"Four-poster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tartar throne, which puts one in mind of Attila's queen, Zingis's lieutenant, and Timour. "The old divan, upon which the Sultans formerly reclined when they gave audience, looks like an overgrown four-poster, covered with carbuncles, turquoise, amethysts, topaz, emeralds, ruby, and diamond: the couch was covered with Damascus silk and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... inauguration. There was a fabulous hardwood king at the St. Charles whom I inflamed with the beauties of marquetrie du bois. It was all modern, of course, made in Baltimore, but I found him a genuine Sinurette four-poster which was very fine. I also discovered a royal Sevres vase for him, worth a small fortune, but he preferred a bath sponge used by Louis XIV. I assured him the sponge was genuine, so he bought a Buhl cabinet to put it in. I took the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... he hardly slept a wink. His bed was a huge four-poster, girt about with plush hangings like over-ripe plums, that shut him in as though he were in some monstrous Victorian trinket box. A post creaked at every turn he made in its downy softnesses, and being used to the light, camp-like furniture of an Indian bungalow he got up, took an eiderdown ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... forces with no lack of decision, but with a fainting voice which made me run over to her quickly as Paul laid her down on the four-poster. Her eyes were still indomitable, but her mouth hung open slackly and her color was startling. "Oh, Paul, quick! quick! Haven't ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Honor smiled. "Merry from much comedy" the house had been in the old gay days; dark from much tragedy it seemed to-day. What would it be to her when she came back again? But, little by little, the old room soothed and stilled her. There were the sedate four-poster bed and the demure dresser and the little writing desk, good mahogany all of them; come by devious paths from a Virginia plantation; the cool blue of walls and rugs and hangings; the few pictures she had loved; three framed ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... drizzle and the soothing tinkle from the eaves were the only sounds; within, there was but the faint rustle of garments from Mrs. Tanberry's room. Presently the latter ceased to be heard, and a wooden moan of protest from the four-poster upon which the good lady reposed, announced that she had drawn the curtains and wooed the rulers ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the four-poster bed that Poquelin had carved, Felicia slept, she smiled as she stirred in her slumbers. She was very tired. "Maman," she muttered drowsily as the Major paused outside her door on his way to his room, "In the garden—" and ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... indeed, it was of the shadowiest silver. It had chanced at that early time that an influx of visitors to the farm had exceeded the sleeping room, and he and another little fellow had been provided with a bed in the miller's house. He had never quite forgotten that bedroom—its huge old-fashioned four-poster, slumbrous with great dark hangings, such as Queen Elizabeth seems always to have slept in; its walls dim with tapestry, and its screen of antique bead-work. But it was round the toilet table that memory grew brightest, for thereon was a crystal phial of a most marvellous perfume, and two great mother-of-pearl ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... other in doing honor to the nation's guest. At Pittsburg, for instance, a bedroom was prepared for the distinguished visitor in a hall that had been a Masonic lodge room. The ceiling was arched, and the sun, moon, and stars were painted upon it. The bed prepared for Lafayette was a vast "four-poster" of mahogany, on whose posts were inscribed the names of Revolutionary heroes. Above the canopy a large gilt eagle spread its wings and waved a streamer on which were written the names of Washington and Lafayette. In this city, as everywhere, Lafayette was shown everything ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... drive, I opened the door of my room. It was very pretty, very elegant, as perfectly appointed as any hotel room I had ever gazed upon, but mine no more. This one little sacred precinct had been entered in my absence and robbed of every vestige of me. Instead of my single four-poster were two mahogany sleigh beds, spread with expensively embroidered linen. Instead of my magazine cut of Robert Louis Stevenson pinned beside the east window was a signed etching. Instead of my own familiar desk welcoming me with bulging packets of old letters, waiting for some ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... boys," the hostess said, "wi' a rale four-poster hung wi' yaller on purpose to suit his wife's complexion, an' then to have no wife ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the whole matter coolly, while I see what is the matter with the patient. That is what I say to myself, as I draw a chair to the bedside.—The bed is an old-fashioned, dark mahogany four-poster. It was never that which made the noise of something moving. It is too heavy to be pushed about the room.—The Little Gentleman was sitting, bolstered up by pillows, with his hands clasped and their united palms resting on the back of the head,—one of the three ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... morning when she wasn't so sleepy. Americanization work in Whitmanville. That seemed to offer rich possibilities. There must be room for endless Uplift in Whitmanville. And what could be richer than Uplift? She would start a school, she thought, as she turned off the light and climbed into her four-poster. She would teach the women how to take care of their babies and the men how to take care of their women. But it must all be done tactfully. She must be eternally vigilant upon that score. Yet not so tactful as to become ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... discouraged, Honey," said She. "Go right back and start all over, and possibly sometime Next Year you will again have the blessed Privilege of going up a neglected Alley twice a Day and changing your Clothes in a Barn. Any Girl with your Looks and Family Connections can curl up in a Four-Poster at night and then saunter to the Bath over a soft Rag in the Morning, but only a throbbing Genius can make these Night Jumps in a Day Coach and stop at a Hotel which is operated as an Auxiliary to a first-class Saloon. It will be Hard Sledding for the first 15 ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... stock of Edom had early learned not to part with any massive claw-footed sideboard with glass knobs, or any mahogany four-poster, or tall clock, or high-boy, except after feigning a distressed reluctance. It had learned also to hide its consternation at the prices which this behaviour would eventually induce the newcomers to pay for such junk. Indeed, it learned very soon to be ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... white wilderness of his first four-poster, the poor New England boy missed his mother very hard, more perhaps than he had ever missed her before. He fell asleep on a pillow that was wet in spots—and he ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... at the Ritz late that night there was held a secret conference. Two shadowy figures stole down the corridor at midnight and were admitted to the room, while Prince Robin slept soundly in his remote four-poster and dreamed of something that brought a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... its chintz hangings, four-poster bed, low wicker chair by the fireplace, fresh Cherokee roses on the mantel; a room of cheerfulness and open spaces. He stared into woods where a cool light lay on moss and fern. He did not need to remember Ruth's ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... The mosquito-nets cut off a good deal of air, and people are tempted to discard them unwisely when the nights are intensely hot. The framework from which the nets depend is a frail counterpart of the four-poster of the Victorian age. The net is usually tucked in under the mattress, to prevent any possibility of the mosquito entering. In places where mosquitoes abound they are troublesome by day as well as by night, and they are specially fond of attacking the ankles of ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... "The bedstead, a four-poster of the most funereal type, stood near the fireplace, from which a couple of thick pine logs sent out a ruddy glare; and directly opposite the foot of the bed, with its back to the wall, stood an ebony chair, which, although in a position that should have necessitated its receiving a generous ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... had, and I meant to tell her, and walk away with my nose in the air when she offered to show me; but this was different. I was wild to see what was going on because the Princess was there. The room was small, and the big cherry four-poster was very large, and all of them were talking, so no one paid the slightest attention ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... ordered us into the house; and when we had declined to partake of the relics of a feast which strewed the table, we were ignominiously consigned to a den of a lean-to opening upon the piazza. A "terribly-strange bed" indeed was the old four-poster, which swayed and shrieked at the slightest touch, and myriad the enemies which there lay in wait for our blood. We were not murdered, however, nor did our unseen foes—as had once been predicted by a Cracker friend—quite "eat us plum up, bodaciously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and likewise sobbing myself to sleep in the four-poster. Often since I have wished that I had questioned Breed of many things on which I had no curiosity then, for he was my chief companion in the weeks that followed. He awoke me bright ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... door, and Peter was ushered into a big apartment in semi-darkness. The butler retired without a sound, closing the door behind him and Peter stood hesitating, looking about to get his bearings. From the other side of the room he heard three faint coughs, suggesting a sick man. There was a four-poster bed of some dark wood, with a canopy over it and draperies at the side, and a man in the bed, sitting propped up with pillows. There were more coughs, and then a faint whisper, "This way." So Peter crossed over and ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... most robins out of the room at once. On this particular bird, however, the effect was just the opposite. It hopped self-consciously on to the dressing- table, fluttered next to the arm-chair, and the same second dropped out of sight behind the end of the four-poster bed. It acted, that is, with decision; ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... her guests into the big four-poster, they cuddled close to each other, forgetting the friction of the last few days in present comfort, sleepily grateful for the glimpse they had had that day of difficulties and griefs much greater than any of their own, and each resolving to be happy ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... they were house-cleaning anyhow. A little bit more to clean up, that was all. And what luck that they were in the east-room garret, the one that had all the old things in it, the hoop-skirts and the shells and the old scoop-bonnets, and the four-poster bed and those fascinating old ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... house in the suburbs; the half-hundredweight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up into three tons of the best Walls-end; his small French bedstead was converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster; and in the empty chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, imagination seated a beautiful young lady, with a very little independence or will of her own, and a very large independence under a ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... she found Aunt Dolcey in the big bedroom over the living room. She had just finished remaking the bed—an old maple four-poster, the wood a soft and mellowed orange, fine and colourful against the white ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... She was gazing, from her bed, into her own room, but at the farther end of it instead of the wall with the rosy trees and the gold mirror was another room. This room was strange and cheerless with bare boards, a large four-poster bed with faded blue hangings, two old black prints with eighteenth-century figures and a big standing mirror. In front of the bed, staring into the mirror, was Martin, He was dressed shabbily in a blue reefer coat. He looked older than when ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... well-known ground in a gentle little amble—sometimes subsiding into a walk as she approached some special horror, and pulling up altogether—that is to say, suspending her knitting, and looking with a mysterious nod at her young mistress in the four-poster, or lowering her voice to a sort of whisper when ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... aside the clothes that streamed across it and throned herself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster. Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully, and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each were trying to make out, without asking, what ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... for camping, a place cleared for a camp, a camp as an abstract proposition, and a camp in the concrete as represented by a tent, a thatched shelter, or a conical tepee. In like manner, the English word camp lends itself to a variety of concepts. I once slept in a four-poster bed over a polished floor in an elaborate servant-haunted structure which, mainly because it was built of logs and overlooked a lake, the owner always spoke of as his camp. Again, I once slept on a bed of prairie grass, before ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... lived to be a little older. I was shocked to hear my mother say she preferred having her children little living devils rather than dead angels. After prayers, all about hell and damnation, which she said aloud, I was put to bed against the wall. The bedstead, a big mahogany four-poster, had to be mounted like an omnibus. That, and the feather bed, and the mattress stuffed with the 'best curled hair,' were presents sent to my father from Philadelphia, and were a great source of pride to me, especially the mattress, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... pair of low-branched oak trees in the side-yard, almost within arm's length of the wall,—they were so close, in fact, that their limbs stretched out over the rough shingle roof, producing in the wind an everlasting sound of scratching and scraping. There was a huge four-poster feather bed of mountainous proportions, leaving the occupant scant space in which to ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon |
