"Wainscot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... converted into something between a shop and a private house, and which a red lamp, projecting over the fanlight of the street door, would have sufficiently announced as the residence of a medical practitioner, even if the word 'Surgery' had not been inscribed in golden characters on a wainscot ground, above the window of what, in times bygone, had been the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the gilt-labelled drawers and bottles were; and finding nobody there, knocked with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... 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 carved and gilded and richly upholstered. The floor was paved ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... disregard me! Look! that last arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently I did not see ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the door suddenly, and there, sure enough, was Eliza, stooping without. She flicked feebly at the wainscot with a duster, but concealment ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... is not enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat when they are lighted and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... it had originally been, with frescoes still beautiful, though much damaged, and the marble bath still in its place in a niche painted with river gods. In one of the Vatican's periodical fits of prudery the frescoes were completely hidden with a wooden wainscot, the bath-tub was taken away and the room was turned into a chapel. It is believed, however, that the paintings still ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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, unless in December, January, and ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... din! Midnight Mass is about to begin. In the chapel of the chateau, a miniature cathedral with arches intercrossed and a wainscot of oak mounting as high as the walls, all the hangings have been arranged, all ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... He plucked forth his revolver with quivering fingers, levelled it at his guest, and pulled upon the trigger. The bullet sang across the room, passed through armchair and screen into the wainscot beyond. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... 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 a large and curiously-cut looking glass. The lower ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... time I hoped against hope. Never did a rat squeak behind the wainscot, or rain drip upon the attic-floor, without a wild thrill shooting through me as I thought that at last I had come upon traces of some unquiet soul. I felt no touch of fear upon these occasions. If it occurred ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... in front sketched the interior of the caravan vaguely in melancholy chiaroscuro. The inscriptions of Ursus, gloryifying the grandeur of Lords, showed distinctly on the worn-out boards, which were both the wall without and the wainscot within. On a nail, near the door, Gwynplaine saw his esclavine and his cape hung up, as they hang up the clothes of a corpse in a dead-house. Just then he had ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... ours. Stretched upon a lounge, his eyes half-closed, he was coddling himself in the coziest corner of a dainty boudoir. The panel-mirrors which surrounded him, majestically duplicated on every side his enormous person; bags filled with gold covered the table; around him, the furniture, the wainscot, the doors, the locks, the mantel-piece, the ceiling were gilded; so was his coat. I do not know but that his brain was gilded too. He was calculating the issue of a little business affair which could not fail to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... comfortable." The change was certainly amazing, and made the funeral day seem longer ago than it really was. The walls were not literally lime-washed; but (which is the same thing, except for a little glue!) they were distempered, a soft pale pea-green. About a yard deep above the wainscot this was covered with a dark sombre green tint, and along the upper edge of this, as a border all round the room, the school-mistress had painted a trailing wreath of white periwinkle. The border was painted ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he returned Binks was still exhaling vigorously at a hole in the wainscot, behind which he fancied he had detected a sound. With the chance of a mouse on the horizon he became like Gamaliel, and cared for none of these things. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... confined to two or three small rooms in the south- east corner. The great apartments through which they now whisperingly walked wore already that funereal aspect that comes from disuse and inattention. Triangular cobwebs already formed little hammocks for the dust in corners of the wainscot, and a close smell of wood and leather, seasoned with mouse-droppings, pervaded the atmosphere. So seldom was the solitude of these chambers intruded on by human feet that more than once a mouse stood and looked the twain in the face ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... but whom, unless he has been slandered, his lady's influence involved in some political matters which had been more wisely let alone. She was a woman of high principle, however, and masculine good sense, as some of her letters testify, which are still in my wainscot cabinet. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the door were driven hard home into the wainscot; the wedges underneath were tightly fixed. The bed, with bedding complete, was drawn against the entry. A second line of defence was thrown up of chairs, chest of drawers, book-case, and wash-stand. Beyond that were stacked against the wall cricket bats, stumps, boxing-gloves, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... him; he saw only D'Artagnan leaning with his back against the wainscot—D'Artagnan, calm, kind, and good-natured as usual—and Saint-Aignan whom he had accompanied, and who still leaned over the king's armchair with an expression of countenance equally full of good feeling. He determined, therefore, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... creeping dread—of what? As he entered the house, he met his confidential servant. He gave him orders respecting the flight of the morrow, and then retired into the chamber where he slept. It was an antique and large room: the wainscot was of oak; and one broad and high window looked over the expanse of country which stretched beneath. He sat himself by the casement in silence—he opened it: the dull air came over his forehead, not with a sense ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you are mistaken—'twas but the wind in the old wainscot. (Aside.) He is quite capable of destroying that innocent child; but, old and attached servant as he is, there are liberties I still know how to forbid. (To M.) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... enough of it, but there had been one scene near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes in the evening dusk the walls of her attic to see whether there too verses had been ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... he designed her, which was very rich and gay, and towards a fine garden. The hangings and beds all glorious, and fitter for a monarch than a subject; the finest pictures the world afforded, flowers in-laid with silver and ivory, gilded roofs, carved wainscot, tables of plate, with all the rest of the movables in the chambers of the same, all of great value, and all was perfumed like an altar, or the marriage bed of some young king. Here Sylvia was designed to lodge, and hither Octavio conducted ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... at his house—not a thing left but some empty Bottles that were overlooked and the Family Pictures, which I believe are framed in the Wainscot. [Going.] ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... press the blade of the chisel down to its thickest part. He now worked it eagerly backward and forward, and, to his delight, the crack rapidly widened still further; in fact, the short board was sliding back underneath the wainscot. A small oblong cavity was thus revealed, into which the young discoverer glowered with ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... critically about, and I began to test the wainscot, but the Duke stopped me. "You'd never find the place," he said; "and I promised the person who told me not to give away the secret; but that doesn't prevent me from showing you what's ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... young squires,—some to close round the table and be in the way,—some bawled to open, some to shut, a pair of folding-doors which divided the hall from a sort of gallery, as I afterwards learned, or withdrawing-room, fitted up with black wainscot. Opened the doors were at length, and in rushed curs and men,—eight dogs, the domestic chaplain, the village doctor, my six ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... room, it was immediately seized and read aloud in secret places to a select few. I found myself a 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 a ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... and we made as if to fetch a couple of chairs that stood against the wainscot by the door. As we did so, Sir Deakin push'd the punch bowl forward ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then There is no sound at the top of the house of men Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again Dapples ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... ventured forth again. It was pitch dark in the village street, and the darkness seemed only the greater for a light here and there in an uncurtained window or from an open door. Into one such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw within a charming genre picture. In a room, all white wainscot and crimson wall-paper, a perfect gem of colour after the black, empty darkness in which I had been groping, a pretty girl was telling a story, as well as I could make out, to an attentive child upon her knee, while an old woman sat placidly dozing over the fire. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a flash. Worst fake outfit I ever had anything to do with was Vango's Spirit Thought Institute in St. Paul. I've told you before how ashamed I am of that. I left because there's some kinds of work I won't stand for. Well, he used a ceiling trap for his materializin'; though the wainscot is a sight better and more up-to-date in my experience. When he let it drop careless, in practicing before the seance, it used to make a noise like that. I fell asleep by-and-bye; and out of my dreams, which was troubled and didn't bring nothing definite, I got the ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... This has ever been a free country, and they shall not imperil its freedom by their volubility and self-conceit." Here Mr. Lavender paused for breath, and in the darkness a faint noise, as of a mouse scrattling at a wainscot, attracted his attention. "Wonderful," he thought, elated by the silence, "that I should so have succeeded in riveting their attention as to be able to hear a mouse gnawing. I must have made a considerable impression." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... here, quick!" he said just as Grace opened the table cloth with a jerk and flung it over his head. A pistol shot rang out, but David had dodged in time and the bullet was buried in the mahogany wainscot back of him. The astonished burglar dropped the weapon, and began to struggle violently to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... she concealed her heart-sickness. But bride and bridegroom had not long been home at the castle when the young wife's unhappiness became plainly enough perceptible. Her maids and men said that she was in the habit of turning to the wainscot and shedding stupid scalding tears at a time when a right-minded lady would have been overhauling her wardrobe. She prayed earnestly in the great church-pew, where she sat lonely and insignificant as a mouse in a cell, instead of counting her rings, falling asleep, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... Hah—now cannot I refrain joining with her in affectionate Tears.—No, but do not weep for me, my excellent Lady, for I have made a pretty competent Estate for thee. Eight thousand Pounds, which I have conceal'd in my Study behind the Wainscot on the left hand as you ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... taper's glare, checked the motion of their hundred legs upon the wall, or dropped like lifeless things upon the ground; the death-watch ticked; and the scampering feet of rats and mice rattled behind the wainscot. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... checked by observing the reeve of the forest peeping from behind the wainscot, and earnestly regarding the miller, and he called the attention ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... through the old passages and rooms, and often came upon strange discoveries. Things hidden away for years and forgotten, doors which had remained unopened, or perhaps even had been mistaken for a part of the wainscot for generations. These discoveries were somewhat awe-inspiring, and the game not unfrequently became what the children called 'Treasure-hunting.' They generally managed to keep together on such occasions; it was too uncanny to be alone ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... sixteen inches square, and a quarter of an inch thick: wainscot is the best, as it does not warp. These will go into the groove of the lesson post: there should be about twenty articles on each board, or twenty-five, just as it suits the conductors of the school; there should be the same quantity of things on each board, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... justice 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 ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... going to say something very confidential, and hitched it away again, as not being able to make up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the day he cruised completely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than once went ashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in a ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot: a shrill twofold note. But the notes were long and shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled as the flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... sought their respective rooms. I thought, I must acknowledge, that they went to bed rather too early at my friend's. I had no wish to sleep; I therefore examined my room, which was charming. It was completely hung with an old figured tapestry framed in gray wainscot. The bed, draped in dimity curtains, was turned down and exhaled that odor of freshly washed linen which invites one to stretch one's self in it. On the table, a little gem dating from the beginning ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... 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
... indeed be more elegant; though that is to be rather plain than rich, as well in its wainscot as furniture, and to be new-floored. The dear gentleman has already given orders, and you will soon have workmen to put them in execution. The parlour-doors are to have brass-hinges and locks, and to shut as close, he tells them, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... will I now have recourse to such a fallacious expedient. Yet she sleeps in the same chamber with me; and ought I not to beware of inspiring perfidy with projects? 'Tis true my slumbers are broken, my nights restless, and the cracking of the wainscot is as effectual in waking me as a thunder-clap could be. I am resolved, however, to take the key out of the door, and either hide it or hold it all night in my hand. Mischief is meant me, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... about the cabin, examined the globes, books, and pictures, with great attention. The wainscot struck him particularly, as well as the machinery and finish of the windows and sliding shutters. Captain Maxwell tried to make him comprehend our track on the globe. He had felt it becoming to preserve some state while business was going ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... 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 still, and she ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... them again. Too like the kicked cur, that! He retired—call it 'sulked in his tent,' if you like. His wife had to share his fortunes. He being slighted, she necessarily was shadowed. For a while she bore it contentedly enough; then began her mousy scratches to get into the room off the wainscot, without blame from him; she behaved ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heard," continued Conrad, "or read of those wonderful persons, or, as you have been such a great traveller, have you yourself never stumbled upon such, whose eyes can pierce through a board, through wainscot and wall, nay down into the depths of the earth and into the heart ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... not "caught". "But if I were," she says, "do you know what soothsayers I would consult?... 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 ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Nothing could be more simple than the interior of this quiet dwelling, as was sufficiently shown by the furniture of a pretty large room on the ground floor. The walls of this apartment were lined with old gray wainscot; the tiled floor was painted red, and carefully polished; curtains of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and down, to stop the invitation. The lord chamberlain said Sir John had exceeded his commission, if he had invited the Dutchmen "to stand in the closet of the queen's side; because the Spanish ambassador would never endure them so near him, where there was but a thin wainscot board between, and a window which might be opened!" Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil!) "and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy!) This ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... lawyers of the last century; and there were old pier-glasses to reflect them, as well as the little satin-wood tables and the sofas resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief against the dark wainscot This was the physiognomy of the drawing-room into which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive him, who were also old-fashioned, and of a faded but genuine respectability: Mrs. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mistook the door: At coming in, you saw her stoop; The entry brush'd against her hoop: Each moment rising in her airs, She curst the narrow winding stairs: Began a thousand faults to spy; The ceiling hardly six feet high; The smutty wainscot full of cracks: And half the chairs with broken backs: Her quarter's out at Lady-day; She vows she will no longer stay In lodgings like a poor Grisette, While there are houses to be let. Howe'er, to keep her spirits up, She sent for company to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 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 for, it has been supposed, fully a hundred years. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... stillness and silence. Everyone speaks softly to those only who sit next him. The greater part read the newspapers, and no one ever disturbs another. The room is commonly on the ground floor, and you enter it immediately from the street; the seats are divided by wooden wainscot partitions. Many letters and projects are here written and planned, and many of those that you find in the papers are dated from some of these coffee-houses. There is, therefore, nothing incredible, nor very extraordinary, in a person's composing a sermon ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... aspirations being ended, an air of calm composure reigned around my "Father's Fireside." He seated himself in his arm-chair, while my mother busied herself in preparing tea, and each little one took his appointed place around the oval wainscot table. The turf fire burned cheerily on the hearth. The tea-kettle gave out its hissing sounds, indicative of comfort; and the solitary candle diffused light on the fair young faces which brightened as the oat-cake and the "buttered pieces" began to disappear. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... glaring at the opposite wall. 'The shadow! I saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass along the wainscot like ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... referred to is that caused by a mouse nibbling at the wainscot; and I venture to say so much in a ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... 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 ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... rising from his seat walked to the other side of the room and touched a spring in the wainscot. A panel flew to one side and revealed a ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... use restless-patterned wall papers. Leather (used with paneling or above wainscot), modern tapestries, fabrics of all kinds are suitable for covering dining-room walls. If low, the ceiling should never be dark, since this makes the room appear still lower. (A breakfast room done in lacquer is very effective, however, if not too low.) A single large rug, harmonizing with the ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... logic kills me quite; A noisy man is always in the right— I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair, Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare; And when I hope his blunders all are out, Reply ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... but a little iron stove that got so red that it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of the pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic wainscot half around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest fragrance in the world.... They petted the soldier ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... was a zealous advocate for the cause of temperance employed a carpenter to make some alterations in his home. In repairing a corner near the fireplace, it was found necessary to remove the wainscot, when some things were brought to light which greatly astonished the workman. A brace of decanters, sundry bottles containing "something to take," a pitcher, and tumblers were cosily reposing in their snug quarters. The joiner ran to the proprietor ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... out of my wainscot last night, and plunged me in horrible dilemma: for I am equally idiotic over the idea of the creature trapped or free, and I saw sleepless nights ahead of me till I had secured a change ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... on the floor and draw my boots. I did it, shamefacedly enough, being but a foul and ragged vagabond unfit to have her come anigh me. But I might have spared my blushings for she had turned her back and was opening a secret door in the high wainscot. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... front of the chateau, and over them still hung long sweeping curtains, so tattered and moth-eaten that they were almost falling to pieces. Profound silence reigned here, unbroken save by occasional scurrying and squeaking of mice behind the wainscot, the gnawing of rats in the wall, or ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the chambers of the tower is the following sentence, carved on the frieze of the wainscot:—"In the yeire of owre Ld. MDLV. was this howse buyldyd, by Sir Wyllyam Ingilby, Knight, Philip ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... world,—that such a strange life was a part of the life, which seems to us who are living it now, so passionless and commonplace. It is only when I stand amid ruined castles, that look at me so mournfully, and behold the heavy armour of old knights, hanging upon the wainscot of Gothic chambers; or when I walk amid the aisles of some dusky minster, whose walls are narrative ofhoar antiquity, and whose very bells have been baptized, and see the carved oaken stalls in the choir, where so many generations of monks have sat ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the composition is built into a pyramid. Draw a line from the inn-keeper's head down the stairway at the left, and follow the outline of the Good Samaritan's right shoulder along the body of the wounded traveler, and you have the figure. This pyramidal form is emphasized again by the wainscot of the stairway at the left, and the ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... everything" her husband knows; and she had guessed that those two were discussing secret matters which they had no intention of imparting to her. A woman has a faculty about such things which corresponds to scent in the terrier; the little mystery is there—the small rodent lurks behind the wainscot; she is consumed with a desire to get at it—to worry its life out; and if it refuse to leave its hiding-place she cannot rest and be satisfied. It was her nature; and though she asked no questions, knowing that her husband was not ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much over-scribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I have never (though I do not personally adopt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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, ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... 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 ramped surbase ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... architecture, and the materials of which it is composed. I was told that it was "the Imperial Library in miniature,"—but with this difference, let me here add, in favor of Moelk—that it looks over a magnificently wooded country, with the Danube rolling its rapid course at its base. The wainscot and shelves are walnut tree, of different shades, inlaid, or dovetailed, surmounted by gilt ornaments. The pilasters have Corinthian capitals of gilt; and the bolder or projecting parts of a gallery, which surrounds the room, are covered with the same metal. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... until her own eyes would grow large with something which was almost like fear, particularly at night, when the garret was so still, when the only sound that was to be heard was the occasional squeak and scurry of rats in the wainscot. There were rat-holes in the garret, and Sara detested rats, and was always glad Emily was with her when she heard their hateful squeak and rush and scratching. One of her "pretends" was that Emily was a kind of good witch and could protect her. Poor little Sara! everything was "pretend" ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... large, is still inadequate to the reception of its numerous visitors.[21] In this first room you observe a few of the very choicest productions of the burin, from the earliest periods of the art, to the more recent performances of Desnoyer, displayed within glazed frames upon the wainscot. It really makes the heart of a connoisseur leap with ecstacy to see such Finiguerras, Baldinis, Boticellis, Mantegnas, Pollaiuolos, Israel Van Meckens, Albert Durers, Marc Antonios, Rembrandts, Hollar, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I should rather say, parts of figures, because you have not shown one leg or foot, which makes it very defective. If you do not know how to draw feet and legs, I will show you.' And with a crayon he made drawings on the wainscot of ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of his courage, that something strange was about to take place. At last he thought that the best thing to do was, first of all to light up the family room; and then to find some place in which to hide himself. As soon as he had lighted all the candles, he moved two planks out of the wainscot at the end of the room, and creeping into the space between it and the wall, restored the planks to their places, so that he could see plainly into the room and yet avoid ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 been ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... said no more; and Mirande, seeming to be satisfied that his condition was accepted, dropped the subject and proceeded to show his guest where he might sleep; for the latter felt a natural reluctance to return to his narrow prison behind the wainscot. In a few minutes the light was extinguished and the two men, thus strangely brought together again, lay a few feet from one another; the mind of each turning in the stillness of the night, to the link which had bound them, nay, which still ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... was to be heard in the sick-room but the labored breathing of the sufferer. But there was a stir on the floor below him—doubtless a mouse gnawing the wainscot. Bernhard listened uneasily. "How long will it go on gnawing? till it makes a hole at last, and comes into the room." A shudder came over him—he tossed about on his bed—the darkness seemed to press him in—the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... you are come in, Mr Henry," said the cross old woman, "what for do you no tak up your candle and gang to your bed? and mind ye dinna let the candle sweal as ye gang alang the wainscot parlour, and haud a' the house scouring to ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with a shawl over my feet on a deep sofa with a high back. I turned to look at Stoffles, who was slowly perambulating the room, looking for flies and other insects (her favourite amusement) on the wainscot. When I glanced again at the dog his appearance filled me with horror; he was standing, obviously from pain, swaying from side to side and breathing hard. As I watched, his body grew more and more rigid. With his eyes fixed on the half-open door, he drew back as if from the approach of some dreaded ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... forced the door and burst it inward with a crash. During the moment's silence that followed they heard the key spring into the room and strike the wainscot. The place was flooded with sunshine, and seemed to welcome them with genial light and attractive art. The furniture revealed its rich grain and beautiful modelling; the cherubs carved on the great chairs seemed to dance where the light flashed on their little, rounded limbs. ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... lamps and candles burned longer 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 banner-staff of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... partition wall which fell in at the great shock." "Have you had an earthquake?" blazed up my uncle, now fairly in a rage. "No, not an earthquake, worshipful Herr Justitiarius," replied the old man, grinning all over his face, "but three days ago the heavy wainscot ceiling of the justice-hall fell in with a tremendous crash." "Then may the"—— My uncle was about to rip out a terrific oath in his violent passionate manner, but jerking up his right arm above his head and taking off his fox-skin cap with his left, he suddenly checked ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that the Council of Ten was much more numerous than its name implied. The Councillors were between twenty and thirty, sitting in a semicircle, against a carved wooden wainscot, on each side of the aged Doge, Cristoforo Moro, who had yet one more year to live. There were other persons present also, of whom one was the secretary, the rest being apparently there to listen to the proceedings and ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... carle led him into the house; and if it were goodly without, within it was better. For there was a fair chamber panelled with wainscot well carven, and a cupboard of no sorry vessels of silver and latten: the chairs and stools as fair as might be; no king's might be better: the windows were glazed, and there were flowers and knots and posies in them; and the bed was hung with goodly web from over ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... within the dreamy 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 said; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... It 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
... the same man who had directed us hither on the other side of the lake, and afterwards we learned that he was the father of our hostess. He showed us into a room up-stairs, begged we would sit at our ease, walk out, or do just as we pleased. It was a large square deal wainscoted room, the wainscot black with age, yet had never been painted: it did not look like an English room, and yet I do not know in what it differed, except that in England it is not common to see so large and well-built a room so ill-furnished: there were ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... might, if we had room, speak of at large, and divert you too with the Relation, such as my Lady Hatt's Devil in Essex, who upon laying a Joiner's Mallet in the Window of a certain Chamber, would come very orderly and knock with it all Night upon the Window, or against the Wainscot, and disturb the Neighbourhood, and then go away in the Morning, as well satisfied as may be; whereas if the Mallet was not left, he would think himself affronted, and be as unsufferable and terrifying as possible, breaking ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... begone!" said Kitty. "There is nothing but a wainscot between my chamber and Milady's; every word that is uttered in one can be heard ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it rested upon the narrow, unglazed windows beyond which lay freedom. Would she ever again breathe God's pure air outside these stifling walls? These grimy hateful walls! Black as the inky rafters and wainscot except for occasional splotches a few shades less begrimed, where repairs had been made. As her eyes fell upon the trophies of war and chase which hung there her lips curled in scorn, for she knew that they were acquisitions by inheritance rather ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... ha! These forms are air—mere counterfeits Of my imaginous heart, as are the whirling Wainscot and trembling floor!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 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 ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... blue-bottle chances, in his bouncing random flight, to get entangled in the glutinous meshes, he shakes and roars, and blusters so loudly, until he breaks away, that the spider affrighted, invariably takes advantage of his long legs to scamper off to his sanctum in the cracked wainscot—like some imbecile watchman, who fearing to encounter a tall inebriated bruiser, sneaks away with admirable discretion to the security of his snug box, praying the drunkard may speedily reel into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... room!" she went on, looking about her. "I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the wainscot, and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the ribs—nothing but ribs and darkness—I should ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... to pull him by the sleeve. Frederick, angry, and out of patience with these interruptions, suddenly turned round, and gave Marcus such a push, that he sent him reeling across the room, and he at last fell against the wainscot. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... laughed, but looked round the old wainscot walls with unusual interest; she thought it would be a fine thing to be ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... panels; the low broad lattice window with a few upper panes of old stained glass; the faded familiar pictures on the wall; these all awoke in him memories of his earliest years. In the corner of the room, hardly to be distinguished from the wainscot, was the high narrow door communicating with his mother's chamber, through which he had often, how often! seen her come in softly, on tiptoe, to take a look at him. His own children, too, had slept there; and it was here that he had last seen his little son and ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... thought better of it, though it would have been impossible to catch cold on such a stifling night I heard every clock strike in Westminster and London. It was light at five, yet the night seemed endless. I would have welcomed even a mouse behind the wainscot. Priscilla is an odious tyrant," making a face at the easy-tempered gouvernante sitting by; "she won't let me have my dogs ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Mauleverer furniture at a valuation when she bought the old house; and the Mauleverer furniture being of a rococo and exploded style, the valuation had been ridiculously low. Thus it happened that a big wainscot wardrobe, with doors substantial enough for a church, projected its enormous bulk upon one side of the butterfly-room, while a tall narrow cheval glass stood in front of a window. That cheval was the glory of the butterfly-room. The girls ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... resolution,' says Prince, 'that, for the honor and liberty of a royal lady in a castle besieged by infidels, he fought a combat with a Sarazen; for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford-hall doth plainly show); whom yet he vanquished and rescued the lady.' Sir Baldwin's name must have been woven in many a romance ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... 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 ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the light, and yet its faint glimmer only made the darkness more horrible. He did not dare to look behind him, though he knew that there was nothing there. He trembled at the scratching sound in the wainscot, though he knew that it was only mice. A sudden light on the window, and a distant chorus, did not make his heart beat less wildly from being nothing more alarming than two or three noisy students going ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the United States lived in the subdued simplicity of the White House. But William H. Vanderbilt ate in a great, lofty dining room, twenty-six by thirty-seven feet, wrought in Italian Renaissance, with a wainscot of golden-hued, delicately-carved English oak around all four sides, and a ceiling with richly-painted hunting-scene panels. When he entertained it was in a vast drawing- room, palatially equipped, its walls hung with flowing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was the same bare, poverty-stricken look in this room as in every other part of the manor house. The bed was a tall melancholy four-poster, with scantiest draperies of faded drab damask. Save for one little islet of threadbare Brussels beside the bed, the room was carpetless. There was an ancient wainscot wardrobe with brass handles. There was a modern deal dressing-table skimpily draped with muslin, and surmounted by the smallest of looking-glasses. There were a couple of chairs and a three-cornered washhand-stand. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... seemed more absolute than ordinarily he turned round. The heavy, gloomy oak wainscot, which extended over the walls upstairs and down in the dilapidated "Old-Grove Place," and the massive chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling, stood in odd contrast to the new and shining brass bedstead, and the new suite of birch furniture ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Monastic Orders), near the church of San Francesco, and belonging to the same Order, the Franciscans. This chapel is an exact parallelogram and the frescoes which cover the four walls are thus arranged above the wainscot, which rises about ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... step to obey, and kicked against something which rattled as it flew forward, and struck the wainscot board, while the next moment a dim, blue spark of light in a ground-glass burst into a flame, and lit up a dingy-looking, old-fashioned surgery just as the kneeling girl uttered ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn |
