"Signboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... payment she tendered, and they let her go; only the big, burly eldest son stood at the door and watched her as she went slowly down the little pathway and out through the creaking gate into the snowy road. She only looked back once, and then she saw that a dingy signboard hung in front of the house. The picture of what was meant for a cow, and had once been white, was depicted on it, and the words "A la Vache Blanche" were clumsily painted underneath. So the house was an inn, evidently, and as Babette read the words she dimly remembered having heard, long ago, that ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... night one would select for traveling on horseback, unless his business was urgent. However, the man's seemed to be of this nature, for he rode behind a large signboard which advertised the wares of the Prouty Emporium, dismounted, tied his horse to the prop that held the signboard upright, and with a show of haste took a coil of rope from his saddlehorn, an axe—the head of which was wrapped in gunny sacking—and ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... a dam across the river, and a mill—a great, gaunt promontory of building,—half on dry ground and half arched over the stream. The road here drew in its shoulders and crept through between the landward extremity of the mill and a little garden enclosure, with a small house and a large signboard within its privet hedge. I was pleased to fancy this an inn, and drew little etchings in fancy of a sanded parlour, and three-cornered spittoons, and a society of parochial gossips seated within over their churchwardens; but as I drew near, the board displayed ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the distant conflagration. I rush home, I want to hide myself, to sleep, to forget. When I am in my room, I see through the white curtains of the window a bright light. I tremble and rush to the window! It is the gilt letters of a signboard, on the opposite side of the way, that are darting forth brilliant flashes, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... expression in her face, partly spiritual, partly spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar to her art; Mrs Gamp rummaged in her pocket again, and took from it a printed card, whereon was an inscription copied from her signboard. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... scarred and smashed by shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only shattered walls and heaps of bricks. Over all hangs that curious odour one gets at the Front—a sort of combined smell of burning and decay. A grotesque effect is produced by a signboard hanging outside a ruined tenement and bearing the words: "Delattre, Debitant," or, in other words, "Delattre's Inn." On the right a gunner is standing on what was once a house roof, hacking away at the beams with a pickaxe; he is getting firewood, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... official positions, were very rare articles, and Master Altham had not received a full dozen in all the seven-and-twenty years that he had lived in the Strand and made patties. Next door to him was John Arnold, the bookbinder, who displayed a Saracen's head upon his signboard; then came in regular order Julian Walton, the mercer, with a wheelbarrow; Stephen Fronsard, the girdler, with a cardinal's hat; John Silverton, the pelter or furrier, with a star; Peter Swan, the ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... and to swell the statistics of insanity and disease. The most loyal and friendly of Australians resent this importation. The uninstructed and untravelled native accepts him as a pattern Englishman, and the satirical prints help out that conclusion in his mind. There is no signboard on the Australian continent that rubbish of this sort may be shot there, and the English tendency to throw its waste in that direction has never been regarded in a friendly spirit. We gave them our convicts for a start and now we give them our most dangerous incapables. They do not like ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, the party ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... occupied by a photographer, the fourth by a dealer in picture frames, the third and the second are let out for offices. Over the first hangs the gilded symbol of the three balls and the further information, lettered on a signboard, "Isaac Buxbaum, Money to Loan." The basement is given over to a restaurant-keeper whose identity is fixed by the testimony of another signboard, bearing the two words, "Butter-cake Bob's." Mr. Ricketty's little black eyes ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... shopmate, William Manning, preserved this signboard. In 1881 we found a Baptist shoemaker, a descendant of Carey's wife, with four assistants, at work in the shed. Then an old man, who had occasionally worked under Carey, had just died, and he used to tell how Carey had once flipped him with his apron when he ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... are alike to thirsty men," answered Rob. "Lead us where thou wilt; we'll speak our thanks under one signboard as ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... morning to quarrel, so I sent word that I would fix it up; and when I was driving by there next day the painters were hard at work on it. There was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed on the Avenue, and I saw right off that it was just a natural signboard. So I called over the boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice little ad that ran something ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... all the outer world by the high ridge that girds it round on every side, and turned only on the southern front towards the open Channel and the backing sun. Half-way down the steep cobble-paved High Street, just after you pass the big dull russet church, a small shop on the left-hand side bears a signboard with the painted legend, 'Oswald, Family Grocer and Provision Dealer.' In the front bay window of that red-brick house, built out just over the shop, Harry Oswald, Fellow and Lecturer of Oriel College, Oxford, kept his big ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... destination being a particularly attractive feature of this walk. But I enjoy also the journeys that are made in strange places where one knows neither the way nor the destination, except from a map or the advice of signboard or kilometer posts (which one reads by the flame of a match, or, where that is wanting, sometimes by following the letters and figures on a post with one's fingers), or the information, usually inaccurate, of some other wayfarer. Most of these journeys ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and spindling thread, across what men then called "The Great American Desert." Two days' journey from Independence this road branched from the Santa Fe Trail and bent northward across the prairie. A signboard on a stake pointed the way and bore the legend, "Road to Oregon." It was the starting point of one of the historic highways of the world. The Indians called it "The Great Medicine ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... hospitality to strangers. The host being a fellow-countryman who had had the good fortune to marry a Dutch lady of most distinguished family. Almost at the summit of the hill, about eight miles from the station, stood a little halting house bearing the English-looking signboard with the legend of the "Pig and Whistle." Here refreshments awaited the travellers, and then the journey was continued along a jungle path which shortly emerged on to the cultivated slopes of the estate. These slopes were covered ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... time the officer in command of the three torpedoes looked at his watch or at the compass, both of which he carried around his wrist. Intently the men all watched the signboard on the wall in front of them. The storm without made itself felt even in the depth. Every motion of the water caused the submarine to rock up and down ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... at 18 Rue Boileau, Auteuil. On the iron gate was a long, dark signboard, with gold letters. I looked up at it, and mamma said, "You will be able to read that soon, I hope." My aunt whispered to me, "Boarding School, Madame Fressard," and very promptly I said to mamma, "It says ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the house, recognizable by an immense wooden signboard where the name of "Gatonax" sprawled in enormous pumpkin-colored letters, and by two little glass cases where false teeth were carefully set in rose-colored wax, he gasped for breath. He perspired profusely. A horrible fear shook him, a trembling ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... beautiful embankments were still preserved, thanks to the care of the early settlers, who planned a street to pass between them, which was named the Via Sacra. These words still remain on a corner signboard; but alas for sentiment! the banks, so long revered, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... and all else was forgiven them. Nevertheless, Catholicism was the religion of the country. Its inhabitants might be likened to promiscuous guests at an inn whose landlord made no criticisms on their beliefs, further than to inscribe the Papal insignia on the signboard over his door. Thus liberty was discriminated from license, and in the midst ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... a little and its nickel work dull, but seemingly all right. In the middle of the road stood a chauffeur, his cap pushed back and a hand to his head. As we approached, he looked away from the little writing-block and stared up at the signboard of the inn. When he heard the car approaching, he made for the pavement, turning a puzzled face in our direction. At that moment I ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... of three; it was just an empty, unemployable room. The building had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where, behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window and a door that led directly by two steps into the street. A strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard. Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had blown into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He had always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reason would never hear of such a thing as a clearance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in the Tatler and Spectator; and he also commenced his attack on John Partridge, quack doctor and maker of astrological almanacs. On the appearance of Partridge's "Merlinus Liberatus" for 1708, Swift—borrowing a name from the signboard of a shoemaker—published "Predictions for the year 1708, wherein the month and day of the month are set down, the persons named, and the great actions and events of next year particularly related, as they ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... have a tenement of his own, he shortly after took a small house alongside the Promenade du Gravier; and he removed and carried on his trade there for about forty years. The little shop is still in existence, with Jasmin's signboard over the entrance door: "Jasmin, coiffeur des Jeunes Gens," with the barber's sud-dish hanging from a pendant in front. The shop is very small, with a little sitting-room behind, and several bedrooms above. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... as he called it on his signboard, "Dental Parlors," he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and, having crammed his little stove full of coke, lay back in his operating chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking his beer, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... road we passed a signboard on the edge of a cratered field. New words had been painted on it in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... before a signboard on which was a picture of a slender man dressed up in white clothing, very tight, with red and black squares on it; he was leaning against a table; his head and face were a dead white, except for red eyebrows, and a red spot in each cheek, and he had no hair, but a smooth dead-white skin from his ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... existence of that universal Consciousness 'in which we live, and move, and have our being'; and of the existence of the reality of the Eternal Now, in which past, present, and future are blended as one fact of infinite consciousness. He sees here the signboard pointing to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... "Shreve? Now, what signboard did you rob? Shreve is a good name, too good for a foc'sle rat. Did you come by it honestly? Did you have a father by that name? I dare say not. A gutter product would not know ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... inspiration,—so that it should be a distinction, give people a cachet, to have had tea at their cottage; and in a prominent position in the road in front of it, where every motor-car would be bound to see it, there would be a real wayside inn signboard, such as inns in England always have, with its ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Paris? Yes, I think it is, too. I don't know any other place where there are all these high houses, all these haggard-looking wine shops, all these billiard tables, all these stocking-makers with flat red or yellow legs of wood for signboard, all these fuel shops with stacks of billets painted outside, and real billets sawing in the gutter, all these dirty corners of streets, all these cabinet pictures over dark doorways representing discreet matrons nursing babies. And ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... likenesses. An English writer says: "As the English, a particularly quick-witted race, tinged with the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in their reputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity the figure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does not resemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that they are dying of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... friend, he is jealous of me as a rival in that capacity; and he has never forgiven the slight put on his establishment in connection with the girls' proposed visit. I partly appeased him by suggesting that he supply the shanty with a new signboard labeled 'Palace Hotel.' Fortunately I don't have to put up ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... his own life for suspecting other people. He had always disliked Jim Dyckman because Dyckman had always disliked him, and Jim's transparent face had announced the fact with all the clarity of an illuminated signboard. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... is true, the older men, less concerned perhaps at staring the word in the face, are not altogether unfortunate in their self-revelation; but consider the portrait of Lord Leighton by himself,—it must have been painted originally as a signboard for Burlington House, for the summer exhibition of the Academy there, as who should say to a discerning public: Here you may have your fill of the impudent and blatant commonplace you love so much. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... such sorrowful blind looking, she opened to her chapter of Matthew again, and carelessly and sadly turned over a leaf or two; till she saw a word which though printed in the ordinary type of the rest, stood out to her eyes like the lettering on a signboard. "ASK." — ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... remembered some Dawson acquaintances in town made the fall before while coming down the Yukon River with my brother. To one family of these I made my way. They were in the grocery and bakery business on a prominent corner on First street and their signboard caught ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... warning we came on this little village called Montignies St. Christophe. A six-armed signboard at a crossroads told us its name —a rather impressive name ordinarily for a place of perhaps twenty houses, all told. But now tragedy had given it distinction; had painted that straggling frontier hamlet over with such ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... usual, waiting at the station when the down train arrived, on the Tuesday—or Wednesday—of the selectmen's meeting. The train was due, according to the time-table, at eleven forty-five. This time-table, and the signboard of the "Bayport Hotel" are the only bits of humorous literature peculiar to our village, unless we add the political ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Excellency might go away and other officials might be installed in the castle. Von Hartrott had seen much and his smile seemed to imply that nothing could surprise him, no matter how outrageous it might be. But his relative continued scorning his protection, and laughing bitterly at the impromptu signboard. What more could they carry off? . . . Had they ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... years back, opposite this dealer, stood a shop whose bottle-green woodwork excreted damp by all its cracks. On the signboard, made of a long narrow plank, figured, in black letters the word: MERCERY. And on one of the panes of glass in the door was written, in red, the name of a woman: Therese Raquin. To right and left were deep show cases, lined with ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... mammoth sandwiches and a large slice of cheese waited in an untied handkerchief until such time as his thirst should be satisfied. At the other side of the table the oldest man in Claybury, drawing gently at a long clay pipe, turned a dim and regretful eye up at the old signboard. ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... in a peculiarly subtle way; there is a sensation of being withdrawn from the actual experiences, of living in a new and far-away world. Suddenly the road diverged, and we had mountains on either side; another turn, and on a tree was a signboard, "Durkee's Scotch Whiskey." Instantly the "supreme moment" vanished, and I was again in my home city, and one of a band of women battling "the bill-board nuisance." I was rebellious at thus being despoiled of my poetic mood and tried to regain ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... dismally through coronets of young redwoods that grew riotously around the base of the departed parent trees. From the fringe of the thicket thus formed, the terminus of an old skid-road showed and a signboard, freshly painted, pointed the way to the Valley of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... which, owing to the absence of a trolley, had retained a certain individuality. The rivers of mud broadened out into a sea, flanked by a double row of two-story, flat-roofed frame stores, whose monotony was interrupted by a hotel and a town hall. My guide stopped at a corner butcher shop. Its signboard was a couple of mild-eyed animals hanging head downward, presented informally, with their skins untouched, and having more the appearance of some ill-treated pets than future beef and bouillon for the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Immediately under the signboard of the White Lamb, and before the front-door, stood a couple of men who chatted as they passed a tankard of beer to each other. Captain Salt could not see their faces owing to the extreme width of their ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day these huge masses of painted timber creaked and waved overhead, to the terror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On the 2nd of December, 1718 (George I.), a signboard opposite Bride Lane, Fleet Street, having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement, suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing four persons, one of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however, till 1761 (George III.) that ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Elsmere stood looking a moment at the inn, the bridge, and the village. It was a characteristic Westmoreland scene. The low whitewashed inn, with its newly painted signboard, was to his right, the pony at the door lazily flicking off the flies and dropping its greedy nose in search of the grains of corn among the cobbles; to his left a gray stone bridge over a broad light-filled river; beyond, a little huddled village backed by and apparently built out of the great ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saw. The carvings were strangely grotesque, interwoven and ornamenting the cornices and surrounding the windows; but the most remarkable fact was that the house opposite reproduced exactly the same sculptures, the same ornaments; even the signboard, with its post and spiral of iron, was ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... o'clock, Therese went, as she had promised, to the gate of the English cemetery. There she found Dechartre. He was serious and agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy. He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which she did not know. She read on a signboard: Via Alfieri. After they had taken fifty steps, he ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... show how three of the arrows were removed each to a neighbouring square on the signboard of the "Chequers" Inn, so that still no arrow was in line with another. The black dots indicate the squares on which ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... stood in a darkish cross-town street looking up at the name "Rooney's," picked out by incandescent lights against a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a tough "hang-out"; with its frequenters and its locality he was unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Bishopstowe, I could see that it bore out Kitwater's description of it. A prettier little place could scarcely have been discovered, with its tree-shaded high-road, its cluster of thatched cottages, its blacksmith's shop, rustic inn with the signboard on a high post before the door, and last but not least, the quaint little church standing some hundred yards back from the main road, and approached from the lych-gate by ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... the village inn, for it was in plain sight, not a hundred yards from the station. As the town seemed to be peopled chiefly by French residents it would have been natural to conclude that the hotel also would be French. This, however, was not the case, for the Lion Inn (there was a swinging signboard adorned by the figure of a lion, the work of a fourth-rate sign painter) was kept by a short, stout, red-faced Englishman, who stood in the doorway as Fred came up, ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... and was compelled to close his shop and abscond from his creditors. He took refuge in Paris, where he seemed likely to die of hunger. One day over a magnificent establishment in the Rue de Grammont appeared a signboard with the name of Van Klopen, dressmaker, and in the thousands of handbills distributed with the utmost profusion, he called himself the "Regenerator of Fashion." This was an idea that would have never originated ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... was to get it into the van. Messrs. Blake, Johnson and Jones tried alone and failed. For ten minutes they tried alone and failed. Between each attempt they paused to mop their brows and throw longing glances towards the Blue Cow, whose signboard was ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... delicious food they had tasted there. It is a mistake if you are old to go back to the village in which you were born and bred. Ghosts meet you in every lane and look out from the windows. There are new names on the signboard of the inn and over the grocer's shop. A steam-engine has been put in the mill, and the pathway behind to the mill dam and to the river bank has been closed. The people you see think you are a visitor. The church is restored, and there is a brand new Wesleyan chapel. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... doorway, whilst Chauvelin did the same at the other. Rateau, standing in the gutter, appeared once more in a state of hesitation. Immediately in front of him the door of a small cabaret stood invitingly open; its signboard, "Le Bon Copain," promised rest and refreshment. He peered up and down the road, satisfied himself presumably that, for the moment, his pursuers were out of sight, hugged his parcel to his chest, and then suddenly made a dart for the cabaret and disappeared ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... his reflections when suddenly he caught sight of the signboard of the Amour peintre, and a torrent of bitter-sweet emotions swept tumultuously over ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... enough for a large box, but admitted that it was all her own fault for not employing a proper man. It got about that he had made a poor job of the box; and as he, when taxed with this, emphatically confirmed it, he got no other commission; and his signboard served thenceforth only for the amusement of pedestrian tourists and of shepherd boys with a taste ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... and there is the bleat of a young calf; pigs are squeaking one against another, and in the midst of the din a dog begins to bark. At the farther corner, where the hedge retreats from its encroachments on the meadow, a grey house comes into view, with a signboard across its upper part announcing that here the tired traveller may ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... would build a beautiful dog-house with a top like one of the heathen temples, and have an account of Caesar's heroism printed in large letters on a signboard over the front." But Hatty thought that Caesar would better appreciate good care, plenty of meat, and ...
— The Lost Kitty • Harriette Newell Woods Baker (AKA Aunt Hattie)
... difference, that they are Japanese, and inhabit Japanese houses. The one we design to honor to-day carries on his profession in the suburbs, in that ancient quarter of big trees and gloomy pagodas where, the other day, I met the pretty little mousme. His signboard, written in several languages, is stuck up against a wall on the edge of the little torrent which, rushing down from the green mountain above, is crossed by many a curved bridge of old granite ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way tew Boston, an' I want tew git that ere name painted out and his'n put in its place. Are yer up tew it, and what 'ud the job tax me?" As the publican spoke he pointed at the lettering below the weather-beaten portrait of George the Third, which served as the signboard of the tavern. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the first he eschewed the facile trickeries and ostentations which allure the populace. He sought a high-class trade, and by waiting he found it. He would never advertise on hoardings; for many years he had no signboard over his shop-front; and whereas the name of 'Bostocks,' the huge cheap drapers lower down Machin Street, on the opposite side, attacks you at every railway-station and in every tramcar, the name of 'E. Brunt' is to be seen only in a modest regular ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... camped outside a little village for the night, they saw beside the road a signboard ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... o'clock the house was well filled. The signboard bearing the legend, "Standing Room Only" was put out in front to catch a few more. It was such an audience as would make any manager's heart rejoice. The curtain rose promptly on the first act. To say the act went off tamely would be simply admitting the truth. Camille was not ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... and rode away from the plowed field wherein nothing grew as yet. As they left the furrows they came to a signboard with writing on it, in a peculiar ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... determined a hundred years before his birth. The ancestral ground slopes upward toward the mountain-minded man. The great never appear suddenly. Seven generations of clergymen make ready for Emerson, each a signboard pointing to the coming philosopher. The Mississippi has power to bear up fleets for war or peace because the storms of a thousand summers and the snows of a thousand winters have lent depth and power. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Hegion a bronze-founder; AEschine a fuller, and Cydias a wit—that is his profession. He has a signboard, a workshop, finished articles for sale, mechanics who work under him. He cannot deliver for more than a month the stanzas which he has promised you, unless he breaks his word to Dosithee, who has ordered an elegy from him. He has an idyl on the loom; it is ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... luggage, were goaded to fury by the calmness of the officials and their determination not to be hurried. Hearing there was no chance of having tea on board that night, and discovering near the wharf a signboard announcing that meals could be obtained at all hours (except, as we were told, that particular one), we with difficulty persuaded the proprietress to let us have something to eat. Amidst muttered grumblings that she was "slaved to death," that "her ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... them, and it turned out that the sleeves were satisfactory also. In short, the cloak appeared to be perfect, and most seasonable. Petrovitch did not neglect to observe that it was only because he lived in a narrow street, and had no signboard, and had known Akakiy Akakievitch so long, that he had made it so cheaply; but that if he had been in business on the Nevsky Prospect, he would have charged seventy-five rubles for the making alone. Akakiy Akakievitch did not care to argue this point with Petrovitch. He paid him, thanked ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Hotel and Warm Lane to its right, and Woodisun Bank creeping inconspicuously down to its left, stood a three-storey building consisting of house and shop, the frontage being in Wedgwood Street. Over the double-windowed shop was a discreet signboard in gilt letters, "D. Clayhanger, Printer and Stationer," but above the first floor was a later and much larger sign, with the single word, "Steam-printing." All the brickwork of the facade was painted yellow, and had obviously been painted yellow many times; the woodwork ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... end of the trail," he said gaily. "We have reached the inn with 'The Sign of the Sunflower.' See the signboard Jim has put ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... right!" Ignat approved. "That's to show what stuff we are made of. That's clear enough—for the father's honour—for the honour of the firm. And there is no loss either, because that gives a good reputation. And that, my dear, is the very best signboard for a business. Well, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... for a while. There was no signboard to help him. He looked back and saw the innkeeper still standing by the door. He called to him:—"My friend, which of these roads shall I ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... stood out in chaste white letters from the black background of the signboard. Indeed the name might be said to spring from the landscape, for this shop jumped from its rural setting with an air of aggression. It was a commercial oasis on a desert of grass. It proclaimed the clash of two civilisations. There were the hills, pitched round ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... dropped from the list of post-towns, but every cross-road for miles around had a fingerboard showing the direction and telling the distance to New Boston. Upon a tall cottonwood-tree on the river-bank, and nearly in front of Wardelow's residence, was an immense signboard bearing the name of "New Boston Landing," and on the other side of the river, at a ferry-staging belonging to a crossing whose other terminus was a mile further down the river, was a sign which informed travelers that persons wishing to go to New Boston would find a skiff marked "Wardelow" ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... The Italians have their dear domestic quarter, with Italian caricatures in the windows, Chianti and polenta in the taverns. The Chinese are settled as in China. The goods they offer for sale are as foreign as the lettering on the signboard of the shop: dried fish from the China seas; pale cakes and sweetmeats—the like, perhaps, once eaten by Badroubadour; nuts of unfriendly shape; ambiguous, outlandish vegetables, misshapen, lean, or bulbous—telling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meeting at Cheltenham, he made me an offer of one-third share of the value of his patent. This would have been another fortune to me. But I had already made money enough. I was just then taking down my signboard and leaving business. I did not need to plunge into any such tempting enterprise, and I therefore ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... stood a sort of decayed inn with the dingy sign of The Grapes. The signboard was dark and indecipherable by now, and hung black against the sky and the gray moorland beyond, about as inviting as a gallows. March remarked that it looked like a tavern for vinegar ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... bitter things there in that waste about the man with the information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me—it seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots. "We have wronged ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... level and so magnificently shaded by huge old trees that I could believe myself in an English lane—a lane in Kent or Surrey, perhaps—but for some exotic detail breaking the illusion at intervals; a torii, towering before temple-steps descending to the highway, or a signboard lettered with Chinese characters, or the wayside shrine of some ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... intensity the white winding road from Cambridge to Royston which I have bicycled hundreds of tunes. One sees the little inns along the way—the Waggon and Horses, the Plough, the King's Arms—and the recurring blue signboard Fine Royston Ales (the Royston brewery being famous in those parts). Behind the fun there shines Brooke's passionate devotion to the soil and soul of England which was to reach its final expression so tragically soon. And even behind this the immortal questions of youth which have ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Honourable George. Plodding solitary down that low street he was, heeled as usual by the Judson cur. He came to the Spilmer public house and for a moment stared up, quite still, at the "Last Chance" on its chaffing signboard. Then he wheeled abruptly and entered. I was moved to follow him, but I knew it would never do. He would row me about the service of the Grill—something of that sort. I dare say he had fancied her ladyship as keenly as one of his volatile ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin, worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... malsanema. Side flanko. Sideboard telermeblo. Side face profilo. Siege siegxo. Sieve kribrilo. Sift kribri. Sigh ekgxemi. Sigh after—or for sopiri pri. Sight vido. Sight (view) vidajxo. Sign signi—igi. Sign signo. Sign (a document, etc.) subskribi. Signboard elpendajxo. Sign-manual subskribo—ajxo. Sign (notice-board) surskribajxo. Signpost signa fosto. Signal signalo. Signal signali. Signal (milit.) signaldiro. Signature subskribo. Signet sigelilo. Significant signifa. Signification signifo. Signify (to mean) signifi. Signify ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... (mountains, they call them here), the water and the sky all were lovely. At Patterdale I had a cup of tea, with bread and butter and the veritable orange marmalade manufactured at Dundee. Thence I took a stage over Kirkstone Pass, and walked two miles up the hills to a small hotel with a signboard saying it is the highest inhabited house in England, 1,114 feet above the sea—not very much beside Denver's 6,000 and others in Colorado 10,000 or 12,000. Arrived at Ambleside to find the hotel overflowing, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... himself with an awkward air. His tall and badly jointed body swings like a hanging signboard. He is an original and sentimental soul, but no one has ever troubled to find out what he is. He begins, "My young friend—hum, hum—" (he repeats this formless sound every two or three words, like a sort of clock with a sonorous tick)—"One may be wanting money, you know, for something—hum, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... further on he came opposite a neat, three-story brick building, across the width of which was a black and gold signboard, lettered THE GAZETTE. Below it was the large plate-glass window of a counting-room, now dark. On the left was a ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought, that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know—and they know we know—that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the signboard of a ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... found in all the other apartments. The tavern itself, in reference to the obvious pursuit of many of those who made it their home, was entitled "The Golden Egg"—a title made sufficiently notorious to the spectator, from a huge signboard, elevated some eight or ten feet above the building itself, bearing upon a light-blue ground a monstrous egg of the deepest yellow, the effect of which was duly heightened by a strong and thick shading of sable all round it—the artist, in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... town, small as it may be, and darkened as it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot forget—men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging signboard of the tavern, and—worst of all—in the trim-printed "ATTORNEY AT LAW." Even the little milliner's shop, with its meagre show of leghorns, and its string across the window all hung with tabs and with cloth roses, is ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... to be coming to a signboard soon," declared Gif a few minutes later. "I remember there used to be one on the road, pointing to a number of camps north of ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... very incident, tricked me into believing that a door had creaked again? I listened, but a silence followed, broken only by a drone of voices ascending from the common room. As I had assured the host upon the stairs, so I now assured myself that it was the wind, the signboard of the inn, perhaps, swaying ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... burning the whole town, the Huns had gone to the trouble of displaying a huge signboard on the side of a building in the square on which were these words: ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears, in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then, at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixt to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... were covered in silence, and then they came to a signboard. It told that the main road was closed, and that they must take to a side road—a highway that was fairly good, ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... than three hours to that time when the boys reached the little cluster of six houses which comprised West Hill. The signboard had probably told only half the truth in regard to distance—as country ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... Whistler, they say they only painted out your butterfly from the signboard, and changed the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum." I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. "Strange, is it not," I added, "that a grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he had not continued in that comparatively honorable vocation instead of sinking to his present position—wondering if Jo. Kirby would ever consent, if he were alive, to die wrapped up in a Secession flag!—gazing admiringly upon the unostentatious signboard which is suspended in front of the Hon. Izzy Lazarus's tavern—glancing, wondering, and gazing thus, I enter the old Chatham theatre. The pit is full, but people ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... sort, and sights of every description, from the kind where there is nothing to see to panoramas of the globe. One man who has since made seven or eight hundred thousand francs by traveling from fair to fair began here by hanging out a signboard, a revolving sun in a blackboard, and the inscription in red letters: "Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance, two sous." The showman at the door never admitted one person alone, nor more than two at a time. Once inside, you ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... burning all night. While thus engaged I found in the side of the rock a cave of good depth. I explored it at once, while there was light, to ascertain that it was not the abode of another grizzly. Having assured myself that the lodgings were unoccupied, though no signboard announced that they were to be let, I piled my wood up in front, and collected all the branches of fir trees and moss which I could find, to form a bed for myself inside. These arrangements being made, I lighted my fire and sat ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... a signboard recently in Britain, he has filled the same office now close on a century in Canada, and still continues to do so. He has defied wind and weather ever since the day when the Cholette Brothers affixed to the house at the north-west corner of St. John and Palace streets ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... oppressed by excessive thirst, saw a goblet of water painted on a signboard. Not supposing it to be only a picture, she flew towards it with a loud whir and unwittingly dashed against the signboard, jarring herself terribly. Having broken her wings by the blow, she fell to the ground, and was caught by one of ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... the common to the front of the inn, they encountered a little group of men conversing underneath the rusty old anchor signboard which dangled from a stout stanchion above the front door of the inn. Some men, wearing sea-boots and jerseys, others in labouring garb, splashed with clay and mud, were standing about. They ceased their conversation as the party from the motor-car appeared ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... have heard that on a day Mine host's signboard flew away Nobody knew whither, till An astrologer's old quill To a sheepskin gave the story— Said he saw you in your glory Underneath a new-old Sign Sipping beverage divine, And pledging with contented smack The Mermaid in the Zodiac! Souls of poets dead and gone What Elysium have ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... a journey, setting out from London one bright morning, they rode through Essex and stopped by chance at a little village inn. 'Twas the village of Wickben, and on the signboard which hung swinging on a post before the small thatched house of entertainment was painted a ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... second-hand. In its vivid familiarity it seemed to make straight for the two Englishmen, to surround and take possession of them, and they paused. The source of it was plain—an open door under a vast white signboard dingily lettered "The Salvation Army." It loomed through the smoke and ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... read on a board in big letters: "Private Lying-in-Hospital, kept by Madame Alessandri, first-class midwife, ex-pupil of the Maternity, author of various works, etc." Then, in the centre of the street, over the door—a little side-door—there was another signboard: "Private Hospital of Madame Alessandri," ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... prettiest of English villages. It does and has and is everything the ideal village ought to. It nestles, for instance, in the folds of hills; it is very small, and far away from other places; its cottages are old and thatched; its little inn is the inn of a story-book, with a quaint signboard and an apparently genial landlord; its church stands beautifully on rising ground among ancient trees, besides being hoary; its vicarage is so charming that to see it makes you long to marry a vicar; its vicar is venerable, with an eye so mild that to catch it is to receive ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... outlook was bounded by a cabbage garden, while a surly wind prophesied rain. It was chilly, too, and he had his breakfast beside the kitchen fire. Mrs. Brockie could not spare a capital letter for her surname on the signboard, but she exalted it in her talk. He heard of a multitude of Brockies, ascendant, descendant, and collateral, who seemed to be in a fair way to inherit the earth. Dickson listened sympathetically, and lingered by the fire. He felt ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... an hour they found themselves on a good stone road and reached a signboard put up by the automobile association, telling the exact distance to Philadelphia. This set them at ease mentally, and they started off at a speed of twenty miles an hour. Tom wanted to "let her out," as he put it, but Nellie demurred and so he kept ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... sent to the public schools, but had a governess, yet Mortimer Conklin, who was always alert for the call, could not understand why the people never summoned him to any office of honor or trust. He kept his brass signboard polished, went to his office punctually every morning at ten o'clock, and returned home to dinner at five, and made clients wait ten minutes in the outer office before they could see him—at least so both of them ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... were a little larger and more pretentious than most of the houses in this street, and a goodsized garden ran backwards from each towards Saint James's Park. As every house had then its name and a signboard to exhibit it—numbers being not yet applied to houses—these were no exception to the rule. That one of the trio nearest to the Abbey displayed a golden fish upon its signboard; the middle one hung out a white bear; while from the northernmost swung a panel representing an ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... vehemently. "It was Trimmer who did this; somehow, someway he did it, and he flaunts it in our faces. Look there!" and he pointed to a huge signboard that had been erected overnight just opposite the entrance to Burnit Avenue. In huge, bold letters, surmounted by a giant hand that pointed the way, it told prospective investors to buy property in the high and dry Trimmer Addition, the words "High and Dry" being twice ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... over and over again; he was so abject in his love and worship of her name that he carried everywhere with him a volume of Lessing, because the name of Minna occurred in it, and every day when he left the theater he went a long distance out of his way so as to pass a mercery shop, on whose signboard the five adored letters ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the silent "l" in the original settler's name had been lost entirely. But the post office agreed to put it back into the name, and a big signboard was painted and ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long |
