"Piece of furniture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to keep the child in it, that he will often be found soaking there a large proportion of his time. Every one knows that the air has not so free access to a child in the cradle as elsewhere, especially if it have a kind of covering or hood to it, as we often see. Besides, the cradle is a piece of furniture which takes up a great deal of space in the nursery; and every one who has made the trial effectually, will, it seems to me, greatly prefer ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes. Of any other queer chair, Tom would only have thought it was a queer chair, and there would have been an end of the matter; but there was something about this particular chair, and yet he couldn't tell what it was, so odd and so unlike any other piece of furniture he had ever seen, that it seemed to fascinate him. He sat down before the fire, and stared at the old chair for half an hour.—Damn the chair, it was such a strange old thing, he couldn't take his ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the motion was partly rotary, from left to right. He particularly noticed that the girl's feet did not touch the frame, and that, when it was repulsed, she seemed drawn irresistibly after it, stretching out her hands, as if instinctively, towards it. It was afterwards remarked, that, when a piece of furniture or other object, thus acted upon by Angelique, was too heavy to be moved, she herself was thrown back, as if by the reaction of the force ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... children please him just as well when they sit patiently with folded hands, if that is His will, as when they are hard at work. But to be at work, to be useful, to be necessary to my husband and children, is just what I want, and I. do find it hard to be set against the wall, as it were, like an old piece of furniture no longer of any service I see now that my first desire has not been to please God, but to please myself, for I am restless under His restraining hand, and find my prison a very narrow one. I would be willing to bear any other trial, if I could only have health and strength for my beloved ones. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... practice of the latter we cannot, if we would, wholly shake off the influence of past times over what we do at present. I do not think it is too much to say that no man, however original he may be, can sit down to-day and draw the ornament of a cloth, or the form of an ordinary vessel or piece of furniture, that will be other than a development or a degradation of forms used hundreds of years ago; and these, too, very often, forms that once had a serious meaning, though they are now become little more than ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... wind and people in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives within his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of them, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard Shaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that George Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all around him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and think—looking ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the wall. The vise loosed its grip. There was a terrific din. The window panes were shattered, a heavy piece of furniture was pushed aside, oscillated, fell with a crash; then a sudden silence; but a silence broken by gaspings, loud breathings, hoarse sounds, an ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... little heaps of brushwood for beds, a kettle or two, a bag of pemmican, an old flint gun, two pairs of snow-shoes, a pair of canoe-paddles, a couple of very dirty bundles, and an old female. The latter was the dirtiest piece of furniture in the establishment. She was sister to Peegwish, and was ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... to put his sword carefully into a corner; he took off his boots like a thief, and spoke so low that Matilda could hardly hear him. At last, he was just going to be really happy when the floor, or some piece of furniture, or perhaps the bed itself, creaked; it sounded as if something had broken; and in a moment a cry, feeble at first, but which grew louder every moment, made itself heard. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... is often looked upon as quite of secondary importance; but, instead of being last and least, it ought to be first and foremost, for a cook cannot be expected to send up a good dinner without proper utensils, any more than a carpenter can turn out a piece of furniture without proper tools. It is no doubt a great mistake to have many things in use, for a bad servant will have every one dirty before she begins to wash up, and a good servant will have a lot of work ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... loo-tables inlaid, and they seem to attract a good deal of attention from more than us. You look a little puzzled at the word inlaid; I think I must explain it to you, by telling you that it means pieces of different material let into a piece of furniture ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... that room—moved every chair, the table, the desk. He dusted each piece of furniture four times. He polished each rung and followed around the baseboard ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... impressed me more than the exquisite carvings and elaborate work of the cabinet ware; and I must, Charley, try to describe one piece of furniture which excites universal praise. It is a cabinet made by John Stevens, of Taunton. It was prepared at great cost, and is the gem of the carved work in the exhibition. The wood of which it was composed was a walnut-tree, which, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... moment she hath uttered these words: 'that she will take it as a very great favour if you will speak to Mrs. Herbert to speak to Lord Herbert, that he would speak to anybody who may chance to go by Mr. Nix's house, to call upon him to hasten his sending the piece of furniture, which, perhaps as soon as she receives it, may tempt her to write to somebody or other that very little expects it';—for she loves to do things by surprise. She would take it kindly if you write to her against this thing comes here; for I verily believe she will try whether or no it be ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... should have liked well enough to be introduced to some pleasing and intelligent girl, and to have freedom and opportunity to show that I could both feel and communicate the pleasure of social intercourse—that I was not, in short, a block, or a piece of furniture, but an acting, thinking, sentient man. Many smiling faces and graceful figures glided past me, but the smiles were lavished on other eyes, the figures sustained by other hands than mine. I turned away tantalized, left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the fate of women of her type. They pass through life making themselves vastly comfortable, and those around them vastly uncomfortable, and then "depart without being desired." They are never missed—otherwise than as a piece of furniture might be missed. To such women the whole world is but a platform for the exhibition and glorification of the Great Me: and the persons in it are units with whom the Great Me deigns—or does not deign—to associate. Happy are those ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... painters—has caught the spirit of those mellow, sensual "interiors" of typical country houses, with their mixture of grossness and avarice and inveterate conservatism; where an odour of centuries of egotism emanates from every piece of furniture against the wall and from every gesture of every person seated over the fire! One is plunged indeed into the dim, sweet, brutal heart of reality here, and the imagination finds starting places for its wanderings from the mere gammons ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Things go on altogether too well. Caroline buys little account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice little piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe superbly, she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very many articles are needed in the house. It is her ambition to be an incomparable housekeeper. Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right of censorship, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... agitated absorption had not noticed the silently advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her hands and rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested. Will Ladislaw, starting up, looked round also, and meeting Dorothea's eyes with a new lightning in them, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a ladder—not a staircase, mind!—to the sleeping deck. There we see two long rows of chests, which represent the wardrobe, chest of drawers, washing place, private locker, every piece of furniture, in fact, which a naval ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... gammon of bacon". Prior compared a passage from Goldsmith's 'Animated Nature', 1774, iii. 9, 'a propos' of a similar practice in Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. 'A piece of beef,' he says, 'hung up there, is considered as an elegant piece of furniture, which, though seldom touched, at least argues ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... some legal expedient by which he could set it aside. And then, as he thought of the shameful persecution of which he was the victim, he kicked the fender with impotent violence, and, as the noise of the falling fire irons added to his passion, he reiterated his kicks till the unoffending piece of furniture was smashed; and then with manly indignation he turned away ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... give us time to get a few things together," said the girl, turning to Quinton Edge. "A woman cannot be moved about like a piece of furniture." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... not!" the girl returned with cruel frankness. "You talk as though I were a piece of furniture you could just walk into a store and select and buy and then own! You've been taking immeasurably much for granted if you have been thinking all those things ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... for he chose a large and heavy fauteuil, took it up in his arms, and began to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret's chamber, he stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked it up, and retired silently ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... An old-fashioned piece of furniture, coeval with diamond shoe-buckles, ruffled shirts and queues, a brass bound mahogany chiffonier, with brass handles and tall brass feet representing cat claws, stood in one corner; and across the top was stretched a rusty purple velvet strip, bordered with tarnished gilt ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... build anew rather than to restore, and this one has done its turn. We saw several bronze and marble Buddhas under a carved teak shed; some fading orchids lay before them. Two men were making wood carvings very freely and easily in teak. Miss B. and G. coveted a little piece of furniture in brown teak, covered with lozenges of greeny-blue stone. It looked like a half-grown bedstead, the colour very pretty. If we had had an interpreter, we might have saved it from the ruin. What I carried away was a memory ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... endowed with an excellent physical and mental organization had allowed her ability and capacity to become perverted. Orderliness, at first a well planned daily routine, gradually degenerated into an obsession for cleanliness. Each piece of furniture went through its weekly polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged and sunned—even Mary could not do the table-linen to her taste—and Tuesday afternoon through the years went to immaculate ironing. The obsession for cleanliness ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... relied on theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives. This is the most remarkable fact that we have had occasion to notice; and yet we challenge the candid reader to call it in question. Now, as there cannot be any MORAL SELECTION in a mere dead piece of furniture—as the umbrella cannot be supposed to have an affinity for individual men equal and reciprocal to that which men certainly feel toward individual umbrellas—we took the trouble of consulting a scientific friend as to whether there was any possible physical explanation of the phenomenon. He was ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a square piece of furniture which the Marquis of Glome called an "Aberdeen lean-to." She now spread herself out upon it in the easy attitude of one who is about to converse intimately for some centuries, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... agent's office were attempting to remove to the County Infirmary. The poor old creature had thrown herself bodily upon a small and battered chest of drawers and clung there, clutching it so firmly that it would have been impossible to remove her without also taking the piece of furniture . She did not weep nor moan nor indeed make any human sound, but between her broken gasps for breath she squealed shrilly like a frightened animal caught in a trap. The little group of women and children gathered at her door stood aghast at ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... they must take only the parlor furniture. They had declared they must put the heavy pieces in the bottom of the cart, and the lighter furniture on top. So she had seen them go into every room in the house, and select one piece of furniture after another, without even looking at Elizabeth Eliza's programme; she doubted if they could have read it if they ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... piece of furniture differentiated from the sideboard by its smaller size and by the enclosure of the whole of the front by doors. Its name (which comes from the French for a rag-gatherer) suggests that it was originally intended as a receptacle for odds and ends which had no place elsewhere, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. When ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... cuckoo on the top; it had heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with its shining brass plate went to and fro with a 'tick! tick!' But it was not that he looked at; no, it was his mother's spinning-wheel, which stood directly under the clock; this was the dearest piece of furniture in the whole house for the boy; but he dared not touch it, for if he did, he got a rap over the fingers. While his mother spun, he would sit for hours together looking at the buzzing spindle and the revolving wheel, and then he had his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... thief. A man was brought before him charged with stealing a small but very valuable jewelled table. The prisoner denied the charge. He said that he was weak and feeble with long illness. For that reason it was impossible for him to have carried off a piece of furniture. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... outlasted the first owners. In every room, the kitchen excepted, there is a bed, according to the very general custom of the country. The character of the people is distinctly utilitarian, notwithstanding the blood of the troubadours. There is even a bed in the salle a manger. A piece of furniture, however, from which my eye takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of his equipment, and that which has procured him such a retinue of little ragged and shouting boys, is his saddle. This extraordinary piece of furniture, which cost the owner five thousand dollars, is entirely covered with velvet, richly embossed in massive gold; he sometimes appears with another, inlaid with ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... hats and coats, all of them looking considerably the worse for wear, and by two straight-backed chairs placed with praiseworthy exactitude at equal distances apart from the aforesaid rather overburdened piece of furniture. The floor was covered with linoleum of which the black and white chess-board pattern had long since retrogressed with usage into an uninspiring blur. A couple of threadbare rugs completed a somewhat ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the weird gift in good spirits, and had it placed in his cabin. It was hardly a pleasant piece of furniture for his visitors to be confronted with, so he was prevailed upon to have it put below until it was required. A few more raging battles, and a few more years of momentous anxieties, and the prodigious hero was to become its occupant. It seems ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Archie Douglas was in the Bay of Biscay; but even to Joanna it was not a sorrowful day, for did not Herbert on that day crawl back into his sitting-room, full dressed for the first time, holding tight by her shoulder, and by every piece of furniture on his way to the sofa, Rollo attending in almost pathetic delight, gazing at him from time to time, and thumping the floor with his tail? He had various visitors after his arrival—the first being ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blown them up. Instead he had saved explosives by attaching steel hawsers to the houses and by means of tractors had pulled them down, so that the roof and sides fell in on the foundation. Every pump handle in the village had been broken off short, and not a single piece of furniture was left behind. Later, we found the furniture from this and other ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... from under a piece of furniture, where he had apparently been lying, and rubbed himself familiarly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... or landing, about four yards square, lighted from above; at the further end of it was the door into her bedroom. This lobby was scarcely more than a broad passage; and would attract no attention from any passing through it. The only piece of furniture in it was a great tall old chest as high as a table, that stood against the inner wall beyond which was the long gallery that looked down upon the cloister garden. The lobby appeared to be practically as broad as the two rooms on either side of it; but this was effected by the outer ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... was cross, and worked as though she had a personal grudge against every dish and piece of furniture she touched. The twins and Molly were actually scared into silence, and forbore to make their usual demands on her time and patience. Charlotte, who understood, kept them and herself as much out of the way as possible, ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... with which he fed himself; he seemed to have forgotten the habits of refinement at table. Afterwards he lighted a cigar, but soon threw it aside; tobacco made him sick. In the drawing-room he moved aimlessly about, blundering now and then against a piece of furniture, and muttering a curse. The clothes he wore, out of his old wardrobe, hung loose about him; he had a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... reply, not wishing to incur the expense of such a useless piece of furniture, and his wife continued her needlework with a sigh. From the bottom of her large heart she pitied the Scottish nation, and wondered whether there was the remotest hope of the place ever being properly colonised by the English, and the condition of ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... was very weak in bed, faint, and worn, and white, propped up with pillows—that poor, bereaved old man. Ever since Lady Dillaway's most quiet death he had felt alone in the world. True, while she lived she had seemed to him a mere tranquil trouble, a useless complacent piece of furniture, often in his way; but now that she was dead, what a void was left where she had been—mere empty space, cold and death-like. She had ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... tantalize the suffering heart. I sat with the child, and gazing full upon him, beheld him not, but—a vision of my father's house. There sits the good old man, and at his side—ah, how seldom were they apart!—my mother. And there, too, is the clergyman, my first instructor. Every well-remembered piece of furniture is there. The chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated by me for its age, and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew myself. The antique bookcase—the solid chest of drawers—the solemn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of the painful subject, the king and queen resolved to hold a counsel of three upon it; and so they sent for the princess. In she came, sliding and flitting and gliding from one piece of furniture to another, and put herself at last in an arm chair, in a sitting posture. Whether she could be said to sit, seeing she received no support from the seat of the chair, I do not ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... the one to the two mile round—as two of the walks around Ballybay were called—but where was the house with its crowd of noisy children, which he saw every morning with the same confident familiarity as a well-remembered piece of furniture in his own house? Yes: there was the little road where he remembered to have stood one day so many years ago. It was a bright, beautiful day in summer, the sky was blue, and the roses bloomed; but everything was dark to him, for Betty, his first nurse, the strongest affection of his childhood, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... two rooms of moderate size, built for their reception, and lighted from above. The great salon to which they led contained treasures scarcely less precious; the walls were covered with the richest silks which the looms of Lyons could produce. Every piece of furniture here was a work of art in its way: console-tables of Florentine mosaic, inlaid with pearl and lapis-lazuli; cabinets in which the exquisite designs of the Renaissance were carved in ebony; colossal vases of Russian malachite, but wrought by French artists. The very knick-knacks ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hanging to the saddle. The bridle was a cheap affair, but the saddle was as good as they make them in Wagga, and quite new. During the previous afternoon, I had marked something incongruous in Bum's ownership of such a piece of furniture. But being always, I trust, superior to anything like surprise, I saddled and mounted Bunyip, took Cleopatra by the rein, and joined the Ishmaelites, who, on their bare-backed horses, were hurrying contingents of cattle from different ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... took them, and before noon every handsome piece of furniture from all over the house had been placed in our suite; flowers were everywhere, and servants fairly swarmed at ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... walked across to the writing-table; and I went on very slowly clearing the cloth, for Sir John always treated me as if I was a piece of furniture; but I felt uncomfortable, for it seemed to me that there was going to ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... left-hand side of the room was an arched recess, in which, no doubt, had stood at one time a sideboard, or some such piece of furniture. There was no occupant of the room, however, and I grew calmer as I stood before the fire, which drew from my wet clothes a cloud of steam. The ruddy fingers of the fire-gleam playing upon the walls made the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... crushed look of a neglected woman, her listless movements, her slow speech, her indifference for everything but the passion that was consuming her, moved him so deeply. For the last week, perhaps, she had not put a chair in its place, or dusted a piece of furniture; she left the place to go to wreck and ruin, scarcely having the strength to drag herself about. And it was enough to break one's heart to behold that misery ending in filth beneath the glaring light from ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... sheet. Wet a newspaper, tear into small pieces and spread on the rug or carpet. Now you are ready for sweeping. If the floor is carpeted, sweep all dirt to the center of the room. Sweep the corners with a small whisk broom. Move every piece of furniture lest there be dirt left underneath. Open the windows before sweeping. When the dust is settled take a pail of warm water, put in a tablespoonful of ammonia, then with a clean cloth wrung from this wipe the window glass, ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... with a tremulous hand, and then leaned forward, breathlessly watching it fall, waver from side to side, and roll slowly under the bookcase. Too much excited to rise from his knees, he crept towards it, and, pressing his cheek against the dusty floor, he peered under the unwieldy piece of furniture, to catch a glimpse of his penny and learn ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... very substantial and handsomely made piece of furniture, the material being Spanish mahogany. But, unlike the writing-table, all its drawers were unlocked; and, opening them one after the other, I found them to be full of apparel: shirts of finest linen, silk stockings, a brand-new suit of uniform, coats, breeches—in short everything necessary to complete ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... since he had last been in the room, the day after the murder was committed. There was a washstand near the window, a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a large wardrobe at the side of the bed. Colwyn looked at this last piece of furniture with the same interest he had felt when he saw it the first time. It was far too big and cumbrous a wardrobe for so small a room, about eight feet high and five feet in width, and it was placed in the most inconvenient ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... compact and well-ordered stateroom where there was not a piece of furniture that could escape his glance nor a drawer whose contents he did not know down to the slightest detail. His body was accustomed to slip without embarrassment through the spaces of his cabin furnishings. He had adapted himself to all incoming and outgoing angles just as the body of the mollusk adapts ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... its gay patchwork cushion; and her Bible, spectacles, and work-basket lay on the window-seat beside it. In another was a huge leather arm-chair, which Hilda rightly supposed to be the farmer's, and a wonderful piece of furniture, half desk, half chest of drawers, with twisted legs and cupboards and pigeon-holes and tiny drawers, and I don't know what else. The third window Hilda thought was the prettiest of all. It faced the west, and the full ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... dark coat with a white mark on the arms and back. On grand occasions public officials wear a similar dress of a light fawn or dove tint. A person of the rank of a gentleman invariably wears two swords stuck in his girdle. On sitting down he removes the longest, and places it against some piece of furniture at his side; but he never parts with the smaller one, which is kept sharp, and in readiness to kill himself should any accusation of a crime, false or true, be brought against him. The questions put to the captain having been satisfactorily answered, we were informed ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... silly people are now to have wide staircases and straight passages and stupid doors, which you know will open, instead of never being sure if the trap-door had not stuck, or some enemy had not placed a heavy piece of furniture upon it! ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... into the small space she had selected for it, but eventually they succeeded in doing so. Smith-Oldwick was again impressed by the fiendish brutality of the girl. In the center of the room lay a blood-stained rug which the girl quickly gathered up and draped over a piece of furniture in such a way that the stain was hidden. By rearranging the other rugs and by bringing one from the alcove she restored the room to order so no outward indication of the tragedy so ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rough, looking like a prehistoric animal turned to wood; and Donald Douglas said it was perhaps the oldest table alive in England to-day—as old as King Edward's, and of the shape which gave an idea later for Tudor tables. As he talked, I could almost see Queen Mary sitting by this queer piece of furniture eating a poor meal, and reading some book which might help her forget—perhaps idly fingering the splendid black pearls which Mrs. James said were bought last year in a tiny shop in Scotland, kept by descendants of a faithful maid who went with her to the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... being, when He knows that human being will sin; and He knows that human being will suffer eternal agony? Why not leave him in the unconscious dust? What right has an infinite God to add to the sum of human agony? Suppose I knew that I could change that piece of furniture into a living, sentient human being, and I knew that that being would suffer untold agony forever. If I did it, I would be a fiend. I would leave that being in the unconscious dust. And yet we are told that we must believe such a doctrine, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... tired—I have been here ever so long,' said Bob. 'And I—' But the chair having been placed behind him, and a smart touch in the hollow of a person's knee by the edge of that piece of furniture having a tendency to make the person sit without further argument, Bob sank down dumb, and the others drew up other chairs at a convenient nearness for easy analytic vision and the subtler forms of good fellowship. The miller went about saying, 'David, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... foot dipped and he fell into the sea. The ship kept on her way without the mariners being aware of what had happened, and as the squire did not attempt to move, those on board the king's ship thought some piece of furniture had tumbled overboard. On coming nearer, however, they perceived that it was a human being, and Walter and Guy, with some mariners, lowered a boat, rowed to the rescue, and ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... to the respect Mr. Sands showed for his wife, and for his own character, in acknowledging those "young niggers." And as for sending Ellen away, she pronounced it to be just as much stealing as it would be for him to come and take a piece of furniture out of her parlor. She said her daughter was not of age to sign the bill of sale, and the children were her property; and when she became of age, or was married, she could take them, wherever she could ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... was by this time seated on the table again. Mr Brick also took up a position on that same piece of furniture; and they fell to drinking pretty hard. They often looked at Martin as he read the paper, and then at each other. When he laid it down, which was not until they had finished a second bottle, the colonel asked him ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... but succeeded in subduing the impulse. "It is the only comfortable piece of furniture I have left in my apartments," said ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... what I've done," she remarked, "that I should have to live all the time with people who keep their noses in books. Your pa was forever readin' and you're marked with it. I could set here and set here and set here, and he took no more notice of me than if I was a piece of furniture. When he died, the brethren and sistern used to come to condole with me and say how I must miss him. There wasn't nothin' to miss, 'cause the books and his chair was left. I've a good mind ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... oil-cloth to shake the snow from his boots, and set down his lantern on a kitchen chair which was the only piece of furniture in the hall. Then ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Chambers, in which I still (1895) agree. On the other hand, in Chelsea we carried the war into the enemy's camp. The "loyal inhabitants" tried to hold a meeting at the Vestry Hall to censure me, on which occasion no article or piece of furniture larger than a match was left in existence in the room, and the meeting concluded with a vote of confidence in me, carried in the dark after the gas had been put out. The second attempt was made outside the borough, at the Duke of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... windows stood the Countess's writing-desk, a coquettish piece of furniture of the last century, on which she wrote replies to those hurried questions handed to her during her receptions. A few books were on that, also, familiar books, index to the heart and mind of a woman: Musset, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... of private life a very deep and fine sentiment which goes even to minuteness of detail and of superstition. He knows how to move you and make you palpitate from the first, simply in depicting a garden-walk, a dining-room, a piece of furniture. He divines the mysteries of provincial life; sometimes he makes them. Most often he does not recognize and therefore isolates the pudic and hidden side of life, together with the poetry it contains. He has a ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... were none in all that country poorer than Snowflower and her grandmother. A cat and two hens were all their live stock. Their bed was dry grass, and the only good piece of furniture in the cottage was a great armchair with wheels on its feet, a black velvet cushion, and many strange carvings of flowers and fairies on its dark ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... never be the same man again, and that henceforth his own abode would be eternally stricken for him with the curse of insipidity. Regaining somewhat his nerve, he looked for pictures. There were no pictures. But every piece of furniture was painted with primitive sketches of human figures, or of flowers, or of vessels, or of animals. On the front of the mantelpiece were perversely but brilliantly depicted, with a high degree of finish, two nude, crouching women who gazed longingly at each other across the impassable semicircular ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... tradition. He may have seen the headless man who was accustomed to walk down Green Street to Market Space, with what intention was never divulged. Every old house had its ghost, handed down through the generations, as necessary a piece of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were as quiet as the shadowy lady of the Brice house, who would glide softly in at the hour of gloaming and, with ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... delicious acrity in a situation where I played, not with fire, but—with ashes! I studied Calyste; the point was to know if that passion was thoroughly extinct. I watched, as you may well believe, every wind that blew; I kept an eye upon his face as he went from room to room and from one piece of furniture to another, exactly like a child who is looking for some hidden thing. Calyste seemed thoughtful, but at first I thought that I had vanquished the past. I felt strong enough to mention Madame de Rochefide-whom in my heart I called la Rocheperfide. At last we went to see the famous bush ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... be beautiful, Nan, because it will be penetrated with the touch of your hand. Every piece of furniture will glow with that radiance. Gold and precious stones can have no such lustre. See, here I have planned to place your piano. There will be no music on earth like the songs those throbbing strings shall make to my soul when they quiver beneath the touch of your hand. Here on this ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... and reflect for a moment, and what do we behold! every thing that presents to view gives evidence of the skill of the white man. Should we purchase a pound of groceries, a yard of linen, a vessel of crockery-ware, a piece of furniture, the very provisions that we eat,—all, all are the products of the white man, purchased by us from the white man, consequently, our earnings and means, are all given to the ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... their few wants are limited to the supply. The richest persons live principally within themselves, and derive their meats, vegetables, fruits, wine, brandy, sugar, coffee, oil, and most other necessaries and luxuries, from their own plantations. One piece of furniture, however, to be seen in several of the houses, was evidently not the manufacture of the island, but an export of Yankee-land. It was the wooden clock, in its shining mahogany case, adorned with bright red and yellow pictures of Saints and the Virgin, to suit the taste of good Catholics. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... in the world, Roberto!" And she really felt herself to be so. Thoughtful love could have devised nothing more likely to bridge pleasantly and surely over the transition between the past and the coming life. Every fresh piece of furniture unpacked was a new wonder and a new delight. With her satin skirts tucked daintily clear of soil, and her mantilla wrapped around her head and shoulders, she went from room to room, interesting herself in every strip of carpet, and every yard of drapery. Her delight was infectious. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... the subject of music I must be the advocate of Mme. de Stael. She has been accused of falsehood in stating that in the Cottages in Germany a Piano Forte was a necessary piece of furniture. I cannot from my own knowledge go quite so far, but from my short experience of German manners I may safely say there is no nation in which Music is so popular. We have heard the notes of pianos and harpsichords issuing from holes and ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... agreed, moodily. "So far as that goes people have a right to move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I suppose, even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much attention just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... strange piece of furniture," said Euphra to Hugh, who had kept by her side since ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... writing at the old desk, which Gertrude has placed in my room, but it seems difficult to imagine myself the boy who used to sit by it and make rhymes. It is wonderfully rejuvenated, and is a handsome piece of furniture. It was the desk of my great-grandfather, and seemed to me a wretched old wreck when thee took it to Portland. I did not suppose it could be made either useful or ornamental. I wrote my first pamphlet on slavery, 'Justice and Expediency,' upon it, as well as a great many rhymes which might as ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... puzzled me at the time,' said Mr Boffin, 'and it rather puzzled me and Mrs Boffin when we spoke of it afterwards, because (not to make a mystery of our belief) we have always believed a Secretary to be a piece of furniture, mostly of mahogany, lined with green baize or leather, with a lot of little drawers in it. Now, you won't think I take a liberty when I mention that you certainly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was silence in the rushing cars, though a bedlam of howls and curses came from aloft. Then a sudden shrieking of foreseen triumph came from overhead. A huge piece of furniture, a couch, seemed certain to crash into the car in which Calhoun rode. But it swerved sharply, ran up on the sidewalk, and the couch dashed itself to splinters where the car should have been. The car went down to the pavement ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... from my revery by hearing George call in a low voice to Frances, telling her to fasten the ends of the leathers to a bedpost or a heavy piece of furniture, and asking her if she could come down hand under hand. She answered that she could and took the end of the reins from Betty. After a minute or two spent by Frances back in the room, she reappeared, tossed her cloak down to us, climbed out the window, and stood for a moment beside Betty on the lower ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... clothes be ready? He descended into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee, coming over the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked down upon him approvingly. 'He's learning to carry himself as if he were a man, instead of a piece of furniture, and,' she screwed up her eyes to see the better through the sunlight 'he is a man when he holds himself like that. O blessed Conceit, what ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... one side, I on the other, and between us we quickly stood that heavy piece of furniture up against the dark opening. Then, while I held it in place, Addison propped it fast with the door from the foot of the chamber stairs, which with one wrench he ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... piece of furniture which, in the struggles of my nightmare, I have just broken. This very prosaic avalanche recalls me to the reality. I laugh at my terrors, a contrary current of thought gets the upper hand, and with it ambitious ideas. I need only use a little ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... repose. The room was empty. She glanced about in some surprise, for she knew that the two reception-rooms on the other side of the hall were being used for the doll show. She tiptoed over and peered in through the half-open door. The room was filled with dolls in rows and tiers; every piece of furniture was covered with them; and in a far corner, at the end of a long vista of dolls, appeared Mr. Algernon Vivian Todhunter, gingerly sitting on the edge of a sofa, surrounded by flaxen-haired baby dolls, and awkwardly holding in his lap ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... awaiting my pleasure, and from the moment of arrival I am the recipient of unstinted attention. A large reclining chair is placed immediately beneath the punkah, and a punkah-wallah, ambitious to please, causes the frilled hangings of this desirable and necessary piece of furniture to wave vigorously to and fro but a foot or eighteen inches above my head. A smiling servant kneels at my feet and proceeds to knead and "groom" the muscles of the legs. Judging from the attentions lavished upon my pedal extremities, one might well imagine me to be a race-horse that had just ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... into a room which seemed packed tightly with glittering things; everything gleamed; not a foot of the wall but had a painting, and each held within a gilded frame; small marbles shone as though they had been polished; each piece of furniture had been rubbed to the ultimate; the rugs were of the brightest and the floor threw off a sheen of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... a piece of mother's mirror, which was as thick as his finger, saying, "Madame, I should like to keep this as a memento. I am about to travel through Mississippi, and having seen what a splendid piece of furniture this was, and the state your house is left in, should like to show this as a ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... together and cover the handle with a piece of oilcloth, smoothly stitched into place, or wrap the handle with cloth and stitch. A brush of this kind is very soft and may be used to dust any highly polished piece of furniture. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... vent holes in the walls. This artificial atmosphere was supplemented by a reserve fund of pure oxygen gas compressed in steel cylinders, and a quantity of chemicals for purifying the air. It need hardly be said that we did not burden the ship with unnecessary articles, and that every piece of furniture was of the lightest ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro |
