"Calico" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there were better things than to chop and clear land, and make black salts, or tend a saw-mill, or drive oxen, or sell tape and calico; but, in these woods, poor and unfriended, how could he find them? Was not his brother Henry studying law at Jefferson, and were they not all proud of him, and did not everybody expect great things of him? But Henry was different ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... arrived in England he was invited to work in a calico establishment, where he remained about six years. But making drawings to be printed on cloth failed to give him the scope he required. At the back of his mind was the passion to work with woodblocks in color. This led him to take a bold and hazardous step— to leave his position and attempt, ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... apart—a hard-featured woman, in a clean cotton gown, and clean brown apron, whose face proclaimed that she lived much in the open air. Perhaps she lived so much in it as to disdain bonnets, for she wore none—a red cotton handkerchief, fellow to the one on Charley's head, being pinned over her white calico cap. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... brought the brandy you see for the use of others rather than myself. One case is of the very best spirits for our own use. The rest is common stuff and is intended as presents. Our main drink will be tea and chocolate. These are invaluable for the traveler. I have, besides, large quantities of calico, brass stair rods, beads, and powder. These are the money of Africa, and pass current everywhere. With these we shall pay our carriers and boatmen, with these purchase the right of way through the various tribes we shall meet. Moreover it is almost necessary in Africa to pass as traders. ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... wool. Home-made linen and clothing of linsey-woolsey were used in the settlements by high and low alike. It was not until the close of the eighteenth century that articles of apparel, other than those made at home of flax and wool, were easily obtainable. A calico dress was a great luxury. Few daughters expected to have one until it was bought for their wedding-dress. Great efforts were always made to array the bride in fitting costume; and sometimes a dress, worn by the mother in other days, amid other scenes, was brought ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... we found prevailed through the country. A broad-brimmed hat, usually of a black or dark-brown color, with a gilt or figured band round the crown, and lined inside with silk; a short jacket of silk or figured calico, (the European skirted body-coat is never worn;) the shirt open in the neck; rich waistcoat, if any; pantaloons wide, straight, and long, usually of velvet, velveteen, or broadcloth; or else short breeches and white stockings. They wear the deer-skin shoe, which is of a dark-brown color, and, (being ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... taken of Brannagan's fooling, Buck Tryon, ordered out on the same duty, went the little Irishman one better, decorating his engine headlight and handrails with festoonings of colored calico, the decoration figuring as a caricature of Lidgerwood's college colors, and calico being the nearest approach to bunting obtainable at Jake Schleisinger's emporium, two doors north of Red-Light Sammy's ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... stood that dusky personage, arrayed not in her usual starched calico and white apron, but in her Sunday dress of black, with ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... for housecleaning, for washing windows and for washing lamp chimneys. Old pieces of calico, or flannel make good holders to use about the stove. Wash, boil and dry cleaning cloths when soiled, that they may be ready for ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... Patience to the skies; and, as if this were not sufficient to make her happy, he produced a big clay pipe, three plugs of real "manufac terbacker," which was hard to get in those times, a red shawl, and twelve yards of calico. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... cabeza, head cafe, castano, brown, (dyed) cepillo, brush cualquiera (s.),[43] any (affirmative) cualesquiera (pl.) any (affirmative) dientes, teeth dinero, money encarnado, red escoba, broom estampar, to print (calico) la frente, the forehead lengua, tongue malo,[44] bad, wicked manteca, butter moreno, brown, (natural colour) (la) nariz, nose necesitar, to want, to need, to be in want of. ninguno,-a (s.) any (after a negative) ningunos,-as ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... the fortunate ones. Then you will give each child not only plenty of everything, but things individualized, easily distinguished, and a place to put them in. I've often thought that the habit of buying things wholesale—so many dolls, all exactly alike, so many yards of calico for dresses, all exactly alike, leads, in institutions like yours, to a vague conception of private property, and even of individuality itself. If some room could be allowed for free choice—the children be allowed to buy their own calicoes, within a given price, or to choose the ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... stage. I'll never forget the morning the first stage train came. Men had use for their money then, though many of them used gold weighed out in little scales. Flour was a dollar and a half a pound, calico fifty cents a yard, and eggs five dollars a dozen. Shoes were priceless. One man bought a pair for thirty dollars. I remember that Robert and I wanted to give our neighbor's little girl a birthday ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... my landlady—who is a saint in spectacles and calico—looked at me one morning at the breakfast table and said, VERY gently, 'You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Old Maggie had donned her ragged slippers and a blue calico wrapper and shuffled to the foot of the emergency bed. Old Maggie was of that vague neighbourhood back of the Avenue, where squalor and poverty rubbed elbows with vice, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth, and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her bread—meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage; in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions was something like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who was better off needed that sort of thing. And since Mary had been keeping Mr. Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had been converted into something more positive, by alarm lest Fred ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and a little girl of eight. The exquisite neatness of the room almost concealed its wretchedness: everything announced order and economy, but at the same time great poverty. A painted wooden bedstead, covered with coarse but clean calico sheets, blue calico curtains, four chairs, a straw arm-chair, a high desk of dark wood, with a few books and boxes placed on shelves, composed the entire furniture of the room. And yet the man who lay on that wretched bed, whose ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... it, John?" said Mrs. Sedley to her husband; and that night in a conversation which took place in a front room in the second floor, in a sort of tent, hung round with chintz of a rich and fantastic India pattern, and double with calico of a tender rose-colour; in the interior of which species of marquee was a featherbed, on which were two pillows, on which were two round red faces, one in a laced nightcap, and one in a simple cotton one, ending in a tassel—in a CURTAIN ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were off Calicut, a curious old town of nearly 50,000 inhabitants, to which belong many ancient stories and traditions. As we all know, it gives its name to that useful and familiar material—calico. This was the first point of India touched at by Vasco de Gama nearly 400 years ago, after his long voyage from Portugal. Not far from Calicut, near Mahe, a high rock rises—one of the few places in India where ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... hand him back the dagger "quite careless like," and never let on that she'd thought anything of it. Perhaps that was the reason why, before she went to bed, she took a good look at it, and after taking off her straight, beltless, calico gown she even tried the effect of it, thrust in the stiff waistband of her petticoat, with the jeweled hilt displayed, and thought it looked charming—as indeed it did. And then, having said her ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... reached the corner of Little South St. He made none then; the door was opened softly, and he brought her up the stairs and into his room without disturbing or falling in with anybody. Putting her on a calico-covered settee, Winthrop pulled off his coat and set about ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... quota to the public burdens. In a word, I have heard my Aunt Judith say, that in her youth it was usual for respectable young women to take service with more thriving neighbors or friends, for the annual allowance of their board and a single calico gown, at four and sixpence a yard,—as the price was before mills were established ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... the trenches. All day long the big guns boom. By night the rifles and machine-guns take up the tale. One is frequently aroused from slumber, especially towards dawn, by a perfect tornado of firing. The machine-guns make a noise like a giant tearing calico. Periodically, too, as already stated, we are subjected to an hour's intimidation in the shape of bombardment. Shrapnel bursts over our heads; shells explode in the streets, especially in open spaces, or where two important streets cross. (With modern artillery you can shell a town quite methodically ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... it," and she left the room. Lindsay glanced round and promptly announced to himself that he could not come there again. It was taking too violent an advantage. The pursuit of an angel does not imply that you may trap her in her corner under the Throne. The place was divided by a calico curtain, over which plainly showed the top of a mosquito curtain—she slept in there. On the walls were all tender texts about loving and believing and bearing others' burdens, interspersed with photographs, mostly of women with plain features and enthusiastic ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and grandma came from church and when grandma came out of her room where she had changed her silk dress for a calico dress in order to get dinner, I stepped out from a door and said, "Hello, grandma." "Why, child," she said, "you almost scared me to pieces. What are you doin' here? Where's your popie and your momie?" Then ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... a word from a great heart! Such a word, uncouth and simple, but hot from a manly bosom, pierced silk and broadcloth as if they had been calico and fustian, and made a fashionable young lady and a bold school-boy take hands and cry together. But such sweet tears dry quickly; they dry almost as ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... at her side within the circle of her arm, his head against her shoulder and his eyes wide with a delicious horror as he gazed upon a calico book whose pages were brilliant with the tragedy of the three bears, which she was reading very slowly and with many explanatory annotations. Crimie balanced himself against her knee and beat with a spoon against the back of the book and whooped up the situation in ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... folds and long train of her pale satin draperies, the high, transparent cap, the crisp fichu crossed over the breast, which set off to advantage the charming little plump figure with its rounded lines—could fail to recognise the same characteristics which sparkled about the wearer of the pink calico domino in which she frolicked incognito 'till she was tired' at a ball given by the Duke of Wellington in 1814, or of the eight blue feathers which crowned the waving tresses of her flaxen hair ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... child's bed, of the sort called trundle-bed in those days, which could be wheeled under the high-legged bed of the parents, lay the bridegroom, in his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes, with his steeple-crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and his face as red as burning fever ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... before his death in 1891, he begged that I would do him one final act of friendship by supplying him with a winding sheet, that he might go decently to his grave under the sods and the spear-grass, bearing thither a token of the love I bore him. It was a good shroud of fine white calico bought in the bazaar, and it cost more than a dollar. But I found it very willingly, for I remembered that I was aiding to remove from the face of the earth, and to lay in his quiet resting-place, the last Pirate on ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... his degree in philology, and is looking out for a position. Member of the same clubs as Vasily Leoniditch, and also of the Society for the Organisation of Calico Balls. [1] Is bald-headed, quick in movement and speech, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... 8ca: He is a gawky, love-sick youth. He goes a-courting on Potriffle, but finding a rival sitting on the "calico-side" returns to his plowing, weeps, then becomes cheerful in his resolve ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... have been safe for a very child. Half the peasantry had come in from the outlying environs of Villette, and the decent burghers were all abroad and around, dressed in their best. My straw-hat passed amidst cap and jacket, short petticoat, and long calico mantle, without, perhaps, attracting a glance; I only took the precaution to bind down the broad leaf gipsy-wise, with a supplementary ribbon—and then I felt ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... certain quantity of rain water, kept at nearly the boiling temperature by an alcohol lamp placed under the vessel, dissolve per cent. 2 parts of commercial primuline, and in this immerse, by means of a glass rod, some pieces of calico—free from dressing—turning them over several times during the immersion. When the fibers are well imbued, which requires from four to five minutes, remove the calico with the glass rod and rinse it thoroughly in water. This done, wring out the superfluous ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... a band around the neck and arms, and, in cold weather a pretty blanket was wrapped around their shoulders and fastened at the breast in front. In summer the blanket was replaced by a square of bright calico. Their coarse, black hair hung in long braids in front over each shoulder, and nearly all of them wore an even bang or fringe over the forehead. Of course hats were unheard of. The Apaches, both men and ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... that came to him. The very rankness of the smell of manure in the clear sweet air awoke something heady in his brain. The poor little houses lighted by kerosene lamps, the smoke from the chimneys mounting straight up into the clear air, the grunting of pigs, the women clad in cheap calico dresses and washing dishes in the kitchens, the footsteps of men coming out of the houses and going off to the stores and saloons of Main Street, the dogs barking and the children crying—all of these things made him seem, as ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... suspended, with the exception of that proud boast of an enlightened country, a free press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious." Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history of ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... self-control and intelligence of this pony-horse. The dealer amiably withdrew him, and said that he would bring next day a horse—if he could get the owner to part with a family pet—that would suit; but upon investigation it appeared that this treasure was what is called a calico-horse, and my friend, who was without the ambition to figure in the popular eye as a stray circus-rider, declined ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... spoke, she pushed a waiter full of seeds under the stove as if she hated the very sight of them; and when she stood up again, Dotty observed that her dirty calico dress did not come anywhere near the tops ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... Moorish habite, cassocks of colored cloth or silk, with buttons and loopes; over this an ALHAGA or white woolen mantle, so large as to wrap both head and body; a shash or small turban; naked legg'd and armed, but with leather socks like the Turks; rich scymeters, and large calico-sleeved shirts. The ambassador had a string of pearls oddly woven in the turban. Their presents were lions and estridges (ostriches.) But the concourse and tumult of the people was intolerable, so as the officers could keep no order."] and ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... modern artist would paint them. For native coloring, there were typical specimens of northern Indians, grunting their jargon amid the babel of other tongues; and groups of squaws wandered through the irregular streets in gaudy blankets and red calico. The only civilizing element to be seen was the camp of engineers, running the survey of the ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... man looked at these details with an expression of pleasure that seemed to have something rather sad in it; his eyes roved from the kitchen to the roof, with a motion that showed a deliberate purpose. The rosy glow of the rising sun fell on a calico curtain at one of the garret windows, the others being without that luxury. As he caught sight of it the young fellow's face brightened gaily. He stepped back a little way, leaned against a linden, and sang, in the drawling ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... hemmed grey calico covers for the drawers and the dressing-table, and we drew the blinds half-down, and when all was done the room looked as quiet as ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... think she must have been like the old schoolmistress, who occasionally boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells strongly of pasteboard and calico. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... against, occupied as it was with other thoughts; thus die now the other industries; the fine manufactures of the Visayas are gradually disappearing from trade and even from use; the people, continually getting poorer, cannot afford the costly cloths and have to be content with calico or the imitations of the Germans, who produce imitations even of the work of ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... clean room. Floor and window and cupboard-door were as clean as water could make them; and the bed, while it looked hopelessly hard and dreadful to Mrs. Roberts, was really a pattern of neatness and purity to every dweller in that attic. There was a straw tick, covered with a dark calico spread, which did duty as a sheet, and the boy who lay on it was covered by a patched quilt that had been mended, and was clean. Wonderful things these to say of such a locality! Mr. Roberts suspected it, and Dr. Everett knew it. That gentleman was ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... mask of a face was marred by one or two scratches and by a smudge of dirt. But it was as calm and as eternally smiling as ever. In place of his wontedly correct, if garish, form of dress, he was clad in ragged calico shirt and soiled drill trousers whose lower portions were in ribbons. All of which formed a ludicrous contrast to his white buckskin yachting shoes and his corded ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... song which the men chant as they row home at the close of day. The pathos in the woman's voice was so exquisite, its notes so true, that Madge's blue eyes filled with tears. None of the four friends stirred until the song was over, and the girl in her faded calico dress and bare feet had disappeared into the cabin of ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... myself being accommodated in the other one, where we were very hospitably received by the senhora of the sitio, an old Indian woman, whose gold ornaments, necklace, and ear-rings were rather out of keeping with her calico skirt and cotton waist. This is, however, by no means an unusual combination here. Beside the old lady, the family consisted, at this moment, of her afilhada (god-daughter), with her little boy, and several other women employed about the place; but it is difficult to judge of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... in the country especially, nothing can be more fun or more appropriate than a barn dance, or an impromptu play, or a calico masquerade, with properties and clothes made of any old thing and in a few hours—even in a ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... everything it is clean-shaven. Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your bourgeois who set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet, ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a candle. There's the epoch for you. My demand is that I may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians. Ah! in 1787, I predict ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... truth of that, I've never married, Mr. John; I do as I please and don't have to listen to a passel of opinion. But I was going to say, what's to hinder me from toting that boy to my home? There are no calico petticoats hanging up in ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... from the house a bed and mattress, which she supplied with sheets, pillows, blankets, and a quilt. Then Uncle Nathan, the carpenter, took a large wooden box and put shelves in it, and tacked some bright-colored calico all around it, and made a bureau. Two or three chairs were spared from the nursery, and Diddie put some of her toys on the mantel-piece for the baby; and then, when they had brought in a little square table and covered it with a neat white cloth, and placed upon it a mug of flowers, and ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... born, in 1826, at Llwynymaen, and was a partner in a mercer's business with Mr. Edward Morris (who afterwards purchased and sold the Van Mine near Caersws), under the style of Messrs. Morris and Savin. Mr. Savin's mind, however, was not entirely concentrated on measuring cloth and calico. He took a keen interest in the life of the town, and was an energetic supporter of local institutions. Elected to the Town Council in 1856, he was mayor in 1863, and appointed alderman in 1871, an office he retained to the end of his varied ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... gray horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the verandah, where the light of a kerosene-lamp fell on a brown calico habit and a white face under ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... their suspense, and with a twinkle in his eye proceeded slowly, "I was sort of loafin' around town one day about two weeks ago when I come across a Seminole, who, I reckon, had been sent in by his squaw to trade for red calico and beads," he paused for a moment and Charley ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and shook her red curls from her eyes. She gave a breathless gasp and began fanning herself with the flap of her white sunbonnet. A fine moisture shone on her bare neck and arms above her frock of sprigged chintz calico. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... useful and powerful distraction for Amedee Violette's grief. L'Atelier, when played the first week in April, did not obtain more than a respectful greeting from the public; it was an indifferent success. This vulgar society, these simple, plain, sentiments, the sweetheart in a calico gown, the respectable old man in short frock and overalls, the sharp lines where here and there boldly rang out a slang word of the faubourg; above all, the scene representing a mill in full activity, with its grumbling workmen, its machines in motion, even ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the end came. One morning, the brown calico frock was changed for an India silk, and the little school bonnet, with its blue veil, for a new one, covered with artificials. She was accompanied by an elderly lady, and looked nervous and excited. I was troubled at the tremulous, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... wearing late, one day toward the end of summer, and Mercy Crane sat in her doorway dressed in a favorite old-fashioned light calico and a small shoulder shawl figured with large palm leaves. She was making some tatting of a somewhat intricate pattern; she believed it to be the prettiest and most durable of trimmings, and having decorated her own wardrobe in the course of unlimited leisure, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a thumb toward the house, and in the tense silence Hardy could clearly discern the sound of women's voices. Now you could ride the Four Peaks country far and wide and never hear the music of such voices, never see calico on the line, or a lace curtain across the window. There were no women in that godless land, not since the Widow Winship took Sallie and Susie and left precipitately for St. Louis, none save the Senora Moreno and certain strapping ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... quiet and looking at the cash-box in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was "capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... spinning wool on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico short-gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long low window under the eaves. There was ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... street so narrow that two vehicles cannot pass in it. A wooden staircase with an iron handrail led from a dark passage to the large barrack-like hall they occupied: an abode which Balzac tried to beautify, possibly for Madame de Berny's visits, by hangings of blue calico. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... but at the time of my visit, ten years later, they were comparatively civilised. At the Peake we were enabled to re-shoe all our horses, for the stony road up from Port Augusta had worn out all that were put on there. I also had an extra set fitted for each horse, rolled up in calico, and marked with its name. At the Peake I engaged a young man named Alec Robinson, who, according to his account, could do everything, and had been everywhere, who knew the country I was about to explore perfectly well, and who had frequently met and camped with blacks from the west ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Lamba Theta—a compliment rarely paid to a Freshman. As a preparatory initiation ordeal he had to parade the principal business streets of Kingsport for a whole day wearing a sunbonnet and a voluminous kitchen apron of gaudily flowered calico. This he did cheerfully, doffing his sunbonnet with courtly grace when he met ladies of his acquaintance. Charlie Sloane, who had not been asked to join the Lambs, told Anne he did not see how Blythe could do it, and HE, for his part, could ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... CALICO-BUSH.) The only species which grows at all tree-like has ovate-lanceolate or elliptical, smooth, petioled leaves, tapering at both ends and green on both sides. Flowers in terminal corymbs, clammy-pubescent, white to ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus. Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction. They consist of companies of slaves from the plantations, generally of the lower class. Two athletic men, in calico wrappers, have a net thrown over them, covered with all manner of bright-colored stripes. Cows' tails are fastened to their backs, and their heads are decorated with horns. A box, covered with sheepskin, is called the gumbo ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... There is not any real economy in purchasing cheap calico for night-shirts. Cheap calico soon wears into holes, and becomes discoloured ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... to her room to change her plain brown calico gown for a fine black silk dress and mantle that had been Reuben Gray's nuptial present to her, and a ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... cracks; and pedestals and statues LOOKED like marble. At some distance, you could not tell but that the wreaths and eagles were gold embroidery, and not gilt paper—the great tricolor flags damask, and not striped calico. One would think that these sham splendors betokened sham respect, if one had not known that the name of Napoleon is held in real reverence, and observed somewhat of the character of the nation. Real feelings they have, but they distort ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... mill office. The change from her dull, drab life, giving her, as it did, an opportunity for companionship with people of greater mentality and refinement than she had been used to, quickly brought about a swift transition in the girl's nature. With the passing of the coarse shoes and calico dresses and the substitution of the kind of clothing all women of Moira's instinctive refinement and natural beauty long for, the girl became cheerful, animated, and imbued with the optimism of her years. At first old Sinclair resented the advent ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... yellow eyes fixed upon her. When Moska began to whine she would say as she quieted it: "Enough, enough! I know without thy telling me that my time is near." A month before her death she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white cambric, and pink ribbon, and, with the help of the maidservants, fashioned the garments in which she wished to be buried. Next she put everything on her shelves in order and handed the bailiff an inventory which she had made out with scrupulous accuracy. All that she kept back was a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... roll, wrap it in calico, bury it in the garden, take it up next day. The sufferer from whooping-cough is then to eat the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... us the example; but as we were not qualified by years of arduously won sanctity to stand stark naked in the presence he conceded us a clout apiece torn from a filthy length of calico that some one had tossed in a corner. And he tore another piece of filthy red cotton cloth in halves, and divided it between us to twist around our heads. King laughed ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... said Meg patiently. "Mother is going to cover them with calico, the way she had her books when she was little. Some of the covers are so torn I hate to have to ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... and decent, in a neat calico dress and gingham sun-bonnet. At sight of Elsie she stood still, and, gazing with open-mouthed curiosity, asked, "Be you the rich young lady that was coming to see Miss Wealthy from ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... and children were getting as intimate with the turf and the sweet earth as their nurses would let them. We turned into a little cottage, which gave notice of hospitality for a consideration; and were shown, by a pretty maid in calico, into an upper room,—a neat, cheerful, common room, with bright flowers in the open windows, and white muslin curtains for contrast. We looked out on the green and over to the beautiful churchyard, where one of England's greatest painters, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... about women. I never could understand why some men who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a bold of calico draped around what belongs to it. Inside of eight minutes me and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around as amiable as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of canned fruit I had eaten, and I got back at her, flat-footed, about how a certain lady named Eve started ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... respectable career as black silk slippers, having been neatly covered with that material by Mrs. Barton's own neat fingers. Wonderful fingers those! they were never empty; for if she went to spend a few hours with a friendly parishioner, out came her thimble and a piece of calico or muslin, which, before she left, had become a mysterious little garment with all sorts of hemmed ins and outs. She was even trying to persuade her husband to leave off tight pantaloons, because if he would wear the ordinary gun-cases, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... left, with no one to care for it, to grow up at the poorhouse with the other wretched orphan children, who wore calico dresses all alike and had little to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... not unusual to find an old Indian wrapped in a blanket made of twisted rabbit-skins, but I doubt if one could be found to-day. The white man's overalls, blouse and ordinary coat and vest for the men, with calico in variegated colors for the women, seem to have completely taken the place of their own primitive dress. A pair of moccasins, however, now and again, may be found in use at a dance or on some ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... foolish trick, Fanny, to be idling away all the evening upon a sofa. Why cannot you come and sit here, and employ yourself as we do? If you have no work of your own, I can supply you from the poor basket. There is all the new calico, that was bought last week, not touched yet. I am sure I almost broke my back by cutting it out. You should learn to think of other people; and, take my word for it, it is a shocking trick for a young person to be always lolling ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... kitchen, followed by a strapping Irish girl, nearly six feet in height. Her hair, flaming red, was twisted round a huge back comb; her faded calico dress came far above her ankles; her brawny arms were folded one over the other; and there was in her appearance something altogether disagreeable and defiant. Mrs. Hamilton introduced her as Ruth, her new cook, saying she hoped ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... game. We 'll get you, and get you early, see if we don't. There are other things besides money in this world, and you 've got your price, just as well as every other man. Perhaps it's silk, perhaps it's calico; but you bet it's something, for you 're no angel. By God, I believe I could ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... framework of light posts and thin laths occupied the greater part of the deck amidships of the Emma. The four walls of that airy structure were made of muslin. It was comparatively lofty. A door-like arrangement of light battens filled with calico was further protected by a system of curtains calculated to baffle the pursuit of mosquitoes that haunted the shores of the lagoon in great singing clouds from sunset till sunrise. A lot of fine mats covered ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... bespoke a pair immediately, and sent Mary a piece of pretty calico for the outside. The last-maker made a last for her, and over this Mary sewed the calico vamps tight. Her brother advised her to try platted packthread instead of hemp for the soles; and she found that this looked more neat than ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... where I sometimes have the honor to be a guest. I am a man, and silks and laces confuse me. Yet I remember three young girls in a frontier town more than forty years ago. Mary Gentry was slender—"skinny," we called her to tease her. Her dark-blue calico dress was clean and prim. Lettie Conlow was fat. Her skin was thick and muddy, and there was a brown mole below her ear. Her black, slick braids of hair were my especial dislike. She had no neck to speak of, and ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... augmented her store, until she had two kittens, one little white pig with a curly tail, half a dozen soft piepies, one kid, and many inanimate articles, such as broken bottles, dishes, looking-glass and gay bits of calico. When the little thing became sleepy she would toddle through the long grass to a corner, whence the river could be heard fretting against its banks, and lie there: she said the water sang to her. Finding that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... and children, from the awkward age of shoe-top trousers and skirts to that which, in many cases, was partaking from the maternal fount, as the women stood in groups and whispered as they looked at us shyly. Somehow their decorous calico skirts, which just cleared the ground, made me feel naked in my own of white corduroy, which was all of eight inches from the mud in which theirs ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of human carcases was plentiful. Sometimes, when the harvest was too plentiful, they imposed on the missionaries by letting the word slip out that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue. Promptly the missionaries would buy the lives of the victims with stick tobacco, fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads. Natheless the chiefs drove a handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus live meat. Also, they could always go ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... elbows on the top of the ash hopper and looked at her laughingly. He had on a straw hat lined with green calico, and his trousers were of blue jeans, held up by "galluses" of the same; but he was a handsome fellow, with sound white ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... policeman, talking to her down the area. Punch is independent and original in this respect. His strange creed seems to be, that human nature is human nature,—whether, in its feminine department, you robe it in silk or calico, and, in its male department, button a red coat over the breast of an officer of the Guards, or put the coarse jerkin on the broad back of the industrious toilsman. And according to this whimsical belief, he writes and talks jocosely, but with covert ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... cotton or calico stimulate the skin too much by the points of the fibres, though less than flannel; whence cotton handkerchiefs make the nose sore by frequent use. The fibres of cotton are, I suppose, ten times shorter than those of flax, and the number of points in consequence twenty times the number; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... was clothed in a blue calico frock and white apron, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, showing some faint traces of flour clinging to her wrists, as if she had been suddenly summoned from the bread-bowl. She was fresh and sweet, strong and healthy, with a certain grace of manner about her that ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the corner. A rough pine table was in the middle of the floor and a smaller one against the wall. On this side table sat two rusty flat-irons, and against it leaned an ironing board. A dirty piece of turkey-red calico hung on a string for a portiere at the opening which evidently led into a sort of kitchen somewhere ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... t'way fro' Lincoln, and looked at it through little tallerscope things, and me standing close by all the time to see as they didn't steal nowt, for them sort's terruble folk for knocking bits off wi' hammers as they carries in their pockets and spreadin' bits o' calico over t' brasses, and rubbin' 'em wi' heel balls same as I uses for edges of soles; and first one and then another of 'em says—'Human.' That's what they says. Ay, lad, that's true enough, and been here ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... ask papa if we mayn't buy some calico and other things, with some of our benevolence money, ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... man of a neighbouring English livery-stable drew up a dark-coloured job cab, with a red-and-white striped calico lining, drawn by a venerable long-backed white horse, at the Countess's gateway in the Rue des Mauvais-Garcons, into which Mr. Jorrocks having handed her ladyship, and Agamemnon, who was attired in his chasseur uniform, having climbed up behind, the old horse, after two or three flourishes ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... that whatever breeze there was might come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected from the flies by a brown paper bag inverted over its head. Two plaster ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant rosette, while more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag of somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union Jacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal wand—probably the roller from a piece of calico. Henchard rolled up his flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and went ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... there, in the great mass of darkness under the lofty foliage. More lanterns, of the shape of cylindrical concertinas, hanging in a row from a slack string, decorated the doorway of what Schomberg called grandiloquently "my concert-hall." In his desperate mood Heyst ascended three steps, lifted a calico curtain, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... received at my house. Should any believers have tables, chairs, bedsteads, bedding, earthenware, or any kind of household furniture to spare, for the furnishing of the house; or remnants, or pieces of calico, linen, flannel, cloth, or any materials useful for wearing apparel; or clothes already worn, they will ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... ago, lie on the shelf and laugh as I saw her stand by the half hour before the glass, giving an extra twist to her curl and an additional dash of white powder on her hair—now fretted because the powder was too thick, now fretted because it was too thin? She was as proud in cambric and calico and nankeen as Harriet is to-day in white tulle and organdy. I remember how careful she was when she ran me along the edges of the new dress. With me she clipped and notched and gored and trimmed, and day and night I went click! click! click! and it seemed as if ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... my life I have been shocked more than once, mostly, while living in North Carolina. For instance, in 1876, when it was supposed that Tilden had been elected, the young men of Odell's store thought it a good joke and decorated my fence with black calico. Our colored cook, thinking it would hurt our feelings, stripped it all off early in the morning before we got a sight of it, much to our regret. But Madam was equal to the emergency and had the girl gather up the black stuff and take it to Odell's store to sell for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Moore Africa has shaken her up by shifting her, and by giving her a lesson in local values, just as the donkey has done about linen or calico, I ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Look you, sir, I shall never be reconciled to this nauseous wrapping-gown, therefore pray get me another suit with all possible expedition; for this is my eternal aversion.—[Exit TAILOR.] Well but, Tam, you don't tell me what has driven you to Scarborough.— Mrs. Calico, are not you of my mind? Semp. Directly, my lord.—I hope your lordship is pleased with your ruffles? Lord Fop. In love with them, stap my vitals!—Bring my bill, you shall be paid to-morrow. Semp. I humbly thank your worship. ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... o' life. Hits me now that ther ol' sky scout was 'bout right. Feller cain't possibly keep busy all th' love in his system, workin' it off on nothing but a pet hoss or gun; thar's allus a hell of a lot you didn't know you had comes oozin' out when a proper piece o' calico lets ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... naturally they have brought back many new words from East and West. Sometimes these are the names of new things brought from strange lands. Thus calico was given that name from Calicut, because the cotton used to make calico came from there. From Arabia we got the words harem and magazine, and from Turkey the name coffee, though this is really an Arabian word. We had already learned the words cotton, sugar, and ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... that a large box, bearing my address, had arrived at one of the Orphan-Houses. I set off immediately, and found it was from the neighbourhood of Wolverhampton. It contained 12l. for the Orphans, 1l. 11s. 10d. for the other Funds, 4 yards of flannel, 9 yards of calico, 12 yards of print, 4 1/2 yards of coloured cotton, 4 yards of stuff, 2 pairs of stockings, and 3 1/4 yards of brown holland. Besides this, there were in it the following articles for sale: 2 decanters and stands, 4 glass salt cellars, 3 scent bottles, a set of cruets and stand, 5 beer ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... "All of us girls must meet as often as we can, during the coming week, to make aprons and neckties out of print. Only one apron and one necktie is to be alike, and Walt Haley and Mr. Dilloway are going to give us as much calico as ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... said Miss Ianthe Howard, a young lady of six years' standing, attired in a tattered calico thickened with dirt; her unkempt locks straggling from under that hideous substitute for a bonnet so universal in the Western country—a dirty cotton handkerchief—which is used ad nauseam for all ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... good wig, you should shape a piece of calico to fit the head; then sew fire shavings or tow all over it. If you wish for a curly wig, it is a good plan to wind the shavings or tow tightly round a ruler, and tack it along with a back stitch, which will hold the curl in position after you have slipped it off the ruler. These ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... up an auction block before the door of the hotel and auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn't we?" suggested Helen, who had been rummaging in her bag. "Here, Bella! If you want a shirt-waist to take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one. One of mine. And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy's did. She wears an ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... about the kitchen, preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... garret and cellar. In the former were barrels of hickory nuts, and, on a long shelf, large cakes of maple sugar and all kinds of dried herbs and sweet flag; spinning wheels, a number of small white cotton bags filled with bundles, marked in ink, "silk," "cotton," "flannel," "calico," etc., as well as ancient masculine and feminine costumes. Here we would crack the nuts, nibble the sharp edges of the maple sugar, chew some favorite herb, play ball with the bags, whirl the old spinning wheels, dress up in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... them sitting round the dining-room: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, Mrs. Belk with her busy eyes, and Miss Kendal and Miss Louisa, Mrs. Oldshaw and Dorsy; and Mrs. Horn, the grocer's wife, very stiff in a corner by herself, sewing unbleached calico and hot red flannel, hot sunlight soaking into them. The library was dim, and leathery and tobaccoey ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... tell you that I never give any reasons. But what I was saying was this: that I've learnt that the world likes tinsel and glitter—just as the Sioux Indians are caught by glass beads and lengths of Turkey red calico. And I give the world what it ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... to be sure, we've the outfit on board for a disaster, if we wanted one. Two real torpedoes that hold, between them, four hundred pounds of gun-cotton—or danger-calico, as Williamson would call it. But cheer up, old fellow. There's no danger, after all. Williamson and his pipe ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... moved on shore, took up his quarters at Larkin's house, and established his headquarters, with Captain Turner as his adjutant general. One day Turner and Warner were at my tent, and, seeing a store-bag full of socks, drawers, and calico shirts, of which I had laid in a three years' supply, and of which they had none, made known to me their wants, and I told them to help themselves, which Turner and Warner did. The latter, however, insisted on paying me the cost, and from that ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... hand in his bosom. This—this was the concrete symbol of their land—worthy of all honor and reverence! Let no boy look on this flag who did not purpose to worthily add to its imperishable lustre. He shook it before them—a large calico Union Jack, staring in all three colors, and waited for the thunder of applause that should crown ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Canada Line, playing with his Yard-stick, and perhaps about to take the measure of an unmade piece of calico; when Mabel, with a wild cry of joy, sprang from a small boat to his side. The meeting was too much. They divided a good square faint between them this time. At last Philander found his utterance, and said, "Do they think of me at Home, do they ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... from continual crying. Her hair had been brushed twice that morning by Aunt Izzie, but Katy had run her fingers impatiently through it, till it stood out above her head like a frowsy bush. She wore a calico dressing-gown, which, though clean, was particularly ugly in pattern; and the room, for all its tidiness, had a dismal look, with the chairs set up against the wall, and a row of medicine-bottles on ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... of cold water in the morning, and not possessing a towel clean enough for a white man, he insisted that I should use his wife's newly starched calico apron to wipe my face and hands upon. When I offered him money for the night's accommodation and the excellent oyster breakfast that his wife prepared for me, he said: "You may gib my wife whateber pleases you for her cooking, but nuffin for de food ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... looked back with such loving thoughts that night. A narrow wooden bedstead, as battered and crippled as Little Lottie, but without the latter's air of sympathy and companionship; a tremulous kitchen table; a long box set on end and curtained off with a bit of faded calico, a single chair with a mended leg—these rude conveniences comprised my total list of housekeeping effects, not forgetting, of course, the dish-pan, the stubby broom, and the coal-scuttle, along with the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... failed, and for some months Cobden had to take unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out on the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester calico-printers to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the enterprise ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... said the other. "Will you come into my room?" Betty followed her into a small room, simpler than any in her own servants' quarter. But it was neat, and there was an attempt at smartness in the bright calico curtains and bedspread. The furniture looked home-made, and there was no carpet ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... a comparatively silent one, but Roger noted with a contemptuous glance that his sister's hair was arranged more neatly than he had seen it since the previous Sunday, and that her calico dress, collar, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... you? One case more or less for your filing cabinet, that's all. If I were one of these poor girls and found myself stuck in one of these places that screams out their indigence above the very doorway, dresses them in the blue calico of indigence, and then seals and stamps indigence all over them, I'd show you what real indigence is, once you insisted upon stamping me with it. But you're not going to make an indigent out of my baby. No, you're ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... upon a hunk of corn bread, while the chickens, with easy familiarity, peck at the crumbs which fall upon her black shins. Within the cabin, Polly, the miller's wife, has tied a string of beads about her sleek black throat, and now, in all the bravery of her flowered calico, is ready to set off for the quarter; first, though, she pauses at the gate ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... or know Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playing relations? must my friend's brethren of necessity be mine also? must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Selby the calico printer, because W.S., who is neither, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a common parentage with them? Let him lay down his brothers; and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a superflux) to balance the concession. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Tobey, and Tim unhooked a calico bag from the saddlebow and held it out. A laugh ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... knows what it was. Wait a bit.... I believe I didn't tear it off anything. It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it up in a ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... printed from taking the dye, consequently these remain white or a different color. This is called the "resist" process. Another process is to first dye the cloth and then print on some chemical which, when the calico is steamed, discharges the color. This is called the "discharge" process. Sometimes this weakens the goods in the places where the color has ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... woman were looking at him so strangely and pleasingly. They seemed to thank him and caressingly beckoned him, and besides those eyes he saw nothing. The woman was dressed like the city women. She wore shoes, a calico waist, and over her black hair she had a peculiar kerchief. Tall and supple, seated on a pile of wood, she repaired sacks, quickly moving her hands, which were bare up to the elbows, and she smiled ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... used in the preparation of chromium compounds for use as pigments (chrome-yellow, &c.) and in calico-printing; it is also used in the manufacture of chrome-steel. (L. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... had the boy set between us to the supper-table, Josiah and me did, in Thomas Jefferson's little high-chair. I had new covered it on purpose for him with bright copperplate calico. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the sun go down on you," he read. "That's the third one of those reminders, Calico," he told the horse. "The wording a little different but ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... for the explanation. You have heard, I dare say, of those wonderful spinning-machines which take in at one end a mass of raw cotton, very like what you see in wadding, and give out at the other a roll of fine calico, all folded and packed up ready to be delivered to the tradespeople. Well, you have within you, a machine even more ingenious than that, which receives from you all the bread-and-butter and other sorts of food you choose to put into it, and returns it to you changed into the nails, hair, bones ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... her face so thickly freckled that it was all freckles; she had confluent freckles, and as the spots and blotches were of different shades, one could see that they overlapped like the scales of a fish. Her head was bound tightly round with a piece of white calico, and no hair appeared ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... Junior, rolled in a shawl, on his knee. The wife's face and heart were calm with thankful content as the hours moved on. She was rosy and plump, with pleasant blue eyes and brown hair, a wholesome presence at the hearthstone, in her gown of clean chocolate calico with her linen collar and scarlet cravat. Top, Senior, had noticed and praised the new red ribbon. He comprehended that it was put on to please him and Junior, both of whom liked to see "Mother fixed up." In this life, ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... two figures which had moved silently down the avenue passed and went on; the man solid and compact, as if well-fed, his face as he turned, however, giving the lie to such impression, but his keen alert eyes seeing every shade of difference in the merest scrap of calico or tufts of hair. For the woman, it was plain to see why the needle had been of small service, her wandering, undecided blue eyes passing over everything to which the man's hook ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... or a farm Where I'll get up at six instead of twelve, Where I'll wear calico instead of silk, And where there'll be no furnace in the house. And where the carpet which has kept me here And keeps you here as editor is not. I'm going to economize my life By freeing it of systems which grow rich By using me, and for the privilege ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... village near the foot of the White Horse range. And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and begat sons and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of the roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings, and calico shirts, and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with the "rheumatiz," and good counsel to all; and kept the coal and clothes' clubs going, for yule-tide, when the bands of mummers came round, dressed out in ribbons and coloured ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... molasses, and calico greeted her; so, too, did Elias Barnes, who came forward from behind the counter, extending his damp and sticky palm and showing every tooth that an expansive ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... president of the evening, who was fortunately a "popular" character, order was partially restored; and the favorite scene from Miss More's dialogue of David and Goliath was announced as the closing piece. The sight of little David in a white tunic edged with red tape, with a calico scrip and a very primitive-looking sling; and a huge Goliath decorated with a militia belt and sword, and a spear like a weaver's beam indeed, enchained everybody's attention. Even the peccant schoolmaster and his ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... why should the present be right and the past wrong? The men who painted the pictures and built the palaces of three hundred years ago were certainly of as delicate fiber, of as keen reason, as ourselves, who merely print calico and build locomotives. What makes me think this, is that I have been calculating my nativity by help of an old book belonging to Sor Asdrubale—and see, my horoscope tallies almost exactly with that of Medea da Carpi, as given by a chronicler. May this explain? No, no; all is explained by the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of a wrapper, or short loose jacket, of printed calico, and a blue winsey petticoat, which she had a habit of tucking between her knees, to keep it out of harm's way, as often as she stooped to any wet work, or, more especially, when doing anything by the fire. Margaret's dress was, in ordinary, like her mother's, with the exception of the cap; ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... riding by, All in a coach and four, And pretty Annette, in a calico gown (Bringing her marketing things from town), Stopped short with her Sunday store, And wondered if ever it should betide That she in a long plumed hat would ride Away ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... her attention upon the white cotton socks she was knitting for her spouse and the other half on the gate of her small garden through which her "chile" would come, she sat in her doorway awaiting him. She was splendidly arrayed in her new purple calico and a big white apron, just from under the iron. Her gayest bandanna "hankercher" covered her tightly "wropped" locks from view and the snowiest of "neckerchers" was crossed over her ample bosom. Her kind, black countenance was ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... him, about ten leagues off the city of Nankin, we had first of all the honour to ride with the master of the house about two miles; the state he rode in was a perfect Don Quixotism, being a mixture of pomp and poverty. His habit was very proper for a merry-andrew, being a dirty calico, with hanging sleeves, tassels, and cuts and slashes almost on every side: it covered a taffety vest, so greasy as to testify that his honour must be a most exquisite sloven. His horse was a poor, starved, hobbling creature, and two slaves followed him on foot to drive the poor ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home. I thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a corncrake—a creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song like to the tearing of calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening of saws—settled somewhere in the garden and set to work to praise its Maker according to its lights. I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and spends his evenings at the Garrick Club. He writes occasional verse for the evening papers, and talks ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... several shops was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them, or that they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a great many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise; and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she led him such a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to the utmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... some of the leading men connected with the calico-printing trade and looms of art, established a School of Design within the Royal Institution, where two rooms were lent rent-free; but, as soon as Government apportioned a part of a special grant to the Manchester School, the Committee, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... his hands more than usually full. For, once a month, certain printed bills, called Mess-bills, are circulated among the crew, and whatever you may want from the Purser—be it tobacco, soap, duck, dungaree, needles, thread, knives, belts, calico, ribbon, pipes, paper, pens, hats, ink, shoes, socks, or whatever it may be—down it goes on the mess-bill, which, being the next day returned to the office of the Steward, the "slops," as they are called, are served out to the men and charged ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... actress, "get this woman into your dressing room and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part, understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satin waist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room, where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! We can't be on ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... went to the kitchen on Sunday morning, the one day she allowed herself to relax, she found the fire crackling in the stove and the kettle filled and ready to boil. Standing by the table, rolling out biscuit, was a small, old mulatto woman, wiry and erect. She was dressed in a stiff, purple calico dress and on her head was a bandanna handkerchief, the ends tied in front and ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... individual standpoint. Questions upon which Adam Smith and Auguste Compte, Jefferson and Hamilton disagreed, are settled by the dicta of a partisan convention—composed chiefly of political hacks and irresponsible hoodlums—with less trouble than a colored wench selects a calico gown. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the city there was no drinking-bar nor billiard room, so far as I am aware. But a drink on the sly could always be had at one of the hard-goods stores, in the back office behind the pile of metal saucepans; or at one of the dry-goods stores, in the little parlor in the rear of the bales of calico. At the present time I believe that there are two or three open bars in Salt Lake, Brigham Young having recognized the right of the "Saints" to "liquor up" occasionally. But whatever other failings they may have, intemperance cannot be laid to their charge. Among the Mormons ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... came back with his sample of rock—with a pocketful of samples—just as Murphy had finished and was wiping his thick glasses on a soiled, blue calico handkerchief with large white polka-dots on the border and little white polka-dots in the middle. He turned toward the professor inquiringly, warned by the scrunching footsteps that some one approached. But he was blind as a bat—so he declared—without his glasses, so he finished polishing ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... when the grand entry opened the show to a packed house, a shout of laughter from the great assemblage greeted the entrance of old Emperor. Emperor was clad in a calico gown of ancient style, with a market basket tucked in the curl of his trunk. But the most humorous part of the long-suffering elephant's makeup ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... that I spent with my Buzz at his club in the country with what he called in front of their very faces, bunches of calico, passed with such a rapidity that I felt I must grasp each minute and remonstrate with them for their fleetness. That Mademoiselle Sue was even much more lovely in her gray costume of golf with a tie the color of the one ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... longer be pierced. One seized my bonnet, with which he decked himself, and ran in the streets. Indeed, all who found such, rushed frantically around town, by way of frolicking, with the things on their heads. They say no frenzy could surpass it. Another snatched one of my calico dresses, and a pair of vases that mother had when she was married, and was about to decamp when a Mrs. Jones jerked them away, and carried them to her boarding-house, and returned them to mother the other day. Blessed be Heaven! I have a calico dress! Our clothes were used for the vilest purposes, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Bickford was not interested in this figure, and still looked vague and anxious as she began to brush the broken stems and wilted leaves into her wide calico apron. "I done the best I could while they was alive," she said, "and mourned 'em when I lost 'em, an' I feel grateful to be left so comfortable now when all is over. It seems foolish, but I'm still at a loss about ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... blacksmiths. They make good axes, spears, needles, arrowheads, bracelets and anklets, which, considering the entire absence of machinery, are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence. In villages near Lake Shirwa and elsewhere, the inhabitants enter pretty largely into the manufacture of crockery, or pottery, making by hand all sorts of cooking, water, and grain pots, which they ornament with plumbago found in ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... your stockings and shirt, and put these on," I said, handing him a new pair of socks, and a calico shirt too small for me, but which I ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... he explained. "Nobody home at The Dreamerie—" He took her face in his calloused hands, drew her to him. "You're sweet in that calico gown," he informed her, waiving a preliminary word of greeting. "I love you," he added softly, and kissed her. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne |
