"Quilt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wellington lay in state,—very gorgeous, of black velvet embroidered with silver and adorned with escutcheons; also, the state bed of Queen Anne, broad, and of comfortable appearance, though it was a queen's,—the materials of the curtains, quilt, and furniture, red velvet, still brilliant in hue; also King William's bed and his queen Mary's, with enormously tall posts, and a good deal the worse for time ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well provided for a week of such weather as this, and have only to fear a sudden change to extreme cold. I therefore think the first thing for us to do, is to finish our feather quilt, enlarge our hut, and get up a stove as ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... pinned round the head gave the effect of an elaborate coiffure, above which was perched a scarlet turban decorated by half-a-dozen brooches, holding in position as many feathers; a blue dressing-gown opened over an underskirt composed of an eiderdown quilt, which gave an appropriately portly air to the figure, and by some mysterious process a double chin had been produced for the occasion! Gasps of delight from the bed greeted this masterpiece; but the third impersonation was most successful of all, when the audience ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... All the inhabitants of the village neglected and abused him. He was not allowed to sleep in any of the huts, but one family permitted him to lie outside in the cold passage among the dogs who were his pillows and his quilt. They gave him no good meat, but flung him bits of tough walrus hide such as they gave to the dogs, and he was obliged to gnaw it as the dogs did, for he ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... minutes afterward, you meet the family. A small, light wagon, easily dragged through sloughs and heavy roads, is covered with a white cotton cloth, and drawn, by either two yokes of oxen, or a pair of lean horses. A "patch-work" quilt is sometimes stretched across the flimsy covering, as a guard against the sun and rain. Within this vehicle are stowed all the emigrant's household goods, and still, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... clothes, their broken-down gait—every thing bears witness to their poverty. Their beds consist of a few bits of wood crossed one upon the other, supported by two heaps of stones, and covered with straw; their whole bedclothes a miserable, worn-out quilt, without any blankets . . . . But there is nothing in Ireland like the habitations which the people of the village of Fallmore have made for themselves, who have been evicted by Mr. Palmer. They are composed of masses of granite, picked up on the shore, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Aunt Hannah was making a crazy patchwork quilt, and she frowned hard at a triangular piece of red silk and circular piece of pink, wondering how to fit them together. "Well?" ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... great many things that are not so, but the interesting thing about that is this: Things that are not so do not match. If you hear enough of them, you see there is no pattern whatever; it is a crazy quilt. Whereas, the truth always matches, piece by piece, with other parts of the truth. No man can lie consistently, and he cannot lie about everything if he talks to you long. I would guarantee that if enough liars talked to you, you ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... me a meal she fetched fresh hay from a barn and spread a quilt over it and made a bed for me, and would have given me her own pillow but that I pointed out that my pack itself made a very good ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... night that she saw something stirring in her bed-room. In the idea that the ghost would attack her head rather than her feet, she tied up her feet in her bonnet- de-nuit, put them upon the pillow, and her head under the quilt—a novel way of cheating ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... sorrow and disgrace? I can bear my burden a year or two longer, I think; then, when she is gone, I can consider my vindication." She patted his hand to emphasize her unity of purpose. "That's the way I've figured it all out—the whole, crazy-quilt pattern, and if you have a better scheme, and one that isn't founded on human selfishness, I'm here to listen ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... it about her head and shoulders, fastening it back above one ear with a pink rose. Around her throat she clasped a string of pearls, then stood quietly in the middle of the room and looked about her. In one corner was a little brass bedstead covered with a heavy quilt of satin and lace. The pillow-cases were almost as fine and elaborate as her gown. In the opposite corner was an altar with little gold candlesticks and an ivory crucifix. The walls and floor were bare but spotless. The ugly wardrobe built into the thick ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... play, I think," and Kitty fingered over her treasures lovingly. "Grandma will help me with my patterns, and I'm going to piece a silk teachest quilt. Oh, Mother, it will be ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... is a great favorite with the little folks, for it contains just such stories as they like to hear their aunt and older sister tell; and learn them by heart and tell them over to one another as they set out the best infant tea-set, or piece a baby-quilt, or dress dolls, or roll marbles. A book to put on the book-shelf in the playroom where Susie and Prudy, Captain Horace, Cousin Grace, and all the rest of the 'Little Prudy' folks are ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... a fix," said Mrs. Ambrose, who was flushed and out of breath. "You know what gentlemen are. The chairs too high—the tables too low—there's six inches between the floor and the door. What I want's a hammer, an old quilt, and have you such a thing as a kitchen table? Anyhow, between us"—she now flung open the door of her husband's sitting room, and revealed Ridley pacing up and down, his forehead all wrinkled, and the collar of his ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... a sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen; Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside; Faints into airs, and languishes with pride; On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, Wrapt in a gown, for sickness, and for show. 45 POPE: R. of the Lock, Canto ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... sleepily insistent, and shortly the captain gave over his deprecatory contortions. He fetched a pink quilt with yellow dots on it to the freckled man, and a black one with red roses on it to the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... corn by drawing the ears across a spade resting on a wash tub, and we children built houses of the cobs, while mother sewed carpet rags or knit our mittens. Quilting bees of an afternoon were still recognized social functions and the spread quilt on its frame made a gorgeous tent under which my brother and I camped on our way to "Colorado." Lath swords and tin-pan drums remained a part of our equipment ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... "Mr. Levine came out with the dog this afternoon and suggested the change. He helped me. We stored all the other things up in the attic. See the old quilt in the corner? That's for the dog to sleep on. Ain't he as big as an elephant! I'm afraid he'll eat as much as ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Nance seed that Polly Ann was a-eyin' Jeb sort o' flustered like, an' she come might' nigh splittin' right thar an' a-sp'ilin' the fun, fer she knowed what a skeery fool Jeb was. An' when the ole folks goes to bed, Nance lays thar under a quilt a-watchin' an' a-listenin'. Well, Jeb knowed the premises, ef he couldn't talk, an' purty soon Nance heerd Jeb's cheer creak a leetle, an' she says, Jeb's a-comin', and Jeb was; an' Polly Ann 'lowed Jeb was jes a leetle TOO resolute an' quick-like, ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Ella Scarlett-Synge (M.D., D.P.H.) visited this camp on December 17, 1915. She reports: "The prisoners of war are housed in well-built, well-drained barracks having excellent ventilation. Each man has an iron bedstead with two blankets (or a thick quilt), a straw mattress, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... some old trunks and boxes neatly piled up high in the loft, which was reached by a ladder, generally swung out of the way—hung a faded, woollen blanket; from the opposite corner there fell an old, patchwork, silk quilt. Dainty white curtains in all their crispness were at the windows, and upon the walls were many rare and weird trophies of the chase, not to mention the innumerable pictures that had been taken ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... impression was that it would be carried away if we dropped in for half a tornado, until I saw our sail and recognised that that would go to darning cotton instantly if it fell in with even a breeze. It was a bed quilt that had evidently been in the family some years, and although it had been in places carefully patched with pieces of previous sets of the captain's dungarees, in other places, where it had not, it gave "free passage to the airs of Heaven"; which I may remark does not make for speed in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... voice changed. He caught her wrist sharply—so sharply that Sally almost dropped the watch on the quilt. "What's that?" His tone was so strange that she was surprised, and tried to follow his glance. It rested upon her hand—upon the wedding ring. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... itself was decorated with a patchwork quilt of great antiquity; and at the upper end, upon the side nearest to the door, hung a scanty curtain of blue check, which prevented the Zephyrs that were abroad in Kingsgate Street, from visiting Mrs Gamp's ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... silver-haired terrier, who looked abjectly depressed whilst this was doing, and preposterously proud when it was done. She washed her own hair, and studied her Sunday-school lesson for the morrow whilst it was drying. She spread a colored quilt at the foot of her white one for the terrier to sleep on—a slur which he always ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... an elaborate chandelier hanging from a coloured plaster rosette in the middle of the ceiling, all twisty and gilt, but it doesn't light,—Wanda, the maid of all work, brings me a petroleum lamp with a green glass shade to it when it gets dusk. I've got a very short bed with a dark red sateen quilt on to which my sheet is buttoned a11 round, a pillow propped up so high on a wedge stuck under the mattress that I shall sleep sitting up almost straight, and then as a crowning glory the sack of feathers, which will do beautifully for holding me down when I'm having a ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... canoe, hid it away, and then refused the canoe, saying that if he had to escape with his family he would require it. He demanded an ax, a sail for his canoe, and a pair of blankets. As Koris had the ax and another had the quilt, I gave the quilt to him for a sail, and the ax and blankets for the canoe, in fact, these few relics of our earthly all at Nowar's were coveted by the savages and endangered our lives, and it was as well to get ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... grazing their oxen—one sitting under a tree singing, another smoking, some fighting, others eating. Inland, husbandmen were driving the plough, beating the oxen, lavishing abuse upon them, in which the owner shared. The wives of the husbandmen, bearing vessels of water, some carrying a torn quilt, or a dirty mat, wearing a silver amulet round the neck, a ring in the nose, bracelets of brass on the arm, with unwashed garments, their skins blacker than ink, their hair unkempt, formed a chattering crowd. Among ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... Banou had given her orders conveyed the sorceress into an elegant apartment, richly furnished. They first set her down upon a sofa, with her back supported by a cushion of gold brocade, while they made a bed on the same sofa, the quilt of which was finely embroidered with silk, the sheets of the finest linen, and the coverlid cloth of gold. When they had put her into bed (for the old sorceress pretended that her fever was so violent she could not help herself in the least), one of the women went out, and returned soon ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... never bear to look upon it again, nor did I ever afterwards enter the tapestry chamber:—but there were some other of the antique rooms in which I delighted, and divers pieces of old furniture which I reverenced. There was an ancient bed, with scolloped tester, and tarnished quilt, in which Queen Elizabeth had slept; and a huge embroidered pincushion done by no hands, as you may guess, but those of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots, who, during her captivity, certainly worked harder than ever queen worked ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... in the straw for thee, though thou art a fine lady, and thinkest great things of thyself." Thorgunna made her own terms with Thurida and Master Harold, and set up her bed at the inner end of their hall. Her richly worked bed-clothes, her English sheets and silken quilt, and her bed-hangings and canopy were such "that men thought nothing at all like them had ever been seen." An air of truth is given to the whole story by the details. Thorgunna is described as "tall ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... ask for a quilt or rug, there was no time for that. She quickly slipped out of her dress, and catching the little fellow wrapped him tight in the gown, smothering out ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... were forward to help; some threw out flossy bits of cotton,—for which, we grieve to say, Charlie had cut a hole in the crib quilt,—and some threw out bits of thread and yarn, and Allie ravelled out a considerable piece from one of her garters, which she threw out as a contribution; and they exulted in seeing the skill with which the little builders wove ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bright, pretty place, with pictures and flowers and toys. But it was not at all like home to poor little Sharley; and as she thought of her mother and her sisters she sobbed and cried in her little bed, and buried her head under the pink quilt, and refused to be comforted. A lady came to see her, and brought her a picture-book; but still she hid her face, and cried, "Oh, do let me go home!" The lady tried to please her by showing her a stuffed squirrel, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... up In her old, red quilt, They carry her down At a horizontal tilt, She doesn't say "Yes" And she doesn't say "No," She doesn't say, "Gentlemen, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... terrible! I've been so—so frightened!" Allie Briskow suddenly lost control of herself and, bowing her head, she hid her face in the musty patchwork quilt. Her shoulders shook, her whole strong body twitched and trembled. "You've b-been awful sick. I did the best I ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of work has ever attained such popularity as Crochet. Whether as a simple trimming, as an elaborate quilt, or as a fabric, almost rivalling Point Lace, it is popular with every woman who has any time at all for fancy work, since it is only needful to understand the stitches, and the terms and contractions used ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... up, all blue silk, and lovely muslin embroideries; and she did look such a sweet, cosey thing among it all, her dark hair in fluffs round her face, and an angelic lace cap over it. She was smoking a cigarette, and writing numbers of letters with a gold stylograph pen. The blue silk quilt was strewn with correspondence, and newspapers, and telegraph forms. And her garment was low-necked, of course, and thin like mine. I wondered what Alexander would have thought if he could have seen her in contrast ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... the middle of the bed with the down quilt up to his chin, while Lasse sat on the edge, turning over the things in the green chest and talking to himself. He was going through his Sunday devotions, taking out slowly, one after another, all the little ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... then I have risen in their estimation by improvizing a lamp—Hawaiian fashion—by putting a wisp of rag into a tin of fat. They have actually condescended to sit up till the stars come out since. Another advance was made by means of the shell-pattern quilt I am knitting for you. There has been a tendency towards approving of it, and a few days since the girl snatched it out of my hand, saying, "I want this," and apparently took it to the camp. This has resulted in my having a knitting class, with the woman, her married daughter, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... would meet again shortly. They were, indeed, rather surprised that neither of them had come down a few days before, as soon as the road was open, in order to tell them all about their long winter sojourn. At last, however, they saw the inn, still covered with snow, like a quilt. The door and the window were closed, but a little smoke was coming out of the chimney, which reassured old Hauser. On going up to the door, however, he saw the skeleton of an animal which had been torn to pieces by the eagles, a large skeleton ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... doctor came he nodded to the clergyman and just touched the hand on the quilt. He was in evening dress, and he explained that he had been detained owing to his hostess ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... and newly patched quilt were designated as "ornery" but the printed spread, patterned to imitate blue torchon lace, drew a murmur of admiration from the woman. Sary quickly changed her robe of mourning to a calico house-dress ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... eyes turned towards them, but not his head. He lay as still in bed as if he were already dead, and his long body raised the gay patchwork quilt in a ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... entered the sitting-room door, she found the little old lady propped in a rocking chair just inside the doorway with a patchwork quilt across her lap, tucking her in. There was no appreciable change. She was as yellow, as parchment like as ever. Her eyes perhaps were brighter; indeed they seemed almost to have a heat of their own as Mary Louise stooped to kiss the cheek held ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... beehive. Beside it stood a little wattled shanty, where they put the beehives for the winter. I peeped into the half-open door; it was dark, still, dry within; there was a scent of mint and balm. In the corner were some trestles fitted together, and on them, covered with a quilt, a little figure of some sort.... ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... went to a lot of quiltings. I suppose they had them much the same as they do now. Everybody took a part of the quilt to finish. They talked and sang and had a good time. And they had somethin' to eat at the close just as they did in the corn shucking. I never went ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... quietly knelt down upon the kang and said her prayers, taking care to ask God to comfort her parents and send her back to them soon. The poor child felt much happier when she had done this. She crept into her quilt, and was soon asleep. Little Yi and An Ching presently came and curled themselves up on the kang, and all was ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... was far beneath the surface, and midway of its depth, a frontier refrigerator reached by a rope ladder, was a narrow chamber in which Margaret Rowland kept her meats fresh, often for a week at a time. For another purpose as well it was used: a big basket with a patchwork quilt and a pillow marking the spot where Baby Rowland, with the summer heat all about, slept ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... the house. He found a coach at the door, with the blinds carefully drawn up, and ascertained from a tall, ill-looking, though tawdrily-dressed fellow, who held his horse by the bridle, and whom he addressed as Quilt Arnold, that the two boys were safe inside, in the custody of Abraham Mendez, the dwarfish Jew. As soon as he had delivered his instructions to Quilt, who, with Abraham, constituted his body-guard, or janizaries, as he termed them, Jonathan ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... defended it in its cradle, but it would have perished there had it not been for the brave women of that day who plied the needle and made the quilts that warmed it, and who nursed it and rocked it through the perils of its infancy, into the strength of a giant. The quilt was attached to a quadrangular frame suspended from the ceiling; and the good women sat around it and quilted the live-long day, and were courted by the swains between stitches. At sunset the quilt was always finished; a cat was thrown into ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... up crocheting. Miss Cornelia cut me some quilt pieces. She say 'Betty that's her talent' bout me. Miss Betty say, 'If she goin' to be mine I want her to be smart.' Miss Mary lernt my sister ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... know I said you shall make four every day still so you get the quilt done this summer yet and ready to quilt. You go and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... No patchwork quilt, all seams and scars, But velvet, powder'd with golden stars, A fit mantle for Night-Commanders! And the pillow, as white as snow undimm'd And as cool as the pool that the breeze has skimmed, Was cased ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... after she had replaced the coarse horse-blanket with a soft down quilt, the doctor made one of his bi-weekly visits ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... eyes only looked into his with mocking intentness. He put his fingers on the lids and pressed them gently down, but she struggled, and turned away her face. Her hands crept constantly along the snowy quilt as if seeking for something, and taking them both, he folded them in his and pressed them to his lips, while tears, which he did not attempt to restrain, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... bottom first, and then at the sides, and leave the top end loose, so that when you've got the blankets spread, you turn the sheet neatly down over the blankets; and then you see it's all tidy under the quilt, ready for when you come to turn down the ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... talked of paintin' his house over, wanted me to ask the President what kind of paint he used on the White House, and if he put in any sperits of turpentime. And Ardelia Rumsey, who wuz goin' to be married soon, wanted me, if I see any new kinds of bed-quilt patterns to the White House, or to the senators' housen, to get the patterns for her. She said she wus sick of sunflowers, and blazin' stars, and such. She thought mebby they'd have suthin' new, spread-eagle style, or suthin' of that kind. She said "her feller was goin' to be connected with ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the head of the household. But the very completeness of the despotism rendered its exercise impossible. Force cannot act where there is no resistance. The sword of the Plantagenet could cleave the helmet but not the quilt of down. I could do as I pleased without infringing any understanding or ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... A heavy-set deppity grunted a verdict. "Gimme 'at quilt, an' I makes down mah pallet on ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... been mistaken for a slave, was released from that jail. He came to us telling of the suffering the prisoners endured, having no bed but a pile of filthy straw in their cells; and that Calvin requested him to see his friends, and tell us he must perish unless a quilt and flannel underclothing were furnished him; and he also needed a little pocket money. No one dared to take these articles to him, for only two weeks previously a man by the name of Conklin had brought the wife and four children of an escaped slave into Indiana, and was captured in ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... there in the bouquets, and then she opened an inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the associations were still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet dressing-gown and the pair of tiny slippers; the clothes were piled neatly on two chairs,—a boy's velvet tunic on one, a girl's white frock, a little limp and discolored, hung over the rails ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... they could see that some of the boards had been painted and some had not. Some were painted halfway across, and some only in patches of a foot or two. They had been hastily thrown together. The whole effect, viewed at a distance, resembled nothing so much as a crazy-quilt. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... cushion and flounce of Turkey red; and Kate had speedily stitched up a cover for hers to match, of cloth that Mrs. Scherman gave her) stood one each side the chimney,—in the recesses. A red and white patchwork quilt, done in stars, Bel's own work before she ever came to Boston, lay folded across the foot of the bed, in patriotic contrast with the blue,—reversing the colors in stars and stripes. Bel had found in the attic a discarded stairway drugget, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... was Scraps, the Patchwork Girl of Oz, who was made of a gaudy patchwork quilt, cut into shape and stuffed with cotton. This Patchwork Girl was very intelligent, but so full of fun and mad pranks that a lot of more stupid folks thought she must be crazy. Scraps was jolly under all conditions, however ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... well?" Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but frowning. The window shook, and Rebecca stole like a ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Mrs. Wills through the back room into the yard. The room they passed through was very clean, and held a stove with a little tin kettle on it, a bed with a patchwork quilt, a shining little table and several chairs ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... principal, "to note the gifts of the older colored people, many of whom had spent their best days in slavery. Sometimes they would give five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents. Sometimes the contribution was a quilt, or a quantity of sugarcane. I recall one old colored woman, who was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were raising money to pay for the farm. She hobbled into the room where I was, leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags, but they were clean. She said, 'Mr. Washington, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... a salute from the castle. After passing two guards of very proper men, well clothed, we were conducted into the governor's house, all built of freestone, having large handsome stairs, by which we were led to a room spread with rich carpets, having a bow-window at the upper end, where a silken quilt was laid on the floor, with two cushions of cloth of silver, on which I was desired to sit down. Presently the governor entered from another chamber, himself dressed in a gown of cloth of silver, faced with rich fur, and accompanied ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... your clothes should catch fire, do not run; the wind you make will only fan the flames, so that they burn faster. Lie down and roll over and over, as fast as you can. If there is a rug or a quilt handy, wrap yourself up tight in it. My youngest brother once saved a little child's life this way. He was not very old, but he remembered to put the child on the floor and roll him ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... hall seemed to have donned strange carnival clothes, for a mystic Saturnalia. It was literally swaddled in bedquilts,— tumbler-quilts, rising-suns, Jacob's-ladders, log-cabins, and the more modern and altogether terrible crazy-quilt. There were square yards of tidies, on wall and table, and furlongs of home-knit lace. Dilly looked at this product of the patient art of woman ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... overcome by weariness that they one night decided to lie on the bed. They did not undress, but threw themselves, as they were, on the quilt, fearing lest their bare skins should touch, for they fancied they would receive a painful shock at the least contact. Then, when they had slept thus, in an anxious sleep, for two nights, they risked removing their clothes, and slipping between the sheets. But they remained apart, and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... dis, and some of dat, in de sacks. When day poured it out at night, dare was plenty of good somepin' t'eat. De mens kept de fire goin' and if dey got hold of a tallow candle day lit dat to help de 'omans see how to quilt. Most of de quiltin's was at night and nearly all of 'em ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... he lay down without the greeting he was wont to give me—lapsed into his place beside me with the limpness of a man spent to the utmost ounce. He slept without turning on his side, his worn hands, half-closed, lying loosely on the quilt. Yet within an hour after daylight he rose with narrow, sleep-burdened eyes, fumbled into his clothes, and staggered out to the spruit again, to resume his merciless work with the very fever of energy. The Kafirs that worked leisurely on the next plot stopped to look at ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to his house at three o'clock in the morning, he found the lamp was burning brightly. Nireeungo was lying on the bed, covered over with a quilt of navy blue. He called to her, but she made no answer, and Clausen called her a sleepy little pig. Then he turned to the side table to take a drink of schnapps—on the edge of it was Nireeungo's head with its two long plaits of jet-black hair hanging down, and dripping an ensanguined ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... amputated hand, my father with his melancholy forebodings, and the forester. What with the long journey, the warm room, and the punch, my father soon got sleepy (I had had a strong bedstead placed in the forester's room); he kissed my head as he wished me good-night, tapped the quilt, and said, 'To-morrow, then, my manikin!' He was asleep in a moment; and how he slept, to be sure! I got out of the forester's bed, and watched every breath he drew. It was a weary night. The next ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... you be a fool," his mother had replied. She had then covered her face with the quilt. There was an end to the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... call of fire had been given, the workers saw some one staggering through the lower hall. In her arms she carried a bundle wrapped tightly in a bed-quilt. And dangling from her hands was a long string of beads. Her face was burned. There was no hair on her head. She was writhing in agony, but she reached the door, handed the burden to a worker, saying quietly, 'I am badly burned, but I have saved my two treasures. Keep them safely for me.' ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... Pine? A Gentile I know not. Hearne he was born and Hearne he shall be to me, though the grass is now a quilt for him. Ohone! Hai mai! Ah, me! Woe! and woe, my gentleman. He was the child of my child and the love of my heart," she rocked herself to and fro sorrowfully, "like a leaf has he fallen from the tree; like the dew has he vanished into the blackness of the great ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... the lamb till the sun began to redden; then it occurred to her that, under the circumstances, it was her duty to get supper. It was a welcome thought; she would see what she could do. She put the orphan at the foot of the bunk, drew the quilt over it and set ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... was a short one. I heard two dull blows, given in rapid succession; a quivering sigh, and the long-drawn, heavy breathing of the sleeper was for ever suspended. I unclosed my eyes, and saw the murderer fling the quilt across the head of his victim; he then, with the instrument of death still in his hand, proceeded to the lobby-door, upon which he tapped sharply twice or thrice. A quick step was then heard approaching, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... seasoning our mouths with the tainted scraps and fragments from an unknown table, and searching among the verminous and polluted rags dropped overworn from the toiling shoulders of Time, with these deformedly to quilt and interlace the entire, the spotless, and undecaying robe of Truth. What impiety,' he added, 'the confronting and paralleling the sacred verity of St. Paul with the offals and sweepings of antiquity, that met as accidently and absurdly as Epicurus his ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... laughed at his ardor, but the fancy pleased them; and as Mamma saw no reason why their little works of art should not be sent, Frank fell to work on his model, and Jill resolved to finish her quilt at once, while Mrs. Minot went off to see Mr. Acton about the hours and ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... and the costume of the daughter whom he had just beheld. The window was curtainless, the walls were damp, in places the varnished wall-paper had come away and gave glimpses of the grimy yellow plaster beneath. The wretched bed on which the old man lay boasted but one thin blanket, and a wadded quilt made out of large pieces of Mme. Vauquer's old dresses. The floor was damp and gritty. Opposite the window stood a chest of drawers made of rosewood, one of the old-fashioned kind with a curving front and brass handles, shaped like rings of twisted ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... couch saying, "Drain thou this drink. It is the water of the Lions' Fount and whoso tasteth of the same is forthwith made whole of what disease soever he hath." The Sorceress took the cup with great difficulty and after swallowing the contents lay back on the bed; and the handmaidens spread the quilt over her saying, "Now rest awhile and thou shalt soon feel the virtues of this medicine." Then they left her to sleep for an hour or so; but presently the Witch, who had feigned sickness to the intent only that she might learn where Prince Ahmad abode and might inform the Sultan thereof, being ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... beyond. Snowy white, and fragrant with the leaves of rose and geranium which had been pressed within their folds, were the sheets which covered the bed, the last Rose Lincoln would ever rest upon. Soft and downy were the pillows, and the patchwork quilt, Rose's particular aversion, was removed, and its place supplied by one ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... a strange funeral. They had arranged mattress and sheet in the bottom of a four-wheeler, and covered him with sheet, blanket, and quilt, though the weather was warm; and over the body, from side to side of the trap, they had stretched the big dark-green table-cloth from Anderson's dining-room. The long, ghostly, white, cleared government road between the dark walls of timber in the moonlight. The buggies and carts behind, ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... her and sighed deeply. The room was brimful and spilling over: trash, tin cans, and bottles overflowed the window- sills; a crippled rocking-chair, with a faded quilt over it, stood before the stove, in the open oven of which Chris's shoe was drying; an old sewing-machine stood in the middle of the floor, with Miss Hazy's sewing on one end of it and the uncleared dinner-dishes on ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... appearance of tidy fullness. An everlasting quilt was stretched across the end window, and here Miss Becky had laid her chalk-lines and pricked her fingers through several generations. The faithful fingers were brown and crooked, she said, from rheumatism; but how could they be straight when eternally ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Down of the eider duck, used to stuff quilts and pillows. Quilt stuffed with the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... none of her silences or mockeries about her till he felt like a painter who has somehow let the devil into his paintbox so that each stroke he makes goes a little fatally out of true from the vision in his mind till the canvas is only a crazy-quilt of reds and yellows. Now, perhaps, though, she might come, even though he was tired. He pressed the back of a hand against his eyes. She was coming to him now. He remembered one of their walks together—a walk they had taken some eight months ago, when ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... funny place for a camp in the woods," said Freddie. He and Flossie had often pretended to camp out in a tent made from a blanket or quilt, and they ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... first elated. She overlooked the matter of duplicates, and accepted graciously every article that was tendered—from a patch-work quilt to a hem-stitched handkerchief. "You can't have too many of some things," she remarked to Esther. But later she reversed this statement. Match-safes, photograph-frames, and pretty nothings accumulated to ...
— Different Girls • Various
... camp-hospital. Doctor Blecker stood on the outside of the door: all night he had been there, like some lean, unquiet ghost. Story, the surgeon, met the men. They carried something on a board, covered with an old patchwork quilt. Story lifted the corner of the quilt to see what lay beneath. Doctor Blecker stood in their way, but neither moved nor spoke ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Lockhart in the afternoon following his return to Chance Along. The singer was sitting up in a chair by the fire, wrapped about in her own silk dressing-gown, which had been brought ashore from the wreck, and in an eiderdown quilt. Her plentiful, soft, brown hair was arranged in a manner new to Chance Along, and stuck through with a wonderful comb of amber shell and gold, and a pin with a jewelled hilt. The ornaments for the hair had been supplied by Mother Nolan, who had possessed them for the past thirty years, hidden ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... very old man, with a strong face in folds, clean-shaven like the rest of the world, and was now lying back on his water-pillows with the quilt ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... and was served up at the head of the stairs, on an old-fashioned oaken table in the great hall, into which the chambers opened. Berkley ordered at the same time a tub of cold water, in which he seated himself, with his coat on, and a bed-quilt thrown round his knees. Thus he sat for an hour; ate his breakfast, and smoked a pipe, and laughed a good deal. He then went to bed and slept till dinner time. Meanwhile Flemming sat in his chamber and read. It was a large room in the front of the house, looking upon the village ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in bed when the children arrived. The bed was of mahogany and had four twisted posts. The white quilt had been turned back and a book and Diana's doll Alice were lying on the blanket. The sun came shining in through the two west windows. The room looked very fresh, with the new white paint and pale ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... was one set together in what is called Job's trouble, with many a grave warning ringing in her ears, accompanied by an ominous shake of the head, and an assurance she never would marry Edward if she pieced her quilt together so. She sighed now as she unfolded it, and stood for a moment gazing upon its beauty. Then smoothly replacing the folds, and laying it in a large chest, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... regard to decorum and the to prepon, that he was always ready at a moment's warning to make his appearance without embarrassment to himself or to others. This done, he lay down on a mattress, and wrapped himself up in a quilt, which in summer was always of cotton,—in autumn, of wool; at the setting-in of winter he used both—and against very severe cold, he protected himself by one of eider-down, of which the part which covered his shoulders was not stuffed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... them exclusively, and that no man could hope to remain in peace within range of their mops and brooms till every vestige of summer dust and dirt was removed, every feather bed sunned till it swelled tick tight, every quilt aired, every rug beaten, every floor scoured, and they themselves relaxed, exhausted, purified, and satisfied at the end of ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... estates largely held by imperial favorites, as Pliny said, destroyed Italy. So fearful has the destruction been that it is only in our generation that the Campagna at Rome, which was once an intensely fruitful quilt of garden patches, has been reclaimed from the fever-smitten swamp to which vast landlordism had ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... could tell that they were having a duel of spirits, and that she was taking liberties with William's theology that must have made his guardian angel pale. He wore his red flannel nightshirt, had a quilt folded around his legs and one of Benson's Commentaries open upon his knees. His hair was bristling in fine style, and his long beard lay like a stole upon his breast. His hands were resting on the arms of his chair, and he was regarding Sal, who sat in the opposite ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... symbolic oyster stew; A countenance in which did meet The paving blocks from some old street; The staircase, floating fancy-free, With steps of Cubic liberty. A perfect lady, nobly built, Constructed like a crazy quilt. Or a volcano on a spree, Or herd of elephants at tea. The staircase, by a bombshell wrecked, With something of a ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... as if up-country existed for the sake of its market town of Tideshead. Betty had been there once or twice in her childhood, but her memories even of sister Sarah were rather indistinct. She had taken a long nap once on the patchwork quilt in the bedroom, and had waked to find four or five women hooking a large rug in the kitchen, all talking together, which had made an impression upon her young mind. It was strawberry-time too on that last visit. But sister Sarah remembered ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... fastening the broken bed-post; then used more pins than her apparel could well spare to fasten up the bed-curtains in festoons; then shook the bed-clothes into something like form; then flung over all a tattered patch-work quilt, and pronounced that things were now 'something purpose-like.' 'And there's your bed, Captain,' pointing to a massy four-posted hulk, which, owing to the inequality of the floor, that had sunk considerably (the house, though new, having been built by contract), ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... greenish and yellow, and Father Tanager is scarlet and black. The young ones come from the nest looking like their mother, but as they shed their baby clothes and gain new feathers, bits of red and black appear here and there on the little boys, until they look as if they had on a crazy-quilt of red, yellow, green, and black. You need not wonder that little Tommy Tanager does not care to be seen in such patched clothes, but prefers to stay in the deep woods or travel away until his fine red spring jacket is complete. Father Tanager also changes his scarlet coat after ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues |
