"Feather bed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those days. It was not, as it is now, a question of what you could afford to buy, but of what rank you were. You could not wear ermine or samite unless you were an earl at the lowest; nor must you sleep on a feather bed unless you were a knight; nor might you eat your dinner from a metal plate, if you were not a gentleman. Such notions may sound ridiculous to us; but they were serious earnest, six hundred years ago. We should not like to find that we had to go before a magistrate and pay a fine, if our shoes ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... the door, planted himself in front of it with a heroic gesture. Deuce take it! his own interest was at stake in the matter. The fact was that when his child was once in the gutter he ran great risk of not having a feather bed to sleep on himself. He was superb in that attitude of an indignant father, but he did not keep it long. Two hands, two vises, seized his wrists, and he found himself in the middle of the room, leaving the doorway ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... trooping through the streets, their bare heads shining in the sun or glistening in the rain, according as the fickle sky may smile or weep; and babies are drawn about in the open air, two, and sometimes three of them, crowded into a small carriage and sweltering under a feather bed which covers them to their chins, and yet with their bald pates exposed to all the winds that blow. The ignorant recklessness with which the changes of temperature are met is well exemplified in the attire of little girls and young maidens who participate in the religious processions which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... mony was the feather bed That flattered on the faem; And mony was the gude lord's son That ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... met. With a peculiar expression of countenance, he stepped towards her, saying "Good morning, school ma'am. For what part are you bound with all this baggage?" pointing to a huge chest with a feather bed tied over it, the whole the property of a daughter of Erin, who stood near, carefully ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... log one, and though unpapered, looked very comfortable, and was prettily hung round with Japanese fans and scrolls, and various photographs. We had a funny little canvas partition in the roof allotted to us; but were not particular, and did great credit to our feather bed. ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... midst of all these distinct and clashing tastes, that of Mrs. O'Grady (the wife) must not be forgotten; her weak point was a feather bed. Good soul! anxious that whoever slept under her roof should lie softly, she would go to the farthest corner of the county to secure an accession to her favourite property—and such a collection of luxurious feather beds never was seen in company with such rickety bedsteads and tattered and ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... the inspector opened the door, and hesitatingly, one after the other, entered the room. Their eyes met the following sight: Beside the single window stood the big wooden bed with a huge feather mattress. On the crumpled feather bed lay a tumbled, crumpled quilt. The pillow, in a cotton pillow-case, also much crumpled, was dragging on the floor. On the table beside the bed lay a silver watch and a silver twenty-kopeck piece. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... en say all de sky was blue as indigo wid de Yankees comin right dere over de hill den. Say she see more Yankees den could ever cover up all de premises bout dere. Den I hear my Missus scream en come a runnin wid a lapful of silver en tell my grandmammy to hurry en sew dat up in de feather bed cause dem Yankees was mighty apt to destroy all dey valuables. Old Missus tell all de colored people to get away, get away en take care of demselves en tell we chillun to get back to de chimney corner cause she couldn' protect ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... surrender One day a fleet of vessels was seen bearing down upon the coast. It was first noticed in the vicinity of Huron by a woman. No sooner had she seen the vessels bearing down towards the coast from the westward, than she rushed into the house, emptied her feather bed and placed the tick on a horse as a pack-saddle; then catching up one child before her and another behind, she rode at the top of the animal's speed, thinking torture and death lay behind her. Whenever ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the feather bed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered up his administration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass. Finding nothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made the feather bed a part of my official duties, I filed it away in an obscure place and burned it in effigy, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... disadvantage to them. Many of their tools are not as efficient as ours, especially their axes, hoes, and hammers. On the other hand, when a person falls to the ground, it is nearly the same thing as if an inhabitant of the earth were to fall on a feather bed. Yet I saw as many instances of fractured limbs, hernia, and other accidents there, as I ever saw on the earth; for when they fall from great heights, or miscarry in the feats of activity which they ambitiously attempt, it inflicts the same injury upon them, as a fall nearer ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... conceivable, floating thus loosely in space, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thing in earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft feather bed. But the quality of utter detachment and independence! I had not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt—as if I were disembodied. It was not like ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Candy Rabbit do but fall on the soft, rubber ball! Right down on the squidgy-squdgy ball toppled the sweet chap, and it was like falling on a feather bed. The Candy Rabbit was not hurt a bit, but just bounced straight up, almost as far as he had fallen down, and the girl clerk caught him in ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... worries me," muttered Clay. "I believe I'd sooner carry a feather bed. The crazy thing jerks when I stick it under one arm, and if I hug it to my breast it hits me on the chin every few seconds. It's so heavy that the cords cut my hand if I try to carry it that way. I wish I could balance it ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... drink unless he have snow to cool his drink, nor eat bread purchased in the market, nor touch food served on cheap or earthenware plates, nor sleep upon any but a feather bed that rises and falls like the sea stirred up from its depths, and with rods and blows hastens his servants at table, so that they run about and cry out and sweat as if they were bringing poultices to sores, he is ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... were East Germanic, and that was a grief, taking, as it were, the bloom from the guess that had made him great; and again they were West Germanic, and that was awful, the hallucination ending in a mortal struggle with the feather bed under which German science is incubated, and passing off with an anguished "Donnerwetter! It cannot be Lombard. It is not possible." His not infrequent Italian trips had, then, an archaeological pretext, and ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... bit of the Cresswell manor, a tiny cabin, new-boarded and bare, in front of it a blazing bonfire. A white man was tossing into the flames different household articles—a feather bed, a bedstead, two rickety chairs. A young, boyish fellow, golden-faced and curly, stood with clenched fists, while a woman with tear-stained eyes clung to him. The white man raised a cradle to dash it into the flames; the woman cried, and the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... summer of 1831 Samson Traylor and his wife, Sarah, and two children left their old home near the village of Vergennes, Vermont, and began their travels toward the setting sun with four chairs, a bread board and rolling-pin, a feather bed and blankets, a small looking-glass, a skillet, an axe, a pack basket with a pad of sole leather on the same, a water pail, a box of dishes, a tub of salt pork, a rifle, a teapot, a sack of meal, sundry small ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... more parts in 100 of the atmosphere of the nursery, is reduced to 15 or 18 parts only, and the carbonic acid gas is increased from 1 or 2 parts in 100, to 5, 6, 8 or 10—when to this is added the other noxious exhalations from the body, and from the lamp or candle, fire-place, feather bed, stagnant fluids in the room, &c., &c.—is it any wonder that children, in the end, become sickly? What else could be expected but that the seeds of disease, thus early sown, should in due time spring up, and produce ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... field. Parson lived in a good, big frame house, and the niggers lived in log houses what had dirt floors and chimneys, and our bunks had rope slats and grass mattress. I sho' wish I could have cotch myself sleepin' on a feather bed them days. I wouldn't woke up ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... had a frugal mind. After pulling half the feathers out of Lucinda's bolster, she remembered that she herself was in want of a feather bed. ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... big rattler was old, and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that the world does n't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... at home, they found in their humble little cottage one of the gay-looking cavaliers they had sometimes seen on the forest road, and with him was a very beautiful lady. Old Nurse Heine was getting the spare room ready by beating up the great feather bed, and laying down on the floor the few strips of carpet they possessed. Their father was talking with the strangers, and he told them that Carl and Greta were his children; but they took no notice of them, for they were completely taken up with each other, for the gentleman, it appeared, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... is the kitchen, which also serves for the sitting and eating apartment. In the others the family sleep; while, in the outer one already mentioned, visiters and travellers are accommodated with a rush mat, a feather bed, and a coverlet spread on the clay floor. In this situation I have often enjoyed, after a fatiguing day's ride, the most balmy repose; while a swarthy train of slaves and Hottentots were moving round the embers of the fire, wrapped ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... Welsley, but I don't think I should like to pass all my year in it. I don't believe in sinking down into religion, or into practises connected with it, as a soft old man sinks down into a feather bed. And that's what ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the blue merino frock was flitting about near the red one, the wearers of both being engaged in shaking up a feather bed, Red suddenly stopped her occupation in ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and feathery plumes of balsam—soft and feathery only through six blankets—is laid the bedding, and on this couch the wearied and saddle-sore tourist may sleep as comfortably as in his grandaunt's feather bed. ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... her scorn. "Do you s'pose I'd let that poor lamb know I see him cryin'? Well, I guess not! I backed out as soft as a feather bed, an' I didn't go near that settin'-room for an hour, nor let any one else. I was a regular dragon-fly guardin' it. Well, by an' by Keith comes out. His face was white an' strained- lookin'. But he was smiling, an' he handed out ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... it's safe, Nat," were Uncle Dick's last words. "It's nicer to have the solid ground under you. This is a treat; the sand's like a feather bed; but we shan't often have such ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... his home a gentleman I had made the acquaintance of in New Orleans. He is a man of great worth and fine intelligence: his grandfather had emigrated to the country in 1785 from Emanuel County, Georgia. His grandson says: "He carried with him a small one-horse cart pulled by an old gray mare, one feather bed, an oven, a frying-pan, two pewter dishes, six pewter plates, as many spoons, a rifle gun, and three deer-hounds. He worried through the Creek Nation, extending then from the Oconee River ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... strew the floor with grass or, small boughs, in lieu of a feather bed, and you will tie up a bundle of the same material into a sheaf, which will form a capital pillow. If grass and sticks are at hand, this will be completed thus far in ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a weapon or two, and a few pieces of homemade furniture. However, between 1607 and 1612, George Percy was generously outfitted with some necessities as well as much fine apparel and numerous luxury items (including a feather bed) by his brother the Ninth Earl of Northumberland, as published records of the Earl's expenditures for George show. Other persons of gentle birth and position quite probably ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... the soldiers was comin' through and runnin' the white folks both ways. Law chile—you don't know nothin'! We used to hide in the cistern. One time when the Yankees come in a rush my brother and me hide in the feather bed. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... of one of the elephants to bring it back to the bungalow to be skinned. It was not an easy matter. For the tiger weighed nearly three hundred and fifty pounds; and to raise the limp carcase, which sagged like a feather bed at every spot where there was not a man to support it, was a difficult task. But it was achieved at last; and with the tiger roped firmly on a pad the elephants started ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... man of under forty, clean-shaven, clad in a smock, and evidently used to a quiet life, seeing that his face was of that puffy fullness, and the skin encircling his slit-like eyes was of that sallow tint, which shows that the owner of those features is well acquainted with a feather bed. In a trice it could be seen that he had played his part in life as all such bailiffs do—that, originally a young serf of elementary education, he had married some Agashka of a housekeeper or a mistress's favourite, and then ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the orders, and one or two pretty sharp examples of punishment inflicted by the commodore, the Black Jokers were not the only plunderers ashore that night. One master's-mate had the buttons taken off his coat, for stealing a feather bed, besides being obliged to carry it back again. Of course he was a ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... out in the fields, men, women, and children, and in one hayfield I saw the baby's cradle—baby, of course, concealed from view under a small avalanche of a feather bed, as the general fashion in these parts seems to be. The women wore broad, flat hats, and all appeared to be working rather lazily, as it ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... so much talent, would have to be stuffed full of stuff. There would be room enough in Fanny's dress, if Anna had it on, as we remember the two, to put in a feather bed, eleven rolls of cotton batting, twelve pounds of bird seed, four rubber air cushions, two dozen towels, two brass bird cages, a bundle of old papers, a sack of bran and a bale of hay. That is, in different places. Of course all this truck ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... tusks! Here too we saw the skeleton of an enormous whale that was captured on the coast of France; and from the size of its jaw bones, I can readily believe the old story, that the tongue of the whale is as large as a feather bed. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... resuming his paddle. "I often wonder how them white-faced fellows in the settlements manage to keep body and soul together—a-sittin', as they do, all day in the house, and a-lyin' all night in a feather bed. For my part, rather than live as they do, I would cut my way up streams like them we've just passed every day and all day, and sleep on top of a flat rock o' nights, under the blue sky, all my ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... spirit, and returning to her prayers, vowed, poor lady, to make a pilgrimage to St. Maria Zell, in Styria, if the Holy Virgin's intercessions obtained their success, and till the pilgrimage could be made, "to forego every Saturday night my feather bed!" After another false alarm at a supposed noise at the maidens' door, she ventured into the vault to see how her companions were getting on, when she found they had filed away all the locks, except that of the case containing the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... had better get busy if we want to have a place to sleep on," Landy exclaimed, for the hard ground did not appeal very much to the fat scout, accustomed as he was to a feather bed at home. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... place, several of the men were ripping open an old feather bed they had brought with them. Into this Ben was plunged, and rolled over and over until he looked more like an unsightly feathered creature than a human being. He was then made to stand on his feet for general inspection. The ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... with him to the very end and then tucked him into his big feather bed. She left his door into the winter kitchen ajar so that he could hear the singing, which they were sure to have. Then she helped her mother air the spare room for Allister, and put a little fire in the shiny box stove in the hall, for ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... yes, sir," cried Edward; "but a man don't want to be always comfortable, and well fed, and to sleep on a feather bed. He's a poor sort of a chap who does. I don't think much of him. It's like being a blind horse in a clay mill, going round and round and round all his life. Why, he never gets so much change as to be able ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... state for the private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothing were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the state as "legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as imported mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs of extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelve monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of whisky, one pair of corsets. During the recess, supplies were sent out to the rural ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... Why, Bob, it was like coming down on a big feather bed. I only hope Rusher doesn't do ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... the thick gray feathers, and put both arms round his neck; and whiz they went, up, up, up, higher and higher, till the trees looked like grass, they were so far below. At first it was very cold, and Rosy cuddled deeper into her feather bed; then, as they came nearer to the sun, it grew warm, and she peeped out to see the huts standing in a green spot on the top of ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... died a month ago, And left me all his riches; A feather bed, a wooden leg, And a pair of leather breeches. A coffee pot without a spout, A cup without a handle, A 'bacco box without a lid, And half ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... fairest place in the cemetery." John replies: "Gladly, sire." Forthwith John departs, prepares well the tomb, and did thereat what a master of his craft would do. Because the stone was hard, and even more on account of the cold, he has placed therein a feather bed; and moreover, that it may smell sweet to her, he has strewn thereon both flowers and foliage. But he did it even more for this, that none should spy the mattress that he had placed in the grave. Now had the whole office been said in chapels ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... then, plunging her hands into the great suds of feather bed, the whole thrust of her ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... fast, and he came again and brought Sir Selivant with him, and six men with an horse litter; and so they took up the feather bed with Sir Launcelot, and so carried all away with them unto the Castle Blank, and he never awaked till he was within the castle. And then they bound his hands and his feet, and gave him good meats and good drinks, and brought him again to his strength and his fairness; but in his ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... prevent me. Hurry, Nora, for Heaven's sake! For the life of me, don't give me a cup of cold water to taste, and then dash it from my lips. If we are not quick, we'll be caught and prevented from going. I am ready; wrap me up in a rug, and carry me out. I am ready and willing. Good-by to feather bed-dom. I don't want ever to see these ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the show, which was to be on a Saturday, it began to dawn upon me that I might be buried under an avalanche of quilts. The old ones were terribly large. They were made to cover a fat feather bed or two and to hang down to hide the trundle bed underneath, and, though the interlining of cotton was very thin and even, still the weight of a quilt made by ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... in Mrs. Wingate truculently, "no difference what you men say, I ain't going to leave my bureau, nor my table, nor my chairs! I'm going to keep my two churns and my feather bed too. We've had butter all the way so far, and I mean to have it all the way—and eggs. I mean to sleep at nights, too, if the pesky muskeeters'll let me. They most have et me up. And I'd give a dollar for a drink of real water now. It's all right to settle ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... keener apprehension of it than the lazy mulateers, whom I saw sleeping in their ox-carts below on the square, their red-blue caps and white jackets flooded in sunshine. The visitors to Cuba need not expect the luxury of a feather bed or a mattress. Neither was visible in my room. The couch consisted of a piece of canvas tightly spread over the iron frame, and strongly attached to it. A single sheet constituted the only covering, and the stranger will find that the pillow, filled with ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... in her bed and drew the feather bed over her ears. She would neither see nor hear anything. What business was it of hers? The master was a kind man, but the mistress was really very kind too, and it was a difficult matter for such a poor servant-girl, who had already got two children [Pg 46] on her hands, to side ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... knows is on the housetops. To tell the truth, she possessed certain medical secrets, and was of such great service to ladies in certain things, and to the nobles, that she lived in perfect tranquillity, without giving up the ghost on a pile of fagots, but on a feather bed, for she had made a hatful of money, although the physicians tormented her by declaring that she sold poisons, which was certainly true, as will be shown in the sequel. The servant and La Fallotte came on the same ass, making such haste that they arrived at the castle ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... with his own mother. A more remarkable human being than the one these little ladies had happened upon I don't look to see again the world around. Man or lion—God forgive me if I know what to call him. He'd hair enough, shaggy hair curling about his shoulders, to have stuffed a feather bed. His dress was half man's, half woman's. He'd a tattered petticoat about his legs, a seaman's blouse for his body, and a lady's shawl above that upon his shoulders—his legs were bare as a barked tree, and what boots he had should have been in the rag-shop. More ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... moan that came from the feather bed was a voice of collapse and chaos, to which speech ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... you're having?" the fat, dirty janitress enquired. Mrs. Foley was the widow of a useful Tammany man, and she owned real estate in Flatbush. She was huge and soft as a feather bed. Her face and arms were permanently coated with dust, grained like wood where the ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... years old, at least, should sleep upon a feather bed, for the reasons referred to above. The pillow, however, after the sixth month, should be made of horsehair; for at this time teething commences, and it is highly important that the head ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... for a consideration, but Fate overtook him and he was smothered under a feather bed for having too much wizard in his cosmos. A wizard, be it known, is a male witch, and the Bible says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," although it does ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Herr Pflersch was our grocer, a burly, good-natured man, who bowed politely to us when he arrived at the house, led by a troop of admiring and rejoicing friends. He was attended by his cook, and had brought with him a sackful of provisions and his feather bed, which came toiling up ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... usually consisted of a wooden bench, instead of a chair, and a crude bed made from heavy wood. Slats were used in the place of springs. The mattress was made stuffing a large bag with wheat straw. "This slept as good as any feather bed" says Mr. Wright. Candles were used to furnish light ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Pothier, sticking the pen behind his ear, after a magnificent flourish at the last word, "there is a marriage contract fit to espouse King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba! A dowry of a hundred livres tournoises, two cows, and a feather bed, bedstead, and chest of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby |
