"Wainscot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... further back! disregard me! Look! that last arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently I did not ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... item is one of the most interesting. It ought to be read in conjunction with an earlier item in the same will, in which special directions are left to the executors not to pull down or to deface any manner of wainscot or glass in or about the house of Slyfield. For the end of the Slyfield family as a power in Surrey came with bitter suddenness. Henry, the Sheriff's eldest son, succeeded his father in 1590, and died in 1598. He was succeeded by his son Edmond, who had ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... she could only just reach the high knocker, she was not likely to alarm anybody with the noise she made. After a great many little faint raps, which, if anybody heard them, might easily have been mistaken for the attacks of some rat's teeth upon the wainscot, Ellen grew weary of her fruitless toil, and of standing on tiptoe, and resolved, though doubtfully, to go round the house and see if there was any other way of getting in. Turning the far corner, she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... pictures were paneled in the oaken wainscot; and here and there the horns of the mighty stag adorned the walls, and united with the cheeriness of comfort associations of that of enterprise. The good old board was crowded with the luxuries meet for a country Squire. The speckled trout, fresh from the stream, and the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to start for Gravesend. Since he had wakened out of that wonderful dream on purpose to go to Gravesend, he might as well start at once. But his jump ended in a sickening sideways fall, and his head knocked against the wainscot. ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... talkin' to Mrs. Wyvern, and I, beginnin' to feel more comfortable and at home like, was walkin' about the room lookin' at this thing and at that. There was pretty old china things on the cupboard, and pictures again the wall; and there was a door open in the wainscot, and I sees a queer old leathern jacket, wi' straps and buckles to it, and sleeves as long as the bed-post hangin' ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Sir John Pope Hennessy imagines that the preliminary investigations may be traced much farther back. Ralegh quotes in his book Peter Comestor's Scholastica Historia, an abstract of Scripture history, which has been found, with other remnants of an old monastic library, in a recess behind the wainscot of Ralegh's bedroom, next to his study in the house at Youghal. Mr. Samuel Hayman, the historiographer of Youghal, writing in 1852, states that the discovery was made a few years before, and that the books had probably been 'hidden at the period of the Reformation.' Sir John ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Glory, and of infirmities. A message went to his grand house in Pall Mall, and he presently waited on my Grandmother. He was closeted with her for an hour, when the tap of my Grandmother's cane against the wainscot summoned Mistress Talmash, and she, doing her errand, brought ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... detained their prisoner in a sort of steward's room, Mr. Glossin was ushered into what was called the great oak-parlour, a long room, panelled with well-varnished wainscot, and adorned with the grim portraits of Sir Robert Hazlewood's ancestry. The visitor, who had no internal consciousness of worth to balance that of meanness of birth, felt his inferiority, and by the depth ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... now only used with reference to the top of a room—the ceiling. It is an old English word, and means overlaid or lined with wood, wainscot, or plank, either ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... taught us in the almshouses; for though there were now no bedesmen, and the houses themselves were fallen to decay, yet the little hall in which the inmates had once dined was still maintained, and served for our schoolroom. It was a long and lofty room, with a high wainscot all round it, a carved oak screen at one end, and a broad window at the other. A very heavy table, polished by use, and sadly besmirched with ink, ran down the middle of the hall with benches on either side of it for us to use; and a high desk for Mr. Glennie stood under the window at the end ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... ushered Nance into a room cased with yellow wainscot and lighted by tall candles, where two gentlemen sat at a table finishing a bowl of punch. One of these was stout, elderly, and irascible, with a face like a full moon, well dyed with liquor, thick tremulous lips, a short, purple hand, in which he brandished a long pipe, and an abrupt ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old, old house, full of cupboards and passages. Some of the walls were four feet thick, and there used to be queer noises inside them, as if there might be a little secret staircase. Certainly there were odd little jagged doorways in the wainscot, and things disappeared at night— ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves seemed to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of the rat are less highly developed. His visible visits to the mess are rarer, but we overhear his conversation in his tunnels that open on our shelves, the patter of his pink feet across the canvas overhead, and the muscular squirming of his body in some tight place about the sandbag wainscot. Like a friendly dog he trots about your dug-out by night, bumping with trustful carelessness against the fragile legs of your rustic bed. You hear him crooning to himself or a pal, in his content—a placid, complacent little sound very different from the grating squeak ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... in the castle itself, where the Earl had been giving a banquet to his guests, of the best that his estates could afford. Nevertheless, it was yet long before midnight when the cheep of the mouse in the wainscot, the restless stir or muffled snore of a crowded sleeper in the guardroom, was the only sound to be heard from dungeon to ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... chancel is apsidal, externally, as well as the nave, covered with modern house tiles. Internally the nave has a flat ceiling of deal boards. The pulpit and seats are painted wainscot; there is a small modern oak reading desk, and a lectern to match it. The chancel arch is a plain semicircle, but on its eastern side has a pointed Early English arch. The chancel rails are of modern oak, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... in the Upper Gallery"—a certain person so called, who had been observed to frequent, during some years, that portion of the theatre, and to express his approval of the transactions of the stage by loud knocks upon the benches or the wainscot, audible over the whole house. It was doubtful how he came to be called the Trunkmaker; whether from his blows, resembling those often given with a hammer in the shops of such artisans, or from a belief that he was a genuine trunkmaker, who, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... this confusion in his personal pronouns, Capua mounted nimbly on pieces of furniture, thrust his pocket-knife through a crack of the wainscot, opened the door of a small unseen closet, and, after groping about and inserting his head as Van Amburgh did in the lion's mouth, scrambled down again with his hand full of charred and blackened papers, talking glibly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... rough-grain'd body of a stubbed oak, is the fittest timber for the case of a cyder-mill, and such like engines, as best enduring the unquietness of a ponderous rolling-stone. For shingles, pales, lathes, coopers ware, clap-board for wainscot, (the ancient{54:1} intestina opera and works within doors) and some pannells are curiously vein'd, of much esteem in former times, till the finer grain'd Spanish and Norway timber came amongst us, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... sharpers and noble cullies." The rake has lost all his recently acquired wealth, pulls off his wig and flings himself upon the floor in a paroxysm of fury and execration. In allusion to the burning of White's in 1733, flames are seen bursting from the wainscot, but the pre-occupied gamblers take no heed, even of the watchman crying "Fire!" To the left is seated a highwayman, with horse pistol and black mask in a skirt pocket of his coat. He is so engrossed in his thoughts that he does not notice ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... side, running up to the end, and making a seat for one, or by sitting close, for two, at the table and a good stout wooden chair afforded a seat to another boy, so that three could sit and work together. The walls were wainscoted half-way up, the wainscot being covered with green baize, the remainder with a bright-patterned paper, on which hung three or four prints of dogs' heads; Grimaldi winning the Aylesbury steeple-chase; Amy Robsart, the reigning Waverley beauty of the day; and Tom Crib, in a posture of defence, which did no credit to ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... appears to possess a great deal of taste and feeling for Gothic architecture. The old apartments, splendid enough in extent and proportion, are paltry in finishing. Instead of being lined with heart of oak, the palace of the British King is hung with paper, painted wainscot colour. There are some fine paintings and some droll ones; among the last are those of divers princes of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of which Queen Charlotte was descended. They are ill-coloured, orang-outang-looking figures, with black eyes ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... lay mute awhile, then feebly raising himself, in a voice for the moment made strong by the sarcasm, said, "A hundred dollars? rather high price to put upon confidence. But don't you see I am a poor, old rat here, dying in the wainscot? You have served me; but, wretch that I am, I can but cough you my thanks,—ugh, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... house, The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, Or from the crevice peer'd about. Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices call'd her from without. She only said, 'My life is dreary, He cometh not,' she ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Vicar of Leeds, writing to Ralph Thoresby in 1723, tells him that a pleasing surprise awaits his return, 'Our altar-piece is further adorned, since you went, with three flower-pots upon three pedestals upon the wainscot, gilt, and a hovering dove upon the middle one; three cherubs over the middle panel, the middle one gilt, a piece of open carved work beneath, going down towards the middle of the velvet.' If, however, the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... an immense number of closets, and closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries of "Rinaldo Rinaldini." Beside which there are immensely curious bits of old furniture—so black and heavy, and with such curious carving!—and you think of the old wainscot in the "Children of the Abbey". You think you will never tire of rambling about in its odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have to tell of it when you go back to Nelly ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... doorway one enters a hall of baronial character, thirty-three feet long, eighteen feet wide, and twenty-one feet high, finished in oak with open beam ceiling and above the high wainscot a rough wall ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... the Memoires under the oak in my garden, where they are to be found a thousand years hence, and taken perhaps for a Runic history in rhyme. I have part of another valuable MS. to dispose of, which I shall beg leave to commit to your care, and desire it may be concealed behind the wainscot in Mr. Bentley's Gothic house, whenever you build it. As the great person is living to whom it belonged, it would be highly dangerous to make it public; as soon as she is in disgrace, I don't know whether it Will ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the wainscot that's not feeling quite well this morning," suggested Honor, though it would have needed an absolute giant of a mouse to give vent to the unearthly yowl in which Pete had indulged. She said it, however, rather ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... nor woman, elderly nor young: the little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... maddening as the noise of a mouse in a wainscot. Jovannic wanted not so much to think as to dwell in the presence of his ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and felt it again; when, reader, judge of my astonishment—this ghostly spectre proved to be nothing more than a large new flannel dressing-gown which had been sent home to me in the course of the day, and which had been hung on some pegs against the wainscot at the foot of my bed. One arm accidentally crossed two or three of the adjoining pegs, and the other was nearly parallel by coming in contact with some article of furniture which stood near. Now the mystery ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... Cats, and poisoned the Rats. The latter have revenged 'emselves by dying behind the Wainscot, which makes the lower Part of the House soe unbearable, 'speciallie to Father, that we are impatient to be off. Mother, intending to turn Chalfont into a besieged Garrison, is laying in Stock of Sope, Candles, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... person of immense importance, it having leaked out that I was tolerably well versed in the history of supernaturalism, and had once written a story the foundation of which was a ghost. If a table or a wainscot panel happened to warp when we were assembled in the large drawing-room, there was an instant silence, and everyone was prepared for an immediate clanking of chains and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... out a great gilt rosette. The mighty pilasters, whose gilded capitals supported the vaulting, were of many-veined dark yellow marble, polished and gleaming like the slabs of pale yellow marble which panelled the interspaces. The high-moulded wainscot was of red and green porphyry, somberly smooth and shining. Against it, below the wall-panels, were set great chests of carved and gilded wood, while about the bases of the pilasters were placed groups of settees and armchairs, similarly ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... end of that time he returned once more, horribly dishevelled, dirty and extended. He looked to be just out and about again after a ruinous debauch. He talked in hollow whispers, he trembled in the limbs, he started and turned pale at a shadow, or the sound of a mouse in the wainscot. He said he had been to Ancona, Gubbio, Rimini, Ravenna, Chioggia, Venice, Udine, Trieste. He demanded money—fifty guineas; but this time I gave him nothing. I was preparing to go to Florence, and had other agents than him in view. I dismissed him from my service, and told him to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... "of a plank of stone of about six inches in thickness, and in its other dimensions equalling the size of an ordinary door, or somewhat less. It was carved in such a manner as to resemble a piece of wainscot: the stone of which it was made was visibly of the same kind with the whole rock; and it turned upon two hinges in the nature of axles. These hinges were of the same entire piece of stone with the door, and were ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... pile. The purity of the marble columns had been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the foliated capitals of the columns supporting the "Round" bore traces of gilding. These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy pews of Charles II.'s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of the columns; the organ (built by the famous Father Smith in the reign of Charles II.) was removed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of the corn-husks in the mattress underneath Was to me a ghostly whisper muttered through a phantom's teeth, And the mice behind the wainscot, as they scampered round about, Filled my soul with speechless horror when I'd put the candle out. So I'm deeply sympathetic when some story I have read Of a victim buried living by his friends who thought him dead; And I think I know his feelings in the cold and silent ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... present quarters, and piteously implored Marie not to suffer him to come. Marie soothed her, and hoped that Jean's compassion might be as strong as her own. Had she not been taken up with Perine, she would have more quickly caught the impatient scratching like a mouse in the wainscot, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... I carried up the pail, slopping the water on the stairs at every step, with a scrubbing-brush in the other hand, and then I set to work. When once I had begun, I cannot pretend that I found the actual washing of the wainscot particularly distasteful, although it seemed rather hard, after I had done my best, that Mrs. Turton should upbraid me for soiling ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... last being hither committed[1], and I usually having my servants here allowed me, to read nightly an hour to me after supper, it fortuned that Fulcis, my then servant, reading in the Christian Resolution, in the treatise of Proof that there is a God, &c., there was upon a wainscot table at that instant three loud knocks {513} (as if it had been with an iron hammer) given; to the great amazing of me and my two servants, Fulcis ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... particularly their window-heads, are ornamented with the tracery peculiar to Kent. The great hall, the earliest of these buildings, has a characteristic open-timber roof, while its minstrel-gallery, fronted by a wainscot screen, is ornamented with the badge of the Dudleys, the "bear and ragged staff." Within these halls are the family portraits of a noble lineage. Of Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Sidney and heiress of Sir ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining rooms were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiece was of marble. A slab of common free-stone and fire irons which had cost from three to four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best-apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of these intervals, I heard a scratching sound—just such a sound as a mouse makes behind the wainscot. I had not noticed it before, and it caused me nothing but irritation now, for when a man is wakeful, such sounds, however slight they may be, become magnified to his overstrung nerves. I endured ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... order, and secured in excellent wainscot presses, by order of the house of peers, in the year 1719 and 1720. Attendance is given at this office, and searches may be made from seven o'clock in the morning to eleven, and from one to five in the afternoon, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... to speak, there was a rustling behind the screen which stood between her and the door, and some person knocked at the wainscot.' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... with its shadowy bed, dark mirrors, ghostly wainscot-doors and narrow windows, had not been brightened for a long time by such a charming little apparition as Amy when she shook out her airy muslins, smoothed her curls, and assumed all manner of distracting devices for the captivation of mankind. Even Helen, though not much given to personal ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush, like a beggar? Get you to church and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is: this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... mouse," he thought to himself, as though he were seeing her for the first time, "preparing to run off into the wainscot" He was conscious, too, of her quiet clothes and shy preoccupied timidity—all of it he seemed to see for the first time, a disguise for some purpose as ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and I was entirely broke of swearing.—Soon after this, as I was placing the china for tea, my mistress came into the room just as the maid had been cleaning it; the girl had unfortunately sprinkled the wainscot with the mop; at which my mistress was angry; the girl very foolishly answer'd her again, which made her worse, and she call'd upon God to damn her.—I was vastly concern'd to hear this, as she was a fine young lady, and very good to me, insomuch ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... base, basement; plinth, dado, wainscot; baseboard, mopboard^; bedrock, hardpan [U.S.]; foundation &c (support) 215; substructure, substratum, ground, earth, pavement, floor, paving, flag, carped, ground floor, deck; footing, ground work, basis; hold, bilge. bottom, nadir, foot, sole, toe, hoof, keel, root; centerboard. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... it holds writing-materials, a book, too, on its face, with the dust gathered on its back. There is, moreover, a sort of antique box, or coffer, of some dark wood, that seems to have been wrought or carved with skill, wondrous skill, of some period when the art of carving wainscot with arms and devices was much practised; so that on this coffer—some six feet long it is, and two or three broad—most richly wrought, you see faces in relief of knight and dame, lords, heraldic animals; some story, very likely, told, almost revelling in Gothic sculpture ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by Hilliard and two Olivers or Oliviers, a father and son of French extraction, and by a Swiss named Petitot. A collection of miniatures by the Oliviers, including no less than six of Venitia, Lady Digby, had a similar fate to that of Holbein's drawings. The miniatures had been packed in a wainscot box and conveyed to the country-house in Wales of Mr Watkin Williams, who was a descendant of the Digby family. In course of time the box with its contents, doubtless forgotten, had been transferred to a garret, where it had lain undiscovered ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... intended for him. A bed draped with a mosquito-netting under a linen canopy, a large bureau of mahogany wood, and a table, was the furnishing of this room, which opened upon the garden. Its only ornament was a crucifix suspended from the center of the slightly roughened wainscot. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the others had gone to bed, and continued to sit with his back to a stanchion dreamily gazing at the starry sky. Chris was in a fever for Amos to sleep, which his good friend soon did. Then a gray mouse scuttered along the wainscot of the ship's passageways until it reached a good vantage point from which to see the young sailor on deck. Chris had chosen well; a mouse ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... have been as clever a cat as ever went rat-catching in a pair of soft-soled shoes. She always knew just where a mouse would peep out of the wainscot, and she had her soft-sharp paw on him before he had time to know that he was not alone in the room. She knew how to catch nice breakfasts for herself and her children, a trick I will teach you, my dears, when the spring comes; she ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof, The long tables, and the faces merry and keen; The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof, The Dons on ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... IS so absurd to be an engaged orphan and it IS so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about after one, like mice in the wainscot; and it IS so absurd ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... being supported by square, fluted columns. In this smaller hall a simple, though only a molded cornice in harmony with that of the main hall suffices. Unlike the plain dado of the main hall, however, elaborated only by a molded surbase and skirting, a handsome paneled wainscot runs around the staircase hall and up the stairs. The spacing and workmanship displayed in this heavily beveled and molded paneling could hardly be better. At the foot of the flight, on the landing and at the head of the stairs, ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... understanding most favourably inclined to grant a credulous reception to its visions. The apartment also which was appropriated to Lord Londonderry, was calculated to foster such a tone of feeling. From its antique appointments; from the dark and richly-carved panels of its wainscot; from its yawning width and height of chimney—looking like the open entrance to a tomb, of which the surrounding ornaments appeared to form the sculptures and the entablature;—from the portraits of grim men ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... last particular, I learned by the sequel of the story, when the spark, proud of his acquisition, came to me, that he had been peeping about in the cabin whilst his mother was packing the chests, and seeing a small brass knob in the wainscot, took it for a plaything, and pulling to get it out, opened a little door of a cupboard, where he had found some very pretty toys that he positively claimed for himself, among which were a small plain gold ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... appeared to take form in his mind; and sitting, the only person awake in the slumbering house, where no sound broke the stillness, except the falling of a few cinders, and the occasional noise of a mouse behind the wainscot, somewhat of the superstitions of his northern youth came over him. His countenance became grave, and he ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... still as the mice in the old wainscot when they smelt Miss Latournelle's cat, whilst the ladies were in the parlour, for our teachers insisted on our being quiet; but as soon as we saw the coach bowling away, we all began to chatter, and to speak our thoughts concerning the occasion of this visit, which ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles from Arbraeth (Aberbrathock), the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom where the mason-work ceases to be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the people's provisions, water, etc.; above that, ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... without glasse, excepting the Churches, yet with faire comely windowes, and with faire grates of iron to them, and haue very large folding leaues of wainscot or the like. It hath very fewe Chimnies in it, or almost none at all: it may be some one chimney in some one or other of the lower out roomes of lest account, seruing for some necessary vses, either to wash in, or the like, or els nowe and then perchance for the dressing of a dish of meate, hauing, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... but one in this house were preoccupied, on the day of our visit, in consequence of which we were obliged to dine in the former little bed room of the queen, where, like the idalian goddess, she used to sleep in a suspended basket of roses. The apertures in the ceiling and wainscot, to which the elegant furniture of this little room of repose had once adhered, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... The solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... not to drink any of it, though she pretended to do so; and she was wakeful enough in the morning, and saw her husband passing out through a panel in the wainscot, though she kept her eyelids nearly closed. The next night she got a few drops of the sleepy posset that she saved the evening before put into her husband's night drink, and that made him sleep sound enough. She got up after midnight, passed through the panel, and ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Presidents and Governors looked down at him from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... And wil you (being a man of your breeding) be married vnder a bush like a begger? Get you to church, and haue a good Priest that can tel you what marriage is, this fellow wil but ioyne you together, as they ioyne Wainscot, then one of you wil proue a shrunke pannell, and like greene timber, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... before daylight, while I lay dreaming in my cosy box bed, I was awakened by hearing a rapping noise. I listened, fancying it was but the noise of some rat behind the wainscot that had come for shelter into the warm house; but the loud knocking came again. I hurriedly drew on some clothes and opened the outer door. A wild gust of wind and snow swished in upon me, and in the deep snow outside there stood a woman holding ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... that Miss Burns fancied. On her return, not seeing the lady on the sofa, where an hour previous she had left her, she looked round the room and discovered her doubled up in a corner of the room with her face towards the wainscot, while Mr. Angus was asleep sitting in a chair covered by a counterpane. The evidence was most conflicting. Several witnesses declared Miss Burns was not pregnant, others that they believed she was. The medical evidence was also of a most bewildering ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... particular pleasure in seeing Me, and kept advancing to me near, that involuntarily I retreated from her, not knowing er design, and kept, therefore, getting further and further back as she came forward, till I was stopped from any power of moving by the wainscot. I then necessarily stood ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... structure and the beauty of the situation, the Prince, having proceeded down a long corridor, opened the door into a small chamber, which he introduced to Vivian as his cabinet. The furniture of this room was rather quaint, and not unpleasing. The wainscot and ceiling were painted alike, of a light green colour, and were richly carved and gilt. The walls were hung with green velvet, of which material were also the chairs, and a sofa, which was placed under ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... oaken beams, the spaces between which in the four outer walls are filled in with brick, though you mustn't fancy a brick-and-timber house, for outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside there is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the fashion of the time when it was built. It is very sunny, the sun rising so as to shine (at an acute angle to be sure) through the northern windows, and going round the other three sides in the course of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... room, long mahogany boards, to which are fastened about twenty small tablets provided with hooks, from which are suspended the telephones. The latter are connected with the underground conductors by extensible wires which project from the wooden wainscot of which we have just spoken, so that it is very easy for the auditors to put ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... now," said Lady Gerard; and immediately the dumb prophetess was at her side. She threw off a disguise, ingeniously contrived, and Ellen beheld her cousin William! The magic mirror was but an aperture through the wainscot into another apartment, and the plot had been arranged in the first place by Mrs Bridget, who had been confederate with the handsome but somewhat haughty wooer, having for his torment a maiden as haughty and intractable as himself. Thus two loving hearts had nigh been broken for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... his impatience to go to see her sharpened as he thought of this: so certainly should he find out that wherever he might touch her, with a gentle though firm pressure, he would, as the fond visitor of old houses taps and fingers a disfeatured, overpapered wall with the conviction of a wainscot-edge beneath, recognise some small ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... and mother, my head was so giddy, and my limbs trembled so, that I was forced to go holding by the wainscot all the way with both my hands, and thought I should not have got to the door: But when I did, as I hoped this would be my last interview with this terrible hard-hearted master, I turned about, and made a low courtesy, and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... knotty oak and wainscot old Within doth eat the silly worm;[53] Even so a mind in envy rolled Always within it self doth burn. Thus every thing that nature wrought, Within itself his hurt doth bear! No outward harm need to be sought, Where enemies be ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... as the footsteps died away; he listened, but again the stillness was profound. He felt his way to the secret door; the wainscot screen stood ajar. It was plain that some one had come to the Rat's-Hole only to discover that the key of the outside door was missing. Constans realized that he, too, had missed something—his chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. Shame ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... through the two days, and look spruce as a robin when I get out. I'll ask the Squire for the things this very night when he drops in. Hark! ain't that a sort of rumbling in the wall? I hope there ain't any oven next door; if so, I shall be scorched out. Here I am, just like a rat in the wainscot. I wish there was a low window to look out of. I wonder what Doctor Franklin is doing now, and Paul Jones? Hark! there's a bird singing in the leaves. Bell for ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Land. The beautiful fancy of the "Little People," even if you do not give it to him, he will very probably get for himself; they will lurk always just out of reach of his desiring curious eyes, amidst the grass and flowers and behind the wainscot and in the shadows of the bedroom. He will come upon their traces; they will do him little kindnesses. Their affairs should interweave with the affairs of the child's dolls and brick castles and toy furniture. At first the child will scarcely be in a world of sustained ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a sufficiently pleasant cell in the Beauchamp Tower, furnished with straw mats underfoot, and straw hangings in place of a wainscot; his bed stood in one corner, with his crucifix and beads on a little table beside it, and his narrow window looked out through eleven feet of wall towards the Court and the White Tower. His books, too, which his servant, John Wood, had brought from Chelsea, and which had ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... vent and water pipes are run in wall spaces, so as to be accessible. The rooms are ventilated through the hollow columns of the kiosks, and each is provided with an electric fan. They are heated by electric heaters. The woodwork of the rooms is oak; the walls are red slate wainscot and Keene cement. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... a slight girlish figure in a holland skirt and white cambric blouse-bodice, her slender waist girdled with a belt of brown leather, the colour of her little shoes. Huddled up against the corrugated-iron wainscot of the rough earth wall, the obsession of fear that dilated her eyes and parched her lips shook her in recurrent gusts of trembling, whenever the guns of the Gueldersdorp batteries spoke in thunder, whenever the Boer artillery bellowed Death from the heights above. For since the great ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... were compelled to submit to, that so by a mechanical process, if in no other way, the flesh might be subdued. The beds of the monks were arranged along the walls of the dormitory, at regular intervals; and in some monasteries a wainscot partition separated the sleepers from each other, thus making for each a little cubicle, with a low door leading into it. The broad passage, running from end to end, between the sleeping-places in the dormitory was strewn ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... legible as the day it was cut, full forty years ago. In the grave at the foot of this stone lies buried another Major Bugbee, the great-great-grandson of the first Major. The commission of this gentleman, signed by John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, still hangs in a frame against the wainscot, over the mantel, in the parlor of the great gambrel-roofed house, whose front-yard fence and garden palings form, for almost half the way, the eastern side of the village square. The late master of this dwelling, Doctor Bugbee, who was the eldest son of the Continental major, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... so that he might have the pleasure of making out receipts and reckoning the interests on the sums lent. When he could do no more he drove up and down the city in trams. Then the season of pleasure came to an end. The pot of pink enamel paint gave out and the wainscot of his bedroom remained with its unfinished ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... opportunity of their absence to examine more minutely the ruins of Waverly Hall. The thickness of one of the remaining walls struck him as singular; it was an abutment behind the chimney of what had been the banqueting-room, the wainscot of which was left in this place entire. Sedley inspected every pannel, and at last found one which slided, and afforded him an entrance into a small but perfect apartment, lighted from the ceiling, and which had probably served as a secret chamber to conceal ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... well pleased to get her off his hands—she submitted, rather than consented to the ceremony; but there her compliance ended; and, when forcibly put into bed, she started quite frantic from it, screaming out, that after three gentle taps on the wainscot, at the bed-head, she heard Cromlus's voice, crying, 'Helen, Helen, mind me!' Cromlus soon after coming home, the treachery of the confidant was discovered,—her marriage disannulled,—and Helen became ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... noticed the kitchen-apron, picked it up and held it a moment irresolutely. Then opening a door in the wainscot near the fireplace he flung it in. Before the door went to, Elsie had a glimpse of worse disorder—of the sort that is supposed to pertain to ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... the present inhabitants of the castle. The mouldering tapestry, which, in his father's time, had half covered the walls of this stately apartment, and half streamed from them in tatters, had given place to a complete finishing of wainscot, the cornice of which, as well as the frames of the various compartments, were ornamented with festoons of flowers and with birds, which, though carved in oak, seemed, such was the art of the chisel, actually to swell their throats and flutter ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes casting flames more terrifying than the glitter of the dagger. When Ginevra saw him approach her she looked at him with an air of triumph, and advancing slowly, knelt down. "No, no! I cannot!" he cried, flinging away the weapon, which buried itself in the wainscot. ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... room, pausing at the stiff, distinguished, grey-haired couple, one on either side of the fire. The effect was of a highly finished genre picture: the rich wainscot between low book-shelves, the brooding portraits, the black-blue rug bordered by a veiled Oriental motive, the black-velvet cushions that brought out the watery reflections of old Sheraton as even the ancient horsehair had not done; the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... just come in—Dean Burscough it was—and my father had been 'prenticed to a good firm of joiners in the city, and knew what good work was when he saw it. Crool it was, he used to say: all that beautiful wainscot oak, as good as the day it was put up, and garlands-like of foliage and fruit, and lovely old gilding work on the coats of arms and the organ pipes. All went to the timber yard—every bit except some little pieces worked up in the Lady Chapel, and ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... about. A horrid little mouse that keeps scratching at the wainscot and creeping about the room and ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... is marvellously well preserved. The panelled wainscot, about three feet high, is of chestnut. A magnificent Spanish leather with figures in relief, the gilding now peeled off or reddened, covers the walls. The ceiling is of wooden boards artistically joined and painted and gilded. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... glowing face mirrored in this floor; and, when alone, I often skate upon it. But as I do not wish to see my less sure-footed friends disposed about it in writhing attitudes expressive of agony and broken bones, I usually keep it covered, up to a yard's breadth from the dark-carved wainscot, with a velvety carpet, which was woven for me at Wilton, and represents the casting scene in the 'Song of the Bell.' The window curtains are of velvet, of just the shade of purple that nestles in the centre of the most splendid kind of fuchsia, and have an Etruscan ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you are really of a spiritual nature, my weapon will be harmless, if you are not, the consequences be upon your own head." As he spoke he pointed the pistol at her heart. With a courage worthy a better cause, she darted by him and tried one or two of the wainscot panels as if seeking a private spring, which Davy who, was fully awake by this time perceiving, sprang up, and caught hold of her, grasping her tightly; she wrestled with him with the strength of a lioness, and but for papa's help, she must have escaped; ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... to a house more remote, where I remained until 4 o'clock, by which time one of the best finished houses in the Province had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings, and splitting the doors to pieces, they beat down the partition walls; and although that alone cost them near two hours, they cut down the cupola or lanthorn, and they began to take the slate and boards from the roof, and ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 24th of November 1244 Henry issued a writ enjoining "the clerks of the works at Windsor to work day and night to wainscot the high chamber upon the wall of the castle near our chapel in the upper bailey, so that it may be ready and properly wainscoted on Friday next [the 24th occurring on a Tuesday, only two days were allowed ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bedsides, and drew the curtains to and fro, then twerle them, then walk about again, and return to the bed-posts, shake them with all the bed, so that they in bed were put to hold one upon the other, then walk about the room again, and come to the servants' bed, and gnaw and scratch the wainscot head, and shake altogether in that room; at the time of this being in doing, they in the bed-chamber heard such strange dropping down from the roof of the room, that they supposed 'twas like the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... red and yellow, he gathered into a loose pad in his left hand for his cheek and temple to rest on. His face was thus supported by his hand and arm, while the side of his head touched and rested against the wainscot ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... don't know," I said. "Some of the wainscot panels rattle a bit, but I imagine the house will stand it unless you go in too much for Wagner. 'Tannhaeuser' or 'Siegfried' might shake a few beams loose, but lighter music, I think, can be indulged in ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... thought I, but he has come, By Charon kindly ferried, To tell me of a mighty sum Behind my wainscot buried? There is a buccaneerish air About that garb outlandish— 70 Just then the ghost drew up his chair And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,' he continued, waxing more fluent ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... authority, "is a large Hall, called the Frater-house, finely wainscotted on the North and South sides; and in the West and nether Part thereof, is a long Bench of Stone in Mason-work, from the Cellar Door to the Pantry or Cove Door: Above the Bench is Wainscot Work two Yards and a Half high, finely carved, and set with imboss'd Work in Wainscot, and gilded under the carved Work. Above the Wainscot was a large Picture of our Saviour Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, and S. John, in fine gilt Work, and most excellent ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... change, too, as is every jot as good for the master, though not for the tailor or valet-de-chambre; not such a stately palace, nor gilt rooms, nor the costlier sorts of tapestry, but a convenient brick house, with decent wainscot and pretty forest-work hangings. Lastly (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with that which I love most in both conditions), not whole woods cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain or cascade gardens, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley |
