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Mattress   Listen
noun
Mattress  n.  
1.
A large pad stuffed with hair, moss, or other suitable soft material, and quilted or otherwise fastened, used as or in a bed, to support the human body while lying down. (Written also matress)
2.
(Hydraulic Engin.) A mass of interwoven brush, poles, etc., to protect a bank from being worn away by currents or waves.
innerspring mattress A variety of mattress (1) having springs inside to provide a flexible support; it is considered more comfortable than a stuffed mattress.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mattress" Quotes from Famous Books



... up here!" she cried, and once again over-ruled his objections, and dragged up the mattress and blankets. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... the milk, poured off the creamy top into a pitcher, stirred it, and quietly insisted that she drink two glasses. Lorraine observed that Swan himself ate very little, bolting down a biscuit in great mouthfuls while he carried a mattress and blankets out to spread in the wagon. It was like his pretense of weariness on the long carry down the canyon, she thought. It was for her more than for himself ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... of no excuses. I must stay until morning. I could sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she could lay a mattress for herself on the floor by the side of Giovanni's. There would be no great sacrifice in that. It was going to be one of Giovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... neighboring parts of the body, it can be partially counteracted by getting into a comfortable position; but it is also necessary to have the surroundings as conducive to sleep as possible. Thus anyone will be much more likely to rest well if the bed-room is large and well ventilated, if the mattress is comfortable, and if the coverings are warm without being heavy. Finally, not the least important detail is to occupy a single bed, so that it is possible to turn over without fear ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... shook foolish fists at the oncoming enemy. Some fell upon their knees and lifted hands to the God of fire and flood. Then each ran back into the house for his or her treasure; a little bag of money under a mattress, or a babe in its crib, or a little rifle, or a dolly ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... just where the arches of the vaulted root begin to spring from the pillars, is ranged round with the beds of one of the regiments of soldiers. They are small iron bedsteads, each with its narrow mattress, and covered with a dark blanket. On some of them lay or lounged a soldier; other soldiers were cleaning their accoutrements; elsewhere we saw parties of them playing cards. So it was wherever we went among those ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... or the broad shoulders of the Tartar driver. The correct way of preparing for a journey in this primitive region is to half fill your cart with hay, lay your baggage upon it as a kind of pavement, and cover the whole with a straw mattress, upon which you recline, walled in with rolled-up wrappers to keep you from being absolutely battered to bits against the sides of the vehicle. You then provide yourself with a hatchet and a coil of rope, as an ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Egyptian cat from its nest under his mattress and put it into the inner pocket of his coat. "Couldn't leave our pal, could we? Bad man ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... kitchen, and communicating with it by a door, was an outhouse; used, partly as a scullery, partly as a lumber-room. There was an old truckle-bed among the lumber, on which one of the gentlemen might rest. A mattress on the floor could be provided for the other. After adding a table and a basin, for the purposes of the toilet, the accommodation which Mr. Rook was able to ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... animal set in a battered silver holder. On a deal table stood a smoking oil lamp of mean design and cheap material. Underneath it was a large wooden chest or coffer, studded with huge brass nails, clamped with brass, and painted a brilliant green. Near it, touching the canvas wall, was a mattress covered with gaudy rugs that served ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... on one side, the other side being supported by two wooden legs a foot high. A plank at the side, and another at the foot, in conjunction with the walls of the cottage, converted the shelf into an oblong box. But the mattress of this rude couch was formed of buffalo-skins, covered with thick, long luxurious hair; above which were spread two large green mackinaw blankets of the thickest description; and the canvas pillow-case was stuffed with the softest down, purchased from the wild-fowl ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... silver five-franc pieces, very difficult to carry. He had collected the whole sum from small farmers and peasants in the neighbourhood—the five-franc pieces coming always from the peasants, sometimes fifty sewed up in a mattress or in the woman's thick, wadded Sunday skirt. He said he could get as much more if W. wanted it. It seems impossible for the peasant to part with his money or invest it. He must keep it well hidden, but ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... to a young couple who received them as the patriarch received the messenger of God, and they slept on a straw mattress in an old house whose woodwork was so full of worms that it seemed alive. At sunrise they started off again, and soon they stopped opposite a regular forest of crimson rocks; there were peaks, columns, and steeples, all marvelously sculptured ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... a dear friend. Long after the pounding of her pony's hoofs had died away the prisoner could see the startled eyes of fear and horror that had rested on him. As Curly kicked his foot out of the stirrup to dismount a light spring wagon rolled past him. In its bed were a mattress and pillows. The driver whipped up the horse and went across the prairie toward Dry Sandy Creek. Evidently he was going to bring home ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... have killed a man, go into the maquis of Porto-Vecchio. With a good gun and plenty of powder and balls, you can live there in safety. Do not forget a brown cloak furnished with a hood, which will serve you for both cover and mattress. The shepherds will give you chestnuts, milk and cheese, and you will have nothing to fear from justice nor the relatives of the dead except when it is necessary for you to descend to the city ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... piece of the furniture himself. The bed was made of poles, with strips of bark in place of bedcords, the mattress was of husks and the pillows of cat-tail down. There were three straight chairs and a rocking chair with splint bottoms. The splints were made by peeling small ash poles and then pounding them for some time with some heavy instrument, when the wood would come off in ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... inside, the roof slab shingled. On the inner wall was a bookcase, below it a desk, at one side a gun cabinet, at the other a bath in a small alcove beside a closet. The room contained two chairs like those of the veranda, and the bed was a low oak couch covered with a thick mattress of hemlock twigs, topped with sweet fern, on which the sun shone all day. On a chair at the foot were spread some white sheets, a blanket, and an oilcloth. The sun beat in, the wind drifted through, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... that although I kept these harpies at a distance, no sleep could yet be obtained;—I resolved when he was risen, and had changed his room, to examine into the true cause: and with my maid's assistance, unript the mattress, which was without exaggeration or hyperbole all alive with creatures wholly unknown to me. Non-descripts in nastiness I believe they are, like maggots with horns and tails; such a race as I never saw or heard ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... Sergeant Bligh, with his men—two of them carrying a bier with a mattress and cloaks thereupon. They formed, and accompanied by the adjutant, at quick step marched through the town for the park. Mr. Lowe accompanied them, and in the park-lane they picked up the ubiquitous Doctor Toole, who ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Maternity patrineco. Mathematician matematikisto. Matrimony geedzeco. Matrix utero. Matron patrino. Matron patronino, estrino. [Error in book: potronino] Matter sxtofo. Matter materialo. Matter (pus) puso. Mattock pikfosilo. Mattress matraco. Mature matura. Mature maturigi—igxi. Maturity matureco. Maul bategi. Maxillary makzela. Maxim proverbo. Maximum maksimumo. May (month) Majo. May-bug majskarabo. Mayhap eble. Mayor urbestro. Maze labirinto. Mazurka ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... waistcoat and breeches, a black crape cravat, and a cocked hat; a waist-belt, and a long cut-and-thrust sword. He never disfigured himself by the full-bottomed wig of the period, but always wore his own brown hair, combed back from his forehead. His camp-bed consisted of a blue silk mattress, pillow and coverlid; materials that would have suited even a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... into the fire; then he'll no longer disturb the repose of a peaceable family. We can sell the leaden box; it must weigh at least two hundred pounds. The white silk will make me a good lining for a dress; and the wool in the stuffing, will easily make us a mattress." But a tinge of superstition prevented Meiser from following his wife's advice; he preferred to rid himself of the Colonel ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... rushes and cat-o'-nine-tails grew on a fawn-colored ground, and anything that the Careys did not possess for the family sitting room Ossian Popham went straight home and made in his barn. He could make a barrel-chair or an hour-glass table, a box lounge and the mattress to put on top of it, or a low table for games and puzzles, or a window seat. He could polish the piano and then sit down to it and play "Those Tassels on Her Boots" or "Marching through Georgia" with great skill. He could paint bunches of gold grapes and leaves ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Sobieski left him at an early hour, that he might retire to rest; but Thaddeus was neither able nor inclined to benefit by their consideration. He lay down on his mattress, shut his eyes, and tried to sleep; but the attempt was without success. In vain he turned from side to side; in vain he attempted to restrict his thoughts to one thing at once; his imagination was so roused by anticipating the scenes in which he was to become an actor, that he found ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... here glance at some trials and tribulations of a similar kind. I had no mattress, or bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship pitched violently, and almost ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... girl take the clothes off the bed, one at a time, and put them on two chairs near the windows, being careful not to let the blankets get on the floor. She beat the pillows well, and turned the mattress up over the foot of the bed so the air could get underneath it. The white spread she kept by itself, and had Margaret help fold it up in its creases. "Nothing wrinkles more easily," she told Margaret, "and a wrinkled spread spoils the look of neatness a bed ought to have when it is made. ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton

... should not be employed when possible to find a harder bed; the floor, with a single folded blanket beneath the sleeper, would be preferable. Soft pillows heat the head, as soft beds produce heat in other parts. A hair mattress, or a bed of corn husks, oat straw, or excelsior—covered with two or three blankets or a quilted cotton mattress—makes a very healthy ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... serious to fellows who had camped many a time among the rocks, where they were even debarred from having hemlock browse for a soft mattress. ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler

... sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance of my mattress, or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Run, my lad. Get Van Gaasbeeck's light wagon as you go, and ask your mother for a mattress. Dinna stand glowering at me, but awa' with you. I'll tak' twa o' my ain lads and my ain wagon, and be there instanter. God help me! God spare ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... extended itself to providing us better bedding than we had enjoyed the night before. Two of the least fragile of the bedsteads, which stood by the wall of the hut, had been stuffed with heath, then in full flower, so artificially arranged, that, the flowers being uppermost, afforded a mattress at once elastic and fragrant. Cloaks, and such bedding as could be collected, stretched over this vegetable couch, made it both soft and warm. The Bailie seemed exhausted by fatigue. I resolved to adjourn ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... carefully, and with a hopeful smile. The examination was soon completed, for the room presented no facilities whatever for escape. There was no bed from which to take the sheets and blankets to extemporise a rope. No mattress to throw over the window so as to break a heavy man's fall. No chimney by which to ascend to the roof, no furniture, indeed, of any kind beyond a deal chair and table. The door was of ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... a bed. I was put with Guiraud, Romestan and Lagarde, who were my companions at table, and almost as new as I was. I was quite happy with this. They had seemed to me to be nice children, which, in fact, they were. But I was taken aback when I saw the smallness of my bed, the thinness of the mattress, and what displeased me most, the iron bed-stead. I had never seen anything like it. However everything was very clean, and in spite of my dismay I slept soundly, worn out by the shocks to my system which I had suffered on ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... off the town in the life-boat, and saw one boat after another rowing fast towards us. In one, Mr. Koch, the missionary, with a number of school-boys; in another, Mrs. Crookshank, laid on a mattress, Mrs. Stahl, and Miss Coomes, and the school-girls; then the Channons' families and some Chinese; then the Sing-Song's family, and more boys. "Where is the Bishop?" I shouted. "In the Rajah's war boat. We had ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... brought his cart for Sabine's little furniture. Coming back from a lesson Christophe saw heaped up before the door in the street the bed, the cupboard, the mattress, the linen, all that she had possessed, all that was left of her. It was a dreadful sight to him. He rushed past it. In the doorway he bumped ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... that morning, between leaving Clancy and getting back to the dock again, I spent in cleaning up and overhauling my home outfit. My mother couldn't be made to believe that store bedding was of much use—and she was right, I guess—and so a warranted mattress and blankets and comforters and a pillow were made into a bundle and thrown onto a waiting wagon. Then it was good-by to all—good-by to my cousin Nell, who had come over from her house, good-by and a kiss for her little sister—late for school ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... medicine; he threw sago and cornflour overboard till the steward got tired of bringing it to him. He asked for paregoric. They sent him a big bottle; enough to poison a wilderness of babies. He kept it between his mattress and the deal lining of the ship's side; and nobody ever saw him take a dose. Donkin abused him to his face, jeered at him while he gasped; and the same day Wait would lend him a warm jersey. Once Donkin reviled him for half an hour; reproached him with the extra work his malingering gave ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... MATTRESSES.—The most durable Bedding is a well-made SPRING MATTRESS: it retains its elasticity, and will wear longer without repair than any other mattress, and with one French Wool and Hair Mattress on it is a most luxurious Bed. HEAL & SON make them in three varieties. For prices of the different ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... that an accident had happened, and he hurried over to the starboard rail. The ambulance had stopped, and two white-clad attendants were helping out a man who had been reclining on a mattress within. They stood him on one foot while they slipped a pair of crutches under his arms. The man lifted his head, and, with a yell of delight, Drew leaped to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... a hard mattress stretched on the floor, and sleep brings him only a meagre respite from the ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... room stood an iron camp-bed without curtains. There, on a worn mattress, lay King Friedrich, the terror of Europe, without coverlet, in an old blue roquelaure. He had a big cocked-hat, with a white feather [hat aged, worn soft as duffel, equal to most caps; "feather" is not perpendicular, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... it out, Jane—clean it all out—anything, anything,—" but she was gone. He took the tract which she had left on his table and carefully tore it in four pieces, and hid them under the mattress. Then he went to sleep. The professor was in ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... the stair, and he had a little cut-off place to himself. Many in the ward yet lay on the floor, on a blanket as he had done that first morning. In the afternoon of that day a wide bench had been brought into his corner, a thin flock mattress laid upon it, and he himself lifted from the floor. He had protested that others needed a bed much more, that he was used to lying on the earth—but Christianna had been firm. He wondered ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... of him—the observing part—stood aside and looked on while the other part slowly and painfully struggled out of its clothes and into its pajamas. Also he saw the other part, after it had carefully secreted the wrapped package of papers under the mattress, beat the pillows feebly and bury its head in them. After that ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... smoke escaped. In this smoke or milk-room—whichever it may be called—I prepared to pass the night as best I could. My cloak being wet through, I had been compelled to hang it on a stick to dry; and thus found myself under the necessity of borrowing a mattress from these unhealthy people. I laid myself down boldly, and pretended sleepiness, in order to deliver myself from the curiosity of my entertainers. They retired to their room, and so I was alone and undisturbed. But yet I could not sleep; ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... which would be better for him than dancing about. Look again! The bed stands under a gaping hole in the roof, and a stream of water is dripping steadily down upon it. The coarse coverings must be soaked through already, and the hard mattress too. It is really less like a bed than a damp and nasty little pond. No wonder the prisoner does not choose to lie there. But then, why not move the bed somewhere else? And what is that round thing like a platter in his hand, and what is he doing with it? Is he playing 'Turn the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... he said, "as a bed-maker I can beat the owner of that prehistoric old corn-husk mattress out in the suburbs with ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... la gloire—au grabat!" said Cigarette, now grinding her pretty teeth. She was in her most revolutionary and reckless mood, drumming the rataplan with her spurred heels, and sitting smoking on the corner of old Miou-Matou's mattress. Miou-Matou, who had acquired that title among the joyeux for his scientific powers of making a tomcat into a stew so divine that you could not tell it from rabbit, being laid up with a ball in his hip, a spear-head between ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... It brought back my vanishing self-esteem. In a glossy new hat and a pair of trousers with a fold down the front (carefully preserved by keeping them under the bed—I don't mean on the floor, you know, but between the bed and the mattress), I felt I was somebody and that there were other washerwomen: ay, and even other girls to love, and who would perhaps appreciate a clever, good-looking young fellow. I didn't care; that was my reckless way. I would make love to other maidens. I felt ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear—evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a strange sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm—and he saw with a shock that his skin was ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... on a chest one might open the window and see a little bit of the landscape. The ordinary prisoners were allowed to do this but we were forbidden." There was not a single chair. There was the skeleton of an iron bed which was quite useless as there was no mattress. There were four blankets, and two bundles of straw which very soon crumbled into dust. "One day a week we had an hour in the courtyard, and there we walked round and round in single file, being ...
— Their Crimes • Various

... accommodated in the old Russian Red Cross Hospital, such as it was, dirt and all. The remainder were temporarily put into old barracks. What "flu"-weakened soldier will ever forget those double decked pine board beds, sans mattress, sans linen, sans pillows? If lucky, a man had two blankets. He could not take off his clothes. Death stalked gauntly through and many a man died with his boots on in bed. The glory of dying in France to lie ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... golden sunshine which enveloped them with radiance. Then Mathieu pulled up Marianne's pillows, set the counterpane in order, and forbade her to stir until he had tidied the room. Forthwith he stripped his little bedstead, folded up the sheets, the mattress, and the bedstead itself, over which he slipped a cover. She vainly begged him not to trouble, saying that Zoe, the servant whom they had brought from the country, could very well do all those things. But he persisted, replying that the servant plagued him, and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... him off to Ava without her. Arriving next day, she found him in prison, but under orders to embark in a little boat and go at once to the camp at Maloun. She hastened to prepare all that was needful for his comfort, but all was stolen except a mattress, pillow, and one blanket. The boat had no awning, and was so crowded that there was no room to lie down for the three days and three nights of alternate scorching heat and heavy dew; there was no food but a bag of refuse-rice, and the banks on either side of the Irrawaddy were bordered ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Knox by hearsay only, I believe the matter of this paper will be somewhat astonishing. For the hard energy of the man in all public mattress has possessed the imagination of the world; he remains for posterity in certain traditional phrases, browbeating Queen Mary, or breaking beautiful carved work in abbeys and cathedrals, that had long smoked themselves out and were no more than sorry ruins, while ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on a hard mattress. The old-time feather bed was dangerous. There should be light-weight covers, and the room cool. Children should sleep on either side, rarely in the unnatural back position. Aim to have regular ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... used as a beast of burden or for shooting from in thick jungle, carries on its back only a "pad"—a heavy, straw-stuffed mattress reaching from neck to tail and fastened on by a rope surcingle passing round the body. On this pad, if passengers are to be carried, a wooden seat with footboards hanging by cords from it and called a charjama is placed. Only for sport in open country ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... child, and after doing everything possible for her, he conducted her to the Convent de la Visitation without a word of thanks from her, though he had made sacrifices for her, and though his housekeeper had slept on a mattress on the floor, giving up her room in order that Lirette should have suitable quarters. But although hurt by her ingratitude he had enjoyed talking with her, for she brought him news from his friends ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... constant watching, according to Dr. Lee. Then she went about with set lips, doing the last sordid things that death brings in its wake; doing them as she had seen her mother do before her. She threw away the husks in Eva's under mattress and put fresh ones in; she emptied the feathers from the feather bed and pillows and aired them in the sun while she washed the ticking; she scrubbed the paint in the sick-room, and in between her tasks learned from Clarissa Perry ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... shown it now would have made "no end of talk." And she was not sure but that her parents would have demanded its custody! And it was given to HER by HIM to keep. This settled the question of moral ethics. She took the first opportunity to run up to her bedroom and hide it under the mattress. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... happy returns—in wine, after dinner; in a small milk-pot jug of gin-punch, at night. And when I made a temporary table, to hold the little candlestick, of one of my dressing-case trays; cunningly inserted under the mattress of my berth with a weight atop of it to keep it in its place, so that it made a perfectly exquisite bracket; we agreed, that, please God, this should be a joke at the Star and Garter on the second of April eighteen ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... body as comfortably as a feather bed, if not more so, being elastic in nature. A large square of this had been cut up from some other part of the island and placed on the already moss-grown and cushioned ground, serving as a mattress, while two smaller pieces served as pillows. A sumac tree at the head of the improvised couch gave the necessary shade to the face of the sleeper, while a wild grapevine, after having run over and encircled with its moist green every ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... that he had known these poor people all his life. I lingered near the door, taking notes of the sad picture; the two rough wooden boxes, in which slept three little dark children, all apparently of exactly the same size; the mattress on the floor near by for the parents; the open door leading into a dark garret, where, no doubt, the grandmother crept to sleep; the shelves on the wall, bare save for a few dishes of peasant-made pottery; the pile of dried mud on the tiled floor, which the young mother ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... floor and of a girl upon whose cheeks and temples flickered orange and vermilion lights. To his ears came the roar of elevated trains, and, since a fog had risen over the Hudson, the endless night- splitting screams of brazen-throated ferry whistles. He tossed on a mattress which seemed hard and comfortless, and longed ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... brilliant, sunshiny day, the light within was so dim that it was hard to work by; yet with characteristic shiftlessness the window had not been washed for months and diminished still further the little light there was; a mattress in the opposite corner from a shaky cooking gas-burner showed that this room was the ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... we left it at the camp, and we made our beds apparently dry. But I did not sleep well. I could not help thinking that it was not safe to sleep in a bed with a substratum of wet mattress, and I worried Euphemia a little by asking her several times if she felt the ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... kissed them on both cheeks. It was a funny sight. When we got on board again after a couple of hours on shore the wind rose and we tossed about considerably. Another sleepless night on the "living" mattress in the bunk, and early in the morning we reached the Persian ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the old man, smiting his thigh, "if there ain't that there mattress in the loft! And I clean forgot, and told the boys that I hadn't nothin' better than a rug or two 'n the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... they received as much attention as could reasonably be expected.[A] As he passed along the different apartments he was surprised at hearing his name called by a faint voice. He turned to the place from whence it proceeded, and saw stretched on a mattress, a person who appeared on the point of expiring. His visage was pale and emaciated, his countenance haggard and ghastly, his eyes inexpressive and glazy. He held out his withered hand, and feebly beckoned to Alonzo, who immediately approached him. His features appeared ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... in her first quick glance was a girl no older than herself, lying on a dirty bare mattress, a woman bending over a wash-tub, and a baby crawling around the floor. What she saw in her second horrified glance was that a green mould stood out on the walls, that both plaster and lath were broken away in places, so that one could peer through into ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... shall recount a tithe of its other uses? Of course, the nude man under the coconut tree knows nothing of all this. He does without a mattress, and has no use for a door mat. But he cannot do without cordage, and if you took from him his coconut fibre, life would almost stop. Wherewith would he bind the rafters of his hut to the beams, or tether the cow, or let down the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... crept in to take a look at my precious Dinkie, fast asleep in the old cast-iron crib that is growing so small for him he has to lie catercornered on his mattress. He seemed so big, stretched out there, that he frightened me with the thought he couldn't be a child much longer. There are no babies left now in my home circle. And I still have a shamefaced sort of hankering to hold a baby in ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... common sense you don't stand back and examine the pictures of a pink Moses in a nest of purple bullrushes, or complain because the bureau does not harmonize with the wall paper. Neither do you criticize the blue and saffron roses that form the rug pattern. 'Deedy not! Instead you warily punch the mattress to see if it is rock-stuffed, and you snoop into the clothes closet; you inquire the distance to the nearest bath room, and whether the payments are weekly or monthly, and if there is a baby in the room next door. Oh, there's nothing like living in a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... seen her for two days, she left the wedding towards six o'clock in the evening, and came to pay him a visit, accompanied by the Countess of Argyll and the Countess of Huntly. While she was there, Durham, in preparing his bed, set fire to his palliasse, which was burned as well as a part of the mattress; so that, having thrown them out of the window all in flames, for fear lest the fire should reach the rest of the furniture, he found himself without a bed, and asked permission to return to the town to sleep; but Darnley, who remembered his terror the night before, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... out in accordance with Cleek's plan. The captain, trapped into talking by his son, sat up long after Miss Sutcliff and the one serving maid the house boasted had gone to bed, and when, in time, he, too, retired to his room, the soaked mattress did its work in the most effectual manner. Whimpering like a hurt child over the unexplained and apparently unexplainable accident, the old man suffered his son to lead him off to his own room; and there, unable to rest on the harder mattress, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... "right under your hand all the time. You won't have to rip up the mattress for it, or rummage the clothes-press, or hunt through the broken crockery on the top shelves of the kitchen cupboard," she ran on, as if she were delighted to hear the sound of her own voice, and couldn't talk fast enough. "I always leave my purse on the dressing-case, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... she tucked herself into bed, and rolling over on the nubbly mattress and creaky springs, she almost wished that it had been a feather bed. But she was soon asleep, and thought no more about anything ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... It was low, and of scanty dimensions. The walls were bare; and the damp oozed through chinks and crevices, where the wind met with slight interruption, though it clamoured unceasingly for admission. The only furniture in the apartment was a low bedstead, on which a straw mattress reposed in all the accumulated filth of past ages. A coverlid of coarse woollen partly concealed a suit of bed-linen that would have stricken terror amongst a tribe of Esquimaux. Neither party appeared wishful to tempt the mysteries that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... the purpose of a sofa as well as a bed. If it is a box couch, further economy will be gained by its use as a place to store the bedclothes. But the simplest of all arrangements is a divan bed, formed of springs and mattress alone, and supported on legs nailed to the corners of the spring-frame. Over it a cover should be thrown during the day, and the pillows in use, if there is not room for them elsewhere, should be slipped into covers harmonious in color with the couch drapery. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... there; Mrs. Kenyon would not hear of any one of them going over to Tom's house at that hour. So the doctor retired to the spare bedroom, Sherwood and Arthur occupied a broad couch or divan in the little parlor, where Tom Walsh and his young cousin slept even more comfortably on an extra mattress on the floor. Everyone was in good spirits, although tired and very sleepy; and the sun was high in the heavens before any one of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... chest which I had taken for a seat in the boat, as aforesaid, upon breaking it open by the water-side, I found a mattress, some shirts, shoes, stockings, and several other useful things; a small case of bottles with cordials in them, some instruments of surgery, plasters and salves; all which, together with a large quantity of fish that I had salted, I carried to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... live in twilight, affecting illness so as to sit under the protecting tones of light filtered through muslin. Like Diane de Poitiers, she used cold water in her bath, and, like her again, the Marquise slept on a horse-hair mattress, with morocco-covered pillows to preserve her hair; she ate very little, only drank water, and observed monastic regularity in the ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... mattress was wide enough to accommodate three. The boughs were laid down in rows with the under side up, and overlapped each other. To be sure, an occasional twig might poke a sleeper's ribs, but what mattered ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... she approached the bed. The body was laid out: stretched in its winding sheet, stiff and stark did it seem to repose on the mattress—the countenance rendered more ghastly than even death could make it, by the white band which ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... Redruth in the gallery between the cabin and the forecastle, with three or four loaded muskets and a mattress for protection. Hunter brought the boat round under the stern-port, and Joyce and I set to work loading her with powder tins, muskets, bags of biscuits, kegs of pork, a cask of cognac, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Of HOMBURG hangs his hat on the wall and sinks, carelessly reclining, on a mattress spread out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... if it were cleaned up," she continued, with kindling enthusiasm. "These bare logs, bare floors, bare rafters—we've got back to essentials, anyway. And that's his bed." She surveyed a framework of spruce poles, on which lay an old straw mattress and some very grey blankets. "I suppose he is very tired when he goes to bed," she said, drolly, as though that could be the only explanation of sleep amid such surroundings. "And the walls give one a clue to ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... will cut my side all night. I will tell them to rip up the mattress to-morrow and get you ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... spring of 1878, I witnessed an accident in a circus, which for a time made me renounce all athletic exhibitions. Six horses were stationed side by side in the ring before a spring-board, and the whole company of gymnasts ran and turned somersaults from the spring over the horses, alighting on a mattress spread on the ground. The agility of one finely developed young fellow excited great applause every time he made the leap. He would shoot forward in the air like a javelin, and in his flight curl up and turn over directly above the mattress, dropping on his feet as lightly ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... stupefied condition I was hesitating which of the alternatives to choose—the chair or the table, for, oddly enough, I never thought of the bed, when my host settled the question by leading me forcibly forward and flinging me down on the mattress. He then took a wooden wedge out of his pocket, and, going to the door, thrust it in the crack, giving the handle a violent tug to see whether the door stood the test. 'There now, mate,' he said with a grin—a grin that seemed to suggest ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... book, containing rules for the guidance of the station men, times of freight and passenger trains meeting and passing each other, &c. Papa has these. The sofas are covered with a pretty green Brussels carpet (small pattern) quilted like a mattress with green buttons, chairs covered with corded wollen stuff, not a speck or spot of ink or smut on anything. A neat carpet, not a speck or spot on it, a sheet of tin under and all round the stove. Pantry cupboard containing knives and forks, spoons, and mugs. Bed-room berths much higher ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... "That mattress in the little bedroom looks all right," he said. "I'll pack it outside before I go, so it will have all day to-morrow out in the sun. I'll have Hepsy bring ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... electric lamp, and by its rays they inspected the apartment. It was a bedroom, and in one corner was an old bedstead and on it a musty straw mattress. In another corner was a closet ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... wooden trencher and two sacks and two saddles and a gown and two fur pelisses and a cow and two calves and a she-goat and two sheep and an ewe and two lambs and two green pavilions and a camel and two she-camels and a lioness and two lions and a she-bear and two jackals and a mattress and two sofas and an upper chamber and two saloons and a portico and two sitting-rooms and a kitchen with two doors and a company of Kurds who will bear witness that the bag is my bag.' Then said the Kazi to me, 'And thou, sirrah, what sayest thou?' So I came forward, O Commander of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... a hammock ride about the town and surrounding country. Each hammock was fitted out with a mattress, pillows, and canopy, and slung on a long pole carried by two men. We reclined lazily against the pillows, and enjoyed the ride very much. The men, when they went up hill, carried us feet downward, but once they forgot, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Miss Mehitable energetically beat a mattress until no more dust rose from it. With Araminta's aid she carried it upstairs and put it in place. "I'm goin' home now after my dinner and Evelina's," said Miss Hitty, "and when I come back I'll bring sheets and quilts for this. You clean till I come back, and ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... the utmost care, the injured seaman was lifted up and carried into the deckhouse, where, in accordance with Dick's instructions, he was laid upon the table, a mattress having first been hurriedly dragged from one of the bunks and placed to receive him. Then, leaving the patient for the moment in charge of the other man, Dick hurried to the forecastle and brought up the medicine chest which had been Humphrey's parting gift to him, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... puir wafilly budy akinda drave the fear awa frae me; an' I maskit a cup o' tea, an' crackit awa till her till we got her cowshined doon. Their back winda had been blawn in, and Dauvid had tried to keep oot the wind wi' a mattress; but the wind had tummeled baith Dauvid an' the mattress heels ower gowrie, an' the wife got intil a terriple state. They cudna bide i' the hoose ony langer, an' i' the warst o't a', they cam' awa through a shoer o' sklates, an' bricks, an' lum-cans, an' gless, to see ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... darkness, he discovered that Goat's bed was still supplied with mattress and crumpled blankets. This surprised him somewhat, as any item of cloth on Mars had to be imported from Earth and was far too valuable to abandon. But, apparently, these things had been left temporarily in Goat's abandonment of Ultra Vires and would ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... out. He put out his candle in the gray dusk, took a last look at the old house, stole softly along the passage, and opened the street door; but in spite of his caution, he awakened Kolb, who slept on a mattress ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... These pages of small writing, which she set herself to read, bored her extremely, and she was about to restore the drawer to its place, feeling convinced that Florent concealed the proofs of his wicked designs elsewhere, and already contemplating a searching visitation of his mattress, when she discovered a photograph of La Normande in an envelope. The impression was rather dark. La Normande was standing up with her right arm resting on a broken column. Decked out with all her jewels, and attired in a new silk dress, the fish-girl ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... my advancement in the Church. But," he continued, with an expression that betokened some tender recollection, "if I ever should require you to wake me for an early train again, would you mind placing a mattress or feather-bed on ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... on the floor, the smoke of which is allowed to make its escape as it best can at the window, which is always destitute of glass, and is closed by a rude wooden shutter when required; a bed consisting of a mattress of the same hue as the floor, raised a few feet from it by means of boards on a rude frame; some sheep-skins for blankets, and sheets of coarse stuff whose color serves as an effectual check on the curiosity of him who would pry too closely into its texture; are the chief articles of furniture ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... distrustful man than the simple gentleman of honour who finds himself deceived and tricked. It is as if the bottom suddenly fell out of his trust in all mankind, and there is nothing left but a mocking void. Jem Agar lay on his mattress beneath the awning, and stared hard at a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all, a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that moment on the ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... your most valuable medicine has cured me of a very disagreeable complaint, leucorrhea. I suffered for years with pain in my back, never a night was I free. At your request I commenced a course of Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription and "Golden Medical Discovery." I could not sleep on a mattress; it seemed as though it would kill me. Since taking the medicine I can sleep anywhere; I am perfectly well. I would not be placed in my former condition for any money. I bought six bottles, or $5.00 worth. I ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... station. At those tambos it was always possible to obtain rice, chickens and eggs at reasonable prices, fixed by the Government. In many of the tambos were also rough wooden bedsteads, with a more or less comfortable mattress. I generally preferred to use my own camp-bed. As there were never more than one or two rooms in the tambo, you had to sleep in the same room with other people, unless you preferred to sleep outside, as ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... Mr. Camp," said the good lady. "There's room for you up under the canvas top—and I had him spread a mattress so't you can take it easy all the way, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... was rolling heavily, and everything was pitched about in grand confusion. There was a complete "hurrah's nest,'' as the sailors say, "everything on top and nothing at hand.'' A large hawser had been coiled away on my chest; my hats, boots, mattress, and blankets had all fetched away and gone over to leeward, and were jammed and broken under the boxes and coils of rigging. To crown all, we were allowed no light to find anything with, and I was just ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... to the place where my mattress was flung, the crowd had already sunk to rest, and there was a general silence throughout the building. The few lights which our jailers supplied to us, had become fewer; and, except for the heavy sound of the doubled sentries' tread outside, I might have imagined myself in a vast cemetery. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... furniture of these luxurious abodes consists of a hand-loom, two or three iron pots, a few earthen vessels, and some wooden spoons. The bedding is a coarse woollen blanket, which serves as a cloak in rainy or wet weather, and as a mattress and coverlet for the whole family, without ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... with a broken back has been moved to a hospital near his home so his family can see him. We sent him on a mattress, fixed up with pillows and cushions so that he did not suffer at all on ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous

... case. It's a comfort that they have made up their minds at last, and that I can be moved as soon as there is a place ready for me. Father is ordering a spinal carriage from London with the latest conveniences, like the suburban villas. I believe you lie on a mattress or something of the sort, which can be lifted and put down in the carriage. Such a saving of trouble! It is wonderful how cleverly ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the bolt on the door to avoid a sudden surprise. Then they dragged the clothing and mattress off one of the beds, and made a table of the springs. On this they piled, indiscriminately, the things brought from the wardrobe, gloating over the evidence of Ned's generous ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... opposite sides of this table the father and his son, of twelve years, each twanged the string of their heavy bamboo bows, snapping the lint from the wads of cotton and flinging it broadcast in an even layer over the surface of the growing mattress, the two strings the while emitting tones pitched far below the hum of the bumblebee. The heavy bow was steadied by a cord secured around the body of the operator, allowing him to manage it with one hand and to move readily around his work in a manner different ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... all I could to get out, fellows, but the worst of it is, when I lift one foot the other only goes that much deeper down. If a fellow could only get hold of enough stuff to make a sort of mattress he might roll over on it and do the trick that way. I'd be trying that if I had daylight, and was alone here," remarked ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... be sent to America. The mayor informed them that arrangements had been made to transport them there at the expense of the French Government. He also said that he was authorized to give each volunteer the sum of twenty-five francs, a mattress, blanket and a supply of tin-ware. This joyful news was received with loud cries of "Vive la France! Vive la Republique!" and three hearty cheers were given for the mayor. As the volunteers joyously dispersed, an officer informed Paul that the mayor ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... end. He needed no rubbing of eyes to rouse his senses. If a shower of cold water had been dashed upon him he could not have rallied from sound slumber so suddenly. His first movement was to snatch his gun from under his mattress, not that he dreamed of needing it, but for some reason the pressure of the butt against his palm was reassuring. It was better than the grip of his ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... months—he requires the warmth of another person's body, especially in the winter; but care must be taken not to overlay him, as many infants, from carelessness in this particular, have lost their lives. After the first few months he had better lie alone, on a horse-hair mattress. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... Russian from the table, and stretched him on a mattress beside the others; then they laid his ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... share in cruelty and debauchery. At length they arrived at their destination, where the triumphant and implacable Chainitza awaited them. As after the taking of Kormovo, she compelled the women to cut off their hair and to stuff with it a mattress on which she lay. She then stripped them, and joyfully narrated to them the massacre of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, and when she had sufficiently enjoyed their misery they were again handed over to the insults of the soldiery. Chainitza finally published an edict ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... that of building log-houses—two for our twenty hands. In each was an immense chimney-piece, a cooking-stove, and a bed stretching the width of the house on the floor, with a mattress of hemlock boughs. The rifles and shotguns hanging over the wide fireplace, and a long pine table and rustic benches, completed the furniture of our houses. The oxen and a company of hounds and mongrels had their quarters in ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... himself to his rest on the keeper's straw pallet, in a recess adjoining to the kitchen, and, unaffected by his change of dwelling, slept fast and deep. Alice had less quiet rest in old Goody Jellycot's wicker couch, in the inner apartment; while the dame and Phoebe slept on a mattress, stuffed with dry leaves, in the same chamber, soundly as those whose daily toil gains their daily bread, and, whom morning calls up only to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... chance of his winning her, and love, after all, is but a passing impulse which may be summoned or banished at will by such simple mediums as charms. The boy did go out of his way to ease his benefactor's malady by taking a lock of his own fuzzy wool and placing it beneath Kirk's mattress, after ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... said, there is nothing to stir the blood like rifle-fire. Rifle-fire wins or loses decisive actions; rifle-fire sends the heart galloping. At five in the morning of the 9th I turned on my mattress and heard guns; I ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... replied the doctor. "They have had him down on a mattress, and his wife is by his side. What a profession ours is! Here is a man, a wretch, whom I should be most happy to strangle with my own hands; and I am compelled to do all I can to recall him to life: ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... poor man tell who was to occupy the berth! You might have been a fat old lady for anything he knew!" replied Mrs. Beverley, settling herself on the mattress below. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... called back to the farm by his father's illness his mother gave him, for his own use, a small room behind the untenanted "best parlour." Here he had nailed up shelves for his books, built himself a box-sofa out of boards and a mattress, laid out his papers on a kitchen-table, hung on the rough plaster wall an engraving of Abraham Lincoln and a calendar with "Thoughts from the Poets," and tried, with these meagre properties, to produce some likeness to the study of a "minister" who had been kind to him and lent him books when ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... which he woke was worse still. Tipping and Coker had been patiently pinching themselves to keep awake until their enemy should be soundly asleep, in order to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of letting down the mattress; and, too dazed and frightened even to swear, Paul gathered up his bedclothes and tried to draw them about him as well as he might, and seek sleep, which had lost ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... mattress," she told him, "or rather one of the hospital ones. He was carried straight into the ambulance ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... where the city of Portland later was begun; and builded for myself a little cabin of two rooms, with a connecting roof. This I furnished, as did my neighbors their similar abodes, with a table made of hewed puncheons, chairs sawed from blocks, a bed framed from poles, on which lay a rude mattress of husks and straw. My window-panes were made of oiled deer hide. Thinking that perhaps I might need to plow in the coming season, I made me a plow like those around me, which might have come from Mexico or Egypt—a forked limb ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... the covers over his wife, tucking them in where her restless moving had pulled them away from the mattress. The twins moved beside him, their smooth hands following his in the task, their blind eyes intent ...
— Now We Are Three • Joe L. Hensley

... cool of the morning, and frequent excursions in ferry or steam-boats, would often save a long bill for medical attendance. In hot nights, the windows should be kept open, and the infant laid on a mattress, or on folded blankets. A bit of straw matting, laid over a featherbed, and covered with the under sheet, makes a very cool ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later, regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival, however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... notes at breakfast nearly everybody had had similar experiences. Miss Strong confessed to a patent mattress with a broken spring jutting up in the center, round which she had been obliged to lie in a curve. Linda and Francie had slept near the water-cistern, which alarmed them with weird noises, and Bess and Kitty, trying to open their window wider, had found ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... heavy feeling, you use the visual-imagery technique to try to picture your legs stuck to the floor. If you are lying down, imagine you are covered by a heavy blanket which is tightly tucked under the mattress, making it impossible for you to raise your legs. If sitting up, I tell the subject to imagine that his shoes are stuck to the floor with "iron glue," and since his feet are in the shoes, it is impossible to lift them until the specific ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... in order to pursue their daily labours for the use of those who are born to enjoy these blessings. The sturdy hind now attends the levee of his fellow-labourer the ox; the cunning artificer, the diligent mechanic, spring from their hard mattress; and now the bonny housemaid begins to repair the disordered drum-room, while the riotous authors of that disorder, in broken interrupted slumbers, tumble and toss, as if the hardness of down disquieted ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... struck with pity, or perhaps it was the Governor. Anyhow, they brought me a mattress and a rug. They told me to get up off the bed, and I told them I couldn't get up, couldn't even turn over. So they said, 'Very well, then; you can do without these things,' and they took them away. The funny thing was that I really couldn't get up. If I tried to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... conventional pictures of Christ. His fascinations destroyed the peace of many a woman; and it was only after many years of self-indulgence that he married the faithful Mathilde Mirat in what he termed a "conscience marriage." Soon after he went to his "mattress-grave," as he called it, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... began a purposely vague reply, but Mrs. Mowgelewsky was not listening to her. She had searched the pockets of the gown she wore, then various other hiding-places in the region of its waist line, then a large bag of mattress covering which she wore under her skirt. Ever hurriedly and more hurriedly she repeated this performance two or three times, and then proceeded to shake and wring the out-door clothing which she had worn ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... lamba chauki^, lamba kursi^; saddle, pannel^, pillion; side saddle, pack saddle; pommel. bed, berth, pallet, tester, crib, cot, hammock, shakedown, trucklebed^, cradle, litter, stretcher, bedstead; four poster, French bed, bunk, kip, palang^; bedding, bichhona, mattress, paillasse^; pillow, bolster; mat, rug, cushion. footstool, hassock; tabouret^; tripod, monopod. Atlas, Persides, Atlantes^, Caryatides, Hercules. V. be supported &c; lie on, sit on, recline on, lean on, loll on, rest on, stand on, step on, repose on, abut on, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... grating of his window, he had communicated his desire, entered eagerly into the scheme: the two contrived to unfasten a stone in a wall that divided their apartments; when the prison-doors were bolted for the night, this volunteer amanuensis took his place, Schubart trailed his mattress to the friendly orifice, and there lay down, and dictated in whispers the record of his fitful story. These memoirs have been preserved; they were published and completed by a son of Schubart's: we have often wished to see them, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... marriage. Then he bade them put down Badr al-Din Hasan's turband on the settle, as he had deposited it with his own hand, and in like manner his bag-trousers and the purse which were under the mattress: and told daughter to undress herself and go to bed in the private chamber as on her wedding-night, adding, "When the son of thine uncle comes in to thee, say to him:—Thou hast loitered while going to the privy; and call ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... them back. When his servants asked for the sheets so as to have them washed he bade them say no more, as he had given them to one of the poor soldiers on guard, who would be sure to get into trouble if the matter were known. By degrees he emptied the straw out of his mattress, burning a little of it at a time in his fireplace, and replacing it with the sheets, which he cut into strips some inches wide. As soon as he thought these strips were long enough for his purpose, he told his servants that he had given all the sheets away, and that in future ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... Stygian boat. They had made the bed as different as the vine in summer from the vine in winter. A quilt of red satin lay in the place of the patchwork coverlid. Everything had been changed. He thought the mattress felt soft under him—but that was only a fancy, for he saw before the fire the feather-bed intended to lie between him and it. He felt like a tended child, in absolute peace and bliss—or like one just dead, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Near a post he saw two Japanese, presenting a fearful spectacle in the convulsions of death. Close to them lay an American foot-soldier, writhing with pain from a bayonet-wound in the abdomen; and over in the farther corner he could distinguish a woman, dressed in black, lying on a ragged mattress. Ding—dong, ding—dong, rang the bells up above, but the noise of ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... "She lies on a mattress there, behind that group,"—nodding in the implied direction; "and it would be well, if you could lie beside her and get an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... her health gave way. At the end of April her condition was hopeless; she lay upon "a rude bed formed of boxes, but covered with a soft mattress," and thus, her husband beside her, she died in the heart of the great continent for which she and those most dear to her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... pony, the cart, and the tent, I found I was possessed of a mattress stuffed with straw on which to lie, and a blanket to cover me, the last quite clean and nearly new; then there was a frying-pan and a kettle, the first for cooking any food which required cooking, and the second for heating any water which I might wish to heat. I likewise found an earthen teapot ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... mattress and blankets, with a table and chairs, should be brought here before I went out," said Sir Henry, "with a few other things. Good gracious! I had no idea the fire had been so bad. Did ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... send off to a charitable institution—into a lunatic asylum—the unfortunate Pashka, who had fallen completely into feeble-mindedness. The doctors said that there was no hope of her ever improving. And in reality, as they had placed her in the hospital on the floor, upon a straw mattress, so did she remain upon it without getting up from it to her very death; submerging more and more into the black, bottomless abyss of quiet feeble-mindedness; but she died only half a year later, from bed-sores ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... fellow in a loud voice, "if they want to be at their ease, let them bring a mattress from home and ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... and fields and kennels. He had his big writing-table established there, with a sufficiency of chairs, a few rugs upon the forty-feet length of floor, and an old couch upon one side, manufactured by himself with the aid of an ancient spring mattress, a few blocks of wood, a big 'possum-skin rug which some friend had sent him from Australia, and a variety of cushions. The actual house, for all its rambling shape, was small, and possibly this was why the Master chose to utilize this outside place as his den, and to fix a big stove ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson



Words linked to "Mattress" :   futon, tick, paillasse, featherbed, air mattress, mattress cover, palliasse, bed, pallet, pad



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