"Signboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... along whistling, thinking pleasantly of the discomfiture of the other members of the crew when they should discover his luck. For three miles he kept on sturdily, until a small signboard, projecting from between a couple of tall elms, attracted his attention to a little inn just off the road, at the porch of which a stout landlord sat on a wooden stool waiting ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... promised, to the gate of the English cemetery. There she found Dechartre. He was serious and agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy. He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which she did not know. She read on a signboard: Via Alfieri. After they had taken fifty steps, he stopped ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... everything the ideal village ought to. It nestles, for instance, in the folds of hills; it is very small, and far away from other places; its cottages are old and thatched; its little inn is the inn of a story-book, with a quaint signboard and an apparently genial landlord; its church stands beautifully on rising ground among ancient trees, besides being hoary; its vicarage is so charming that to see it makes you long to marry a vicar; its vicar is venerable, with an eye so mild that ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a little less than three hours to that time when the boys reached the little cluster of six houses which comprised West Hill. The signboard had probably told only half the truth in regard to distance—as country signboards ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... post-towns, but every cross-road for miles around had a fingerboard showing the direction and telling the distance to New Boston. Upon a tall cottonwood-tree on the river-bank, and nearly in front of Wardelow's residence, was an immense signboard bearing the name of "New Boston Landing," and on the other side of the river, at a ferry-staging belonging to a crossing whose other terminus was a mile further down the river, was a sign which informed travelers that persons wishing to go ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... silence, and then they came to a signboard. It told that the main road was closed, and that they must take to a side road—a highway that was fairly good, ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... the wedding had been, the verses became more so. They were copied into the weekly and tri-weekly issues of the "Tribune," and into the evening papers. Stedman, in later years, told of being startled by a huge signboard in front of the then young Brentano's, opposite the New York Hotel, at the corner of Broadway and Waverly Place, reading: "Read Stedman's great poem on the Diamond Wedding in this evening's 'Express'!" The father of the bride, infuriated ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... positions, were very rare articles, and Master Altham had not received a full dozen in all the seven-and-twenty years that he had lived in the Strand and made patties. Next door to him was John Arnold, the bookbinder, who displayed a Saracen's head upon his signboard; then came in regular order Julian Walton, the mercer, with a wheelbarrow; Stephen Fronsard, the girdler, with a cardinal's hat; John Silverton, the pelter or furrier, with a star; Peter Swan, the Court broiderer, with cross-keys; John Morstowe, the luminer, or illuminator of books, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the eager ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... building had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where, behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window and a door that led directly by two steps into the street. A strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard. Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had blown into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He had always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reason would never hear of such a thing as a clearance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... officials might be installed in the castle. Von Hartrott had seen much and his smile seemed to imply that nothing could surprise him, no matter how outrageous it might be. But his relative continued scorning his protection, and laughing bitterly at the impromptu signboard. What more could they carry off? . . . Had they not ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mechanisms, incapable of thought, that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know—and they know we know—that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the signboard of a ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... bridge, and on the farther side of the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was a little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurance company,—so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock in trade,—sole leather, dry goods, etc.,—that spoke for itself. I stepped inside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when at last he looked up there was no speculation in his eyes. Possibly ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... mud broadened out into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... which are veritable palaces, and where the ladies are almost bound to change their dress three times a day, there is a hotel of the second and third class; and there is the old inn; the comfortable, hospitable, patriarchal inn, with its Gothic signboard.... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... there was stuck in the wide gable of a two-storied building a lantern which, flickering, diffused but a dull, anaemic light from its dirty panes, while over the long strip of the broken signboard of the building there could be seen straggling, and executed in large yellow letters, the words, "Tavern and—" No more of the legend than this ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... There are lines in the face chiseled by a sculptor who never makes a wrong stroke. The face is a truthful record of our vices and virtues. It is a map of life that outlines character so clearly that there is no getting away from the story it tells. The face is a signboard showing which way the man or woman is traveling, which of life's crossroads they are on. The face cannot betray the years one has traveled until the mind gives its consent. The mind is the master. If the mind holds youthful, innocent ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... run his end of the work properly and without endangering their security, then he is filling his place. Otherwise he is no more fit for his position than would be an infant. The employer, like everyone else, is to be judged solely by his ability. He may be but a name to the men—a name on a signboard. But there is the business—it is more than a name. It produces the living—and a living is a pretty tangible thing. The business is a reality. It does things. It is a going concern. The evidence of its fitness is that the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... "I am no very perfect craftsman. This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum." I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. "Strange, is it not," I added, "that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... signboard of the White Lamb, and before the front-door, stood a couple of men who chatted as they passed a tankard of beer to each other. Captain Salt could not see their faces owing to the extreme width of their hat-brims. But he turned a shade paler, and drawing back from the window stepped ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her go; only the big, burly eldest son stood at the door and watched her as she went slowly down the little pathway and out through the creaking gate into the snowy road. She only looked back once, and then she saw that a dingy signboard hung in front of the house. The picture of what was meant for a cow, and had once been white, was depicted on it, and the words "A la Vache Blanche" were clumsily painted underneath. So the house was an inn, evidently, and ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... beautiful embankments were still preserved, thanks to the care of the early settlers, who planned a street to pass between them, which was named the Via Sacra. These words still remain on a corner signboard; but alas for sentiment! the banks, so long revered, have ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... on the platform, we saw that the signboard on the station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for shops and homes. The waters of ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... back from the road, in a kind of dusty courtyard masked off on one side by a gigantic elm and on the other by the fringe of an orchard with ruddy apples hanging patiently beneath the foliage. Close by the orchard stood the post bearing the signboard on which the Little Bear, an engaging beast, was pictured, and presiding in a ceremonious way over the horse-trough below. In the shade of the elm stretched a trestle table and two wooden benches. The old inn, gabled, half-timbered, its upper ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... is a noble picture for future ages to look upon. Still it is not all. There is in the dining-room of Memorial Hall at Cambridge another portrait, painted by Savage. It is cold and dry, hard enough to serve for the signboard of an inn, and able, one would think, to withstand all weathers. Yet this picture has something which Stuart left out. There is a rugged strength in the face which gives us pause, there is a massiveness in the jaw, telling of an ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... at Manstone a little before dusk. He remained at the principal inn of the village, called the Austin Arms, in honour of the property in the immediate vicinity; and, having looked at the various quarterings of arms that the signboard contained, without the slightest idea that they appertained to himself, he ordered supper, and looking out of the window of the first floor, discovered, at no great distance down the one street ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... 20th Dovers and Wild made a large signboard, taking it out to a prominent point on the glacier, three and a half miles to the north. It was lashed to a bamboo pole with a flag flying on it. The open water was then ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... of Russell House. It was nothing but sandwiches, but it was the most delicious food they had tasted there. It is a mistake if you are old to go back to the village in which you were born and bred. Ghosts meet you in every lane and look out from the windows. There are new names on the signboard of the inn and over the grocer's shop. A steam-engine has been put in the mill, and the pathway behind to the mill dam and to the river bank has been closed. The people you see think you are a visitor. The church is restored, and there is a brand new Wesleyan chapel. Better stay where you ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... village inn, with its curiously painted signboard, has its own story to tell, of the old coaching days, and of the great people who used to travel along the main roads, and were sometimes snowed up in a drift just below "The Magpie," which had always good accommodation for ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... a big, flat-topped tent was pitched, which bore over the low door a signboard on which was painted, Triage No. 1. Malades et Blesses Assis. This meant that those assis, able to travel in the ambulances as "sitters," were to be deposited here for diagnosis and classification. Over beyond was the Salle d'Attente, the hut for receiving the grands blesses, but a tent ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... a goodly hostelrie, which bore upon its swinging signboard the device of "The Pig ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... southward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of Ua- pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like the pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the open doorway, arms a-kimbo, listening as the foreigner tells of the things that he has seen across the Channel since last he visited this coast. And up the hill there, on the rickety old settle, beneath the creaking signboard of the village inn, is another such group. As I gaze upon these masculine but kindly faces I am half inclined to withdraw my too hasty admission that onions have nothing about them of ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... his own life for suspecting other people. He had always disliked Jim Dyckman because Dyckman had always disliked him, and Jim's transparent face had announced the fact with all the clarity of an illuminated signboard. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... with burning the whole town, the Huns had gone to the trouble of displaying a huge signboard on the side of a building in the square on which were these words: "Don't ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... afterwards, each trade kept by itself to its own street or district. The mercers and haberdashers lived in West Chepe or Cheapside, which Stephen had to go down every day. One morning, at the end of those eight years, he noticed that a shop long empty had been reopened, and over it hung a newly-painted signboard, with a nun's head. As Stephen passed, a woman came to the door to hang up some goods, and they exchanged a good look ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... he also commenced his attack on John Partridge, quack doctor and maker of astrological almanacs. On the appearance of Partridge's "Merlinus Liberatus" for 1708, Swift—borrowing a name from the signboard of a shoemaker—published "Predictions for the year 1708, wherein the month and day of the month are set down, the persons named, and the great actions and events of next year particularly related, as they will come ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... in a state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the 'stump,' we have said all that need be said of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... out from London one bright morning, they rode through Essex and stopped by chance at a little village inn. 'Twas the village of Wickben, and on the signboard which hung swinging on a post before the small thatched house of entertainment was ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wash your hands or your feet here." A little further on is a stall, at which a poor old man earns a pittance by selling books, pictures, and medals, commemorating the loyalty of the Forty-seven; and higher up yet, shaded by a grove of stately trees, is a neat inclosure, kept up, as a signboard announces, by voluntary contributions, round which are ranged forty-eight little tombstones, each decked with evergreens, each with its tribute of water and incense for the comfort of the departed spirit. There were forty-seven Ronins; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... again, never wearying, but constantly retouching the sketch, and adding innumerable little characteristic details which his painter's eye had noticed; here the red signboard of a distant shop vibrated in the light; closer by was a greenish bit of the Seine, on whose surface large patches of oil seemed to be floating; and then there was the delicate tone of a tree, the gamut of greys supplied by the house frontages, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... love and worship of her name that he carried everywhere with him a volume of Lessing, because the name of Minna occurred in it, and every day when he left the theater he went a long distance out of his way so as to pass a mercery shop, on whose signboard the five adored ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a sea-legged sailor, Come to this tottering Inn, Just when the bronze on its signboard is fading, And the black shades of ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... each of the top corners of the shield, and the tail coming down into the bottom. You might see that cognizance carved on the manor, and on the stonework and woodwork of the church, and on a score of houses in the village, and it hung on the signboard over the door of the inn. Everyone knew the Mohune 'Y' for miles around, and a former landlord having called the inn the Why Not? in jest, the name had ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Island and across New Jersey to Princeton "after dark," the destination being a particularly attractive feature of this walk. But I enjoy also the journeys that are made in strange places where one knows neither the way nor the destination, except from a map or the advice of signboard or kilometer posts (which one reads by the flame of a match, or, where that is wanting, sometimes by following the letters and figures on a post with one's fingers), or the information, usually inaccurate, of some other wayfarer. Most of these journeys ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... never sent to the public schools, but had a governess, yet Mortimer Conklin, who was always alert for the call, could not understand why the people never summoned him to any office of honour or trust. He kept his brass signboard polished, went to his office punctually every morning at ten o'clock, and returned home to dinner at five, and made clients wait ten minutes in the outer office before they could see him—at least so both of them say, and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... stand up before me as large as a Malted Milk signboard. With a shuddering apprehension I read the details. Apparently the express that left Providence at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon had crashed into an open siding near Willdon about six o'clock, and ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... his vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on what it had ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... by a photographer, the fourth by a dealer in picture frames, the third and the second are let out for offices. Over the first hangs the gilded symbol of the three balls and the further information, lettered on a signboard, "Isaac Buxbaum, Money to Loan." The basement is given over to a restaurant-keeper whose identity is fixed by the testimony of another signboard, bearing the two words, "Butter-cake Bob's." Mr. Ricketty's little black eyes wander for an instant up and ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... smashed by shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only shattered walls and heaps of bricks. Over all hangs that curious odour one gets at the Front—a sort of combined smell of burning and decay. A grotesque effect is produced by a signboard hanging outside a ruined tenement and bearing the words: "Delattre, Debitant," or, in other words, "Delattre's Inn." On the right a gunner is standing on what was once a house roof, hacking away at ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... got a good one for you. This is a brand-new one." They walked down the boardwalk to the place where most of the offices were and there read on a newly placed signboard ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the road we passed a signboard on the edge of a cratered field. New words had been painted on it in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... acquaintances in town made the fall before while coming down the Yukon River with my brother. To one family of these I made my way. They were in the grocery and bakery business on a prominent corner on First street and their signboard caught my eye. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... weather-beaten a little and its nickel work dull, but seemingly all right. In the middle of the road stood a chauffeur, his cap pushed back and a hand to his head. As we approached, he looked away from the little writing-block and stared up at the signboard of the inn. When he heard the car approaching, he made for the pavement, turning a puzzled face in our direction. At that moment I heard ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street looking up at the name "Rooney's," picked out by incandescent lights against a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a tough "hang-out"; with its frequenters and its locality he was unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... missionary, or scholar a less sympathetic mate, due largely to that latent mental disease which in India carried her off; but for more than twenty years the husband showed her loving reverence. As we stand in the Hackleton shed, over which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, "Second Hand Shoes Bought and—,"[2] we can realise the low estate to which Carey fell, even below his father's loom and schoolhouse, and from which he was ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... girls went in Elsmere stood looking a moment at the inn, the bridge, and the village. It was a characteristic Westmoreland scene. The low whitewashed inn, with its newly painted signboard, was to his right, the pony at the door lazily flicking off the flies and dropping its greedy nose in search of the grains of corn among the cobbles; to his left a gray stone bridge over a broad light-filled river; beyond, a little huddled village ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... painful intensity the white winding road from Cambridge to Royston which I have bicycled hundreds of tunes. One sees the little inns along the way—the Waggon and Horses, the Plough, the King's Arms—and the recurring blue signboard Fine Royston Ales (the Royston brewery being famous in those parts). Behind the fun there shines Brooke's passionate devotion to the soil and soul of England which was to reach its final expression so tragically soon. And ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... waiting at the station when the down train arrived, on the Tuesday—or Wednesday—of the selectmen's meeting. The train was due, according to the time-table, at eleven forty-five. This time-table, and the signboard of the "Bayport Hotel" are the only bits of humorous literature peculiar to our village, unless we add the political editorials of the ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a moment, frowning at this signboard as though it were something surprising and distasteful which she had never seen before. Yet it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she almost always passed it when she came down-town, and never without noticing it. Nor was this the first time she had paused to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... something wrong. Something mighty bad—or it may be merely inevitable—has happened to me. I went through the War all right, on a pretty even keel, because I thought I saw a bright light at the end. I thought we all saw the light. And the light wasn't any electric signboard out to say there never would be any more wars, but it was a light you could see to read by. You could see the stars and see them differently from the old way we'd been seeing them. We could see the moon and the Milky Way—but I suppose that comes under stars—and the upshot of it ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... friend, he is jealous of me as a rival in that capacity; and he has never forgiven the slight put on his establishment in connection with the girls' proposed visit. I partly appeased him by suggesting that he supply the shanty with a new signboard labeled 'Palace Hotel.' Fortunately I don't have to put up ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... what signboard did you rob? Shreve is a good name, too good for a foc'sle rat. Did you come by it honestly? Did you have a father by that name? I dare say not. A gutter product would not know his ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... tew-morrer on his way tew Boston, an' I want tew git that ere name painted out and his'n put in its place. Are yer up tew it, and what 'ud the job tax me?" As the publican spoke he pointed at the lettering below the weather-beaten portrait of George the Third, which served as the signboard of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... valley, though I don't know just where. King Fisher reigned nearly twenty years ago. He lived in the building the folks in Rocky Springs use as a Meeting House. He was pretty tough. One of the worst badmen ever hit this part. Had a signboard set up on the trail down from the prairie. He wrote it. 'This is King Fisher's trail, take any other old trail.' I believe most folks used to take 'any other old trail.' There was one feller didn't though. And that was the end of King Fisher's ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.' I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. 'Strange, is it not,' I added, 'that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a sad heart produce ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hurried. Its great name roused no thrill in my bosom. On the morrow, I said, I would seek a lodging, and perhaps write to Ethel Ryley. Meanwhile I strolled up into Trafalgar Square, and so into Charing Cross Road. And in Charing Cross Road—it was the curst accident of fate—I saw the signboard of the celebrated old firm of publishers, Oakley and Dalbiac. It is my intention to speak of my books as little as possible in this history. I must, however, explain that six months before my aunt's death I had already written my first novel, The Jest, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... that has a charm of its own, when, but for a postman or a milkman, one has the pavement to oneself, and even the most common thing takes an ever-recurring freshness, as though causeway, and lamp, and signboard had all wakened to the new day. Then even an inland city may seem beautiful, and bear virtue in its ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... conspicuous signboard, at least four feet long, with large black letters on a white ground: "Boys not allowed." I looked at it for some moments in a sort of bewildered surprise: I did not quite comprehend the meaning of the words. At last I understood it. I was waiting in a large ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... for a short distance beyond the Hotel Richelieu (which hotel, from all we have heard, though large, is not too moderate nor owned by too polite a proprietor), and then we took the turning to the left, which (as the signboard tells) leads to St. Mamet. Without waiting to enter the old church to see its frescoes, we pursued the road branching off to the right, which presently left the Orphanage behind in the same direction. A few minutes later we had passed the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... squeaking one against another, and in the midst of the din a dog begins to bark. At the farther corner, where the hedge retreats from its encroachments on the meadow, a grey house comes into view, with a signboard across its upper part announcing that here the tired traveller may get dinner ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... seemed to be peopled chiefly by French residents it would have been natural to conclude that the hotel also would be French. This, however, was not the case, for the Lion Inn (there was a swinging signboard adorned by the figure of a lion, the work of a fourth-rate sign painter) was kept by a short, stout, red-faced Englishman, who stood in the doorway as Fred came ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... a part of Guildford's life had clothmaking become under Elizabeth that the Corporation required special acknowledgment of the fact from the innkeepers, doubtless because prosperity in the town meant full tankards emptied at the inns. Every alehouse keeper had to have a signboard hung above his door with a woolsack painted on it, under a fine of six-and-eightpence; he had to buy the sign from the hall warden at the Town Hall, and pay two shillings for it. Woolsacks were added to the borough arms. Yet the prosperity of the trade was short-lived, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... was to get it into the van. Messrs. Blake, Johnson and Jones tried alone and failed. For ten minutes they tried alone and failed. Between each attempt they paused to mop their brows and throw longing glances towards the Blue Cow, whose signboard ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... The most loyal and friendly of Australians resent this importation. The uninstructed and untravelled native accepts him as a pattern Englishman, and the satirical prints help out that conclusion in his mind. There is no signboard on the Australian continent that rubbish of this sort may be shot there, and the English tendency to throw its waste in that direction has never been regarded in a friendly spirit. We gave them our ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... of what might be found in all the other apartments. The tavern itself, in reference to the obvious pursuit of many of those who made it their home, was entitled "The Golden Egg"—a title made sufficiently notorious to the spectator, from a huge signboard, elevated some eight or ten feet above the building itself, bearing upon a light-blue ground a monstrous egg of the deepest yellow, the effect of which was duly heightened by a strong and thick shading of sable all round it—the artist, in this ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... excitement of the scene. Men, rushing hither and thither in search of friends, traps, and luggage, were goaded to fury by the calmness of the officials and their determination not to be hurried. Hearing there was no chance of having tea on board that night, and discovering near the wharf a signboard announcing that meals could be obtained at all hours (except, as we were told, that particular one), we with difficulty persuaded the proprietress to let us have something to eat. Amidst muttered grumblings that she was "slaved ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... right!" Ignat approved. "That's to show what stuff we are made of. That's clear enough—for the father's honour—for the honour of the firm. And there is no loss either, because that gives a good reputation. And that, my dear, is the very best signboard for a business. Well, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... field that sloped gently upward—a field studded with huge black redwood stumps showing dismally through coronets of young redwoods that grew riotously around the base of the departed parent trees. From the fringe of the thicket thus formed, the terminus of an old skid-road showed and a signboard, freshly painted, pointed the way to the Valley ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... of the White Horse; for, to tell the truth, I have somewhat of a superstitious belief in the luck that this emblem brings to the traveller. I place it immediately after the Golden Lion, my favourite beast on a signboard, although it deceived me once. The deception, however, befell in the Bordelais, where the inhabitants are far from being the most pleasant to be found in France; therefore I judged this Lion d'Or charitably, and took account of all that might have ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... The signboard had said "1 MILE." One hundred miles, one thousand miles; that was what it should have said to be truthful. Galusha plodded on and on, stopping to put down the suitcase, then lifting it and pounding ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... shelter at the end made the walk agreeable to me. We stumbled along in silence, and by and by heard the barking of dogs that always heralds a night approach to a village. The first house that greeted my eyes had the welcome signboard swinging before it, and above its lintel a bush. It was a tiny place, but it was a refuge, and I felt quite cheerful as I requested the old tar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... unsuspected results I beheld on my first visit of patronage to Barbran's cellar, the occasion being the formal opening. A large and curious crowd of five persons, including myself and Phil Stacey, were there. Outside, an old English design of a signboard with a wheel on it creaked despairingly in the wind. Below was a legend: "At the Sign of the Wheel—The Wrightery." The interior of the cellar was decorated with scenes from the novels of Harvey Wheelwright, triumphant virtue, discomfited ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 18 Rue Boileau, Auteuil. On the iron gate was a long, dark signboard, with gold letters. I looked up at it, and mamma said, "You will be able to read that soon, I hope." My aunt whispered to me, "Boarding School, Madame Fressard," and very promptly I said to mamma, "It says 'Boarding School, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... patented a process for preserving wood by simply washing out the sap from its cells. Having ascertained that borax is a solvent for sap, he prepared a number of specimens by boiling them in a solution of borax. For small specimens, this answered well, and a signboard treated in that way (experiment No. 13) was preserved a long time; but when applied to large timber, the process was found very tedious and slow, and no headway has been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... of this mile, below Horton's Ferry, the road forks, and there stands a white signboard with its arms crossed, proclaiming the ways to the travelling stranger. The cattle Ward had bought were in two droves. Four hundred were on the lands of Nicholas Marsh, perhaps three miles farther down the Valley River, and the remaining ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... street, behind a doorway, whilst Chauvelin did the same at the other. Rateau, standing in the gutter, appeared once more in a state of hesitation. Immediately in front of him the door of a small cabaret stood invitingly open; its signboard, "Le Bon Copain," promised rest and refreshment. He peered up and down the road, satisfied himself presumably that, for the moment, his pursuers were out of sight, hugged his parcel to his chest, and then suddenly made ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... this year's beginning of his connection with Froben, he was as yet very thankful to accept any commission, however humble. And as a human document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about the Schoolmaster's Signboard preserved by Bonifacius Amerbach, and now with his collection in the Basel Museum (Plate 3). It is a simple thing, with no pretension to a place among "works of art"—this bit of flotsam from 1516, when it was painted. Originally the two views, the Infant Class and ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... ventriloquists and charlatans of every sort, and sights of every description, from the kind where there is nothing to see to panoramas of the globe. One man who has since made seven or eight hundred thousand francs by traveling from fair to fair began here by hanging out a signboard, a revolving sun in a blackboard, and the inscription in red letters: "Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance, two sous." The showman at the door never admitted one person alone, nor more than two at a time. Once inside, you confronted ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... are alike to thirsty men," answered Rob. "Lead us where thou wilt; we'll speak our thanks under one signboard as ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... he came opposite a neat, three-story brick building, across the width of which was a black and gold signboard, lettered THE GAZETTE. Below it was the large plate-glass window of a counting-room, now dark. On the left was a lighted ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... first long ago set off to run. With some such sorrowful blind looking, she opened to her chapter of Matthew again, and carelessly and sadly turned over a leaf or two; till she saw a word which though printed in the ordinary type of the rest, stood out to her eyes like the lettering on a signboard. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... he turned into a side street. Over a high wooden paling could be seen mountains of old rusty iron: springs and empty tins, bent iron beds, dented coal-boxes red with rust, and pails. This must be the place. On the signboard stood: ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the Royal Sovereign, whereof the reigning monarch, in blue uniform on the signboard, curtseyed to his equally windy subjects; and a small congregation of the aged, and some cripples and infants, greeted the patron of Old England's manfullest display, cheering at news of the fight, brought them ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shadow of the abbey tower. It is the original of Phineas Fletcher's house in the novel John Halifax, Gentleman. The "Bear and the Ragged Staff" is another half-timbered house with a straggling array of buildings and curious swinging signboard, the favourite haunt of the disciples of Izaak Walton, under the overhanging eaves of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... continual auction of Kristo Dass and Friend, dealers in the second-hand. In its vivid familiarity it seemed to make straight for the two Englishmen, to surround and take possession of them, and they paused. The source of it was plain—an open door under a vast white signboard dingily lettered "The Salvation Army." It loomed through the smoke and the streetlights ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Brandeis was strenuous to make it good. The whole peninsula was surrounded with a breastwork; across the isthmus it was six feet high and strengthened with a ditch; and the beach was staked against landing. Weber's land claim—the same that now broods over the village in the form of a signboard—then appeared in a more military guise; the German flag was hoisted, and German sailors manned the breastwork at the isthmus—"to protect German property" and its trifling parenthesis, the king of Samoa. Much vigilance reigned and, in the island ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... CANDLE!" he shouted, and tried to run. But the dark and rugged way soon stopped that. The light was more distant than he had thought. But at last, in the very heart of the forest, he found a house, with lighted candles and loud voices inside it. He looked up to see if there was a signboard. There was none. "Not an inn after all!" said he sadly. "No matter; what Christian would turn a dog out into this wood to-night?" and with this he made for the door that led to the voices. He opened it slowly, and put his head in timidly. He drew it out abruptly, as if slapped ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... underwear did he buy? Did he know that Hot-door's shaving-soap was used by 76 per cent. of the entire manhood of America? There was only one place humanly conceivable where lingerie could be purchased; to prove it, the illuminated signboard promptly showed a lady in a costume usually confined to boudoirs. To equalise the immodesty of the sexes, a near male neighbour, at a height of two hundred odd feet, did an electrified turn by putting on and taking off ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... big house of three storeys, adorned with a blue signboard with the word "Restaurant" on it. My head was drooping feebly backwards and on one side, and I could not help looking upwards at the lighted windows of the restaurant. Human figures were flitting about at the windows. I could see the right ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... excursions to Richmond Park, Hampden Court Parks, and the great parks at Windsor Castle. The magnitude of all these parks was something I was entirely unprepared for, and their freedom also; one could roam where he pleased. Not once did I see a signboard, "Keep off the grass," or go here or go there. There was grass enough, and one could launch out in every direction without fear of trespassing on forbidden ground. One gets used, at least I do, to such petty ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... out to Pierre. The half-breed had not much excitableness in his nature, but when he saw this beautiful woman with a touch of the Indian in her contour, his pale face flushed, and he showed his set teeth under his slight moustache. He watched her until she entered a shop, on the signboard of which was written—written since he had left a few months ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it! That no good for Sol Hanson. I know all about him. Somebody tell me. By yiminy! you make damn good blacksmith. Some day we put up signboard, 'Hanson and Ralston, General Blacksmiths.' We get all the trade in this ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... teeth, like a saw. The carvings were strangely grotesque, interwoven and ornamenting the cornices and surrounding the windows; but the most remarkable fact was that the house opposite reproduced exactly the same sculptures, the same ornaments; even the signboard, with its post and spiral of iron, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... pointer, vane, cock, weathercock; guidepost, handpost^, fingerpost^, directing post, signpost; pillars of Hercules, pharos; bale-fire, beacon-fire; l'etoile du Nord [Fr.]; landmark, seamark; lighthouse, balize^; polestar, loadstar^, lodestar; cynosure, guide; address, direction, name; sign, signboard. [Of the future] warning &c 668; omen &c 512; prefigurement &c 511. [Of the past] trace, record &c, 551. [Of danger] warning &c 668, alarm &c 669. [of authority]. scepter &c 747. [of triumph]. trophy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sculptor, Hegion a bronze-founder; AEschine a fuller, and Cydias a wit—that is his profession. He has a signboard, a workshop, finished articles for sale, mechanics who work under him. He cannot deliver for more than a month the stanzas which he has promised you, unless he breaks his word to Dosithee, who ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... less concerned perhaps at staring the word in the face, are not altogether unfortunate in their self-revelation; but consider the portrait of Lord Leighton by himself,—it must have been painted originally as a signboard for Burlington House, for the summer exhibition of the Academy there, as who should say to a discerning public: Here you may have your fill of the impudent and blatant commonplace you love so much. And if such a thing is really without its fellow in these embarrassing ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... with many of the peculiarities of English ones. Here is the well-known countenance of the northern parts of France. Carts such as might have been seen, no doubt, hundreds of years ago in France. The Norman breed of horses: small, round, strong, and enduring. Every other signboard presents a French name; the blacksmith styling himself 'forgeron;' the baker, 'boulanger;' the ladies' attendant, 'sage- femme;'—and so on. The professional man generally has two plates upon his door:—one telling ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... August, and a week or two before Mr. Trapp changed his signboard and resumed his proper business, I was idling by the edge of the Barbican one evening when a boy, whose eye I had blacked recently, charged up behind me and pushed me over. I pretended to be drowning, and sank theatrically as he and half a dozen others, conveniently naked, plunged to the rescue. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was not an ordinary public house, and beyond the signboard announcement that "Spiritis and aile is retailed here" there was little to indicate its commercial character. The parlour was a large room with a window at each end—one facing the street, the other being so situated that the seamen sitting at the large ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... turn is a good turn," Westy said. "Maybe everything has changed, but good turns haven't changed. Their own tent is gone, their canoe is smashed—you said so yourself—and they're on the opposite side from Temple Camp. You know our signboard over there, 'Welcome to friend ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... himself with an awkward air. His tall and badly jointed body swings like a hanging signboard. He is an original and sentimental soul, but no one has ever troubled to find out what he is. He begins, "My young friend—hum, hum—" (he repeats this formless sound every two or three words, like a sort of clock with a sonorous tick)—"One may be wanting money, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple country-girl's face as if it were a signboard. Alminy was a good soul, with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it was out of the question for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a fine lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than their wont, as she said, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... the loom of trees I espied a twinkling light that upon our nearer approach I saw proceeded from a wayside inn with a great trough of water before it and a signboard whereon, though evening was falling apace, I could make ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... mounted this horse and rode away from the plowed field wherein nothing grew as yet. As they left the furrows they came to a signboard with writing on it, in a peculiar ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... right, and Woodisun Bank creeping inconspicuously down to its left, stood a three-storey building consisting of house and shop, the frontage being in Wedgwood Street. Over the double-windowed shop was a discreet signboard in gilt letters, "D. Clayhanger, Printer and Stationer," but above the first floor was a later and much larger sign, with the single word, "Steam-printing." All the brickwork of the facade was painted yellow, and had obviously been painted yellow many times; ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... hours of darkness, save for light of moon and star, Hide the picture on the signboard over Doughty's Horse Bazaar; When the last rose-tint is fading on the distant mulga scrub, Then the Army prays for Watty at the entrance ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... they found themselves on a good stone road and reached a signboard put up by the automobile association, telling the exact distance to Philadelphia. This set them at ease mentally, and they started off at a speed of twenty miles an hour. Tom wanted to "let her out," as he put it, but Nellie demurred and so he kept ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... particularly quick-witted race, tinged with the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in their reputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity the figure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does not resemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that they are dying of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... I made my headquarters at Ed Bennett's woodland hostelry, "Under the Hemlocks." As the hotel was filled with men, women and crying children, bitten to agony by punkies and mosquitoes, I chose to spread my blanket in a well-made bark shanty, which a signboard in black and white said ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance, with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... how three of the arrows were removed each to a neighbouring square on the signboard of the "Chequers" Inn, so that still no arrow was in line with another. The black dots indicate the squares on which the three arrows ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... to Simon, never very hot, had dried up. He had wounded her to the quick in unpardonable fashion in driving her only child out of the house, and all for the sake of a two-penny-ha'penny signboard. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... that I would fix it up; and when I was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it. There was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the Avenue, and I saw right off that it was just a natural signboard. So I called over the boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice little ad that ran something ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... tree-clump could be seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, the party was ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... to strangers. The host being a fellow-countryman who had had the good fortune to marry a Dutch lady of most distinguished family. Almost at the summit of the hill, about eight miles from the station, stood a little halting house bearing the English-looking signboard with the legend of the "Pig and Whistle." Here refreshments awaited the travellers, and then the journey was continued along a jungle path which shortly emerged on to the cultivated slopes of the estate. These slopes were covered ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... it on her lips; anybody who could read print on a signboard could have told what they were shaped to say. She held them there in their preliminary position of enunciation, pursed and wrinkled, like the tied end ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Somme area, through which we were passing, was nothing but an immense wilderness—every village practically in ruins, and hardly sufficient remains in many cases to identify their position. In one case a signboard had been put up to mark the site of the village, and on maps they were usually described as "—— ruins of." Old trenches and barbed wire entanglements existed at various points. Not a scrap of ground was cultivated—all ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... night of Epiphany and the nineteenth anniversary of my birth, the sky poured down with the melting snow a cold ill- humour, penetrating to the bone, while an icy wind made the signboard of the Queen Pedauque grate, a clear fire, perfumed by goose grease, sparkled in the shop and the soup steamed in the tureen on the table; round which M. Jerome Coignard, my father and myself were seated. My mother, as was her habit, stood behind her husband's ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... narrow front to the court, the great walls on either side appeared to have squeezed it. The two little windows above, the signboard flat against the wall, and the single door rather suggested a face; and the door, out of the perpendicular, looked strangely like a mouth awry uttering a cry of pain. The building was deep, however, and there was a long, narrow, low-pitched room at the rear, of which ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... southward and wound, a white and spindling thread, across what men then called "The Great American Desert." Two days' journey from Independence this road branched from the Santa Fe Trail and bent northward across the prairie. A signboard on a stake pointed the way and bore the legend, "Road to Oregon." It was the starting point of one of the historic highways of the world. The Indians called it "The Great Medicine Way of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner |
