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More "Piece of furniture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They open new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy. They mend the streets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us. Look at that coffin of mine—yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this city. You may have it if you want it—I can't afford to repair it. Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 to have been landed and put in ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Dorothea. She turned upon her victim a face full of uncanny suggestion. Divested of its perpetual smile, it seemed to Jennie as unfamiliar as a room from which an accustomed piece of furniture had been moved. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... bureau, which, apart from the piano, was the only piece of furniture the room contained that in England would be ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... same as you and I have. It belonged to our great-grandfather, Sir Vyell Vyvyan, and was made more than a hundred years ago from one of the oaks which grew in the north grove in the park," so saying she laid one hand on the back of a huge, cumbersome piece of furniture, and rolled it across the room up in front of the ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... Paris for a week, he said to me one day, 'The War and the commune have cost me dear. My cottage has had more than twenty shells, and it has been in turn occupied by Francs-tireurs, Communists and Regulars. The walls are broken; and there is not a piece of furniture uninjured. My architect tells me, that all in all, the repairs will cost me some ten ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Every piece of furniture in the room had to be "dusted," that is it was brushed with the evil feather, which somehow or other did stay on the candidate's nose; and if the spectators clapped and laughed Shirley could scarcely blame them, for Dozia Dalton had a foolish lot of truck to be dusted. More ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... wonderfully clean and wholesome—more so, in fact, than most public apartments I saw elsewhere in the West Indies. This effect may be produced in some measure by the absolute lack of household goods and utensils, pictures or bric-a-brac. In fact, the only piece of furniture I could find anywhere was a massive wooden tripod, used for ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... be done before they could leave the city, and Mary had practically no assistance from Stefan in her arrangements. She would ask his advice about the packing or disposal of a piece of furniture, and he would make some suggestion, often impracticable; but on any further questioning he would run his hands through his hair, or thrust them into his pockets, looking either vague or nervous. "Why fuss about such things, dear?" or "Do just as you like," or "I'm sure I ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... apparently into thin air is a piece of good fortune sent on these occasions only to those whom the gods love. By the time he has waddled on his hands and knees twice round the room, broken the boot-jack raking with it underneath the wardrobe, been bumped and slapped and kicked by every piece of furniture that the room contains, and ended up by stepping on that stud and treading it flat, he has not a bitter or an angry thought left in him. All that remains of him is sweet and peaceful. He fastens his collar with a safety-pin, humming an old ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... home. The square, flat-topped mahogany desk at which the two young men worked together blinked up at Laurie with the undimmed luster of a fine piece of furniture on which the polisher alone had labored that morning. Without taking the trouble to remove his hat and coat, Laurie dropped into a chair and tried to think things out. But the process of thinking eluded him, or, rather, his mind ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... floundered into the adjoining bedroom, and dived under the bed. He reappeared with his arms full of human bones, and shot across the room, muttering something like thanks. As he fled down the dark hall, he collided with a piece of furniture, his burden fell, and with a terrific clatter rolled from the top of the stairs to the bottom. John rushed out to help gather up the fallen, and Elizabeth ran across the room and hid her face shudderingly in ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... were the gayly flowered Brussels carpet and the black haircloth furniture the same as when he had been a guest in those rooms nearly thirty years before, but each piece of furniture occupied the same position as then. He smiled as he noted the arm-chair by one of the front windows, to which he had been invariably assigned and in which he had slipped and slid throughout each ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of the cells had been a little cleared; a bucket (the last remaining piece of furniture of the three caitiffs) stood full of water by the door, a half cocoa-nut shell beside it for a drinking-cup; and on some ragged ends of mat Huish sprawled asleep, his mouth open, his face deathly. The glow of the tropic afternoon, the green of sunbright foliage, stared into that shady ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... getting drunk and forgetting how to act. Suddenly the floor rose up and hit him on the nose, but the polished boards, so bright that he could see his face in them, fell back politely, leaving Swipes standing, looking helplessly about him. Every piece of furniture, bed, bureau, table and chairs, flew around and around him ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... very cold," said Lars Peter—"we might just as well have kept the new piece of furniture in here," he ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... looked drearier than ever. The new chamberlain's wife was impatient to get settled in the apartment herself, and kept coming to look at it, and discussing, in the children's presence, where she would put this or that piece of furniture, and how she would ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... kind when I saw the skeletons. Carefully, boys; let us remove this piece of furniture. Undoubtedly, we are in pirates' lair, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... as Kirk discovered, was the lowboy beside the library door. It was a most satisfactory piece of furniture. From its left-hand corner you could make a direct line to the window-seat. It also had smoothly graceful brass handles, and a surface delicious to the touch. When Kirk, stumbling in at the library door, failed to ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... looking round at the bare walls, and seeming to listen expectantly. No doubt she heard ghostly echoes of the patter of children's feet, the ring of children's voices. As she turned to go she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. In her own room she lingered still longer, going from one piece of furniture to another, and laying her hand on each. It was handsome furniture, such as a lady should have about her, and every piece represented a longer or shorter period of self-denial, both on her own part and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... with perfect propriety over the door of every room in his house, and on the title-page of every one of his books; "Dove Diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete pigliate tante coglionerie?" In his villa, every apartment is a museum; every piece of furniture is a curiosity; there is something strange in the form of the shovel; there is a long story belonging to the bell-rope. We wander among a profusion of rarities, of trifling intrinsic value, but so quaint in fashion, or connected with such remarkable names and events, that they may well detain our ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... according to the preponderance of that, he rises or sinks in the scale of individual opinion. A fine painting or marble statue is very rare in the houses of the rich of this city, and those individuals who would not pay fifty pounds for either, expend double that sum to vie with a neighbor in a piece of furniture. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... stock list contained in the description of each piece of furniture illustrated in this book call for material mill-planed, sanded and cut to length. If the workman desires to have a complete home-made article, allowance must be made in the dimensions for planing and squaring the pieces. S-4-S and ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... laudation seemed to them exaggerated. The same may be said of the Minards. Moreover la Peyrade's behavior, as "friend of the family" was perfect. He disarmed distrust by the manner in which he effaced himself; he was there like a new piece of furniture; and he contrived to make both the Phellions and Minards believe that Brigitte and Thuillier had weighed him, and found him too light in the scales to be anything more in the family than a young man whose services were ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... begin our excursion into the region of musical instruments with an examination of that very familiar piece of furniture, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... boys pronounced the great porcelain stove in the family sitting room a decidedly useful piece of furniture, for they could gather around it and get warm without burning their noses or bringing on chilblains. It was so very large that, though hot elsewhere, it seemed to send out warmth by the houseful. Its pure white sides and ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... discovery of recovered strength in the sound limbs. Although, with the reserve of convalescence, he kept his exploit secret, his spirits visibly rose; and whenever he was left alone, or only with his little boy, he repeated his experiments, launching himself from one piece of furniture to another; and in spite of the continued deadness of the left side, feeling life, vigour, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gone, and the rabble dispersed, I followed the discomfited adventurer at a distance, who, leaving the town, went slowly on, carrying his dilapidated piece of furniture, till coming to an old wall by the roadside, he placed it on the ground, and sat down, seemingly in deep despondency, holding his thumb to his mouth. Going nearly up to him, I stood still, whereupon he looked up, and perceiving I was looking ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the very entrails of the sofas, and from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it made one's head ache to see them opened one after another, and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her proceedings, and to find that every nook and corner and individual piece of furniture was something else besides what it pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and place of secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... 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 I was through, I reported to the head teacher. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... did so without a moment's hesitation, and presently the door was opened, so that I had an opportunity of delivering my message. I afterward learned that the servants had been engaged in removing a heavy piece of furniture from one part of the house to the other; an operation which required their united strength, and prevented them from ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... 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 ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... his coat in a flash, and using it as a ram, smashed the window. He reached up, found the catch, and opened the sash. In ten seconds he was in the room, and a great clatter told him that he had overturned some piece of furniture. ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... and together we marched a few steps to a sort of storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): "You'll need it, believe me." I found my stick, at which "piece of furniture" they amused themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring at the mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the whole business unaided on my back. Two new guards—or ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... least uncomfortable chair in the room, which from his point of view was to say little in its favor; because the newest piece of furniture there, has been made a hundred years before the world understood that lounging was not a crime. Over the high, stone mantel hung a shield, so brightly polished as to fulfil the office of a mirror, and from where Egon sat, perforce ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... was talked over, and Dr. Mackey was later on taken to a garret room and tied fast to an old four-poster bedstead, a piece of furniture weighing considerably over a hundred pounds. Then Old Ben was placed at ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... after, that I came forth a sick man to cable for power.... About those music-rolls—I had called for the best. One does that blind, you know. But the best in music matters, it appears, has nothing to do with retired sea-captains.... It's a pretty piece of furniture. The orchestra had died out of me by the time we had the electric-plant going.... I take it you have to be caught young to deal with those stops.... You go after it, Andrew. It scares me and the natives when it begins ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... through the patterned holes of which a single candle had once sprinkled with light the progress of the farmer's evening chores. That, too, had belonged to the early time, and from a dim corner I drew another important piece of furniture of that day. At first this appeared to be a nest of wooden chopping-bowls, oblong as to shape and evidently fashioned by hand. Then remembering something that Westbury had told me, I recognized these bowls ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... where women are not beings, but things—chattels, with which one does as one wills, which one buys, sells, and slays; in short, which one uses for one's caprices as you, here, use a piece of furniture. Besides, she has one passion which dominates all the others, and which would have stifled her maternal love, even if she had loved ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... The broken chairs are to go to-day to be mended, I heard your mother say this morning. Some she will use again, and the rest she will pass on to somebody who wants chairs and has not enough. This old sofa, of course, she will keep, because some day she will have it re-covered; it is a strong, good piece of furniture, and she knows ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... 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 the big window; to gaze on that ill-pargetted shanty, so bare and disorderly, where one ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of stairs, exactly opposite to the room door. This done, he led the way into the apartment; which was destitute of all movables save a broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without covering, which stood behind the door. Upon this piece of furniture, the stranger sat himself with the air of a weary man; and the Jew, drawing up the arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face. It was not quite dark; the door was partially open; and the candle outside, threw a feeble reflection on ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Killegrew could believe that he was in earnest; but when he was convinced that he was, he began to enumerate the dangers and inconveniences attending so rash an enterprise. He told him that a girl educated at court, was a terrible piece of furniture for the country; that to carry her thither against her inclination, would as effectually rob him of his happiness and repose, as if he was transported to hell; that if he consented to let her stay, he needed only to compute what it would ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had three rooms and bath. A small linoleous gas-stove kitchen. A bedroom with standing wardrobe, iron bed, and just one graceful piece of furniture—Una's dressing-table; a room pervasively feminine in its scent and in the little piles of lingerie which Mrs. Golden affected more, not less, as she grew older. The living-room, with stiff, brown, woolen brocade chairs, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the next room some movement against a piece of furniture and a voice muttering. That decided him: better to go and face it than to wait there, so as though he were moving in his sleep, he got out of bed, crossed the floor ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... old nickel teapot, a soup-plate full of treacle blackened with dust. In a corner was a tub for washing dishes, and from nails in the wall hung moist dish-clouts and the cook's livery and skull-cap. The only piece of furniture was a rickety dressing-table with water stains, oil stains, milk stains, black, brown, and white stains, and all kinds of mixed stains. The mirror, detached from it, rested against another wall, and the drawers were receptacles ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... her three months old child on her back, and wanders about, in fair and foul weather, in heat or cold; there it sits winter and summer, in a linen rug, with its head over her shoulder. Gypsey women never use a cradle, nor even possess such a piece of furniture. The child sleeps in their arms, or on the ground. When a boy attains three years of age, his lot becomes still harder. Whilst an infant, and his age reckoned by weeks and months, he was wrapt in rags, but now deprived of these, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... may do what he pleases with his own, provided he do no harm or injury with it. He may cut it down; and, if he please, he may beat it as long as he has the power to raise an arm. He may work it into a house or into a piece of furniture, or he may lay it on the fire, and reduce it to ashes. He may, we repeat, do just exactly what he pleases with his own, if his own be such a thing as a tree, for a tree has ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... power of enjoyment, that in a trifle - an opening flower, a new piece of furniture, an ornament or decoration, a song, a few fine lines of poetry - can find gratification and delight for hours and days. She had the pure taste that, above all, fears overloading and over-excitement, and takes pleasure only in what is simple and ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... and ward off, not so skilful to allay it. Fleda seemed to have intuition for the one and a charm for the other. To her there was pain in every parting; her sympathies clung to whatever wore the livery of habit. There was hardly any piece of furniture, there was no book or marble or picture, that she could take leave of without a pang. But it was kept to herself; her sorrowful good-byes were said in secret; before others, in all those weeks she was a very Euphrosyne; light, bright, cheerful, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... at him curiously for a moment, and then rose from his place and went deliberately to a huge, dark piece of furniture that stood between the windows. He brought back a polished mahogany case, unlocked it and set it beside his brother upon the table, under the light of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... down to the ground, but his search was vain; it was not to be seen beneath the large heavy cabinet. Everything, whether of great or little moment, in his life seemed to be persecuting him as it were under some spell. He shoved at the old piece of furniture and tried to push it out of its place; but it was fastened to the wall. His impatience grew more vehement with every hinderance. He seized an old iron bar which he found in the anteroom, and laboured with all his strength to move the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... readers of "N. & Q." will be able to give me some information as to the use of an ancient piece of furniture which I have met with. At Codrington, a small village in Gloucestershire, in the old house once the residence of the family of that name, now a farm-house, they show you in the hall a piece of furniture ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the house, and laid me down on the lit de fouaille—a wooden frame forming a sort of couch, and filled with dried fern, which forms the principal piece of furniture in every farm-house kitchen in the Channel Islands. Then he cut away the boot from my swollen ankle, with a steady but careful touch, speaking now and then a word of encouragement, as if I were a child whom ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... folding-bed of commerce was a delusion and a snare. As a hater of shams he justified his invention, though of course it couldn't be put to much practical use unless the purchaser was willing to take his books out of the shelves when he intended using the piece of furniture for sleeping purposes. If the purchaser was too lazy to do this it was not Jarley's fault, so the inventor reasoned, nor did he intend improving his machine in order to accommodate the lazy man in his pursuit of a ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 named by ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... you wouldn't like my things 'clutterin' round,' as Mr. Page used to say, would you?" cried Dan, sitting up to survey the old piece of furniture with ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... choice, draw anything polished; especially if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, and choose only ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Robert Augustus, and carried his middle name until 1840, when he seems to have dropped it as a useless piece of furniture. There is a report that some of his political foes, playing upon his initials, saddled him with the sobriquet of "Rat." Having out-grown one nickname he was prepared ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... 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
... symbols of AEsculapius) eating a pineapple, but by tablets, pills, jars, and vials containing dried-up liquids, and a bronze medicine chest divided into compartments which must have contained drugs. A groove for the spatula had been ingeniously constructed in this curious little piece of furniture. ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... washed, the tins polished till they shone like new. By four o'clock not a cobweb or a speck of dust was to be seen in either room. Lloyd sat down to wait for Mrs. Perkins's return. She felt that it was safe to breathe now, and she did not have to sit gingerly on the edge of the chair. Every piece of furniture had been washed and rubbed. She could keep her promise about the pie very comfortably now. Everything smelled so clean and wholesome to her that she was sure that Mrs. Perkins would notice the change at once ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... 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 ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... The gowned-and-wigged figure observed walking up the floor of the House of Lords at half-past five on a June evening, was not making for the Throne. Before that piece of furniture stood a bench, in appearance something like the familiar ottoman of the suburban drawing-room. It was the Woolsack, and the svelte figure, swinging towards it with the easy stride of superlative grace and comparative youth, was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... stood before her mirror between eight and nine—it was nine-fifteen before she was really ready—and pondered over what she should wear. There were two tall pier-glasses in her wardrobe—an unduly large piece of furniture—and one in her closet door. She stood before the latter, looking at her bare arms and shoulders, her shapely figure, thinking of the fact that her left shoulder had a dimple, and that she had selected ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... about us 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 ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... remaining piece of furniture was a queer kind of book-shelf nailed against the wall. It was fully five feet long and protruded a foot out above his bed. In its thirty-odd pigeonholes was jammed a collection of stuff that was evidently the accumulation of years. There were scores of cheap paper-bound novels concerning either ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... change, and was alarmed. Still he did not change that habit of taking "only a glass." Will Somers was unhappy. He saw his mistake, and knew that the community frowned upon him. He rarely whistled now. As for the musical instrument he once loved to perform upon, it was a silent piece of furniture. He had some fine qualities of character, and his vulnerable side was his susceptibility to outside influence. The enemy had found a weak wall on that side of his character, and there successfully assaulted him. Will knew that his misconduct grieved ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... and elaborate piece of furniture, whose upper part was closed by a rolled falling cover, under which were drawers of various sizes. In the large drawer lay the contracts, in the small ones notes and valuables; the lock was a puzzle one, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... from under a piece of furniture, where he had apparently been lying, and rubbed himself familiarly against ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the Tomb of Galla Placida in Ravenna, representing St. Lawrence, cheerfully approaching his gridiron, with the Cross and an open book encumbering his hands, while in a convenient corner stands a little piece of furniture resembling a meat-safe, containing the Four Gospels. The saint is walking briskly, and is fully draped; the gridiron is of the proportions of a cot bedstead, and has a raging fire beneath it,—a ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... gone, Colonel Colquhoun looked about for Evadne's book, and found it—not a difficult matter, for she had a bad habit of leaving the book she was reading open and face downward on any piece of furniture not intended to hold books, by preference a chair where somebody might sit down upon it. This one happened to be upon the piano stool. Colonel Colquhoun glanced at the title as he picked it up, and reading "A Vision of Sin," understood ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... But the queen paid no attention, saying she was sure she had not forgotten anything, and that if she had, she had only time now to pray and to look to her conscience. So she shut up all the several articles in the drawers of a piece of furniture and gave the key to Bourgoin; then sending for a foot-bath, in which she stayed for about ten minutes, she lay down in bed, where she was not seen to sleep, but constantly to repeat prayers ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Captain Nemo went towards a piece of furniture standing near the left panel of the saloon. Near this piece of furniture, I saw a chest bound with iron, on the cover of which was a copper plate, bearing the cypher of the Nautilus ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... 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 once more and ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... developed the immense forces within him. Before 1492 may be dated the two examples in the National Gallery, the Portrait of a Youth and the fascinating Mars and Venus, which was probably intended as a decoration for some large piece of furniture. The beautiful and extraordinarily life-like frescoes in the Louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that Gallery) from the Villa Lemmi, representing Giovanna Tornabuoni with Venus and the Graces, and Lorenzo Tornabuoni with the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... account of the very high wages required by mechanics; but this was not all. None of the materials of a house, except stone and timber, are produced in the colony. Every pane of glass, every nail, every grain of paint, and every piece of furniture, from the kitchen copper to the drawing-room curtains, must have come from England. My property is at a distance of nearly seventy miles from the sea, and there is no road, but a track through the forest, for two-thirds of that distance. The whole colony did not contain as many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... of art in this style; the latter, in particular, is quite unique, and is one of the most curious I have ever seen: the sculpture is very elaborate; at the foot reclines, in relief, a Scotch guard, such as always lay at the threshold of the sovereign, at the period when this piece of furniture was made. An owl of singular expression sits watching, opposite, surrounded by foliage and poppies, quite in character with the sleepy scene: the posts of the bedstead are beautifully turned: it is so formed as to draw out and close in, forming a bed by night, a cabinet by day; and the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... left Paris he called for a telegraph form, wrote a message and paid the reply, but Mr. Ancrum saw nothing of either. When the reply arrived David crushed it in his hand with a strange look, half bitterness, half relief, and flung it behind a piece of furniture ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he gazed upon her splendid beauty, he choked slightly, and fumbled in the lace at his throat with unsteady fingers.—"Would you—have let me ride by your side in the autumn moonlight?" Her glance passed by him as it might have passed by a footman or a piece of furniture. He was dressed magnificently, a multitude of orders glittering on his breast. Her eye took no ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... out and I examined the room with amazed and delighted eyes. It was fifty feet long and half as wide. The hard-wood floor was covered with handsome rugs; every piece of furniture was quaint or interesting. Carved in the heavy oak paneling above the fireplace, in large Old ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... man, rising and selecting a chair at the opposite side of the table, and calmly lighting a fresh cigar, while he swung one leg across the corner of the solid piece of furniture. ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... occasion to visit an artist's studio, by no means meddle with anything in the room. Reverse no picture which stands or hangs with face to the wall; open no portfolio without permission, and do not alter by a single touch any lay-figure or its drapery, piece of furniture or article of vertu posed as a model. You do not know with what care the artist may have arranged these things, nor what trouble the ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... chief wonder 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, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... spectacle of gravity when posed in a chair. He established himself on the edge of that piece of furniture, and for all the employment he gave its back it might as well have been a stool. Mr. Gwynn maintained himself bolt-upright, chin pointed high, with a general rigidity of attitude that made one fear he had swallowed the poker as a preliminary ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 sofa, all substantial as ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... and in the dining-room a large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people realize how its plainness was scouted when William ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sword. It was one of his favorite rapiers. Sometimes people came out of the books—sometimes shadowy forms came back to claim the weapons that had been theirs—and Cleggett fought them. There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in the place. He bent the flexible blade in his hands, tried the point of it, formally saluted, brought the weapon to parade, dallied with his imaginary opponent's sword ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... beating temples, and are at this moment cased in a court-suit of cut velvet, with our hair curled, our whiskers crisped, and a masonic apron decorating our middle man. Having subsided into our chair—it is in most respects like the porphyry piece of furniture of the Pope—and our housekeeper having played the Dead March in Saul on our chamber organ (BULWER wrote "The Sea Captain" to the preludizing of a Jew's-harp), we enter on our this week's labour. We state thus much, that our readers may know with what pains we prepare ourselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... it, and was fulfilling towards him all the duties of a pious sister of charity. The old man, affected even to tears, out of respect allowed his august mistress to act as she thought proper. He had hurt himself in endeavouring to move a rather heavy piece of furniture at the Princess's request. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... 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
... the waltz crashed. Although young men still went in and out, they walked as if keeping engagements. Now and then there was a thud, as if some heavy piece of furniture had fallen, unexpectedly, of its own accord, not in the general stir of life after dinner. One supposed that young men raised their eyes from their books as the furniture fell. Were they reading? Certainly there was a sense of concentration ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... that ancient, venerable, and much-begrimed four-poster made him shudder; while he scarcely ventured to contemplate the attitude likely to be assumed by his housekeeper—of whom he stood in some little awe—if the question were mooted of adding this piece of furniture to her ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... of his neighbors may be taken as the standard, and how else do we measure elegance or style? It had occupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a "toilet," which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail (from which hung a bunch of seed onions,) and the smoked outline of something which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far from the same width. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... ex-post facto application, and made to cover articles of property which had changed hands at Sheriff's sales not only since but also previous to the stoppage of the courts. Wherever, in fact, a horse or a cart, a harness, a yoke of oxen or a piece of furniture had passed from the ownership of a poor man to the possession of a rich man and one of the court party, the original owner now reclaimed it, if so disposed, and so effectual was the mob terrorism in the village that such a claim ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she was evidently tugging at something which appeared to be a heavy piece of furniture braced against the door. At last the bolt was slipped back, and there in the doorway she swayed, half exhausted ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... both struggle and twist about in unimaginable contortions. Another is running up and down on the plastered wall, catching the ants as they roam in black lines over its whited surface; and another leaps from the top of some piece of furniture upon the back of the visitor's chair, and scampers nimbly along the collar of his coat. It jumps on the table—can it be the same? An instant ago it was of the most beautiful golden green, except the base of the tail, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... have been busily engaged in uncovering the throne and canopy for my inspection, and the crown which surmounts the chair is fetched from its safe keeping place, screwed on, and I am at liberty to thoroughly examine the most important piece of furniture ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... to find some crack or crevice in any piece of furniture, into which the trinket might have slipped, but there was none. They felt down between backs and seats of chairs, looked behind cases of treasures, moved every book and paper that lay on the tables, even turned up the edges of rugs, and ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... fresh start, and came through endwise with a great flourish. All of these things made quite a little fleet, and the effect was very imposing; but by this time the water was quite up to the window-ledge, and as the sideboard was a fatherly-looking piece of furniture with plenty of room to move about in, Dorothy stepped aboard of it as it went by, and, sitting down on a little shelf that ran along the back of it, sailed away in ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... to derive its chief value from the circumstance of having been once the property of the imperial warrior, by whom it was presented. The chamber opens into a long and spacious gallery; at one extremity we observed a singularly awkward piece of furniture, resembling a large old-fashioned arm-chair. So useless an article in a Turkish palace induced me to inquire the purpose to which it was applied; and I was informed that, on certain festivals, the pasha gives an entertainment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against the door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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: ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... can afford to learn only the rules of repair or of keeping in order the instrument of consciousness, without knowing what effect her efforts have on the mind itself. It is as though an ignorant maid accepted a piano as merely a piece of furniture to be kept clean and shining, and in her zeal to that end scrubbed the keyboard with soap and water which, dripping down into the body of the instrument, swells and damages its felts, rusts and corrodes its keys, and ruins ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... a prince, happier than a king. His eyes were as clear and his face was as radiant as sunshine; and he held his mother in his arms, and she kissed his mouth, and wept as blissfully as any one can weep for joy; and he nodded at every old piece of furniture in the room, at the cupboard with the tea-cups, and at the flower-vase. He nodded at the sleeping-bench, where he had slept as a little boy; but the old Fire-drum he brought out, and dragged it into the middle of the room, and said to it ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Nellie to watch her father as the days sped by. From room to room he wandered, standing for some time before a familiar object, now a picture and again a piece of furniture. Old chords of memory were awakened. They were simple, common household effects of little intrinsic value. But to him they were fragrant with precious associations, like old roses pressed between the pages of a book, recalling ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... looked at him for a moment, as they might at a new piece of furniture, or a labor-saving machine, and then coolly finished their duties, and followed their employer. Mr. Schwartz showed him about closing the store, taking care of the furnace, etc., and Dennis saw that his place was no sinecure. Still it was not work, but its lack, that he dreaded, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... blunt, honest piece of furniture; it may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer; and sometimes a mad attempt is even made to pass it off for a book-case; ornament it as you will, however, the turn-up bedstead seems to defy disguise, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... at the glass door which opened into the morning-room by this time. The room was steeped in rosy light—such a pretty room, with chintz curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an odour of violets from the celadon china jars ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... rapidly through the first room, scarcely looking at the new paintings which adorned the walls; he entered his study and threw a long, thoughtful glance around this dear room. Every piece of furniture, every book, recalled charming memories of the past—every thing stood as he had left it seven years ago. He now for the first time realized the joy of being again at home; his country had received him and embraced him with ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Walter. "It did not occur to me to do so. But I will go and see now." With these words he left the room, and went up to the apartment where the piece of furniture stood. In the various drawers were found the watch, rings, and jewelry his master had been accustomed to wear. As he viewed these tokens of regard, his eyes were bedewed with melancholy gratitude. Carefully ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 lay ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... out. When, oh when, would his new 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. Oh blessed Conceit, what should ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... haven't been to a good sale for several years. That old man has knocked his fist upon every chair and table, has tested every piece of furniture, has opened all the bureau drawers, even the case of the old clock, and just a moment ago he rocked the cradle furiously to convince himself that it is in good working condition. Here he comes with a pewter plate in his hand—let's hear what he has ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... room, D'Harmental saw that his neighbor's was lighted up; he placed his candle behind a piece of furniture, and approached the window, so that, as much as the muslin curtains allowed, he could see into her room, while she could ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... 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 in keeping them clean and in ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... gentleman picked up 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 specimen ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... table surrounded by eleven stout rush-bottomed chairs: four on the far side, three on the near side, and two at each end. There is a big chair with railed back and sides on the hearth. On the floor is a drugget of thick fibre matting. The only other piece of furniture is a clock with a wooden dial about as large as the bottom of a washtub, the weights, chains, and pendulum being of corresponding magnitude; but the Bishop has long since abandoned the attempt to keep it going. It hangs ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 he opened ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... 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, or we are ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... elaborate plans by which he would shortly make a fortune. By a rare chance she had remained on excellent terms with her daughter-in-law. It must be confessed that Angele had no will of her own—she could be moved and disposed of like a piece of furniture. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... among its intricate series of drawers, pigeon holes, slides, and hidden receptacles. But some one had preceded me in the examination, and had removed all the papers and documents it contained. It flashed across my mind, as I explored the mazes of this old piece of furniture, that it might contain, in some secret drawer, another will. This thought caused the blood to leap along my veins, my cheeks to burn, and my hands to tremble. I renewed the examination, at first hurriedly; then with order and deliberation, taking out each drawer, and feeling carefully all around ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... found a loaded pistol under a piece of furniture. She took it and hid it. It appears that Antonin Moyne ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... too—for he could not conceive of a woman's hesitating for an instant between the magnificent young Duke of Vallombreuse and this ridiculous play-actor. After the first rapid glance he made as if he did not perceive de Sigognac at all, no more than if he had been a piece of furniture standing there; for him Captain Fracasse was not a MAN, but a THING, and he continued to gaze fixedly at poor Isabelle—his eyes fairly blazing with passion—exactly as though no one was near. She, confused ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... was much greater and more active than before, probably because of the psychic's growing confidence. A small table floated in the air 'while we watched it in amazement,' he says. One levitation lasted long enough to count fifty. 'We all had time to observe that the piece of furniture was quite isolated,' he adds. Furthermore, a big black hand came from the curtain and touched Madame Bottazzi on the cheek, and frightened her from her ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... half-an-hour till his conscience allowed him to take himself to his chamber. He was a man of no pursuits in his own house. But from ten in the morning till five, or often till six, in the evening, his mind was active in some work. It was not now all law, as it used to be. In the drawer of the old piece of furniture which stood just at the right hand of his own arm-chair there were various books hidden away, which he was sometimes ashamed to have seen by his clients,—poetry and novels and even fairy tales. For there was nothing Mr. Wharton could not read in his chambers, though there was nothing that he ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
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