"Matting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back in the semi-grin of desperate agony, that dumb, ceaseless moaning makes its way despite the gallant effort to restrain it. The one uninjured arm hangs downwards, its restless fingers picking at the bloodstained matting that covers the loose boards of the floor. A sheet has been lightly laid over him. It is dabbled with the prevailing hue, and sinks in an ominous hollow below the breast. And beyond the bottom of it splashed leggings ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... what's coming to you!" With this I slapped them with my pillow twice or thrice, but the objects being so small, the effect was out of proportion to the force with which the blows were administered. I adopted a different plan. In the manner of beating floor-mats with rolled matting at house-cleaning, I sat up in bed and began beating them with the pillow. Many of them flew up by the force of the pillow; some desperately clung on or shot against my nose or head. I could not very well hit those on my head with the pillow; I grabbed ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... affording safe anchorage for the greater part of the year. It was opened to foreign trade towards the latter end of the 18th century. The exports consist of coffee, pepper, cardamoms and coco-nuts. There are factories for coir-matting. The raja has a palace, and Protestant missionaries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... place to hide them. The place he chose was between the leaves of a book. He would push a pin far in out of sight, and then go after another. A match he always tried to put in a crack, under the baseboard, between the breadths of matting, or under my rockers. He first placed it, and then tried to hammer it in out of sight. He could seldom get it in far enough to suit him, and this worried him. Then he would take it out and try ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... may be kept all winter by laying them in a heap in the cellar, with the concave side upwards to hold in the liquor. Sprinkle them every day with strong salt and water, and then with Indian meal. Cover them with matting or ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... its own. There are lakes of many kinds. One named for the painter, now dead, who many times sketched and dreamed on its shores, is a beautiful ellipse; and its entire edge carries a purple shadow matting of the crowding forest. Its placid surface reflects peak and snow, cloud and sky, and mingling with these are the green and gold of pond-lily glory. Another lake is stowed away in an utterly wild place. It is in a rent between three granite peaks. Three thousand feet of precipice bristle ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... at us! Cora Kimball!" and her brother threatened to injure his beauty on the matting rug. "If I had only the least idea that you didn't like us, I would have packed the whole ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... temple is extremely lofty. The walls and rafters are of teak and the floor is covered with a matting made of silver wire. At the far end of this imposing room an enormous, pyramidal shrine of gold rises almost to the roof, its dazzling brilliancy somewhat subdued by the semi-obscurity of the interior. Wat Phra Keo is unique amongst ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... as nature laid it originally in the quarry not set up edgewise; in our day some people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split and flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything. Let me remove this matting—it is put here to preserve the pavement; now there is a bit of pavement that is seven hundred years old; you can see by these scattering clusters of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there, in the border, was an inscription, once ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... passed through the white chick into the interior of the house before he heard the sound of bare feet upon the matting, and through the soft magnolia-scented, pinky gloom of the room, shaded from the sunset light, Saidie came and fell at his knees, taking his dusty hands ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... the clock on the tower has a triple face, one face showing the hour of the day, one showing the day of the week, and the third, the day of the month. The heavy doors were open, but a curtain of matting hung over the entrance. A ragged, barefoot boy ran before us, and, drawing aside the matting that we might enter, extended his hand for a penny. We walked over the beautiful inlaid mosaic marble floor, and beheld handsomely painted ceilings with life-size figures overhead, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... bed had groaned with the restless weight of him all those many nights through which he had lain wakeful, in impotent mutiny against the outrageous circumstances that made him a prisoner there. Its walls had muted the sighs in which the desires of youth had been spent. Its floor matting was worn threadbare with the impatient pacings of his feet (four strides from door to window: swing and repeat ad libitum). Its solitary gas-jet had, with begrudged illumination, sicklied o'er the pages ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... met with strange sights—unwieldy Chinese junks with matting sails, island trading schooners, slimmer craft containing natives, and even immense canoes which came from distant islands with fish and fruit to barter at sight ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... good-humouredly. "I can see that you have got to be suppressed," he said, with a hand on Stevens's collar. "I can tell you in a breath just what's going into this room at present. The floor is to have a matting, one of those heavy, cloth-like mattings. Auntie Dingley has presented me with one fine old Persian rug from the Marcy library, which she insists is out of key with the rest of the stuff. I'm glad it is—it'll furnish the key to my decorations. Then I've a splendid old desk I picked up in a place ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... man in ten at least had been hit. The surgeons having attended to the hurts of the men, the boats' heads were once more turned down the creek. The crews had fitted them, from the captured junks, with an extraordinary variety of sails,—some of matting, others of coloured cloths, or any material which could be stretched on spars to hold wind. In this guise they returned to the steamers. The town thus unexpectedly entered ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... afternoon following her departure from the water-hole, and she felt a thrill of pride at the acres of sprouting corn, the dense green fields of alfalfa so nicely fitted between their fences. They were like clean, green squares of matting spread for the feet ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... reached the end of it, and then turned to the right, afterwards climbing up a long flight of steps. This brought them to another long passage, but much wider than the one leading to their own cell. It was also covered with some kind of matting, and several doors opened ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... I took in that room, in the book shelves always full, in the pretty rugs and the cool matting and the dainty drapery, all girls can imagine. It was my own Snuggery, and I kept it in the loveliest good order, as ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... a wide passage, thickly carpeted and having its walls covered with a kind of matting kept in place by strips of bamboo. Its roof was similarly concealed. A door near to the end, and on the right, proved to open into a square room quite simply furnished in the manner of a bed-sitting room. A little bathroom opened out of it in one corner. The walls were distempered white, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... shelves. A considerable portion of the strong wall at the base of the structure remains, and on each terrace there is something left of the feudal fortress. Ivy, with gnarled and fantastic stocks, has so overspread the masonry in places that hardly a gray stone shows through the dense matting of sombre leaves and hoary, wrinkled stems. Multitudes of bats cling to the ruinous vaulting where the light is very dim, and lurk in the hollows of the rock. A stone thrown up will bring them fluttering down and whirling ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... cross-pieces being connected by a rafter. On the other side there is a small platform, four feet square, and furnished with a roof, under which they are accustomed to keep their provisions. These pirogues have a triangular sail, which is made of matting woven from bandanus leaves, and is attached to two yards. In tacking about they drop the sail, and turn the mast towards the other end of the canoe, to which, at the same time, they have passed the fastening ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Trevelyan put this aside with a wave of his hand as he led the way into a spacious room, in which had been set out a table with almost a sumptuous banquet. The room was very bare and comfortless, having neither curtains nor matting, and containing not above half a dozen chairs. But an effort had been made to give it an air of Italian luxury. The windows were thrown open, down to the ground, and the table was decorated with fruits and three or four long-necked ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... derived from katna, to cut or spin. But hand-spinning is now practically an extinct industry and the Katias have taken to weaving or ordinary manual labour for a subsistence. The Kanjars and Berias are the gipsy castes of India. They are accustomed to wander about carrying their grass-matting huts with them. Many of them live by petty thieving and cheating. Their women practise palmistry and retail charms for the cure of sickness and for exorcising evil spirits, and love-philtres. They do cupping and tattooing and also make reed mats, cane baskets, palm-leaf mats and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Juke undressed, folded her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her straight-falling nightdress, her hair spreading over her shoulders, her bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed lightly, scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... simplicity. The worshipper, on arriving at the shrine, rings a bell, or sounds a gong, to engage the attention of the deity he desires to invoke; throws a coin of the smallest possible value on to the matting within the sanctuary rails; makes one or two prostrations; and then, clapping his hands, to intimate to his patron that his business with him is over, retires—it not being considered necessary to give to the petition any verbal expression. The making of pilgrimages, however, still ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... of tillable land which have been left by the restless shiftings of the American population. In New England the abandoned farm has long been an institution. Throughout the East there are depleted and dying villages, their solidly built cottages hidden in the matting of trees and shrubs which neglect has woven about them. One can see paralysis creeping over them as the vines creep over their deserted thresholds and they surrender one by one the little industries that ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... product of the hardest and most rocky soils, and seems to draw its ethereal beauty of color and wealth of perfume rather from the air than from the slight hold which its rootlets take of the earth. It may often be found in fullest beauty matting a granite lodge, with scarcely any perceptible ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Pereskia is then split down about 1 in. with a sharp knife, and into this the wedge of the graft is inserted, and fastened either by means of a small pin passed through the stem and graft about half-way up the slit, or by binding round them a little worsted or matting, the former being preferred. The worked plants are then placed in a close handlight or propagating frame, having a temperature of about 75 degs., where they are kept moist by sprinkling them daily with water; they must be shaded from bright sunlight. As soon as a union ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... wall decoration in Europe and in the United States, but it is improbable that the Philippines can hope to supply any part of it unless designs and color combinations are vastly improved. Floor mats are used as rugs in the same manner as are the strips of Japanese matting which are so popular all over the world. Round floor mats, somewhat larger in diameter than the round table tops, are also in demand. Small mats can be used as doilies on the table or under the stands of flower pots ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... an Indian matting of bright light colors on the floor, white lace curtains lined with rose-colored cambric at the windows, and a sofa and easy-chairs covered with rose-colored French chintz. There were a few marble-top stands, and tables covered with ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the porch floor to the porch roof. Miss McGrath hadn't been spying, of course, because her room was at the back of the house, beyond the kitchen, but how did the little heel tracks get on the veranda roof?—the road dust on the matting under the window? the vine twigs in that "quare" made skirt never worn by day? That Miss Flower could and did ride "asthraddle" and ride admirably when found with the Sioux at Bear Cliff, everybody ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... he was no longer a man, but a living corpse. He had picked up every crumb that had been left from his former meals, and was beginning to eat the matting which covered the floor of his cell. Then he entreated Peppino, as he would a guardian angel, to give him food; he offered him 1,000 francs for a mouthful of bread. But Peppino did not answer. On the fifth day he dragged himself to the door of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... recess was filled with groups of flowers in pots. On the other side, the old wall was gaily decorated with hangings of bright chintz. The doors were colored of a creamy white, with gilt moldings. The brightly ornamented matting under our feet I at once recognized as of South American origin. The ceiling above was decorated in delicate pale blue, with borderings of flowers. Nowhere down the whole extent of the place was so much as a single morsel of dark ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the shendza. All things considered, it is the best conveyance for a long interior journey in China. It consists of a couple long poles with a rope basket work in the middle and a cover of matting. It is borne by two mules, and has the advantage of protecting the traveller from the sun and from light rains. An opening in the back gives him the benefit of any breeze while it is possible to get ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... ten feet from the window. It has no stem as yet; and the lower leaves have to be trimmed off or they would close up the path, so that only the great forked green butts of them are left, bound to each other by natural matting: but overhead they range out nobly in leafstalks ten feet long, and fans full twelve feet broad; and this is but a baby, a three years' old thing. Surely, again, we are in the Tropics. Ten feet farther, thrust all awry by the huge palm leaves, grows a young tree, unknown ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... life was most fascinating—crowds of heavy doungas lay moored along the banks—their long, low bodies covered in by matting, and their extremities sloping up into long peaked platforms for the crew. These—many of them women and children—were all clothed in neutral-tinted gowns, the only bit of colour being an occasional note of red or white in the puggaree of the men or skull-cap of the children. The married women ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... looked round the room, noting the rough stone walls, the ancient, uneven floor, uncovered by so much as a piece of matting; and then his glance returned to the large modern window which looked so incongruous in its ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... arrived at the cabin of Djalma—that cabin constructed of mats suspended from bamboos. After listening attentively, he drew from his girdle a knife, the sharp-pointed blade of which was wrapped in a fig-leaf, and made in the matting an incision of three feet in length. This was done with such quickness, and with so fine a blade, that the light touch of the diamond cutting glass would have made more noise. Seeing, by means of this opening, which was to serve him for a passage, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... erected for the spectators. These were all covered with crimson cloth fringed with gold. Underneath them were lines of foot-guards, very martial-looking, fellows. The old stone floor, worn with the tread of Kings' coronations and funeral processions, was covered with matting, and purple and crimson cloth. Immediately under the central tower of the Abbey, inside the choir, five steps from the floor, on a carpet of purple and gold, was a platform covered with cloth of gold, and on it was the golden "Chair of Homage." ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... attic which he shared with a younger brother. The furniture of the latter might have answered for the cell of an anchorite, and consisted of a hard mattress on a cot-bedstead, plain wooden chairs and table, with matting on the floor. It was without fire, and to cold he was throughout life extremely sensitive; but he never complained or appeared in any way to be conscious of inconvenience. 'I recollect,' says his brother, 'after one most severe night, that in the morning he sportively thus alluded to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... made one step toward the kitchen to send a message by one of the maids, but recoiled at the suggestion that this would publish a lovers' quarrel. So I retreated along the hall, my footsteps making no noise on the India matting, and entered the parlor again like a thief. I sat down by the table: "Bessie will certainly come back: she will get over her little petulance, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... The fresh matting on the floors, the light cane sofa and chairs, the white muslin curtains and newly-painted green blinds imparted an appearance of delicious coolness and repose to the rooms; and while not one bright-hued painting was visible, the walls were hung with soft, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... one side the matting that covered the floor of the counting-house, Mr. Wentworth paused, and introducing a lever between the joining of two boards upheaved a square trap-door, revealing to the eyes of the astonished English ladies, and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... servility, ushering us into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect. Following this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music, we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor. In a niche burned a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Hanny went thither, and knelt down on the checked matting. There were two books of engravings containing portraits of famous people, some old volumes of verse, some ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... groups of four columns suggest the four essential posts of native hut construction; the broad roofs are tiled; the windows are not glass, but of thin shell, the common material used in the islands; the walls are finished in split bamboo matting. The same style of construction is used also in all the Philippine booths in the palaces. The materials are used with restrained taste, and this, with the magnificent cabinet woods employed throughout the construction, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... like the letter X, answers very well, but the Mexican pack, known as the aparcho, is much better. It is made of a plated straw matting, on which is fastened a strong wicker-work saddle, and a properly folded blanket, for you must be careful that the animal's back does not get sore. The saddle is fastened by pliant ropes, or broad belts of leather, called in the West "cinches," to fasten which securely ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... by nature, owed but little to the decorations of art; nevertheless, the roughness of the walls was concealed by a rude but comfortable arras of matting; four or five of such seats as the robbers themselves could construct were drawn around a small but bright wood-fire, which, as there was no chimney, spread a thin volume of smoke over the apartment. The height of the cave, added to the universal reconciler ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the body in his arms and laid it face upwards on the matting which covered the floor. He busied himself for an instant at the neck, then rose with a twisted strip of coloured ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... began to cut away the matting; when the workmen, apprehensive that the carriage might sustain some damage from the impetuosity of their proceedings, took upon themselves the act of dismantling the mysterious machine; during which operation, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the Baiga's residence, and if it is burnt down, or abandoned on a visitation of epidemic disease, he can build another in the space of a day. A rough earthen vessel to hold water, leaves for plates, gourds for drinking-vessels, a piece of matting to sleep on, and a small axe, a sickle and a spear, exhaust the inventory of the Baiga's furniture, and the money value of the whole would not exceed a rupee. [96] The Baigas never live in a village with other castes, but have their huts some distance away from the village in the jungle. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... with no floor except the earth, no window except a hole in the wall, no pictures upon the walls, and neither bedstead, nor chair, nor looking-glass. They sat upon the floor or upon cushions; they slept upon rolls of matting, and their meals were taken from a low table not much ...
— The Wonder Book of Bible Stories • Compiled by Logan Marshall
... into her arms. She was a stout and largely-made child, and the little woman found her somewhat difficult to carry. She would not let her down, however, but conducted her across the cool hall and into a room at the further end of the passage. This room was nearly empty, matting covered the floor and a round table stood in the center, while two or three high-backed chairs, with hard seats, were placed at intervals round the walls. It was a decidedly dreary room, and rendered all the more so because the morning ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... was screened from the street by dark blue cotton curtains behind which was a roofed platform carpeted with matting. Here sat a group of clerks, each with his soroban or adding machine at his side. Little Japanese boys, their shoulders loaded with bales of rich materials, staggered about, and through the open doors of the fire-proof warehouse ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... lightness—the grace of a bird's foot. The sole, scarcely streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence that it had never touched the bare ground, and had only come in contact with the finest matting of Nile rushes and the softest carpets ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... friend! A history most pathetic! You shall hear of it some time. But come into the parlor, and you, Angele, my sister, ring and order coffee," said the old Frenchman, leading the way into a pleasant apartment on the right of the hall, furnished with straw matting upon the floor and bamboo settees and chairs around ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... handmaid and fared homewards. Al-Mu'in also went his ways at once, with his raiment dyed of three colours, black with mud, red with blood and ash coloured with brick-clay. When he saw himself in this state, he bound a bit of matting[FN35] round his neck and, taking in hand two bundles of coarse Halfah-grass,[FN36] went up to the palace and standing under the Sultan's windows cried aloud, "O King of the age, I am a wronged ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the whole of the large import of Indian yarn is worked up into cloth by the women of the household. Four-fifths of the clothing of the lower classes is supplied by this domestic industry. Of minor industries Indian ink is manufactured in Ngan-hui and Sze-ch'uen, fans, furniture, lacquer ware and matting in Kwang-tung, dyes in Cheh-kiang and Chih-li, and varnished tiles in Hu-nan. Paper, bricks and earthenware are made in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... to-night, if you please, and in case the housecleaning man gets all the ice cream up from under the sitting-room matting, and makes a snowball of it for the poll parrot to play horse with, I'll tell you next about Bully and Bawly ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... I looked upon was strange, the people strange. On the floor was India matting, red and white in little squares. A panel of painted white wood-work ran around an octagonal chamber, into which stole silently the evening twilight through open windows and across a long brick-walled garden-space ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... with its green blinds of cane hanging down, and its matting on the floor, and its easy-chairs and tables, made a pretty room to look at. In the twilight, the fragile figure, pale, thin, dressed in white, would have lent interest even to a stranger. To the doctor, I suppose, it was only a "case." He pushed the blinds aside and stepped in, strong, big, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... must then be protected either by placing over it leaves broken from the outer part of the plant, or from stumps from which the heads have already been cut, or by tying the leaves together above the head. The latter is the usual method, rye straw or bast matting being generally used for the purpose. Merely breaking down the inner leaves upon the head is unsatisfactory, as the growth, both of the leaves and the head, soon causes ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... return from the bull-fight; whilst old Aldonsa tolls behind, calling upon the saints for succour, and clinging to the greasy rope that does duty as a banister. On reaching the topmost landing-place, the pretty manola raised a fragment of matting that hung before one of those many-panelled doors common in Madrid, took her key and let herself in. The interior of the room was humble enough. Whitewash replaced paper; a scratched mirror—which reflected very imperfectly the charming countenance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... memory in the intangible sum that was the tribe. He, as a member, soon or late, and late was very near, must pass. But pass to what? There was the rub. And so it was, on occasion, that he ordered all forth from his big grass house, and, alone with his problem, lowered from the roof-beams the matting-wrapped parcels of heads of men he had once seen live and who had passed into ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... desk, at which were high stools, backed up against the pickets; a big round stove occupied the centre; a safe crowded one corner. Blue print maps decorated the walls. Coarse rope matting edged with tin strips protected the floor. A single step down through a door led into a painted private office where could be seen a flat table desk. In the air hung a mingled odour of fresh pine, stale tobacco, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... atmosphere of spring. The tapestry and crape hangings are embroidered with cherry blossoms, its one picture is a sweet spring landscape. Low green stools take the place of stuffy chairs and sofas. And there wuz an autumn room, autumn leaves of rich colors wuz woven in the matting and embroidered in the hangings, the screens and walls ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... excitedly, and it could be seen that they were bringing from the huts the rude household utensils in which they did their primitive cooking. The women had their babies, and some, not so encumbered, carried rolls of grass matting. The men had ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... body being rather overstrained, it filled her with something approaching panic. No one was within call. To rouse her brother, or Julius, she must make a tour of half the house. Again the creature pushed against the creaking panels, and, then, panting and snoring, began ripping away the matting ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... should scrape and wash thoroughly all his fruit trees, so as to rub off the eggs of the bark lice which hatch out early in May. Many injurious caterpillars and insects of all kinds winter under loose pieces of bark, or under matting and straw at the base of the trees. Search should also be made for the eggs of the Canker worm and the American Tent caterpillar, which last are laid in bunches half an inch long on the terminal shoots of many of our fruit trees. A little labor spent in ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of the chapar-khana, at Heeya; but, providing the road continues good, I promise myself to polish off the sixty miles between here and Kasveen, to-morrow. The chaparkhana sleeping apartments at Heeya contain whitewashed walls and reed matting, and presents an appearance of neatness and cleanliness altogether foreign to these institutions previously patronized; here, also, first occurs the innovation from "Hamsherri" to "Sahib," when addressing me in a respectful ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of cargo. Desmond went with Bulger on board and arranged a number of bamboos crosswise on the boats, covering up the empty spaces which would usually be occupied by merchandise. Over the bamboos he placed a layer of thin matting, and on this, when Hossain returned, he ordered the coolies to put the melons. To a casual observer it would have appeared that the boats were laden with a particularly heavy cargo ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... flukes only being tipped with iron. Outside at the bows was a wonderfully awkward-looking winch for getting up the anchor; and as Jack observed, when he came to be made Lord High Admiral of the Chinese fleet, there were a good many things he saw that he should have to alter. The sails were made of matting, with laths placed across them. When it was necessary to reef or lower the sails the seamen climbed up these laths, and standing on the upper yards pressed them down, no down hauls being necessary. Bowlines, however, were used to stretch them out. Had Jack and Murray not been prisoners, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... trouble in the best bedroom, but finally a strip of straw matting, two feet by one, was hauled out from its lurking-place under the washstand, whither it had crept for concealment, and reluctantly ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... porpoises. But as the steamer approached, they turned out to be Chinese "sampans" and fishing-boats, hard at work. Some had white sails criss-crossed with strips of bamboo, others huge brown sails of woven matting, like bats' wings; and altogether—what with the brightly painted boats, the queer faces and gestures of the pigtailed fishermen, the barking of the big dogs which seemed to act as sentries, the glittering scales of the fish that came pouring out of the nets, and lay flapping on the deck, the ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... after growing too hot, had broken, and a storm, or just a shower, had burst over us, would come up and beg me to go outside. And as I did not wish to leave off my book, I would go on with it in the garden, under the chestnut-tree, in a little sentry-box of canvas and matting, in the farthest recesses of which I used to sit and feel that I was hidden from the eyes of anyone who might be coming to call upon ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... led nor reined, but followed the group. I myself was dressed in light European clothes, and furnished with an umbrella for keeping off the sun. This latter was all my arms of offence and defence. The other camel carried a trunk and some small boxes, cooking utensils, and matting, and a very light tent for keeping off sun and heat. We had two gurbahs, or "skin-bags for water," and another we were to buy in the mountains, so each having a skin of water to himself. Said was to ride this camel, and now and then give a ride to Mohammed the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 'twas in a twilight bower; 420 Just when the light of morn, with hum of bees, Stole through its verdurous matting of fresh trees. How sweet, and sweeter! for I heard a lyre, And over it a sighing voice expire. It ceased—I caught light footsteps; and anon The fairest face that morn e'er look'd upon Push'd through a screen of roses. Starry Jove! ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... is made of the Coir (Tagalog, Bunot), or outer fibrous skin, which in other countries serves for the manufacture of cocoanut matting, coarse brushes, hawsers, etc. It is said that coir rots in fresh water, whereas salt water strengthens it. It would therefore be unsuitable for running rigging, but for ships' cables it cannot be surpassed in its qualities of lightness and elasticity. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... first place, have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room handsomely, the furnishings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... narrow path, where, pipe in mouth, and emitting puffs of smoke, the old gentleman was busy with some strips of matting tying up the heavy blossoms of carnations to some neatly cut sticks. So intent was he upon his occupation that the two lads stood gazing at him for a few minutes before he rose up, emitting a long ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... usefulness of the cellar for other purposes, box up the beds tightly, and from the heat of the bed itself, when thus confined, there usually will be warmth enough for the mushrooms, but if not spread a piece of old carpet or matting over the boxing. ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... there the matting of the window was pushed aside, and Fitz came softly into the dimly lighted room. He glanced at me, but attempted no sort of salutation. I saw him exchange a long silent look with Elsie, and then he took his station at the bedside next to Elsie, and opposite to the brigadier, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... nice rustic pedestals; and thus I contrive to produce something of an English garden effect. But the climate is against me. The winter is so terribly cold that nothing at all delicate can stand it unless cased up in straw-matting and manure. We have, therefore, no evergreen shrubs, such as the lauristinus, and Portugal and variegated laurels, which form our English garden shrubberies; nor do they seem to replace these by the native growth of their own woods, the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... moment ago so placid and happy, was shrinking back with "I don't like that thing" inscribed in lines of anguish on his distorted face, and not three feet from him a huge cobra, just emerged from the roll of matting, eyed him with a stony stare, its head raised and its hood expanded. Its quivering tongue flickered out from between its lips like ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... now covered with old-fashioned papers, five and ten cents a roll, and cheap matting improved the floors. But how to furnish eleven rooms? This brings ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... are found on the River Uapes. The men wear their hair in a long tail hanging down the middle of the back, while the women wear it loose, and cut to a moderate length. The only dress worn by the men is a small piece of matting passed between the legs, and secured round the loins by a string. The women wear none whatever, but paint their bodies in regular patterns,—generally red, yellow, and black colours. The only ornament worn by ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... little brunette with a nez retrousse. "I have never drunk out of one since my nursery days. How cool it is, after the sunny roads! I think carpets ought to be abolished in the summer. When I have a house of my own, Evelyn, I mean to have Indian matting and nothing else ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Benevolence, Righteousness, etc. When you go into the house of a tolerably well-to-do family, you will find the quantity of furniture rather scanty, and not luxurious. The floor may be covered with matting, but you will find no carpets or rugs. A table and some straight-backed chairs are the principal pieces. On the walls you may find Chinese pictures, which will not challenge your admiration, though they may be artistic in China. Some jars and specimens ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... anywhere else that could have been jarred off in some mysterious manner. Along one of the walls there was the whole complicated apparatus of solid brass pipes, and quite close to it an enormous bath sunk into the floor. The greatest part of the room along its whole length was covered with matting and had nothing else but a long, narrow leather-upholstered bench fixed to the wall. And that was all. And the door leading to the studio was locked. And Therese had the key. And it flashed on my mind, independently of Dona Rita's pessimism, by the force of personal conviction, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... ancient right must needs figure in all Russian romance. We have instead been prating of drawing-rooms and mere interiors of houses, which to-day are the same all the world over. A Japanese fan is but a Japanese fan, whether it hang on the wall of a Canadian drawing-room or the matting of an Indian bungalow. An Afghan carpet is the same on any floor. It is the foot that treads the carpet which makes one to ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... precisely the same impression as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the grating of it was not of gilded wood, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the yard towards the house. On one side of this room were a great many different kinds of garden-tools, such as hoes, rakes, shovels, and spades; there were one or two wheelbarrows, and little wagons. Over these were two or three broad shelves, with baskets, and bundles of matting, and ropes, and chains, and various iron tools. Around the wall, in different places, various things were hung up—here a row of augers, there a trap, and in other ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... its cultivation was fully represented. The nut itself, the various fibers, matting and ropes made from its husk, the copra or dried kernel, from which is extracted the oil now so largely used in the manufacture of best soaps and hair oils; the desiccated and "shredded" cocoanut, the demand for which among ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Hammond," no living thing was visible, save a thrush that looked out shyly from the clematis vines; and after waiting a moment, Mrs. Murray entered unannounced. They looked into the parlor, with its cool matting and white curtains and polished old-fashioned mahogany furniture, but the room was unoccupied; then passing on to the library or study, where tiers of books rose to the ceiling, they saw, through the open window, the form of the pastor, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... a call, he stopped short in his walk in the midst of a declamation on some subject, and said, 'You have a brick floor here.' The hostess confessed that it was true, though she hoped that it had been disguised by double matting and a thick carpet. He said that his habit of always walking enabled him to tell accurately the material he ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... gave us our change, that we should have immediate delivery. We had explained at some length that this was important, and why. He waved us off with the assurance that we need give ourselves no uneasiness in the matter—that, in all probability, the matting we had purchased as a floor basis would be ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Lyddy was revelling in house-furnishing of a humble sort. She had a passion for colour. There was a red-and- white straw matting on the sitting-room floor. Reckless in the certain possession of twenty dollars a month, she purchased yards upon yards of turkey red cotton; enough to cover a mattress for the high-backed settle, for long ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... putting final touches to their toilet in the broad light of day. The native officers alone aspired to a certain degree of privacy. Their huts were detached a little space from those that guarded the horses; and flimsy walls of grass matting, set around them, imparted a suggestion of dignity and aloofness from ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... ripe barley, toasted, pounded, and kneaded to a kind of porridge in leathern bags like Turkish tobacco-pouches. The object was to save the teeth, of which the Guanches were particularly careful.] or parched grain. The articles of dress were grass-cloth, thick as matting, and tamarcos, or smock-frocks, of poorly tanned goatskins. They had also rough cords of palm-fibre, and they seem to have preferred plaiting to weaving; yet New Zealand flax and aloes grow abundantly. Their mahones correspond with Indian moccasins, and they made ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Lyddy was reveling in house-furnishing of a humble sort. She had a passion for color. There was a red-and-white straw matting on the sitting-room floor. Reckless in the certain possession of twenty dollars a month, she purchased yards upon yards of turkey red cotton; enough to cover a mattress for the high-backed settle, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on her feet. Her daughters now bought the strip of Axminster carpet and laid a path across the bedroom, and another one from the bedroom door to the great chair in the sitting-room, so that her feet might not note the straw matting on the floor and ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... boil and set the table for dinner. She could hear the minister pacing up and down his room in the restless way which Mrs. Black secretly resented, since it would necessitate changing the side breadths of matting to the middle of the floor long before this should be done. But of Lydia Orr there was no sign. The minister came promptly down stairs at sound of the belated dinner-bell. But to Mrs. Black's voluble explanations for the unwonted hour he returned the briefest of perfunctory replies. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... appalling figure in the lamplight. The rain dripped from her hair, her sinister clothing, her whole person. She looked as if she must have hidden in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my speckless matting and pale Oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child or dog in the house for fear of the matting, except of course my poor Lindo, who had died a few months previously, and whom I had taught to wipe his ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... finished their solemn chant, they came along-side, and asked for the chief. As soon as I shewed myself, a pig and a few cocoa-nuts were conveyed up into the ship; and the principal person in the canoe made me an additional present of a piece of matting, as soon as he and his companions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Torishihimari or mistress of ceremonies. By clock-work she offered me a seat on the floor, a fan and congratulations. This last simply because I was me. The house was ancient and beautiful. The room in which I sat had nothing in it but matting as fine as silk, a rare old vase with two flowers and a leaf in formal arrangement, and an atmosphere of aloofness that lulled mind and body to restful revery. After my capacity for tea and sugared dough was tested, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... glaring lanterns. Captain B—— handed us out. My child, startled from a deep sleep, was refractory, and would not trust himself out of my fond keeping. When finally I had struggled with him in my arms to the landing, I saw in the shadow a form coiled on a piece of striped matting. Was it a bear? No, a prince! For the clumsy mass of reddish- brown flesh unrolled and uplifted itself, and held out a human arm, with a fat hand at the end of it, when Captain B—— presented ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... was just going to peep at it, and see what it was mother shouldn't have done. Then granny gets up, and goes peering all round to see where the paper's gone. She pulled all the cushions out of the chair, and turned up the matting, and looked over her letters ever so many times, and never noticed that it had blown out of the window. Presently I put my head through the window, and cried out, 'What's the matter, granny?' 'It's only I've dropped ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... eyes the best I could, but I did not see the hawk till she sprang into the air not ten yards away from us. She went screaming upward, and was soon sailing in a circle far above us. There, on a coarse matting of twigs and weeds, lay five snow-white eggs, a little more than half as large as hens' eggs. My companion said the male hawk would probably soon appear and join the female, but he did not. She kept drifting away to the east, and was soon ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... green cocoanut matting, the beds were cunning arrangements of flowers in pots, and from pots the trees and shrubs flourished. It was a garden artificial and even more marvellous than we ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... coaxed from the horizontal position of a lateral to the perpendicular position of a leader? The uninitiated in these matters, and, in fact, practical gardeners generally, would at once reply, by supporting to a stake with the all-powerful Cuba or bast-matting. But no. A far simpler method than that, namely, by fore-shortening all the laterals of the upper tier but the one selected for a leader. Nature becomes the handmaid of art here; for without the slightest prop the lateral gradually raises itself ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... dropping them softly one by one into the ship's bottom. It was a heavy task; the coolie said that sweat poured from the big man like rain. Last of all he covered the bars with dunnage, and rolled against the bow several bulky bales of matting to conceal the work. Captain, when the "Speedwell" sailed from Hong Kong in command of our honored friend, one of her great bow ports below the water hung on its hinges without internal fastenings, and held in place only by the tightness of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... imposture. The reality is no more like it than the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a great court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries, one above another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted balustrades, and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty old mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of nine successive generations of men ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
