise and a short petticoat which exposed a well-turned leg and the prettiest tiny foot, every detail I gathered in one instant presented to my looks the most original and the most perfect beauty I had ever beheld. I looked at her with the greatest pleasure, and her eyes ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... required of him. The offer was accepted, and Betty was forthwith installed as Biddy's help. Her costume when she made her appearance was not altogether suited to her new style of life, as it consisted of a man's old shirt and a piece of grass matting as a petticoat. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... him, and had got within his Britannic Majesty's town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which, as it was well fortified, promised him protection for the time. Four months later, at Falkirk, a portion of another English army was thrown into a panic by the sight of "the wild petticoat-men," and made capital time in getting out of their way. Two regiments of cavalry rushed right over a body of infantry lying on the ground, bellowing, as they galloped, "Dear brethren, we shall all be massacred this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... more beautiful in her person than charming in her carriage, and by nature extremely silly; her amorous passion made her seem witty, serious, and agreeable only to him whom she was in love with, but she soon treated him as she did her petticoat, which to-day she took into her bed, and to-morrow cast into the fire out of ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... own at lessons, I trow; but he pretends to have such a horror of us wild Irish, and to wonder not to find us eating potatoes with our fingers, and that I don't wear a petticoat over my head instead of a bonnet, in what he calls ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her gray linsey-woolsey petticoat, short enough to show her trim ankles in their black open-worked silk stockings. She stood with one hand resting on the open drawer of her bureau, and in the other the two soft bits of ribbon, that held the faint ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Gianettino has new reasons to hate me and lay snares against my life. Go—sound the fellows of thy trade; see if thou canst not smell out some plot on foot against me. Visit the brothels—Doria often frequents them. The secrets of the cabinet are sometimes lodged within the folds of a petticoat. Promise these ladies golden customers. Promise them thy master. Let nothing be too sacred to be used in gaining the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... ragged doll-garments with a tiny bent flat-iron. Anna regarded her pitifully—the small shrunken figure and sunken chest, and the thin white face with its halo of red curls. But Kit was almost too absorbed with her endeavour to get the creases out of a doll's petticoat to heed her scrutiny. She only paused to nod at Malcolm in ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his arms, and carried him through the last few ripples of shallow water, to set him reverently down upon his legs on dry land. But Laurella did not wait for him to wade back and fetch her. Gathering up her little petticoat, holding in one hand her wooden shoes and in the other her little bundle, with one splashing step or two she had reached the shore. "I have some time to stay at Capri," said the priest. "You need not wait—I may not perhaps return before to-morrow. When you ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... surrounded by his brilliant body-guard, galloped to and fro outside the entrenchments, expecting every moment a deputation to come forth, bearing the keys of the town. The Infanta too, magnificent in ruff and farthingale and brocaded petticoat, and attended by a cavalcade of ladies of honour in gorgeous attire, pranced impatiently about, awaiting the dramatic termination of a leaguer which was becoming wearisome to besieger and besieged. Not even on the famous second ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... soon see." And so they did: for Aunt Wee began to play; and presently Daisy was shouting with fun as she sat on an old saddle, with a hair-covered trunk for a horse, a big old-fashioned bonnet on her head, and a red silk petticoat for a habit. Then they went to sea in a great chest, and got wrecked on a desert island, where they built a fort with boxes and bags, hunted bears with rusty guns, and had to eat dried berries, herbs ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... made before the great discovery of some modern authors, that the best novels are those in which there is never a petticoat. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... natural weakness of being taken with outside and appearance. Talk of a new-married couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep their coach and six, or eat in plate. Mention the name of an absent lady, and it is ten to one but you learn something of her gown and petticoat. A ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthday furnishes conversation for a twelvemonth after. A furbelow of precious stones, a hat buttoned with a diamond, a brocade waistcoat or petticoat, are standing topics. In short, they consider only the drapery of the species, and ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Black Chest interested the family, and my wife was not angry. Immediately after its conclusion, the old chest was surrounded and opened, and among an infinite variety of rubbish were some articles of value, viz., of chemises (greatly needed), several pairs of stockings, 1 Marseilles petticoat, lace collars, several pretty baskets, 4 pair ladies' slippers (nearly new), and several books—one from my library, an octavo volume on Midwifery, 500 pages, placed there to prevent the children from seeing the illustrations, given me by the publisher ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... one hand, as he offered the other to the elder of the ladies—ladies was not the word—they had bonnets and shawls, and collars and ribbons, and the youngest showed a pretty little foot and boot under her modest grey gown, but his Highness of Fairoaks was courteous to every person who wore a petticoat whatever its texture was, and the humbler the wearer, only the more stately and polite in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hundred of them, both boys and girls, all of whom were clad in no other garments than their own glossy little black skins, except the maro, or strip of cloth round the loins of the boys, and a very short petticoat or kilt on the girls. They did not all play at the same game, but amused themselves in ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... at once, as if the very last possible moment of silence had passed, the conversation broke loudly and generally: "And did you notice that slimpsy thing she wore last night? Indecent, if you ask me, with not a petticoat under it, I'll be bound!... Always wears shoes twice too small for her ... What men can see in her ... How they can endure that perpetual smirk!..." They were at last discussing the Klondike woman, and whatever had befallen our guest of honour I knew that those ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... these are not like the dusky ghosts that wander through the pale-blue mists of Bloomsbury. Here comes a buxom water-carrier, in her orange petticoat and sage-green shawl, who has the two copper cans at the end of the long piece of wood poised on her shoulders, pretty nearly filled to the brim. Then a couple of the gayer gondoliers in white and blue, with ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... do so. Taro understands their language, which is much like that of Tahiti and his own country. The men are much tattooed, their only clothing being a piece of native cloth round their loins, but the women wear a petticoat and a mantle over the shoulder. This cloth is made of the fibre of a sort of mulberry tree—not woven, but beaten into a consistency of paper. When torn the rent is mended by beating on a fresh piece. It will bear washing only once. A garment thus lasts about six weeks. The women are ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... sitting upon one of her feet and swinging the other, rose impulsively from the garden-seat and covered the lawn in a series of hops, until her shoe, which had become hopelessly entangled in the laces of her petticoat, released itself with a rending sound. Then she removed her hand from Peter's shoulder, upon which she had been supporting herself, and together they went into ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and a daisy smell like a violet. Thou canst make cowardice brave, avarice generous, pride humble, and cruelty tender-hearted. In short, thou turnest the heart of man inside out, as a juggler doth a petticoat, and bringest whatsoever pleaseth thee out from it. If there be any one who doubts all this, let him read ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... wrong me not, nor wrong yourself, To make a bondmaid and a slave of me; That I disdain; but for these other gawds, Unbind my hands, I'll pull them off myself, Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat; Or what you will command me will I do, So well I know my ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... sarcastic apologue entitled the "History of a good Warm Watchcoat," which had "hung up many years in the parish vestry," and showing how this garment had so excited the cupidity of Trim, the sexton, that "nothing would serve him but he must take it home, to have it converted into a warm under-petticoat for his wife and a jerkin for himself against the winter." The symbolization of Dr. Topham's snug "patent place," which he wished to make hereditary, under the image of the good warm watchcoat, is of course plain enough; and there is some humour in the way in which the parson (the Archbishop) discovers ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... robber, in blue velvet, with a red sash and silver buckles. His arm was passed round the waist of a very pretty girl in the costume of a Roman peasant; that is to say, an embroidered boddice, short bright-coloured petticoat, and red stockings. Her feet attracted my attention, they were so beautifully small. On one of her fingers I saw my diamond ring—a circumstance which, as well as the company in which I found her, gave me a very indifferent idea ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... have seemed frightful in the condition she was in, for all the dress she had on was a scanty old petticoat, with a night jacket of plain fustian, and turned back at the top of her head a yellow cap, which let her hair fall in disorder on her shoulders; and yet dressed even thus she shone with a thousand attractions, and all her person was most charming ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)
... young man who has been kept too close to his mother's apron-strings for his own good—a girlish, hysterical kind of boy, who should be given spoon- victuals and put to bed early. Of course he wants to marry Trilby, for he is of that age when the swish of a petticoat makes us seasick. She is perfectly willing to become his mistress—although she had "repented" of her sins and been "forgiven" but a few days before. She has sense enough—despite Du Maurier's portraits ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... never did this up yourself. There's some one been at your arm already. Here's this band be off Matabel's petticoat. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... daughter's petticoat was longer than her frock, it shewed that her father loved her better than ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... do you do, Nancy?" many and many a time in the week. 'Tis surprising the magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. I blush as I think of poor Nancy now, in a red bodice and buxom purple cheeks and a canvas petticoat; and that I devised schemes, and set traps, and made speeches in my heart, which I seldom had courage to say when in presence of that humble enchantress, who knew nothing beyond milking a cow, and opened her ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... came up with a poor Irishwoman, trudging along with a bundle at her back. She had a gray shawl over her head, and a crimson madder petticoat; so you may be sure she came from Galway. [Footnote: Galway is a county in the western part of Ireland. The dress here described was the characteristic dress of the peasants of that county.] She had neither shoes nor stockings, and limped along as if she were tired and footsore; but she was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and threw its penetrating chill to the very marrow of the bones. Often in mid-winter the scant-skirted French calico gowns were made with short elbow sleeves and round, low necks, and the throat and shoulders were lightly covered with thin lawn neckerchiefs or dimity tuckers. The flaunting hooped-petticoat of another decade was worn with a silk or brocade sacque. A thin cloth cape or mantle or spencer, lined with sarcenet silk, was frequently the only covering for the shoulders. In examining the treasured contents of old wardrobes, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... said Priscilla; "and Patty wouldn't take one. Did you see Bonnie Connaught sitting on the back seat in biology this morning, hemming her doll's petticoat straight ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... of the drawer, is a black satin sash. It brings to my mind an entirely different kind of memory. It is one thing that I have left from the dress I wore at my grandfather's funeral. I remember all the tragedy of the occasion, lightened by one spot of comedy, my grandmother's losing her petticoat. ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... great chair by the fire-corner; in her lap was a spaniel-dog that barked furiously; on a little table by her was her ladyship's snuff-box and her sugar-plum box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-colored brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of Banbury Cross; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with great gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels; and an odor of musk was shook out of her garments whenever she moved ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... rents; but not to men without encumbrances. Nearly every day she refused attractive tenants in pretty hats, or agreeable gentlemen who only wanted a room on condition that they might offer hospitality to a dashing petticoat. It was useless to proclaim aloud that her house was 'serious.' The ambition of the majority of these joyous persons was to live in a 'serious' house, because each was sure that at bottom he or she was a 'serious' person, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... circumference. The hat would require to be fixed on the head with long pins, and standing, trencherwise, quite flat and unbending in its full proportions. The crown was low, and, like the cap, richly set off with feathers and flowers. The lower part of the dress consisted of a full petticoat generally flounced, short sleeves, and a very long train; but instead of a hoop there was a vast pad at the bottom of the waist behind, and a frame of wire in front to throw out the neckerchief, so as much as possible to resemble the ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... a chicken's down. Many a cuff it got, and many a hard word, when its straying feet brought it into the way of the rough life up at the tavern. But still the scrap of food was tossed to it, and the worn-out petticoat roughly cobbled into a garment for its little body; for Bough ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... immediate source whence it was taken. It reads as follows:—"History of Female Dress. The sprightly Gauls set their little Wits to work again," (on resuming the war under Queen Anne,) "and invented a wonderful Machine call'd a Hoop Petticoat. In this fine Scheme they had more Views than one; they had compar'd their own Climate and Constitution with that of the British, and finding both warmer, they naturally enough concluded that would only be pleasantly cool to them, which would perhaps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... yourself from being shocked by the victim. Grasp victim only by coat tails or dry clothes. Put rubber boots on your hands, or work through silk petticoat; or throw loop of rubber suspenders or of dry rope around him to pull him off wire, or pry ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... swabbed with tow and prepared for their rest as tenderly as infants. Dobbin is rescued from the (fence) stake to hie hill-ward with his master, cantering exultant or jogging grumly according to the result of the "event;" and the metropolis of Petticoat Gap—for such, in the vernacular and on the maps, is its unfortunate designation—relapses ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... hair, and the back has something of a woman's style of head-dress. Sometimes she also wears a hat; her bodice, laced behind, crosswise, is made something like our doublets, her chemise bulging out all round her petticoat, which she wears rather badly fastened and not over straight. She is always very much powdered, with a good deal of pomade, and almost never puts on gloves. She has, at the very least, as much swagger and haughtiness as the great Gustavus, her father, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... me that she was going down a flight of steps, even when she was walking on level ground. She held herself erect with her arms folded tightly over her bosom. And whatever she was doing, whatever she undertook, if she were only threading a needle or ironing a petticoat—the effect was always beautiful and somehow—you may not believe it—touching. Her Christian name was Raissa, but we used to call her Black-lip: she had on her upper lip a birthmark; a little dark-bluish spot, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... mind his business, which is also my business? He has been witched, as if he were only twenty, by this lass of Adam Ferris's. And the more shame to him that has passed sixty without ever a chick or a child to hamper him, or a petticoat to drag him to ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... a loose gown or sacque open in front, to be worn over a handsome petticoat; and in spite of its name, was not only in high fashion for many years, but was worn for full dress. Abigail Adams, writing to Mrs. Storer, on January 20, 1785, says: "Trimming is reserved for full dress only, when very large hoops and negligees with trains three yards ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... 'zactly. I wore a blue worsted shirt, over a red underskirt, over a white linen petticoat wid tuckers at de hem, just a little long, to show good and white 'long wid de blue of de skirt and de red of de underskirt. Dese all come up to my waist and was held together by de string dat held my bustle in ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Wentworth has written it out for me, in a terrifically distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject; I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They must ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... aspens. Watercress grew below it, and high above it were pines and junipers. It was a spot of surpassing loveliness, but Rhoda, tossing and panting, could not know it, Kut-le laid his burden on the ground and Molly drew off her tattered petticoat to lay beneath the feverish head. The young Apache stood looking down at the little figure, so graceful in its boyish abandonment of gesture, so pitiful in its broken unconsciousness. Molly bathed the burning face and hands in the pure cold water, muttering tender Apache phrases. Kut-le ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... lang, after I'd once got ma start in London, before I was appearing regularly in the East End halls. I was a great favorite there; the Jews, especially, seemed to like me fine. One Sunday I was down Petticoat Lane, in Whitechapel, to see the sichts. I never thocht anyone there wad recognize me, and I stood quietly watching a young Jew selling clothes from a coster's barrow. But all at once another Jew came up ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... which the American invention was to afford an antidote, provides Leech with material for a hundred humorous points of view. For it grew and grew in monstrousness and outrageous proportions until 1861, when it began to dwindle, and by such refuge as a "hooped petticoat" can afford saved its dignity as it made its welcome exit from ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... passing close to the row of elm trees, discovered under their branches a plaster figure of a woman. With two fingers she held wide her petticoat, with her knees bent and her head over her shoulder, as if she ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... said Maurice, twisting and untwisting a ragged handkerchief as he spoke, "the first beginning of all the mischief was, we had nothing to do, so we went to the ashes to make dirt pies; but Babet would go so close that she burnt her petticoat, and threw about all our ashes, and plagued us, and we whipped her. But all would not do, she would not be quiet; so to get out of her reach, we climbed up by this chair on the table to the top of the press, and ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... glimmer gleam across Voluptuous mouth, where even teeth are bare, And gild the broidery of her petticoat. . ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... necklace, while her husband pounded the kalo root on a board. His only clothing was the malo, a narrow strip of cloth wound round the loins, and passed between the legs. This was the only covering worn by men before the introduction of Christianity. Females wore the pau, a short petticoat made of tapa, which reached from the waist to the knees. To our eyes, the brown skin produces nearly ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... express; maids flew about the house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... was tickled to death. Babies wasn't as common as blackberries in the woods o' Kaintucky. Mother come over an' washed him an' put a yaller flannel petticoat on him, an' cooked some dried berries with wild honey fur Nancy, an' slicked things up an' went home. An' that's all the nuss'n either ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... present age without the assistance of a gold watch, he might surely have struggled along to the end on gun-metal. In any case, a man of his years should have been thinking of higher things than mere gauds and trinkets. A like criticism applied to Mrs. Coppin's demand for a silk petticoat, which struck Roland as simply indecent. Frank and Percy took theirs mostly in specie. It was Muriel who struck the worst blow by insisting on a ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... wore the Tam o' Shanter-like cap of black stuff, common among these people, bound on with their long braids, and their coats were of the usual felt. Their skirts, homespun, were made with what we used to call a Spanish flounce. According to Baber, the Lolo petticoat is of great significance. No one may go among the independent Lolos safely save in the guardianship of a member of the tribe, and a woman is as good a guardian as a man. Before setting out she puts on an extra petticoat, and the traveller thus escorted is sacred. But if the guarantee ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and bare feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately, watermen in woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees, peasants in goatskin coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the round kidney-stones, shipwrights and labourers from the dockyards, bellows-menders, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... raises her skirt and shows her lace petticoat, it is obvious that she dresses like a woman who is accustomed to be seen ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... face gladdening as the crescent moon of Sha'aban."[FN204] But when Al-Hayfa heard the words of the women she was glad and gave herself joy and sensed an oppression of pleasure, whilst her vitals palpitated and she perspired in her petticoat-trowsers.[FN205] Then she went down to the gateway which she bade be thrown open, and seeing Prince Yusuf she smiled in his face and welcomed him and greeted him. He returned her salam with sweetness of phrase and softness of words, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... average height. The only clothing they then wore was the MARO, a cloth made by themselves of the acacia bark. This they pass between the legs, and once or twice round the loins. The WYHEENES - women - formerly wore nothing but a short petticoat or kilt of the same material. By persuasion of the missionaries they have exchanged this simple garment for a chemise of printed calico, with the waist immediately under the arms so as to conceal the contour of the figure. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... apricot, with the bodice cut low and the skirt gathered in loops to show her white silk petticoat, which swelled from under a flowered stomacher so monstrously, that the tiny blue-heeled slipper upon the second stair seemed smaller than ever. Deep frills of lace fell from her short sleeves and a little lace cap was set on her ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... wit— he was equal to the best of them. Now one saw that he really might have luck with the women: there was no boasting or lying about it. The young actress with the hair like the lightest flax could not keep her eyes off him, although she evidently had all the others at her petticoat-tails; she made signs to her companions that they should admire the master's splendid big mustache. The master had forgotten his lame leg and thrown his stick away; he was on his knees, taking the actress's measure for a pair of high boots with patent tops and concertina-like folds in the legs. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... ones with red eyes—to wish Mrs. Trevarthen good-bye. She answered them tremulously; but her mind, all the way down the street, ran on a hamper of chinaware, the cover of which she could not remember to have tied. Her left arm rested in Aunt Butson's (who carried the parrot's cage swathed in an old petticoat); on her right she bore a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by her three suitors, taking the arm of one, then of another, bridling up and carrying her head high. She would have been very glad to exhibit the fourth to the passers-by; but it seemed so ridiculous to be paraded thus in company by a petticoat, in everybody's sight, that he kept at a respectful distance, talking with Pere Leonard and finding a way to divert his thoughts and occupy his mind so that they did not seem to belong ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... hardly spoken when the skipper of the vessel, a heavy, sun-tanned-looking man in scarlet cap, high boots and petticoat, came ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... of the State have taken the field in favor of a petticoat empire, with a zeal and energy which show that their hearts are in the cause, and that they are resolved no longer to submit to the tyrannical rule of the heartless "lords of creation," but have solemnly determined to demand their "natural and inalienable ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wedding at Arlington who, as a young girl, paid long visits to Mary Custis, I heard this delicious story: "There being no telephones, when the girls at Arlington and at Tudor Place wanted to get together they had a series of signals. Hanging a red flannel petticoat out of the window meant 'come on over'. A white one had another meaning. This method was not popular with the owners of the two mansions, but persisted, nevertheless." To prove this, not long ago I went to Arlington with the person who told me the story. The room ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... in proper order," observed Malone approvingly, as, with his fine face ruddy as the embers over which he bent, he assiduously turned the mutton chops. "You are not under petticoat government, like poor Sweeting, a man—whew! how the fat spits! it has burnt my hand—destined to be ruled by women. Now you and I, Moore—there's a fine brown one for you, and full of gravy—you and I will have no gray mares in our stables ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the habit of a huntress became her admirably. She wore a beaver hat with blue feathers, a surtout of gray-pearl velvet, fastened with diamond clasps, and a petticoat of blue satin, embroidered with silver. On her left shoulder sparkled the diamond studs, on a bow of the same color as the plumes ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her kneel, just as she was in her petticoat, in order to pass long, ringed fingers through the soft masses, and lift them up for the pleasure of letting them fall. When the golden veil, as Lella M'Barka called it, had been praised and admired over and over again, the order was given to braid it in two long plaits, leaving ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... green quilted petticoat. Overdress and bodice of dark green, flowered in old rose. Elbow sleeves. White ruffles of lace. White lawn fichu. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... devils by a glance, it was his. It was a round face, not remarkable for beauty of outline, inasmuch as it bore a strong resemblance to that of the gentleman on the blue China plates, in two pigtails and a petticoat, who appears to pass a mild ornithological and botanical existence in studying intently certain fishy-looking birds, and a cannon-ball tree, which form the leading feature of the landscape in his vicinity. With regard to expression, however, Coleman had a decided advantage over ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... green lace skirt to the knee, all in ruffles, low-necked, of course, very low-necked and awfully tight-laced. Bright green petticoat, then brighter and brighter. Snow-white underclothes with ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... the formula As secretive as they are sensitive Be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles Becoming air of appropriation that made it family history Constitutionally discontented Decency's a dirty petticoat in the Garden of Innocence England's the foremost country of the globe Enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness Fires in the grates went through the ceremony of warming nobody Foist on you their idea of your idea at the moment ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... patent leather shoes, and the most beautifully embroidered linen. Dare gave him a little smile and nod of approbation. He had not thought of fine clothing for himself; but then for the handsome, elegant, Mexican youth it seemed precisely the right thing. And Isabel, in her scarlet satin petticoat, and white embroideries and satin slippers, looked his proper mate. Dare and Antonia, and even the doctor, watched their almost childlike devotion to ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... selfish and incapable, always tied to the petticoat and caprices of some new mistress, and the unfortunate Nicholas II., well-intentioned, and almost fanatically religious, the affectionate father and the devoted husband, no comparison is possible, except as regards their limitations for the supreme ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... clustered about a delicately-coloured face and hazel eyes. Later in the harvest her cheeks would be ruddy—now they were peach-coloured. A white neck rose above a pink print jacket, called a wrapper; and the rest of her visible dress was a blue petticoat. She ended in pretty, brown bare feet. Robert liked her, and began to talk. If his imagination had not been already filled, he would have fallen in love with her, I dare say, at once; for, except Miss St. John, he had never seen anything ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... with me," said Mrs. Phillips, "but I wouldn't let him. I chipped him out of it. If he's going to write plays, as I told him, he will have to get over his fear of a petticoat." ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Prague, and undoubtedly spotted a winner. This was not the only occasion either, for she did herself a good turn too by means of her supernatural power. As it happened, despite her possession of all the virtues, she had trouble with her subjects, who declared themselves weary of petticoat government and urged her to look round for a husband. She did, calling to aid her uncanny gift. The discussion with her subjects probably took place in the open, high up on Vy[vs]ehrad. Libu[vs]a, with that far-away gaze proper to all soothsaying, pointed out over the distant hills, saying, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... a coach, with no other clothing than a petticoat and a mantle, for they would not let me stay to take any thing else. My fright was so great, I expected to die that very night; but judge my surprise, when I was ushered into an apartment, decorated with all the elegance that taste, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... harvest-field she was always the foremost in the band of reapers; dressed in her tight green-cloth boddice, clean white apron, red stuff petticoat, and neatly blacked shoes; her beautiful features shaded by her large, coarse, flat, straw hat, put knowingly to one side, more fully to display the luxuriant auburn tresses, of the sunniest hue, that waved profusely in rich natural ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... comparison more familiar to the British reader might be made to the philabeg or short petticoat ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... however, they are inducted into raiment which their deluded mothers fancy is European and stylish; but there is always something wrong. Either one little ruffled drawers leg sags down, or the petticoat is longer than the dress skirt, or the waistband is too tight, or mamma has failed to make allowance in the underclothing for the gauziness of the outer sheathing. As for the sashes with which the victims are finally bound, they fret ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... when Juno entered the living-room, an exquisite bit of Venetian lace filled in the V at the back of the bodice; the softest white maline edged the front, and when, she raised her train a lace petticoat which any girl would have pronounced "too sweet for words" floated like ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of the nineties the packers began to put women into departments that had always been staffed by men. So it was when girls began to wield the knife that the men workers first began to fear the competition of the "petticoat butchers." The idea of organizing the girls, were they painters or butchers, as a way of meeting this new menace, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... there a little over a week, preparing our traveling-dresses. Despite the admonitions of papa, we went to the fashionable modiste of the day, Madame Cinthelia Lefranc, and ordered for each a suit that cost one hundred and fifty dollars. The costume was composed of a petticoat of camayeu, very short, caught up in puffs on the side by a profusion of ribbons; and a very long-pointed black velvet jacket (casaquin), laced in the back with gold and trimmed on the front with several rows of gilt buttons. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... doll. The one he selected was dressed like the Princess of Savoy on her arrival in France, on November 4th. The head was a mass of bows and ribbons; she wore a very stiff corsage, covered with gold filigrees, and a brocade petticoat with an overskirt caught up by ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... his notable experiments have called forth the exercise of highly inventive faculties in their very inception. Investigation and experiment have been a consuming passion, an impelling force from within, as it were, from his petticoat days when he collected goose-eggs and tried to hatch them out by sitting over them himself. One might be inclined to dismiss this trivial incident smilingly, as a mere childish, thoughtless prank, had not subsequent development as a child, boy, and man revealed a born investigator ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... already to make use of this conjunction to compass their filthy purposes. They tell the ladies forsooth, that it is only parting with a perishable commodity, hardly of so much value as a callico under-petticoat; since, like its mistress, it will be useless in the form it is now in. If the ladies have no regard to the dishonour and immorality of the action, I desire they will consider, that nature who never destroys her own productions, will exempt big-belly'd ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... no male came up for air. Then, the restaurant door swung back on its noiseless check and spring, and in walked Big Bill Petticoat. ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... much skill and grace by a pretty boy about our own age,—the son of a French dancing-master, who was passing through the city. After the fashion of dancers, he was dressed in a close vest of red silk, which, ending in a short hoop- petticoat, like a runner's apron, floated above the knee. We had given our meed of applause to this young artist with the whole public, when, I know not how, it occurred to me to make a moral reflection. I said to my companion, "How handsomely this boy was dressed, and how well he ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... itself to her, she penetrated his motive on the spot. Her face turned on him brightly, with a look which said, "I own you have pleased and flattered me." Never had she been so charming, in Vendale's eyes, as she was at that moment. Her winter dress—a petticoat of dark silk, with a bodice of black velvet rising to her neck, and enclosing it softly in a little circle of swansdown—heightened, by all the force of contrast, the dazzling fairness of her hair and ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... disdainful port of natives of Old England; all contrasted with the rough aspect of one or two hack settlers, negotiating sales of timber, from forests where axe had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying, with lofty grace, to the punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far from an old mansion, ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of art recently selected by Mrs. Church, in London. On her head was an immense puff of yellow gauze, whose satin foundation had a double wing in large plaits. The dress was of yellow satin, flowing over a white satin petticoat, and embellished about the neck with a large Italian gauze handkerchief, striped with white. Her hair was in ringlets and unpowdered. She was a very plate of fashion, but her brow ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... round of groaning had been completed—and it occupied probably half an hour—a young lad, perhaps of seventeen years, very handsome, and handsomely dressed in a puce-coloured cloak, or rather petticoat, with a purple hat on his head, in shape like an inverted flower-pot, slipped forth from near the tribune into the middle of the circle, and began to twirl. After about five or six minutes, two other younger boys, somewhat similarly dressed, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... in her chamber, and she was middling old, Her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold. Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass As comely or as kindly or as ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... the walks a sign-post sort of daub, representing a Swiss peasant girl, holding in her hand a scroll, requesting that the roses might not be gathered. Unhappily for the artist, or for the proprietor, or for both, the petticoat of this figure was so short as to shew her ancles. The ladies saw, and shuddered; and it was formally intimated to the proprietor, that if he wished for the patronage of the ladies of Cincinnati, he must have ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... drawing-room, leaning on the arm of Captain Douglas, I will try describe her as nearly as possible:—A white satin robe with court train, bordered with the purest lace, festooned with pearls, over a blue satin petticoat, formed a lovely costume, with bodice of white satin, showing the faultless waist of the wearer; white satin slippers, ornamented with pearls, encased the tiny feet of Lady Rosamond. She was, indeed, worthy the name she bore—a type of her lovely but ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... be praised," replied she, "for so great a mercy to me! But tell me, husband, what good have you got by your squireship? Have you brought a petticoat home for me, and shoes ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I have more need of our Lord here than in Crigton,' she said. 'In Crigton there was the bus to be afraid of, and bicycles. Here I just cover my ears for wind, put on an extra flannel petticoat for frost, and sit in the coal-house for thunder. Not that I'm forgetting God. God with us, of course, coal-house ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... life as well as literature, how often have we risen from those tables, to pursue together the not too swiftly flying petticoat, through the terrestrial firmament of shining streets, aglow with the midnight sun of pleasure, a-dazzle with eyes brighter far than the city lamps—passionate pilgrims of the morning star! Ah! we ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... article might be made out of the idea of an imaginary museum, containing such articles as Aaron's rod, the petticoat of General Harrison, the pistol with which Benton shot Jackson,—and then a diorama, consisting of political or other scenes, or done in wax-work. The idea to be wrought out and extended. Perhaps it might be the museum of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... They had broad chests and square shoulders, and well-made backs and legs, which showed the strength possessed by them. They were pleasant-looking people. The men wore a short kilt, with a poncho over their shoulders; the women, a petticoat of ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... petticoat Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light; But, oh, she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter-day Is half so ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... It consisted of a long-bodied gown that had only half skirts; that is to say, instead of encompassing the whole person, the lower part of it came forward only as far as the hip bones, on each side, leaving the front of the petticoat exposed. This posterior part of the gown would, if left to fall to its full length, have formed a train behind them of at least two feet in length. It was pinned up, however, to a convenient length, and was not at all an ungraceful garment, if we except the sleeves, which went ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... down with a load of colour, red earthenware pots forward, a copper-faced man amidship, in white jacket and indian-red kilt. He is paddling, behind him are green bananas, and in the stern a lady sits in pink petticoat and white jacket. The clothes of men and women are somewhat similar; the man's coloured "putsoe," or kilt, often of tartan, is tied in a knot in front of his waist, and comes down to the middle of his calf. The woman tucks her longer skirt or "tamaine," above her bosom, as you might hitch ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... little younger, and from her garb it was plain that she belonged to the peasant class. She wore a spotless bodice of white linen, which but indifferently concealed the ripening swell of her young breast. Her petticoat, of dark red homespun, stopped short above her bare brown ankles, and her little feet were naked. Her brown hair, long and abundant, was still fastened at the nape of her slim neck, but fell loose beyond that, having been disturbed, no doubt, in her scuffle with Rinolfo. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... bless me, ma'am, I wouldn't be a poor woman with two—no, with one incumbrance at my petticoat tails—for the biggest ship and cargo old Steve ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... with the effect that the gold rings in his ears danced, and then he went up the little ladder through the hatchway, to stand half out for a few minutes giving orders, while we had a good look at the lower part of his person, which was clothed in what would have been a stiff canvas petticoat, had it not been sewn up between his legs, so as to turn it into the fashion of a pair of trousers, worn over a pair of heavy ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, white As snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight; Below, the modest petticoat can only half conceal The motion of the lightest foot that ever ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Her cloth petticoat was richly decorated with ribbons, and her leggins and mocassins proved that she had spent much time and labor on the adorning of a person naturally well ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... I have often wondered how they could bear it in so hot a climate. Again, on the other hand, many of the inferior sort during the heat of the Day, go almost naked, the women wearing nothing but the Petticoat aforementioned, and sometimes hardly that. The men wear a piece of Cloth like a Sack, which goes between their thighs, and brought up before and behind, and then wrapped round their waist. This every man wears always without exception, and it is no uncommon ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... Grief of my Heart, and thou Pearl of my Eyes, D'on thy Flannel Petticoat quickly, and rise; And from thy resplendent Window discover A Face that wou'd mortify any young Lover: For I, like great Jove transformed, do wooe, And am amorous Owl, to wit to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... will, my boy; there's my hand. Now out with it. What did you go away for, since it wasn't a petticoat?" ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... in the crude and in coin, with beautiful steel axe heads, with machetes, "or long knives"; "but nothing would work on him." The pirates were beginning to despair, when one of them produced "a Sky-coloured Petticoat," and placed it about the person of the chief's favourite wife. How he had become possessed of such a thing, and whether it came from a Hilo beauty, and whether she gave it as a love token, on the ship's sailing, cannot now be known. It may ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the gorge, copper-tinted in the morning light. It was the most wonderful world; yet Lady Turnour was cackling angrily. Was she afraid? Had she changed her mind? No, the saints be praised! She was only burning holes in her petticoat on the brazier supplied by the hotel! I turned away to hide a smile almost as wicked as a grin, and before I looked round again, the swift stream had swept the boat out of sight round a jutting corner of rock. We were safe. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... also an advantage over the men, in that the petticoat can conceal many defects in their execution; even, if the indulgence due to that amiable sex, did not only make great allowances, but give to the least agreeable steps in them, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... woollen gown, and white linen cap; her gray hair and wrinkled face reflecting the bright firelight; the long stocking growing under her busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock, in the cradle by her side. The goodwife, in linsey-woolsey short gown and red petticoat, steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poises gracefully to give a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... gun!" said Mrs. Gammit, appearing suddenly, a self-reliant figure, at the open door of the barn where Joe Barron sat mending his harness. She wore a short cotton homespun petticoat and a dingy waist; while a limp pink cotton sunbonnet, pushed far back from her perspiring forehead, released unmanageable tufts of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... collar, which hid the back of his head, such as was then in use by country carriers; but the garment was much too short for him, and his bare arms came out a foot beyond the end of the sleeves. The rest of his costume was even more eccentric, being nothing more or less than a coarse flannel petticoat, and his bare feet rested on the mat in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... gorgeous apparel, until she seemed to fairly overreach all the innocent young flowery beauties of the spring with one rich trill of colour, like a high note of a bird above a wide chorus of others. Mistress Mary that morning wore a tabby petticoat of a crimson colour, and a crimson satin bodice shining over her arms and shoulders like the plumage of a bird, and down her back streamed her curls, shining like gold under her gauze love-hood. I knew well how she had sat up late the night before fashioning that hood from ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... a red gown and petticoat, which she had received as a present from Marsden, that reverend gentleman having been obliged himself, in the first instance, to assist in decorating her with these novel articles of attire; and, holding in her hand a large horse-pistol, always ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... any more of this Epistle; but I presume the argument which the Right Hon. Doctor and his friends mean to deduce from it, is (in their usual convincing strain) that Romanists must be unworthy of Emancipation now, because they had a Petticoat Pope in the Ninth Century. Nothing can be more logically clear, and I find that Horace had exactly the same views ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... said Dr. O'Grady. "That's the best way I see out of the difficulty. Mrs. Gregg, you get the dress you want for her, privately, without saying a word about it. Agree with everything Mrs. Ford says, and let her order a red flannel petticoat if she likes." ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... old woman, dressed in a black petticoat, and a red, short gown that came a little below her waist. She wore a cap that fitted close to her head, made of some black cloth, innocent of bow or frill; from under it, locks of gray hung down about her face and neck. She ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... colour, with wavy hair. The men, of large stature, well formed, and dressed with a degree of taste far in advance of any of the savages we had hitherto met with. Elaborate devices were tattooed upon the exposed parts of their bodies; a petticoat of finely-plaited cloth reached from waist to knee; beautiful necklets made from red and white coral hung round their necks; while their hair was frizzled like a mop upon their heads, powdered red or yellow. The women were similarly attired, save that their petticoats ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... petticoats of cocoanut-fibre; for you must know I've often see'd mats made o' that stuff, an' splendid wear there's in it too, though it would be rather rough for the skin at first; but we'd get used to that in coorse o' time. Only fancy Mrs Jarwin in a cocoanut-fibre petticoat with a palm-leaf hat, or somethink o' that sort! An', after all, it wouldn't be half so rediklous as some o' the canvas she's used to ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... The men refused to make them at that price, when other houses were paying as much as 15s. for them. The consequence of this was, the house discharged all the men, and got a Jew middle-man from the neighbourhood of Petticoat-lane, to agree to do them all at 7s. 6d. a piece. The Jew employed all the poor people who were at work for the slop warehouses in Houndsditch and its vicinity. This Jew makes on an average 500 paletots a week. The Jew gets 2s. 6d. profit out of each, and having no ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... her cuz, Hoping that he hath vinegar'd his senses, As he was bid, the Fairy queen dispenses, By me, this robe, the petticoat of fortune; Which that he straight put on, she doth importune. And though to fortune near be her petticoat, Yet nearer is her smock, the queen doth note: And therefore, ev'n of that a piece she hath sent Which, being a child, to wrap him in was rent; And prays ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... "prithee, undo this button" of Lear, coming where it does and expressing what it does, is one of those touches of the pathetically sublime, of which only Shakespeare ever knew the secret. Herrick, too, has a charming poem on "Julia's petticoat," the charm being that he lifts the familiar and the low to the region of sentiment. In the passage from Sylvester, it is precisely the reverse, and the wig takes as much from the sentiment as it adds to a Lord Chancellor. So ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Courtenvaux, related in its place), with anger or severity. Never was man so naturally polite, or of a politeness so measured, so graduated, so adapted to person, time, and place. Towards women his politeness was without parallel. Never did he pass the humblest petticoat without raising his hat; even to chamber- maids, that he knew to be such, as often happened at Marly. For ladies he took his hat off completely, but to a greater or less extent; for titled people, half off, holding ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... kind and much valued cousin, Miss Dolly Hervey, daughter of my aunt Hervey, I bequeath my watch and equipage, and my best Mechlin and Brussels head-dresses and ruffles; also my gown and petticoat of flowered silver of my own work; which having been made up but a few days before I was confined to my chamber, I ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... can," said Marian. "I'll take off my petticoat and put it on this ice-pile. We can see it from there, and when we get back here ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... way: she took off my clothes—just see; I have nothing on but this petticoat and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... covered with a green cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head. The light falls on the scene through a window to ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... return, a tall, strapping wench of eighteen or twenty, dressed, fantastically, in a sort of blue riding-jacket, with tarnished lace, her hair clubbed like that of a man, a Highland bonnet, and a bunch of broken feathers, a riding-skirt (or petticoat) of scarlet camlet, embroidered with tarnished flowers. Her features were coarse and masculine, yet at a little distance, by dint of very bright wild-looking black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a commanding profile, appeared rather handsome. She flourished the switch she held in her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... laughter and strange cries came from it. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went towards the light, but stood still in the doorway without going in. There was tea on the table. In the middle of the room stood the old woman who was a relation of the landlord. She was bareheaded and was dressed in a petticoat and a hare-skin jacket, and her stockingless feet were thrust into slippers. In her arms she had an eighteen-months-old baby, with nothing on but its little shirt; with bare legs, flushed cheeks, and ruffled white hair. It had only just been taken out of the cradle. It seemed to have ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of that shrine, Two ringed fingers placed in mine,— The stones were many carats fine, And of the purest water,— Then dropped a curtsy, far enough To fairly fill her cretonne puff And show the petticoat's rich stuff That ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Tokaido and Nakasendo, of Lake Biwa and Hakone, it does not follow that either is inaccurate. But truly this is a new Japan to me, of which no books have given me any idea, and it is not fairyland. The men may be said to wear nothing. Few of the women wear anything but a short petticoat wound tightly round them, or blue cotton trousers very tight in the legs and baggy at the top, with a blue cotton garment open to the waist tucked into the band, and a blue cotton handkerchief knotted ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... All this tumbling and toiling, and bother and confusion that never ceases, has made me so old, that you would scarcely know me again. On the right side of my head the hair is all gray; my teeth break and fall out; I have got my face wrinkled like the falbalas of a petticoat; my back bent like a fiddle-bow; and spirit sad and downcast like a monk of La Trappe. I forewarn you of all this, lest, in case we should meet again in flesh and bone, you might feel yourself too violently shocked by my appearance. There remains to me nothing but the heart,—which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... child," says he, "to see everything suitable. A fine gown and petticoat, a fine laced head, a fine face and neck, and no necklace, would not have made the object perfect. But why that blush, my dear?" says the prince. "My lord," said I, "all your gifts call for blushes, but, above all, I blush to receive what I am so ill able to merit, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... secretly made for the king. It consisted of fifteen folds of Italian taffeta, and was formed into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger, and several balls were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one morning, in the queen's chamber, a moment's opportunity occurred, and he slipped it on, saying, at the same time, to Madame Campan, "It is to satisfy the queen that I submit to this inconvenience. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... fighting for the rest of the day, he felt that he could never forgive her. She had violated the rule of battle and outraged the noble principle of fair play; and, worse and worse, had disgraced him in the eyes of the world by making him appear as a weakling seeking protection behind a despised petticoat. He reviled Kitty for that action in such overwhelming language that the poor girl fled in tears, and next day it was only with the greatest difficulty that she persuaded him to accept two pears and a blood-alley ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... devotees, in true Irish fashion, made his offering accompanied by the following words: "To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o' the waistband o' my own breeches, an' a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin' made this holy station; an' may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day."[221] I shall not attempt to account for the presence of the usual Irish humour ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... And must be emptied, or must split, In name of president APOLLO, And other gentle folks, that follow: Such as URANIA and CLIO, To whom my fame poetic I owe; With the whole drove of rhyming sisters, For whom my heart with rapture blisters; Who swim in HELICON uncertain Whether a petticoat or shirt on, From vulgar ken their charms do cover, From every eye but Muses' lover; In name of every ugly GOD; Whose beauty scarce outshines a toad; In name of PROSERPINE and PLUTO, Who board in hell's sublimest grotto; In name ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?" asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a sage old man, the oracle of the village, who, leaning both hands ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Maurice, twisting and untwisting a ragged handkerchief as he spoke, "the first beginning of all the mischief was, we had nothing to do, so we went to the ashes to make dirt pies; but Babet would go so close that she burnt her petticoat, and threw about all our ashes, and plagued us, and we whipped her. But all would not do, she would not be quiet; so to get out of her reach, we climbed up by this chair on the table to the top of the press, and there we were well enough for a little while, till somehow we began ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... kerchief, lace scarf, and green silk hood, and my petticoat with the border newly purfled. Hark! 'Tis the bell for prayers. Be quick with my pantofles:—not those, wench—the yellow silk with silver spangles. Now my rings and crystal bracelets. I would not miss early matins to-day for the best ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... leather bag she wore hidden in her bosom; then, cramming the goods hastily into the maw of her sack, she would stagger joyously away. The men's garments she would modestly sell to a second-hand shop, but the women's she cleaned and turned and transmogrified and sold in Petticoat Lane of a Sunday morning; scavenger, earth-worm, and alchemist, she was a humble agent in the great economic process by which cast-off clothes renew their youth and freshness, and having set in their original sphere rise endlessly on other ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... either side of her head, like horse-tails, half-way down her waist; her skin was dark and swarthy, like that of a toad, and the expression of her countenance was particularly evil; her arms were bare, and her bosom was but half-concealed by a slight bodice, below which she wore a coarse petticoat, her only other article of dress. The man was somewhat younger, but of a figure equally wild; his frame was long and lathy, but his arms were remarkably short, his neck was rather bent, he squinted slightly, and his mouth was much awry; his complexion was dark, but, unlike that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... tramp" with a female companion to Middlesborough. It was early in the morning when we turned our backs upon Keighley for the North. We trudged by road to Otley, Ripley, and Ripon, Thirsk and on to Stockton-on-Tees. Here my petticoat companion was so tired and weary that I left her, having secured her lodgings with an old lady, who agreed to take care of her until my return; my intention being to get work and a home in Middlesborough, and then to fetch ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... her present gaudy trim, all flaunting with ribbons and shining with trinkets, the same Betty who used to deal out pecks of potatoes and superintend her basket of cantaloupes in the Jersey market, in pasteboard bonnet and linsey petticoat. Her companions were of the infamous class. If Arthur were still in the city, there is no doubt that the mother and son might renew the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... not twist and squirm in his strong arms, and Rosemary deftly washed out the great jagged cut that had slashed across the slim instep, and then, further scandalizing Nina, tore a wide bandage from the bottom of her petticoat, brought the edges of the cut closely together ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... down a larger tree betwixt the rising of the sun and the coming of the shadows than many a smart beaver of the other sex. As for her wit, try her at the game of the dish, and see who gets up master; and for cleanliness, look at her petticoat." ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... morning over the prairies—I haven't seen one for twenty-five years! That is, she skimmed over the little knolls rather than walked, as if made of something lighter than ordinary human clay. Her dress was ragged, faded, and showed through the tears in it a tattered quilted petticoat, and she wore no bonnet or hat; but carried in, her hand a boy's cap—which, according to the notions harbored by us then, it would have been immodest for her to wear. Her hair was brown and blown all about her head, and her face was tanned to a rich brown—a very bad complexion then, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... eager to enter their place of rest. The wave-like movement of these animals is particularly graceful and cleverly done. A little shepherdess is guiding them, as anxious to get them in as they are to enter, for this means the end of her day's work. Her worn-out blue petticoat is lighted up by a moonbeam; in her hand she appears to have a hoe. It is a most harmonious picture; every line is in accord with ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... impressed upon my memory; I continually recalled them to mind, and thus I became a philosopher long before my wise teeth were in embryo, or I had even shed the first set with which kind Nature presents us, that in the petticoat age we may fearlessly indulge ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... frame before her. Her head-dress was a small sort of hood, richly ornamented, with a veil falling behind. She had a long waist with an embroidered stomacher, and a handsome girdle which hung down in front. Her gown was open, showing a richly-decorated petticoat beneath, so long as completely to hide her feet when she stood up on the entrance of her husband, Master Gresham. On either side of the room were several damsels with spinning-wheels and distaffs by their sides, or else actively plying their needles. A little boy, fair and delicate—a ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Maslova, I say!" called out the jailer, and in a minute or two a small young woman with a very full bust came briskly out of the door and went up to the jailer. She had on a grey cloak over a white jacket and petticoat. On her feet she wore linen stockings and prison shoes, and round her head was tied a white kerchief, from under which a few locks of black hair were brushed over the forehead with evident intent. The face of the woman was of that whiteness peculiar to people who have lived long in confinement, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs. Her flowered petticoat was fastened at the waist with two pins. Even now I cans see the balck heads of those two pins. It was a decidedly vulgar doll—smelt of the faubourg. I remember perfectly well that, child as I was then, before I had put on my first pair of trousers, I was quite conscious ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket, ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap and, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... systematically. On crutches I hobbled round St. Paul's and through the Abbey. I saw the Tower, the Albert Memorial, and all the sights that I could remember or the taxi-driver think of sufficient importance to need a visit. I even went down Petticoat Lane. But most of all I did the theatres, four in one day, returning to the hospital at 1.30 A. M. Next day I repeated and enlarged the dose, returning a little later, but the following morning I was summoned before the O. C. He said: "It is reported to me ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... trusty squire provided needments meet, As for their journey fitting most should be; Meanwhile her vesture, pendant to her feet, Erminia doft, as erst determined she, Stripped to her petticoat the virgin sweet So slender was, that wonder was to see; Her handmaid ready at her mistress' will, To arm her helped, though ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... for Mr. Alden's tray," she announced primly, "if he should speak will you call me?" Felicia nodded. She stitched steadily. She was putting new rows of lace on a torn petticoat, and so intent was she in joining the pattern of the lace that she forgot to watch Babiche. That inquisitive one was exploring, sniffing cautiously as she approached the invalid's bed but a second later she was trotting hastily back to ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... she might sell it to the schoolmaster's daughter in Dorfli and get a good deal of money for it. But Heidi stuck to her intention and hid the hat quietly in a corner behind the grandmother's chair. Then she took off her pretty dress and put her red shawl on over her under-petticoat, which left her arms bare; and now she clasped the old woman's hand. "I must go home to grandfather," she said, "but to-morrow I shall ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... the first floor of an old-fashioned house. Two high windows right. A door at back is the main entrance. A door left leads to other rooms. The walls are papered with election literature. Conspicuous among the posters displayed is "A Man for Men." "No Petticoat Government." "Will you be Henpecked?" A large, round table centre is littered with papers and pamphlets. A large desk stands between the windows. A settee is against ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... top-heavy upon the tiny steed, but he ambled along, whistling a merry lilt and as lighthearted as his master. There was no countryman who had not a nod and no woman who had not a smile for the jovial bowman, who rode for the most part with his face over his shoulder, staring at the last petticoat which had passed him. Once only he met with a harsher greeting. It was from a tall, white-headed, red-faced man whom ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... busy putting some embroidery on your white petticoat all the afternoon," said Mrs Langton trying to change the subject, "you know I had a telegram to say you are expected on Thursday instead ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... silk, both fair and white, With gold embroidered gorgeously; Thy petticoat of sendal right: And these I bought thee gladly. Greensleeves was all my joy! Greensleeves was my delight! Greensleeves was my heart of gold! And who but my ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... than Howat's; she had sympathetic hazel eyes, an inviting mouth, an illusive depression in one cheek that alone saved her from positive ugliness, and tobacco brown hair worn low with a long, turned strand. She had on a pewter-coloured, informal wrap over a black silk petticoat, lacking hoops, with a cut border of violet and silver brocade; and above low, green kid stays with coral tulip blossoms worked on the dark velvet of foliage were glimpses of webby linen and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was of apricot, with the bodice cut low and the skirt gathered in loops to show her white silk petticoat, which swelled from under a flowered stomacher so monstrously, that the tiny blue-heeled slipper upon the second stair seemed smaller than ever. Deep frills of lace fell from her short sleeves and a little lace cap was set on her thick ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... not unlike that of the men in appearance. They wear close jackets of various colors when they go abroad, and the same loose breeches as the men, but over them they usually have a large wrapper (sarong), not unlike the pareu of the Polynesian islanders, which is put round them like a petticoat, or thrown over the shoulders. Their hair is drawn to the back of the head, and around the forehead it is shaven in the form of a regular arch, to correspond with the eyebrows. Those that I saw at the Sultan's were like the Malays, and had light complexions, with very black teeth. The Datu ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Tumzeen Barley Tezzezes Tezezreat Sticks Taginaste Taginast A palm-tree Tahuyan Tahuyat A blanket, covering, or petticoat. Ahemon Amen Water 381 Faycag Faquair Priest or lawyer Acoran M'koorn God Almogaren Talmogaren Temples Tamoyanteen Tigameen Houses Tawacen Tamouren Hogs Archormase Akermuse Green figs Azamotan Azamittan Barley meal fried in oil Tigot ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... with death, were left free to devote themselves to the superfluous decoration of life, the artificial tension of the moral motives would be relaxed. The swimmer who had plunged into the sea to save a woman from drowning would not take a second plunge to rescue her silk petticoat. The socialists, in short, when dealing with military and other cognate heroisms, ignore both of the causes which alone make such heroisms possible. They ignore the fact that the internal motive is essentially isolated and exceptional. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... put on a fair corset of pure silk camblet; above that went the petticoat of white, red tawny, or gray taffeta. Above this was the cotte in cloth of silver, with needlework either (according to the temperature and disposition of the weather) of satin, damask, velvet, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... one of the clay heaps, a woman shot into silhouette against the sky. An odd figure, clad in a skimpy green petticoat, with a scarlet shawl held about her shoulders, wisps of frowsy red hair standing out round her head, she balanced herself on the slippery earth, spinning her arm like the vane of a windmill, and crying at the top of her voice: "Joe, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... may be questioned whether he could have told a petticoat from a gown. Miss Amilly was waiting with breathless ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tak aff my hood But lat my petticoat be; Pat my mantle o'er my head; For the fire ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... house where the Crazy Lady lived—here, if you were alone, you ran—and then, reaching the verge of the woods, you took your choice of climbing a seven-rail fence or of walking a quarter of a mile till you came to the bars. The latter was much better for the lace on a Sunday petticoat. ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... a short vision of a red petticoat and blue jacket on the other bank, was followed by the ferryman himself,—the white sail rose up above the little boat, and she floated smoothly over. Then Mrs. Derrick drove carefully across the boat bridge, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... be so brusque about non-penitentiary offences, but skilful and lovely concealments in gardening were his hobby. To another he whispered, "My dear sir, tell your pretty house her petticoat shows!" and to yet another, "Take all those shrubs out of the middle of your lawn and 'plant out' with them every feature of your house which would be of no interest to you if the house were not yours. Your house's morals may be all right, but its manners are insufferable, it talks ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... by some as stomacher; by others as petticoat, or the slit or opening in those garments. Cf. Wb. It is often used figuratively for woman, as here. Placket and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... doubtless, was why she stood there with the self-possession of a Grand Duchess, surveying that dirty-mouthed, dirty-clothed rabble of the Fishmarket, and perking her lips disparagingly when some one noticed her real pearl earrings, or the Algerian scarf, or the red-flannel petticoat from Gibraltar the Rector had given her! In fact, the only woman she thought quite her class was "Granny" Picores, agueela Picores, a veteran of the Fishmarket, a whale of a woman, mastodontic, who cowed every policeman in the market ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... over-lapping, and cross-lapping, and first and second quality of cedar shingles. Miss Lobelia Brewster, who had a rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife by remarking that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower with her red flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his new-fangled rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been more thoroughly done by a "female infant babe"; whereupon the person criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few infant babes to "put on ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mental dispositions, she got up without sound and slipped off a petticoat that she suspected of having rustled a little when she came in; folding and popping it where it could not be suspected any more, she removed her shoes and put on very old velvet slippers. She walked in these toward the bed, listening ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... crime, for A's abstention from voting gives greater weight to the vote of B. By female suffrage is meant the right of a woman to vote as some man tells her to. It is based on female responsibility, which is somewhat limited. The woman most eager to jump out of her petticoat to assert her rights is first to jump back into it when threatened with a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a petticoat around my house since half-past nine this mornin'," lamented Alf, upsetting a pan of milk while trying to get a plate of cold ham out of the ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... a little town in all England, but has an old female spirit appertaining to it, who, in her high-crown hat, nicely clean linen, and red petticoat, has been viewed by half the parish. This article of dress is of mighty concern among some ghosts; wherefore a skilful and learned apparition writer, in the Preface of Drelincourt on Death, makes a very pious ghost talk to a lady ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... been forgotten,' replied Mrs. Mortimer; 'and you shall have the pleasure of carrying the bundle prepared for her yourself. There it is:—the cotton gown, and stuff petticoat, the shoes, stockings, and apron, lying together at the ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... were all to rush to Pa, and he would save us. Well, last night Ma had to go to one of the neighbors, where they was going to have twins, and we didn't sleep much, cause Ma had to come home twice in the night to get saffron, and an old flannel petticoat that I broke in when I was a kid, cause the people where Ma went did not know as twins was on the bill of fare, and they only had flannel petticoats for one. Pa was cross at being kept awake, and told Ma he hoped when all the children ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... soil by means of buckets worked by hand. The women of the group of whom we are speaking were bareheaded, and wore their long, straight, black hair in braids hanging down over their naked shoulders, their arms being bare, and also their legs to the knee. A loose cotton tunic and short petticoat formed their dress. The men wore straw hats with tall crowns, their broad brims throwing their swarthy faces into deep shadow. Unbleached cotton shirts and drawers of the same reaching to the knees completed the costume. Some wore leather ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... life as well as princes, and on these occasions Dea was arrayed, like Fibi and Vinos, in a Florentine petticoat of flowered stuff, and a woman's jacket without sleeves, leaving the arms bare. Ursus and Gwynplaine wore men's jackets, and, like sailors on board a man-of-war, great loose trousers. Gwynplaine had, besides, for his work and for his feats ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and iron, and scrub, and sweep,—and, at our idler intervals, to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing,—these, I suppose, must be feminine occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us who wear the petticoat will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to take our ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... concealments, and finally the tables and chairs were broken to pieces, and each object on the walls was torn down and flung in bits on to the gorgeous general debris, to the top of which clambered the violet hat, necklace and yellow petticoat, brandishing one single little plate, whose life had been miraculously spared. Shrieks of joy in that little plate played over the din like lightning in a thunderstorm. And the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... porter's wife had thought it expedient to venture forth from their snug bed at such an unpropitious moment. A second time Wilton applied his hand to the bell, and with more success than before, for in stays and petticoat, unlaced and half tied, forth rushed the grumbling porter's wife, with a murmured "Marry come up: people are in great haste: I wonder who is in such ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... countenance for twenty minutes. At the end of that time the image was forthcoming. The ugly thing had burst the paper in which it was wrapped, and its grinning bullet-head projected handily. The paper was wisped about its middle like a petticoat. Dawson took it thankfully from the Greek, and made suitable remuneration ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... lacy petticoat all but swept the greasy floor. An equally spotless skirt, fresh from the laundry, gathered up in one strong pendant hand, gleamed like light against its background of greasy woodwork and greasy wool. The majestic ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... a little girl of about ten, dressed in a chemise and a linen petticoat, with dirty, bare legs and a timid and cunning look. She remained standing in the doorway, as if to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... And so they did: for Aunt Wee began to play; and presently Daisy was shouting with fun as she sat on an old saddle, with a hair-covered trunk for a horse, a big old-fashioned bonnet on her head, and a red silk petticoat for a habit. Then they went to sea in a great chest, and got wrecked on a desert island, where they built a fort with boxes and bags, hunted bears with rusty guns, and had to eat dried berries, herbs and nuts; for no other food could be found. Aunt Wee got ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... she might, and that may have been her petticoat we saw." But in another moment she saw the impossibility of this, for she added: "But I saw her petticoat, and it was a brown silk one. She showed it when she lifted her skirt to get at her purse. I don't ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... who came along to take back one of the horses, would have been a pleasant apparition at any time and in any season. She wore her Sunday dress, consisting of a scarlet boddice over a white chemise, green petticoat, and white apron, while her shining flaxen hair was plaited into one long braid with narrow strips of crimson and yellow cloth and then twisted like a garland around her head. She was not more than twelve or thirteen years ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the landlady, was frying some sausages for her first-floor lodgers; as usual at this hour she wore (presumably over some invisible clothing) a large shawl and a petticoat, her thin hair, black streaked with grey, knotted and pinned into a ball on the top of her head. Here and there about the kitchen ran four children, who were snatching a sort of picnic breakfast whilst they made ready for school. They looked healthy enough, and gabbled, laughed, sang, without ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... little pad, as one might call it, above her shoes. Two ear-drops, worth about three-thousand francs each, adorned her ears. She wore a lace cap with pink ribbons, a mousseline-de-laine gown in pink and gray stripes with an edging of green, opened at the bottom to show a petticoat trimmed with valencienne lace; and a green cashmere shawl with palm-leaves, the point of which reached the ground as ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... to be as brutal as possible with the axe, so that she might properly put greater spirit into her lines. One morning, feeling more frisky than usual, she fell upon her knees and wept in the woodman's petticoat. Curiously enough, her sense of proportion rejected this as soon as it ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... door, shook her head at me, and closed it gently in my face. Castro, sitting on the floor not very far away, seemed unaware of me in so marked a manner that it inspired me with the idea of not taking the slightest notice of him. Now and then the figure of a maid in white linen and bright petticoat flitted in the upper gallery, and once I fancied I saw the black, rigid carriage of the duenna ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger, and several balls were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one morning, in the queen's chamber, a moment's opportunity occurred, and he slipped it on, saying, at the same time, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... before the great discovery of some modern authors, that the best novels are those in which there is never a petticoat. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the favorite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden, muffled in a large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over his brows. His lordship's established type with the mob was a jack boot, a wretched pun on his Christian name and title. A jack boot, generally accompanied by a petticoat, was sometimes fastened on a gallows, and sometimes committed to the flames. Libels on the court, exceeding in audacity and rancor any that had been published for many years, now appeared daily both in prose and verse. Wilkes, with lively ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... men folks of this church, and I'm goin' to deliver it, Paul or no Paul,' says she. 'And as for you, Silas Petty, I ain't forgot the time I dropped in to see Maria one Saturday night and found her washin' out her flannel petticoat and dryin' it before the fire. And every time I've had to hear you lead in prayer since then I've said to myself, "Lord, how high can a man's prayers rise toward heaven when his wife ain't got but ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... silk, faded a little here and there but still extremely imposing, and the sleeve was part of a dress, which was worn by a lady who lay on the stone seat asleep in the sun. The rosy gold dress fell open over an embroidered petticoat of a soft green colour. There was old yellow lace the colour of scalded cream, and a thin white veil spangled with silver ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... Fair. She sat in a great chair by the fire-corner; in her lap was a spaniel-dog that barked furiously; on a little table by her was her ladyship's snuff-box and her sugar-plum box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-colored brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of Banbury Cross; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with great gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels; and an odor of musk was shook out of her ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... into solids. In the former ambition she was unsuccessful, obtaining only bruises and disappointment; but she did develop the latter to a certain extent, for she met the laundress going out one day and, without a conscious effort, she knew that she had the best table napkins pinned to her petticoat. She accused the ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had learned from his old grandmother, who died the year before the famine. She used to sit in the open air knitting, or spinning with a distaff, and the scarlet yarn that trailed across the gray jacket and green petticoat glowed in the sun like a thread of crawling fire, and seemed to keep time to her droning voice, as she poured story after story into the wide-open ears of the ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but in the height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident broke off the debate, nobody knows where it would ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... written it out for me, in a terrifically distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject; I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... so warm that it would be absurd for them to dress up as we do. The king's dress on grand occasions was a crown of gay-coloured feathers, and a sort of Scotch kilt of the same material, with a cloak over his shoulder. The queen also wore a petticoat, and so did little Chickchick, but not a rap else, nor did they seem to think it was necessary. The king's name was Rumfiz, and her majesty was called Pillow. They were an amiable couple, and remarkably fond of each other. When I observed that everything in the island was made of coral, I ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived a beggar-girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and clad in so short a gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled under a porte-cochere. The little girl was getting to be too old for such a thing. Growth does play these tricks. The petticoat becomes short at the moment when ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... found in this country; there were only close-clipped plants trained to stakes. But there was a sound of talking and of laughter, and the pickers, moving among the even lines in their gay rags, lent motley color to the picture. There was scarlet of waistcoat or of petticoat, blue and saffron of jacket and apron, and a blending of all bright tints in the kerchiefs above the hair. The rich dark soil made a background for it all: the moving figures, the clumps of pale green vine leaves, the great baskets ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... dream?" asked Nijeradze, opening wide his oriental, somewhat sheepish eyes. "Whence this beauteous child, this comrade in a petticoat?" ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... canvassing. By George, anything is better than that. Come along. We may get Pump Lane, and Petticoat Yard, and those back alleys done before dinner. You've got cards, of course, Trigger." And the old, accustomed electioneerer led the way out ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... alike interesting to the slowly moving throng of men and women amongst whom they were threading their way. The attitude of her sex towards Berenice was in a certain sense a paradox. She was distinctly the most talented and the most original of all the "petticoat apostles," as the very man who was now walking by her side had scornfully described the little band of women writers who were accused of trying to launch upon society a new type of their own sex. Her last novel ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was very grand in her satin petticoat and brocade gown, that fell away at the sides and made a train at the back. Her imported hat of Leghorn, very costly at that period but lasting half a lifetime, had a big bow of green satin on top, and the high front was filled in with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... up of a winter night and found her woollen petticoat spread onto my bed, and she ashiverin' by the dyin' fire. One mornin' she surprised me uncommon by holdin' of a cap afore my eyes. 'A new one made of the old one,' says she, 'but you 'd never dream on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... husband and coach, a noble, fine woman, and a good one, and one my wife shall be acquainted with. So home, and to dinner alone with my wife, who, poor wretch! sat undressed all day, till ten at night, altering and lacing of a noble petticoat: while I by her, making the boy read to me the Life of Julius Caesar, and Des Cartes' ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... romantic meetings aided by those diminutive steps, but, peering into their shadows, we saw nothing but a vision of Marie Antoinette, half clad in dishevelled wrappings of petticoat and shawl, flying distracted from the vengeance of the furies through the refuge ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the end of three months, the cruel pangs which had gone near to break Pons' sensitive heart had died away; he forgot everything but the charms of society; and languished for them like some elderly slave of a petticoat compelled to leave the mistress who too repeatedly deceives him. In vain he tried to hide his profound and consuming melancholy; it was too plain that he was suffering from one of the mysterious complaints which the mind brings ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... in the British Museum, Minerva appears with her aegis on her breast, and clothed in a petticoat and upper tunic worked in sprays, and a border of kneeling lions. On another Panathenaic vase she has a gown bordered with fighting men, evidently the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... our desire; which made the daughter-in-law of Pythagoras—[Theano, the lady in question was the wife, not the daughter-in-law of Pythagoras.]— say, "That the woman who goes to bed to a man, must put off her modesty with her petticoat, and put it on again with the same." The soul of the assailant, being disturbed with many several alarms, readily loses the power of performance; and whoever the imagination has once put this trick upon, and confounded with the shame of it (and she never does ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... been evolved through experiment, many of his notable experiments have called forth the exercise of highly inventive faculties in their very inception. Investigation and experiment have been a consuming passion, an impelling force from within, as it were, from his petticoat days when he collected goose-eggs and tried to hatch them out by sitting over them himself. One might be inclined to dismiss this trivial incident smilingly, as a mere childish, thoughtless prank, had not subsequent development as a child, boy, and man revealed a born investigator with ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a half apast ten! Seffy, I'm glad you ain't breaking your reputation for being fastnachtich. Chust about a quarter of an inch too late for the prize wiss flour on its hair and arms and its frock pinned up to show its new petticoat! Uhu! If I had such a nice petticoat—" he imitated the lady in question, to the tremendous delight ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... not so sure about that. I think, with a few more touches, it will stand well enough for your Andalusian. Grummet's given her all the wealth of hair you're so constantly bragging about. The only poverty's in that petticoat. But if you get the skirt stretched a bit, that will remedy it. You want sleeves, too, to make her a lady. Then set a tall tortoise-shell comb upon her crown, with a spread of lace over it, hanging down below the shoulders—the mantilla—and you'll make almost as ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... out and lifted it up, grew rapidly larger and larger until it floated away. He set out to search for it; nor did he desist until one day he came upon a large pool in the river and found a beautiful woman bathing. On the bank lay her grass petticoat where she had cast it off. He sat down upon it; and when her attention was attracted to him by his dogs, they recognized one another. She was the moon, and he was the man who had dug her up out of the earth; and he claimed her as ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it into careful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothes closet. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. And then, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue bird machine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinct footsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallway ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the day appointed for his coming, and never sure was there a busier afternoon at the farmhouse than the one which followed the receipt of the letter. Everything that was not spotlessly clean before was made so now. Aunt Betsy in her petticoat and short gown going down upon her knees to scrub the door sill of the back room, as if the city guest were expected to sit in there. On Aunt Hannah and Mrs. Lennox devolved the duty of preparing for the wants of the inner man, while Helen and Katy bent ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... to be the entire factory, adding the two office girls; the model, who was wont to run around our part of the world now and then in a superior fashion, clad in a scanty pale-pink-satin petticoat which came just below her knees and an old gray-and-green sweater; plus various male personages, full of business and dressed in their best. Goodness knows what all they did do to keep the wheels of industry running—perhaps they were salesmen. ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... cloth—surely Madame had found great satisfaction in wearing the bisque cloth?" But your ears are as stone to her blandishments! As a traveling suit, bisque-colored cloth had not been serviceable! Black lace with a cerise velvet under petticoat might be effective at Armenonville, but it had seemed queer, to say the least, at the tennis match in August. No, you are at last immune from any of those sudden attacks of new fashion fever that result in ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... dark, leaden, lowering,— Grey purple shadows fading on the hills; Dreary and desolate the far expanse And gloomy sameness of the open plain. A peasant woman, in white wimpled hood, White vest, and scarlet petticoat, surveys The meadow, with rough hands crossed on ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon
... pleased! and I say so to you openly, although my belief is that you are under a vow to our Lady of Loretto to make giddy with all manner of high vanities, some head, ... not too strong for such things, but too low for them, ... before you see again the embroidery on her divine petticoat. Only there's a flattery so far beyond praise ... even your praise—as where you talk of your verses being liked &c., and of your being happy to bring them here, ... that is scarcely a lawful weapon; and see if the Madonna may not signify so much to you!—Seriously, you will not ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... soon after our arrival, that we were all invited to witness a play called "Adam and Eve." Eve was personated by a pretty young girl known as Dolores Gomez, who, however, was dressed very unlike Eve, for she was covered with a petticoat and spangles. Adam was personated by her brother—the same who has since become somewhat famous as the person on whom is founded the McGarrahan claim. God Almighty was personated, and heaven's occupants seemed very human. Yet the play was pretty, interesting, and elicited universal applause. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the treat for the world. Ippolita, whimpering in hers, wondered what the buzzing and sliding of shoes in the street below could be about. She had troubles of her own, poor girl, but she could not stand this. Up she got: a single glance out of window was enough. She shuffled on a shift and a petticoat, snatched a shawl, and tiptoed out. Annina, her bosom friend, had no troubles. She was half undressed, but she too slipped a shawl over her head and went peering into the alley. There she met Ippolita, and joined hands. Flaring torches, a swarm of eager black heads, whispers, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... rattling pyx within. They lived in Bury Street, and Prescott Street, and Finsbury—these aristocrats of the Ghetto—in mansions that are now but congeries of "apartments." Few relations had they with Belgravia, but many with Petticoat Lane and the Great Shool, the stately old synagogue which has always been illuminated by candles and still refuses all modern light. The Spanish Jews had a more ancient snoga, but it was within a ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... an old black-satin gown of her mother's, and it was fitted as softly over her sweet curves as a leaf over a bud. A long garland of flowers after her own design had she wrought in bright-colored silks around the petticoat, and there were knots of red ribbon to fasten the loopings here and there. And she wore another red rose in her lace tucker against her soft brown bosom. Madelon wore, too, trim black-silk stockings with red clocks over her slender ankles, and little black-satin shoes with steel buckles and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to translate any more of this Epistle; but I presume the argument which the Right Hon. Doctor and his friends mean to deduce from it, is (in their usual convincing strain) that Romanists must be unworthy of Emancipation now, because they had a Petticoat Pope in the Ninth Century. Nothing can be more logically clear, and I find that Horace had exactly the same views upon ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... supports the girl, are another man and woman, who cast from time to time pitying glances at the pale face beneath the straw bonnet. These are as raggedly picturesque in their attire as the rest—a short red petticoat, a blanket substituted for a shawl, and a bundle on the back, distinguish the female; a long great coat and short trousers the male. They are deep in conversation upon the common theme. A young man of more stalwart figure ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... } I gave you,' {petticoat} they said, all {gown } at once, and began tearing the clothes ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Marneffe come in for first honors—in each the leopard crossed on the serpent and united under a petticoat, beautiful and wicked—but since the Balzac and Dumas days the story-tellers and stage-mongers have made exceeding free with the type, and we have between Herman Merivale's Stephanie de Mohrivart and Victorien ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... forth dreadful arrows from the far-resounding bow; he should have looked only to that "child upon the cloud," or rather, he should have seen his little muse as she walks upon the earth—we have her in Gainsborough's picture—with her tattered petticoat, and her bare feet, and her broken pitcher, but looking withal with such a sweet sad contentedness upon the world, that surely, one thinks, she must have filled that pitcher and drawn the water which she carries—without, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... youngsters, but he is a sly fellow in the main. Do you observe how fond he is of the cross roads above this valley? Now, if I were to halt the troops twice in the same place, you would all swear there was a petticoat ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... long corkscrew ringlets over her eyes and cheeks. She parted the ringlets to take a full view of us. The dress of her figure by no means suited the head and elegance of her attitude. What her nether weeds might be we could not distinctly see, but they seemed a coarse short petticoat like what Molly Bristow's children would wear. After surveying us and hearing our name was Edgeworth she smiled graciously and bid us follow her, saying, 'Maman est chez elle.' She led the way with the grace of a young lady who has been taught to ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... Perhaps the most regal of these floral screens was one formed of costly orchids, each worth a fortune. One of the most beautiful of the spring wedding dresses was made of cream-white satin over a tulle petticoat, the tulle being held down by a long diagonal band of broad pearl embroidery, the satin train trimmed with bows of ribbon in true-lovers' knots embroidered in seed-pearls; a shower of white lilacs trimmed ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... niece Susan, of Princeton, Maine, are experts at this work.] And this dress she shaped like those worn of old. [Footnote: This remark indicates the lateness of the Micmac version of this very old myth.] So she made a petticoat and a loose gown, a cap, leggins, and handkerchief, and, having put on her father's great old moccasins,— which came nearly up to her knees,—she went forth to try her luck. For even this little thing would see ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... washing—maybe half a dozen times in all; he had been out, but Emma and I had talked a bit of old things and new. The last time I was there Lars came home suddenly and made a scene the moment he got inside the door, because Emma was sitting on a stool in her petticoat. "It's too hot for a skirt," she said. "Ho, yes, and your hair all down your back—too hot to put it up, I suppose?" he retorted. Altogether he was in a rage with her. I said good-night to him as I left, but he did ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... us through his horn spectacles, and, able to make nothing of our faces, let his glance fall to our garments which were as ragged as his own, and of much the same pattern. Indeed, they were those of Thibetan monks, including a kind of quilted petticoat and an outer vestment not unlike an Eastern burnous. We had adopted them because we had no others. Also they protected us from the rigours of the climate and from remark, had there been any ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... story within whose implications lies all that has ever been said, or ever will be said, about censorship. The copy-readers and make-up men, it seems, could see nothing especially infamous in their reviewer's little simile. As poor George Sampson said of the outraged Mrs. Wilfer's under-petticoat: "We know it's there." At all events, the offending word passed all the sentries and was printed as written, when, too late, it caught the horrified eye of the proprietor. At the sight of so crassly physical a term in the chaste columns of his own paper, he ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... believe du Maurier's art England is a petticoat-governed country. The men in his pictures are often made to recede into the background of Victorian ornament merely as ornaments themselves. As for the women, the mask of manner, the pleasantness concealing every shade of uncharitableness, all the arts of the ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... to pass the low doorway, and seated himself beside a small deal table which, although destitute of a cloth, was thickly covered with ink-stains. The Malay rover was clad in a thin loose red jacket, a short petticoat or kilt, and yellow trousers. A red fez, with a kerchief wound round it turban fashion, covered his head. He was a well-made stalwart man, with a handsome ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... at noontide, she having come forth her chamber in a white petticoat, with her hair twisted about her head, and being in act to wash her hands and face at a well that was in the courtyard of the mansion, it chanced that Calandrino came thither for water and saluted her familiarly. She returned him his greeting and fell to eying ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sight. Along the north side of Queen Square, in front of ruins which had been three days before noble buildings, lay a ghastly row, not of corpses, but of corpse-fragments. I have no more wish than you to dilate upon that sight. But there was one charred fragment—with a scrap of old red petticoat adhering to it, which I never forgot- -which I trust in God that I never shall forget. It is good for a man to be brought once at least in his life face to face with fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be; and have ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was telling himself that, there came to the door a loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door, Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in a petticoat and shawl. ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of playing cards; every day after lunch Jeanne played several games of bezique with her husband, while he smoked his pipe and drank six or eight glasses of brandy. When they had finished playing, Jeanne went upstairs to her bedroom, and, sitting by the window, worked at a petticoat flounce she was embroidering, while the wind and rain beat against the panes. When her eyes ached she looked out at the foamy, restless sea, gazed at it for a few minutes, and then took ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... makes, standing beneath the great overhanging gables of the wooden chalet. She, too, favours the national green; but, as relief, there is no lack of bonny red ribbons, to flutter in the wind, and, underneath the ornamented skirt, peeps out a bright-hued petticoat. Around her ample breast she wears a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down the front. (I think this garment is called a stomacher, but I am not sure, as I have never liked to ask.) Her square shoulders are covered with the whitest of white linen. Her sleeves are ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... girl came, petticoat and all; we gave her some breakfast, and I then went down with her to Avenue A. On the way, she told me that you gave her some money. To my great sorrow we found, on reaching the school, that they could not take another one, as they were already overflowing. As we came ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the white maiden to be captured," said Dimple, as Bubbles coolly proceeded to take off her frock, displaying a red flannel petticoat. ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light; But, oh, she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter-day Is half so fine ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sound of coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... revolutionary movement. Twelve years ago she murdered General Sacharow, the governor of some Russian city, who had been condemned to death by the Socialists for his energy. She appeared before the general with a petition, holding a revolver under her petticoat. When the general began to read she fired four bullets into his body, killing him on the spot. She was sent to Siberia, where she lived for twelve years, at first in solitary confinement, afterwards under somewhat easier ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... beg your pardon, George, but you are enough to try the patience of a saint. My good fellow, I don't deny Miss Vanstone's virtues. I'll admit, if you like, she's the best woman that ever put on a petticoat. That is ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... been sitting upon one of her feet and swinging the other, rose impulsively from the garden-seat and covered the lawn in a series of hops, until her shoe, which had become hopelessly entangled in the laces of her petticoat, released itself with a rending sound. Then she removed her hand from Peter's shoulder, upon which she had been supporting herself, and together they went ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of his entire career. It was Sunday; the boy went to his mother's place, and helped her, as usual, to wash the dishes. Then came Petra's daughters, and they spent the whole afternoon quarrelling over a skirt or a petticoat that the younger had bought with the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... the clink of the teacups. It was in the swish of every silk petticoat. If I went to the theater, church or concert, the call of that germ-ridden spot of the unholy name beat into my brain with the persistency of a tom-tom on a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Miners, noticing this purely perfunctory habit, occasionally supplied him slily with articles inconsistent with their service,—fragments of their shirts and underclothing, flour sacking, tow, and once with a flannel petticoat of his wife's, stolen from the line in the back-yard. Roscommon would continue his wiping without looking up, but yet conscious of the presence of each customer. "And it's not another dhrop ye'll git, Jack Brown, until ye've wiped out the black ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... not to be wondered at that the women of Roma, casting around them to view the kind of men who occupy high seats in Roma politics, should say 'we will have none of them' and should desire to enforce a little petticoat government themselves. Roma has long been proud of its homes, its wives, its mothers and its housekeepers. Perhaps it would be for the public good, were we to set a few of these model housewives to cleaning up City Hall. Let them go ahead and elect a woman-mayor. Then let her proceed ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... the dangers of both. Over her venerable satin mantle, lined with cat-skin, she wore a scarlet duffle Bath cloak, with which she was wont to attend the tent sermons of the Kilwinning and Dreghorn preachings in cold and inclement weather. Her black silk petticoat was pinned up, that it might not receive injury from the nimble paddling of her short steps in the mire; and she carried her best shoes and stockings in a handkerchief to be changed at the manse, and had fortified her feet for the road in coarse worsted ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... as well as the pretty eyes of the niece, began to interest me, but fortunately the uncle put an end to it by begging me to follow him. He took me to the maid's room, and I found her putting on a petticoat, and grumbling ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to do any work required of him. The offer was accepted, and Betty was forthwith installed as Biddy's help. Her costume when she made her appearance was not altogether suited to her new style of life, as it consisted of a man's old shirt and a piece of grass matting as a petticoat. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... lest they should hurt themselves against the stones and gravel. Hence Shakespeare's Ariel, living under blossoms, and riding at evening on the bat; and his domestic namesake in the Rape of the Lock (the imagination of the drawing-room) saving a lady's petticoat from the coffee with his plumes, and directing atoms of snuff into a coxcomb's nose. In the Orlando Furioso (Canto xv, st. 65) is a wild story of a cannibal necromancer, who laughs at being cut to pieces, coming together again like quicksilver, and picking up his head when it is cut off, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... corners of her mouth to the bottom of her chin, and her plump neck bagged. But the thing that marked her as having passed the line was that she no longer had reticences before her husband, and no longer worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat now, and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen in bulgy corsets. She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her full matronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the two children down the grassy path and through a short stretch of woods to the neighbor's. As they returned, Hannah saw a queer looking figure digging roots in the woods. Her waistcoat and petticoat were red; her old apron green. She wore a black hat over a white linen hood tied under her chin. It was Goody Walford. Friendly Old Bluff darted to her side, while Hannah seized Jacob's hand and ran for ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... complete, than she turns into it, all complete, and gives the word 'To Lady Tippins's.' That charmer dwells over a staymaker's in the Belgravian Borders, with a life-size model in the window on the ground floor of a distinguished beauty in a blue petticoat, stay-lace in hand, looking over her shoulder at the town in innocent surprise. As well she may, to find herself dressing under ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... entered as it was trying on, and was all astonishment at the elegance of the habit, and its beautiful effect upon her graceful person; but, most of all, she was astonished at her venturing on such a character—for though it represented the goddess of Chastity, yet from the buskins, and the petticoat festooned far above the ancle, it had, on a first glance, the appearance of a female much less virtuous. Miss Woodley admired this dress, yet objected to it; but as she admired first, her objections after had ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... "will have but my ordinary silk petticoat, but I shall adorn it with an upper skirt of flowered brocade, and shall put on my diamond tiara, which is a great deal finer than ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat—jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot: Bloomin' idol made o'mud— Wot ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Lovegold, a man of 60, and his son Frederick, both wish to marry Mariana, and, in order to divert the old miser from his foolish passion, Mariana pretends to be most extravagant. She orders a necklace and ear-rings of the value of [pounds]3000, a petticoat and gown from a fabric which is [pounds]12 a yard, and besets the house with duns. Lovegold gives [pounds]2000 to break off the bargain, and Frederick becomes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... wonderful part of the Suomi Jehu's attire was his petticoat. He had a double-breasted blue-cloth coat fastening down the side, which at the waist was pleated on to the upper part in great fat folds more than an inch wide, so that from behind he almost looked like a Scheveningen fishwife; while, if he was not fat enough for fashionable ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... chosen sylphs, of special note, We trust th' important charge, the petticoat: Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale; Form a strong line about the silver bound, And guard ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... lap. Adelaide only did she except, explaining to the others, "Oui, mes cheris, je garde Adelaide, car savez-vous bien, c'est elle qui me donne des idees; je prends toujours conseil avec elle. Alors, n'est ce pas?" Then, carrying the dolls in her petticoat, she solemnly undid the button, let it slip down with the dolls inside, and placed it resolutely in the basket, saying: "J'y mets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... doublet, a close-fitting jacket, introduced from France in the fourteenth century, and fashionable in all ranks till the time of Charles II. Cp. As You Like It, ii. 4. 6:—'Doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat.' ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... cup is owned by the Vintners in London, called the Milkmaid. The figure of a milkmaid, in laced bodice, holds above her head a small cup on pivots, so that it finds its level when the figure is inverted, as is the case when the cup is used, the petticoat of the milkmaid forming the real goblet. It is constructed on the same principle as the German figures of court ladies holding up cups, which are often seen to-day, made on the old pattern. The cups in the case of this milkmaid are both filled with wine, and it is quite difficult to drink ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... cylinders, with the possibility of great damage. After the steam enters the throttle valve it passes through the front end of the valve, through the top of the boiler via the dry pipe (fig. 18), through the front tube sheet, and then to the cylinders via the petticoat pipes. The throttle lever is a simple arrangement readily understood from the drawings. It has no latch and the throttle lever is held in any desired setting by the wingnut and quadrant shown in figure 18. The water level in the boiler is indicated by the three brass cocks ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... husband pounded the kalo root on a board. His only clothing was the malo, a narrow strip of cloth wound round the loins, and passed between the legs. This was the only covering worn by men before the introduction of Christianity. Females wore the pau, a short petticoat made of tapa, which reached from the waist to the knees. To our eyes, the brown skin produces nearly ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... is an event that papa desires and mamma dreads. It seems to the mother that it is the beginning of her being forsaken. She looks with tearful eyes at the petticoat laid aside for ever, and murmurs to herself, "Infancy is over then? My part will soon become a small one. He will have fresh tastes, new wishes; he is no longer only myself, his personality is asserting itself; he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gallery of the convent of Jesuits at Lisbon, there is a picture representing Adam in paradise, dressed in blue breeches with silver buckles, and Eve with a striped petticoat. In the distance appears a procession of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... caught the sound of a movement behind him, the swirl of a petticoat, and the clang of a pewter plate as it fell noisily to the floor. His companion looked up swiftly, the smile on his face broadening to a snigger. Claude turned too as quickly as he could and looked, his face ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... wife to search for his child, which had been missing since the day before. Several of the Indian Brethren immediately went to the house of the parents, and discovered the footsteps of the child, and tracing the same for the distance of two miles, found the child in the woods, wrapped up in its petticoat, and shivering with cold. The joy of the parents was so great that they reported the circumstance wherever they went. To some of the white people, who had been in dread of the near settlement of these Indians, this incident was the means of making ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... hoarse voice. "It ain't your claim any more than mine. You've covered it different, that's all. Yours was always the petticoat lay. Mine's slower but safer. Is anyone else in ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... grew but slowly under her fingers, and, truth to say, the occupation bored her. It was artistic, certainly, and it was fashionable; but Lady Kynaston would have been happier over a pair of cross-stitch slippers for her son, or a knitted woollen petticoat for the old woman at her lodge gate. All the same, she took out her crewels and put in a few stitches; but the afternoon was warm, there was a humming of insects in the summer air, a click-clicking from the gardener as he dropped one empty red flower-pot into the other along ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... call to her, when it occurred to me, that it was very queer she should have crept past my door, in that stealthy manner. I was puzzled, and, for one brief moment, the thought occupied my mind, that it was not she, but some fresh mystery of the house. Then, as I caught a glimpse of her old petticoat, the thought passed as quickly as it had come, and I half laughed. There could be no mistaking that ancient garment. Yet, I wondered what she was doing; and, remembering her condition of mind, on the previous day, I felt that it might be best to follow, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the dingy window-panes and the cobwebs hanging from the cracked and bulging plastering overhead. "We can sell plenty on tick, but getting paid is the devil. Jim Cahews is a good man, but he can't say no—to a petticoat, anyway. While I was away he went it rather reckless. Why, he let one little woman that has heretofore been the brag of the county get in clean up to ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... reached the little bay of Capri, Antonio took the padre in his arms, and carried him through the last few ripples of shallow water, to set him reverently down upon his legs on dry land. But Laurella did not wait for him to wade back and fetch her. Gathering up her little petticoat, holding in one hand her wooden shoes and in the other her little bundle, with one splashing step or two she had reached the shore. "I have some time to stay at Capri," said the priest. "You need ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing's worth of millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat, and a petticoat of one's coverlet; how to save one's candle, by taking one's meals by the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... get them, but she was well-known to be a heedless creature. One day she found a nest of five eggs as she was going across the fields to church with a brand new blue silk dress on. So she put them in the pocket of her petticoat and when she got to church she forgot all about them and sat down on them and her dress was ruined, not to speak of the petticoat. Let me see—would not Tod be some relation of yours? Your great grandmother West was a MacAllister. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... banquet given in honour of the occasion, saying that no king ever feasted from such a platter. Las Casas remarks that as for the miserable Indian girl who found it, we may without sin suppose that they never gave her so much as a red silk petticoat, and lucky was she indeed if she got even a mouthful of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and dangerous; forever cocking his ear ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... just as she was in her petticoat, in order to pass long, ringed fingers through the soft masses, and lift them up for the pleasure of letting them fall. When the golden veil, as Lella M'Barka called it, had been praised and admired over and over again, the order was given to braid it in two long ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to me one morning; and I went down to see the writer, a respectable-looking old woman, dressed in the red petticoat and blue cloak of the country-people. She repeated what she had said in her note, and added: 'Now if you could find out the name of that Saint through the press, he'd tell me his remedies; and between us, all the world would be cured. For I can't ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... found out what I wanted. And I've managed with the girl. Had a devil of a job, though! That's the worst of women! You've always got to play the sentimental with them; nothing short of making love or offering to marry 'em is any use. It's a pity this kind of thing can't be worked without a petticoat. There's always trouble and bother when they come in. To-morrow night, Parson, ten o'clock, you and I are men or mice; but it's going to be men," he added, between his teeth. "Did you bring my barker ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... lying asleep on the load, jumped down, with her shoulders hitched up, and looking cross as fire at everybody that came near her. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and had nothing but an under night-gown and petticoat on, which seemed to aggravate her, for she looked scowling enough at the handsome young lady, and would not double-shuffle worth a cent, though all the men and women were trying ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the spring, and saw the congregation seated underneath the pear tree, shrieking like sinners at the Judgment Day. Among them sat the priest, with features hidden in his torn black petticoat. He ventured to approach the man and put a question. The priest unveiled his face a moment and was going to speak, but recollection of his sorrow overcame him. Hiding ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... And as if afraid that her brain, now strained like a body on the rack, would suddenly snap, she threw up her arms, and began to take off her dress, as if she would hush thought in abrupt movements. In a moment she was in stays and petticoat. The delicate and almost girlish arms were disfigured by great bruises. Great black and blue stains were ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... was buried in the curve of one folded arm, the other, flung out, lay with the palm of the hand uppermost. The little feet were crossed under the crumpled skirt, from which peeped the folds of her last white silk petticoat. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
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