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Nightcap   Listen
noun
Nightcap  n.  
1.
A cap worn in bed to protect the head, or in undress.
2.
An alcoholic beverage drunk at bedtime. (Cant)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nightcap" Quotes from Famous Books



... at this dissipation of my fears that, slipping on my dressing-gown (I believe without removing my nightcap), and pausing only on the landing to call up to the maidservants to light a fire and prepare coffee with all speed, I hurried downstairs and unbarred the door. Whereupon Master MacRea instantly and with great cordiality shook ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was, as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old-fashioned frilled nightcap. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... there in the Memoir are glimpses of the world of literature with which he was often in touch. He discusses with Swinburne a much- disputed reference in Shelley's Epipsychidion. In 1872 Browning reads his Red Cotton Nightcap Country at 76, Sloane Street. There are admiring references to the work of George Eliot, and to Mrs. Lynn Linton—'perhaps the cleverest woman I know.' When he goes to the United States, we get his warmly drawn picture of the Boston group—Emerson, Agassiz, Oliver ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled nightcap. Here are the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Madame Carthame, blissfully ignorant of the fact that she had neglected to remove her nightcap, stood up in her place, with her wrapper gathered about her in a statuesque fashion, and in a tragic tone uttered ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... just to twitch the wire and the bell rings: You'll learn the trick, soon, Ruth. (To MICHAEL) Bat, don't you see I've just put on my nightcap, ready for bed— Grannie's frilled mutch? I leave you, Michael? Son, The time came, as it comes to every man, When you'd to make a choice betwixt two women. You've made your choice: and chosen well: but I, Who've always done the choosing, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he was a sage, he was sometimes a sage in a frenzy. He would wind up a peroration by dashing his nightcap passionately against the wall, by way of clencher to the argument. Yet this impetuosity, this turn for declamation, did not hinder his talk from being directly instructive. Younger men of the most various type, from Morellet ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... going on the wrong road, old gentleman," said Sam. "I'm not ashamed of the nightgown and nightcap. They're cool and comfortable. It's seeing the guv'nor dressed up, and him and me and Mr Frank and Mr Landon in this procession. Do you know how I ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... At this intimation, Mr. Jorrocks clambered down, and was speedily surrounded by touts and captains of vessels soliciting his custom. "Bonjour, me Lor'," said a gaunt French sailor in ear-rings, and a blue-and-white jersey shirt, taking off a red nightcap with mock politeness, "you shall be cross." "What's that about?" inquires Mr. Jorrocks—"cross! what does the chap mean?" "Ten shillin', just, me Lor'," replied the man. "Cross for ten shillings," muttered Mr. Jorrocks, "vot does ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... as a huge barometer to forecast the weather. "How is the mountain this morning?" the farmer asked in harvest time. "Has the mountain got his nightcap on?" the housewife inquired before her wash was hung on the line. The Indian would watch the mountain with intent to determine whether he might expect snass (rain), or kull snass (hail), or t'kope snass (snow), and seldom failed in his conclusions. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... 'and found Moshesh ill in bed, a bright nightcap, with a tassel, on his head. A more strange, more picturesque conference, bearing upon the well-being of the British Empire, surely never took place. Moshesh was propped up in his bed, his leading men grouped themselves ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... he answered scornfully that he did not think, he knew, he had not dreamed it; he did not value the experience, it was and had always been perfectly meaningless, but he would stake his life upon its reality. Asked if it had not perhaps been the final office of a nightcap, he disdained to answer at all, though he did not openly object to the ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... morning that the blow was actually struck, he jumped out of bed, and was taken with a great shivering fit, sitting on the side of it. Little Mrs. Sturk, as white as her nightcap with terror, was yet decisive in emergency, and bethought her of the brandy bottle, two glasses from which the doctor swallowed before his teeth gave over chattering, and a more natural tint returned to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... forlorn Pallet sat upright in his bed in a deshabille that was altogether extraordinary. He had laid aside his monstrous hoop, together with his stays, gown, and petticoat, wrapped his lappets about his head by way of nightcap, and wore his domino as a loose morning-dress; his grizzled locks hung down about his lack-lustre eyes and tawny neck, in all the disorder of negligence; his gray beard bristled about half-an-inch through ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the first Earl is dead. They think he had done something in India which he could not answer for—that the house was rebuilt on a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white nightcap, and long white beard. The circumstance of his having died on the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how willing the vulgar are to gull themselves when they can find no one else to take the trouble. I have seen people who could read, write, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... shirt and nightcap, opened the door, and she bounded in. The casements closed to the chorus of subsiding laughter, and the echoes of Jan's footsteps died away in ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... trial in store for her, but for some cause she felt restless and nervous, and even scary, as she expressed it herself. "Worked too hard, I guess," she thought, as she tied on her high-crowned, broad-frilled nightcap, and then as a last chore, wound the clock before stepping ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... down at her a moment, seeing her flushed old face in the nightcap, her bright sunken eyes and her tremulous hands. Yes; this was ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... little woman, my mother, with prominent cheek-bones, a small, firm mouth, and dark eyes. Her hair was likewise dark, though I saw it but very seldom, for like all orthodox daughters of Israel she always had it carefully covered by a kerchief, a nightcap, or—on Saturdays and holidays—by a wig. She was extremely rigorous about it. For instance, while she changed her kerchief for her nightcap she would cause ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... him, the door was flung wide, and into the room, in nightcap and hastily donned robe—looking a very meagre in that disfiguring deshabille—swept ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... day Viscount Turenne in a little white vest and nightcap was standing at the window of his antechamber; one of his men came up and, misled by the dress, took him for one of the kitchen lads whom he knew. He crept up behind him and smacked him with no light hand. The man he struck turned round hastily. The valet saw it was his master ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... great mouth wide open, and his grizzly head enveloped in a white cotton nightcap. The noise of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... parts. It has no favorites; it is violated alike by the systematic glorification and the systematic depreciation of particular forms. The Apollo Belvedere would make as poor a figure in the foreground of a modern landscape as a fisherman in jack-boots and red nightcap on a pedestal in the Vatican. Claude's or Turner's figures may be absurd, when taken by themselves; but the absurdity consists in taking them by themselves. Turner, it is said, could draw figures well; Claude probably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... unshaded lamp, and looking very cross and tired. He glanced at us without comment as he went over to the sink. "Nobody offered me anything good to drink," he complained, "so I came in to get some water from the faucet for my nightcap." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... creeping on to the bed, and peeping out from between the curtains on the opposite side. Keeping the curtains carefully closed with his hand, so that nothing more of him could be seen than his face and nightcap, and putting on his spectacles, he mustered up courage, and ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... which was the prettiest little grating of silk, stuck all over with shining bits of crystal; and when he looked in, the caddis poked out her head, and it had turned into just the shape of a bird's. But when Tom spoke to her she could not answer; for her mouth and face were tight tied up in a new nightcap of neat pink skin. However, if she didn't answer, all the other caddises did; for they held up their hands and shrieked: "Oh, you nasty, horrid boy; there you are at it again! And she had just laid herself up for a fortnight's sleep, and then she would have come out with such beautiful wings, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... were seized by the dog; the owner, conceiving that he wanted to play with them, took them away. The animal began to bark at the door, which the traveller opened, thinking the dog wanted to go out. The dog snatched up the breeches and away he flew, the traveller posting after him with his nightcap on. The dog ran full speed to his master's house, followed by the stranger, who accused the dog of robbing him. "Sir," said the master, "my dog is a very faithful creature; and if he ran away with your breeches, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... from a big man in a big nightcap, leaning from a one-pair window; and as I was not yet abreast of his house, I judged it was more wise to answer. This was not the first time I had had to stake my fortunes on the goodness of my accent in ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... impatience. A pack of cards dealt for a game of "fools" lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the leather sofa on the other side and Maximov lay, half-reclining, on it. He wore a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill and weak, though he was smiling blissfully. When the homeless old man returned with Grushenka from Mokroe two months before, he had simply stayed on and was still staying with her. He arrived with her in rain and sleet, sat down on the sofa, drenched and scared, and gazed mutely ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... he tried, in rehearsal of the approaching scene, to pull over his eyes the silk skull-cap which he usually wore under his hat. Finding it too tight he told the valet to put the nightcap in his pocket and give it him when he should call for it. He then swallowed a half-glass of wine with a strengthening cordial in it, which he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... lunch at a small inn in this village, where I was watched with much curiosity by an old man in a blouse with a stiff shirt-collar rising to his ears, and a nightcap with tassel upon his head. The widow who kept the inn had a son who offered to walk with me as far as some chapel in the gorge of the Chavannon. We were not long in reaching the gorge, the view of which from the edge of the plateau ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... of the village of Creysse were seen through the poplars and walnuts. A delightful spot for a poetical angler is this, for the Dordogne runs close by in the shadow of prodigious rocks and overhanging trees. What a noble and stately river I thought it, as the old ferryman, with white cotton nightcap on his head, punted me across! I took the greater pleasure in its breadth and grandeur here because I had seen it an infant river in the Auvergne mountains, and had watched its growth as it rushed between walls of rock and forest ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... advice as best we could. Jacotot, who was attending to his little stove below when the squall struck us, popped up his head with his white nightcap on, and his countenance so ludicrously expressive of dismay that, in spite of the danger we were in, Trundle burst into a fit of laughter. The Frenchman had not time to get out before the vessel righted. He now emerged completely, and frantically seizing his cap, tore it off his head and threw ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... Examiner, and, as I said before, I leave you to give it a name. But Jenkins had a proper sense of his position, and a proper reverence for all in authority, from the king down to the editor and sub-editor. He would as soon have thought of borrowing the king's crown for a nightcap, or the king's sceptre for a walking-stick, as he would have thought of filling up any spare corner with any production of his own; and I think it would have even added to his contempt of Hodgson (if that were possible), had he known of the "productions of his brain," as the latter ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... whole visible. But such was his bad fortune, not another word of the manuscript was he able to read that whole evening; and, moreover, while he had still an inch of candle left, Aunt Keziah, in her nightcap,—as witch-like a figure as ever went to a wizard meeting in the forest with Septimius's ancestor,—appeared at the door of the room, aroused from her bed, and ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... always on a most economical scale. I was not a profitable customer; I took nothing "for the good of the house." I had a Gargantuesque appetite, and needed food of some sort in proportion to its demands. I neither took, or cared to take, any wine with my dinner, and never wanted any description of "nightcap." As for accommodation for the night, anything sufficed me that gave me a clean bed and a sufficient window-opening on fresh air, under such conditions as made it possible for me to have it open all night. To the present day I cannot sleep to my liking in ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... it out. It was very curly and all fluffed out in a shining white fuzz around her fat, pink face, full of soft wrinkles; but in a moment she was braiding it up again and putting on a tight white nightcap, which she ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... a head, in a nightcap so large and beruffled that it looked like a cabbage, popped out of a room farther down the hall, and ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... Boulogne. The old lady in the opposite corner, who has been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense basket of abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon; she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her handkerchief before her mouth:—her eyes ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my customary nightcap. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... her,'and said it was fearful!—beyond blasphemy! and that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap. She was on a journey into Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there. Both were widows. Well, it was a quarter to twelve. The Electress dropped back on her pillow, as she always did when she had finished the candle. Isentrude covered her over, heaped ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... came to pass that one evening he made the Princess stay up very late, until at last, being desirous of sleep, she bade him leave her. He then went to his own room, and there put on the handsomest and best-scented shirt he had, and a nightcap so well adorned that nothing was lacking in it. It seemed, to him, as he looked at himself in his mirror, that no lady in the world could deny herself to one of his comeliness and grace. He therefore promised himself a happy ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... to his pillow with a delightful sense of his own importance, and led him to confide to the nightcap on the pillow beside him that "Mr. Evatt is a man of vast insight and discrimination." Regrettable as it is to record, the visitor, before seeking his own pillow, mixed some ink powder in a mug with a little water and proceeded to add to a letter ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined, at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the King kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks; the Princesses kissed their mother's hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap." ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... and no sure appeal for you, except to the King; tolerably sure there, if you be INNOCENT, but evidently perilous if you be only NOT-CONVICTED!)—had liberty, I say, to search for contraband; all your presses, drawers, repositories, you must open to these beautiful creatures; watch in nightcap, and candle in hand, while your things get all tumbled hither and thither, in the search for what perhaps is not there; nay, it was said and suspected, but I never knew it for certain, that these poisonous French are capable of slipping in something contraband, on purpose ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... are come on business of State to the QUEEN, and even her sleep must give way to that.' It did; and, to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... and he did it many times; and whenever I was landed well, I got a lollypop, so that I was careful not to break his tackle. Moreover he made him a landing net, with a kidney-bean stick, a ring of wire, and his own best nightcap of strong cotton net. Then he got the farmer's leave, and lopped obnoxious bushes; and now the chiefest question was: what bait, and when to offer it? In spite of his sad rebuff, the spirit of John Pike had been equable. The genuine angling mind is steadfast, large, and self-supported, ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... of one who has been a favorite of the sex, but who has slowly decayed in the midst of his cosmetics; here saunter along a couple of actors with the air of being on the stage. These people all have the "nightcap" habit, and drift along towards the bar-room—the last brilliant scene in the drama of the idle day, the necessary portal to the realm of silence ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... candidly avowed Mrs. Jenkins. "And now I must go back home on the run. As good have no one to mind my shop as that young house-girl of ours. If a customer comes in for a pair of black stockings, she'll take and give 'em a white knitted nightcap. She's as deficient of common sense as Jenkins is. Your servant, sir. Good morning, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... said Captain Dalgetty, "is, next to a good evening draught and a warm nightcap, the best shoeinghorn for drawing on a sound sleep. And since your lordship is pleased to take the trouble to tell it, I shall rest your patient ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... in London, at any season, to keep alive the tradition of sunshine and of blue sky, but the October days I spent there were not so very far behind what we have at home at this season. London often puts on a nightcap of smoke and fog, which it pulls down over its ears pretty close at times; and the sun has a habit of lying abed very late in the morning, which all the people imitate; but I remember some very pleasant weather there, and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... not suspect in my stupid noddle that John Fry would ever tell Jeremy Stickles about the sight at the Wizard's Slough and the man in the white nightcap; because John had sworn on the blade of his knife not to breathe a word to any soul, without my full permission. However, it appears that John related, for a certain consideration, all that he had seen, and doubtless more which had accrued to it. Upon this Master ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... lose,' said the Doctor; 'follow me, like true men:' and the Doctor ran downstairs in his silk nightcap, for his ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... and a brother beloved! Who so pious, so exemplary, so holy as I! I lived in an atmosphere of purity and prayer; prayer seasoned my food before meals, and washed it down afterwards; prayer was my nightcap when I went to bed and my eye opener in the morning. At length I began to pray so fervently with the younger and fairer sisters of the flock, that the old ones, with whom I had no desire to pray, began to murmur—so, growing tired of piety, I kicked it to ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... my promise that I would write and give your conscience a nightcap. I have a splendid one for you. Put it on without any hesitation. I find her quite comfortable. Powys reads Italian with her in the morning. His sister (who might be a woman if she liked, but has an insane preference for celestial ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nonsense, Uncle John. There are plenty of men whom you trust for more than L2,000 who can take four glasses for their nightcap always." ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... contrast, but not an unpleasant one—for Olga was pretty, too, though in a different style. What a sight!—defying all order and bursting all bounds, flushed, tumbled and awry—the round arms tossed up, the rosy face flung back, the bedclothes pushed off, the pillow flung out, the nightcap one way, the hair another—all that was disorderly and lovely by night, all that was unruly and winning by day. Tina—dainty, elegant, perfumed, manicured Tina—bent over untidy little Olga ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... was lying on the bed, with his coat and boots off, and a worsted nightcap of his wife's knitting pulled on to his head. She had tried hard to get him to go to bed at once, and take some physic, and his present costume and position was the compromise. His back was turned to them ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... no case should a person be alarmed at what he suspects to be supernatural. A cool investigation will show, in most cases, that the supposed phenomenon may be easily explained. It might prove a serious thing for one to be frightened by a nightcap on a bedpost, for a fright affects unfavorably the nervous system, but a nightcap on a bedpost is in itself a very ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... pace which soon brought him alongside the others. They stopped in front of Abbott's pension, and he tried to persuade them to come up for a nightcap. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... of as honest a man as any on earth. He received the travelers with his candlestick in one hand and his cotton nightcap in the other. He wished to lodge the two travelers each in a charming chamber; but unfortunately these charming chambers were at the opposite extremities of the hotel. d'Artagnan and Athos refused them. The host replied that he had no other worthy of their Excellencies; but the travelers ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Mr. M'Coul," said they, "by pitching your tent upon the top of Knockmany, where you never are without a breeze, day or night, winter or summer, and where you're often forced to take your nightcap without either going to bed or turning up your little finger; ay, an' where, besides this, there's the sorrow's own ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... fast asleep, and Judy lay awake, tossing restlessly in the gray light of the dawn, the little grandmother came in, in a flannel wrapper, with her curls tucked away under a hand-made lace nightcap. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... these places," said Uncle "the more I feel ashamed that I did not do my share in bringing of relics. Now I could have brought the old nightcap that sister Susan's dead husband's grandfather brought over from England; and I have a gridiron that my great aunt gave me to remember her by. And there's the snuffers and the old wood-yard rake ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... take my nightcap," said the boatswain quietly. "But what's up? Are you going to make fast to the gunboat and tow ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... black, elfish locks, and darted off in triumph, dragging up from another corner a big box, first unceremoniously dumping out the various articles, such as dirty clothes, a tin pan or two, a skillet, an empty bottle—last of all, a nightcap, which she held aloft. "Gran's," she shouted; "it's been lost a mighty long time. Now I'm goin' to wear it to my five-o'clock tea. It's a picter hat, same's that lady had on to your house once—I seen her." She threw the old nightcap over her ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... carriages, all streaming towards the one great point—the ship-builder's yard. It seemed quite like a holiday or a fair, and was such a bright, warm, sunny day that people's hearts felt far lighter than usual. Davy saw all this at a glance the moment he left home; and, throwing his red nightcap into the air, he gave one long loud hurrah! and ran away as fast as his heavy ...
— The Life of a Ship • R.M. Ballantyne

... was opened cautiously, and the head of Mrs. Pill, in a frilled nightcap of gigantic size, was thrust out. "Is that you, Thomas, coming home at this late hour the worse for drink, you idle wretch, and me almost dead ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... an easy chair asleep, supported by cushions, wrapped up in his dressing-gown, a nightcap on his head.—A small table with phials, gallipots, &c.—Mrs Jellybags seated on a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... a moment to gaze with a fierce disdain at the unconscious face of Miss O'Donoghue, which, with snores emerging energetically and regularly from the great hooked nose, presented a weird and witchlike vision in the frame of a nightcap, fearfully and wonderfully befrilled, crept from the room and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... coming towards me, carrying all her three children together. I noticed Mr. Pordage in the greatest terror, in vain trying to get on his Diplomatic coat; and Mr. Kitten respectfully tying his pocket-handkerchief over Mrs. Pordage's nightcap. I noticed Mrs. Belltott run out screaming, and shrink upon the ground near me, and cover her face in her hands, and lie all of a bundle, shivering. But, what I noticed with the greatest pleasure was, the determined ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens

... eyes and shivering with fear, and Monsieur Ragoul was dancing about, with his red nightcap hanging ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... journey from Nice to Turin, describes how he ascended "the mountain Brovis," and on the top thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures: "He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... called them, had sat up one night at a tavern till three in the morning. The courageous thought struck them that they would knock up the old philosopher. He came to the door of his chambers, poker in hand, with an old wig for a nightcap. On hearing their errand, the sage exclaimed, "What! is it you, you dogs? I'll have a frisk with you." And so Johnson with the two youths, his juniors by about thirty years, proceeded to make a night of it. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... old gentleman in a red nightcap and flowered dressing-gown, with slippered feet, and spectacles on nose, entered the hall, followed by another in black, apparently his clerk. Two other persons also came in, and took their seats at the table, ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... proper. Having carefully drawn the curtains of his bed on the outside, Mr. Pickwick sat down on the rush-bottomed chair, and leisurely divested himself of his shoes and gaiters. He then took off and folded up his coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, and slowly drawing on his tasselled nightcap, secured it firmly on his head, by tying beneath his chin the strings which he always had attached to that article of dress. It was at this moment that the absurdity of his recent bewilderment struck upon his mind. Throwing himself back in the rush-bottomed chair, Mr. Pickwick laughed ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... looked out for those who were helping them to escape; these helpers were to be protected from suspicion. To do this they put a manikin with a nightcap on in Lafayette's bed, dug a channel under the chimney, and left a coat in the ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow

... handling of heavy implements of toil. And then you will think of city home-comings after the theatre or the ball; of the quiet half-hour in front of the dying cannel; of the short cigar and the little nightcap, and of the gentle passage bedward, so easy in that warm and slumberous atmosphere that you hardly know how you have passed from weariness to peaceful dreams. And there will come to your spirit a sudden passion of humiliation and revolt that ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... so many men of rank among us are throwing aside as a garment which is too much for them. We can all wear coats, but it is not every one that can carry a robe. The Duke carried his to the last." Madame Goesler remembered how he looked with his nightcap on, when he had lost his temper because they would not let him have a glass of curacoa. "I don't know that we have any one left that can be said to be his equal," ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... got a nightcap with me,' said Alice, as she tried to obey the first direction: 'and I don't ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... 'Liberal Premiers,' or whatever their title is, will accept or expect nothing else, and calls it by the pleasant name of progress, reform, emancipation, abolition-principles, and the like,—I consider the fate of said kennel and of said keepers to be a thing settled. Red republic in Phrygian nightcap, organization of labor a la Louis Blanc; street-barricades, and then murderous cannon-volleys a la Cavaignac and Windischgratz, follow out of one another, as grapes, must, new wine, and sour all-splitting vinegar do: vinegar is but vin-aigre, or the self-same 'wine' grown ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... she was going, or what she intended to do?" Mahony inquired of his wife that night as she bound the strings of her nightcap. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... glasses again thrust his head out at the window, minus the nightcap this time, and seeing the monkey, laughed as ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels

... as I drove up to the door. Mr. Blake was standing at the open window of the breakfast-room, sniffing the fresh air of the morning. The Blake mother was busily engaged with the economy of the tea-table; a very simple style of morning costume, and a nightcap with a flounce like a petticoat, marking her unaffected toilet. Above stairs, more than one head en papillate took a furtive peep between the curtains; and the butler of the family, in corduroys and a fur cap, was weeding turnips in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... it was dis way: I was inter Jackson's der odder evenin' takin' me nightcap. Dere was some fellers in dere wot was college chaps, and dey was talkin' about races and t'ings. Pretty soon dey said somet'ing about you. Some of 'em was hard on you, an' dat got me mad up. I jes' waded inter der gang an' offered ter lick anybody wot didn't t'ink you was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... by the collapse of the French Empire, and recalling the scathing satire with which he lashed the impostures of spiritualism in "Sludge the Medium." In 1872 he published "Fifine at the Fair," to the delight of those who loved him, and, as usual, to the irritation of those who did not. "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" appeared in the following year; and, after an interval of two years, was followed by "Aristophanes' Apology." Again, after a similar interval, he gave us "The Agamemnon of Aeschylus Transcribed." In 1879 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... him to sit up all night in the chamber; she rose herself at five o'clock of a wet November morning, and with her own hands lit the kitchen fire, and made the brothers a breakfast, and served it to them herself. Majestically arrayed in a boundless flannel wrapper, a shawl, and her nightcap, she sat and watched them eat, as complacently as a hen beholds her chickens feed. Yet she gave the cook warning that day for venturing to make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of sago-gruel; and the housemaid lost her favour because, when Mr. Louis was departing, she brought him his surtout ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the poppies are most plentiful, but a few may be found almost every month in the year. Have you noticed the finely cut green leaves, and the pointed green nightcap that covers each bud till the morning sunshine coaxes off the cap and unfolds the four satiny golden petals? The flowers love the sun and close up on dark, cloudy days, or if brought into the house. But put them in a sunny ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... a half hour and then mixed a nightcap, downed it, bathed and piled into bed. He was ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael

... I cannot comply, gentlemen. Vattel has nothing on the subject of watering belligerents, or neutrals, and the laws of Congress compel me to carry so many gallons to the man. If you will take it in the way of a nightcap, however, and drink success to our run to America, and your own to the shore, it shall be in champagne, if you happen ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... these long years. She must have been a tall woman, that mother of Em's, for when he stood up to shake out a dress the neck was on a level with his, and the skirt touched the ground. Gregory laid a nightcap out on his knee, and began rolling up the strings; but presently his fingers moved slower and slower, then his chin rested on his breast, and finally the imploring blue eyes were fixed on the frill abstractedly. When Em's voice called to him from the foot ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... black and bluff, and sported an immense pair of whiskers, but with here and there a grey hair, for his age could not be much under fifty. He wore a faded blue frock coat, corduroys, and highlows—on his black head was a kind of red nightcap, round his bull neck a Barcelona handkerchief—I did not like the look ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... in bed, propped up by pillows. His silver hair strayed from under a nightcap; he wore a light blue bedroom jacket; its color matched that of his restless eyes; his arms were under the clothes from the elbows down. He was rather flushed, but did not look seriously ill, and greeted Doctor ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... the Englishman abroad is particularly entertaining, for the Frenchman is infinitely more vivacious; nor that he is peculiarly stolid, for he yields in that to most of the German students who journey on the faith of a nightcap and a pipe; or that he is especially boring, for every American whom one meets whips him easily in boredom. It is that he is so nakedly and undisguisedly English. We never see Englishmen in England. They are too busy, too afraid of Mrs. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... place of danger; and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should rather stand wrecker after wrecker. There was no emotion, no animation, it scarce seemed any interest; not a hand was raised; but all callously awaited the harvest of the sea, and their children stood by their side ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... strict discipline prevailed. The last persons to appear were the major and Mrs Bubsby and their two tall daughters. The former, with a blanket thrown over his head, making him look very much like a young polar bear, and the lady in her nightcap, with a bonnet secured by a red woollen shawl fastened under her chin, while the costume of the young ladies showed also that they had hurriedly dressed themselves, and in a way they would not have wished ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... our tears, and took a little lesson in real love, which we never forgot, nor the look that the tired man and the tender woman gave one another. It was half tragic and comic, for father was very dirty and sleepy, and mother in a big nightcap and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... (for a white nightcap and nightshirt were discernible in almost pitchy darkness), they saw him strut back from the window to slip downstairs and surprise them. Mr Pinsent paused only to insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he unbolted the back door, to snatch a lantern off its ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... floor or on the forehook, i.e., a beam which stretches across the bows. This class of food and the method of eating it went on uninterruptedly during the whole voyage. The duff, which was made of flour, water and fat, was boiled in a canvas bag made in the shape of a nightcap; it was very leathery, and was responsible for much dyspepsia. It was cut into equal parts according to the number of men who were to share it. On Sundays a few currants or raisins were scattered amongst the flour and ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... knob at the back of her head. She was a martyr to the "neuralagy," and suffered from a perennial cold in the head, which made it necessary for her to wear a cloud, which was only removed when it could be replaced by her nightcap. Her face always bore the marks of her labors, and from it one could gather whether she was among the pots or busy with the baking. But she was kindhearted, and, up to her light, sought to fill the place left empty by the death of the wife and ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... still came, women and little children, who stood in displeased surprise at their father's emaciation and at his nightcap, and uttered exclamations of delight at the sight of the beautifully dressed altar. But Jack's mother did not appear. Madame Belisaire knows not what to say. She has hinted that M. D'Argenton may be ill, or that his mother is driving in the Bois, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... woman appeared in the doorway. She wore her huge white-frilled nightcap, that fluttered in the wind about the shrivelled face it enclosed, but she presented an extremely limp and ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... knocked softly at the door, and being bid to open it, I found the major in his sister's ante-chamber warming her posset. His dress was certainly whimsical enough, having on a woman's bedgown and a very dirty flannel nightcap, which, being added to a very odd person (for he is a very awkward thin man, near seven feet high), might have formed, in the opinion of most men, a very proper object of laughter. The major started from his seat at my entering into the room, and, with much emotion, and a great oath, cried ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding



Words linked to "Nightcap" :   night-robe, game, drink, twin bill, doubleheader, nightie, nightgown



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