"Calico" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tow-colored hair, crowded back by means of a black rubber comb, Susan had been taught a neat arrangement of her blonde locks—so great is the magic of a few deft touches. Instead of being a gawky girl of seventeen, in a faded blue calico wrapper, Susan, as transformed by one of Mrs. Smith's simple white gowns, was a young lady. She so worshipped Mrs. Smith that she imitated her in everything, even to the lesser things, like motions of the hand, and tossings ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... the cottage, Melicent came out on the porch to wave a laughing good-bye. The girl was engaged in effacing the simplicity of her rooms with certain bizarre decorations that seemed the promptings of a disordered imagination. Yards of fantastic calico had been brought up from the store, which Gregoire with hammer and tacks was amiably forming into impossible designs at the prompting of the girl. The little darkies had been enlisted to bring their contributions of ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... ashore. The officers were dressed in the costume which we found prevailed through the country,— broad-brimmed hat, usually of a black or dark brown color, with a gilt or figured band round the crown, and lined under the rim with silk; a short jacket of silk, or figured calico (the European skirted body-coat is never worn); the shirt open in the neck; rich waistcoat, if any; pantaloons open at the sides below the knee, laced with gilt, usually of velveteen or broadcloth; or else ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... what happens, it happens and the whole little taste is so winking that there is no light. There is night. There is night light, there is pink light, there is midnight. All the chief occupations are in the checked dress. This is made of curtains and calico and rhodedendrons and kindling wood and even of some gauze. This is so ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... on Mondays and Tuesdays, the market is held on a large open space in the centre of the village. Abyssinians bring horses, mules, cattle, and honey; the Egyptian merchant displays in his stall, calico, shirtings, hardware, and gaudy prints. Arabs and Takruries arrive with camels laden with cotton and grain. The market-place is now a crowded and exciting scene: horses are tried by half-naked jockeys, who, with whip and heel, drive at a furious pace their diminutive steeds, reckless as to the limbs ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... entry, so that whatever breeze there was might come in, and an unusual glimpse of the new foreroom rug was afforded the spectators. Everything was as neat as wax, for Diadema was a housekeeper of the type fast passing away. The great coal stove was enveloped in its usual summer wrapper of purple calico, which, tied neatly about its ebony neck and portly waist, gave it the appearance of a buxom colored lady presiding over the assembly. The kerosene lamps stood in a row on the high, narrow mantelpiece, each chimney protected from the flies by a brown paper ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Ben Bolt, if it ain't ol' Calico!" he ejaculated, in amaze and pleasure. "Kid, whar'd you ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... clothed in a blue calico frock and white apron, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, showing some faint traces of flour clinging to her wrists, as if she had been suddenly summoned from the bread-bowl. She was fresh and sweet, strong and healthy, with a certain grace of manner about her that pleased Babcock ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... they came to what Betty always called a "calico" cottage, which is to say, a cottage made of scrim, and white-washed. Windows belonged to it, and a door, and a garden enclosed ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... left the house in his palanquin, wearing the short white calico jacket that was then de rigueur at dinner parties. It was late before he returned. There was an anxious and worried look on his face, but he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... another crowned head, namely, King Otoume, the owner of one of the neighbouring islands. He presented a most comical appearance, having put on, over a pair of full but short white trousers, a bright yellow calico coat, that most certainly had not been made by a Parisian artiste, for it was a perfect model of what a coat ought not to ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... newly patched quilt were designated as "ornery" but the printed spread, patterned to imitate blue torchon lace, drew a murmur of admiration from the woman. Sary quickly changed her robe of mourning to a calico house-dress and went out, determined to speak her mind about that awful mattress! She never thought such a rich man's house would have so common a thing as "combin's"—even if it was ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... laughed his sister, though there were two red spots blooming in her cheeks. What would Timmie say next! She led the way through the tiny hall into a big, bright room whose centerpiece was a frail, smiling little woman with a lapful of calico bits. She held out ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Convenient Holders.—For soft, convenient holders use old stocking tops. Take two thicknesses, cut in squares, bind all around with some bias pieces left from calico dresses and sew a brass ring on ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... at her side within the circle of her arm, his head against her shoulder and his eyes wide with a delicious horror as he gazed upon a calico book whose pages were brilliant with the tragedy of the three bears, which she was reading very slowly and with many explanatory annotations. Crimie balanced himself against her knee and beat with ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... multiplication table's gone loco. Two is eight, nine is eleven, and two-times-six is eight hundred an' forty-six—an'—an' a half. Anything is everything, an' nothing's all, an' twice all is cold-cream, milk-shakes, an' calico horses. You've got a system. Figgers beat the figgerin'. What ain't is, an' what isn't has to be. The sun rises in the west, the moon's a pay-streak, the stars is canned corn-beef, scurvy's the blessin' ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... is very trim and pretty when seen close at hand, and from the pattern of the feathers is often called Calico-bird. The Golden Plover is darker and not so conspicuously marked, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... bow on every string, "First couple join right hands and swing!" As light as any blue-bird's wing "Swing once and a half times round." Whirls Mary Martin all in blue— Calico gown and stockings new, And tinted eyes that tell you true, Dance all to ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of twelve and a little girl of eight. The exquisite neatness of the room almost concealed its wretchedness: everything announced order and economy, but at the same time great poverty. A painted wooden bedstead, covered with coarse but clean calico sheets, blue calico curtains, four chairs, a straw arm-chair, a high desk of dark wood, with a few books and boxes placed on shelves, composed the entire furniture of the room. And yet the man who lay on that wretched bed, whose pallid cheek, and ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... cocked and poised, in readiness to fire. Arrowhead and Chingachgook crawled to the cover, and lay in wait like snakes, with their arms prepared for service, while the wife of the former bowed her head between her knees, covered it with her calico robe, and remained passive and immovable. Cap loosened both his pistols in their belt, but seemed quite at a loss what course to pursue. The Pathfinder did not stir. He had originally got a position where he might aim with deadly effect through the leaves, and where he could watch the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... he maintains, is altogether opposed to this; parentage is a public service and a public duty; a good mother is the most precious type of common individual a community can have, and to let a woman on the one hand earn a living as we do, by sewing tennis-balls or making cardboard boxes or calico, and on the other, not simply not to pay her, but to impoverish her because she bears and makes sacrifices to rear children, is the most irrational aspect of all the evolved and chancy ideas and institutions ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Her pink calico dress, newly starched and ironed, had looked so pretty to her when she had started from home, that she had not been able to bear the thought of wearing over it this lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stained riding-skirt; and it was so short that it showed, resting against the saddle-skirt, her ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... grave, where two men received it; then a sheet was held over the grave till they had placed the dead man; and then flowers and earth were thrown in by all present, the grave filled in, watered out of a brass kettle, and decked with flowers. Then a fat old man, in printed calico shirt sleeves, and a plaid waistcoat and corduroy trousers, pulled off his shoes, squatted on the grave, and recited endless 'Koran', many reciting after him. Then they chanted 'Allah-il-Allah' for twenty minutes, I think: then prayers, with ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... any further words, and Bud continued on to the corral. At the enclosure he found Stelton roping a wiry and vicious calico pony, and when he had finally cinched the saddle on Pinte, he turned to see Julie at ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... the day of her marriage; her voice was still an immature treble; the same rueful irresponsibility marked her features; but all her poor prettiness was wasted under the disfigurement of pains and cares, Incongruously enough, she wore a gown of bright-patterned calico, and about her neck had a collar of pretentious lace; her hair was dressed as if for a holiday, and a daub recently made on her cheeks by the baby's fingers lent emphasis to the fact that she had but a little while ago ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... in fresh, blue, checked calico came in. "Wouldn't you like some breakfast?" said she. And Susan read in her manner that the men were out of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... countenance a look of kinship to the family of rodent animals—a genus which lives by stealth and cunning, subsisting on that which it can steal away from stronger and braver creatures. He was dressed in a pair of gray trousers, with the other part of his body covered with a calico garment, like that which small boys used to wear, called "waists." This was fastened to the pantaloons by buttons, precisely as was the custom with the garments of boys struggling with the orthography of words in two syllables. Upon his head was perched a little ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to lovers' parts, both on the stage and off it. Off it, he had one favoured phrase, hackneyed, but effective. "You are too pretty to be so cruel." Thrice he now repeated that phrase, with a simper between each repetition that might have melted a heart of stone. Behind Sophy's chair, and sticking calico-flowers into the child's tresses, stood the senior matron of the establishment,—not a bad sort of woman,—who kept the dresses, nursed the sick, revered Rugge, told fortunes on a pack of cards which she always kept in her pocket, and acted ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a gully running into the Newanga was a typical Australian humpy. It was built entirely of bark. Roof, back, front, and sides were huge sheets of stringy bark, and the window shutters were of the same, the windows themselves being sheets of calico; also the two doors were whole sheets of bark swung ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... microscopic structure of their teeth. There is more variety of pattern,—in most cases of very elegant pattern,—in the sliced fragments of the teeth of the ichthyolites of a single formation, than in the carved blocks of an extensive calico-print yard. Each species has its own distinct pattern, as if in all the individuals of which it consisted the same block had been employed to stamp it; each genus has its own general type of pattern, as if the same inventive idea, variously altered and modified, had been wrought ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... garlands. In the churchyard and at the tavern-door, were groups of peasants, waiting for divine service to begin. They were clothed in their holiday dresses. The men wore breeches and long boots, and frock-coats with large metal buttons; the women, straw hats, and gay calico gowns, with short waists and scant folds. They were adorned with a profusion of great, trumpery ornaments, and reminded Flemming of the Indians in the frontier villages of America. Near the churchyard-gate was a booth, filled with flaunting ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... after day the same story: a wearisome round of visits to the school, and to the houses of the mayor, the parson, the butcher, the baker, whose young ladies, of course, all receive instruction on the piano. But she doesn't complain, nor, indeed, does she look very weary. When she has put on a fresh calico dress for tea, and arranged her hair anew, and with these improvements flits about with that quiet hither and thither of her gentle footsteps, preparing our evening meal, peeping into the teapot, cutting the solid loaf,—or when, sitting down on the low door-step, she reads out select ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... procured to enable the firm to retail the liquors which they had in stock, and not for keeping a tavern. In a community in which liquor-drinking was practically universal, at a time when whiskey was as legitimate an article of merchandise as coffee or calico, when no family was without a jug, when the minister of the gospel could take his "dram" without any breach of propriety, it is not surprising that a reputable young man should have been found selling whiskey. Liquor was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... neatly papered with "Harper's Weeklies," and "Frank Leslies," other papers concealed the roughness of the table and shelves, white sheet and pillow-cases had given the cot an air of inviting neatness, and before it lay a square of rag carpet. The window was shaded with calico curtains, the tin basin and dipper had been scoured to brightness, and beside them stood a cedar ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... "all was different. A trail to Salt Lake had been opened and provisions came through by stage. I'll never forget the morning the first stage train came. Men had use for their money then, though many of them used gold weighed out in little scales. Flour was a dollar and a half a pound, calico fifty cents a yard, and eggs five dollars a dozen. Shoes were priceless. One man bought a pair for thirty dollars. I remember that Robert and I wanted to give our neighbor's little girl a birthday present. After much thought we decided on an ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... which our friend Pedro Nunes had given me were made of cheap calico, printed in little checks. They were of the kind that was usually sold to the seringueiros, and looked pretty when they were new. But they were a little too small, and had evidently not been shrunk before they were made. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to a neighbouring farm for milk. He heard her quick step on the shingle, and he stood still in the middle of the floor to meet her. She had on a short dress of pink calico and a square of blue-and-white-plaided flannel thrown over her head. She came in like the breath of the spring Sabbath. Her face was rosy, her lovely lips slightly apart, her blue eyes dewy and soft and bright and brimming with love. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... than whose face none is blacker, or more comically moulded, will say her word; but she is very profound withal. "Reckon how tain't de clo' what make e' de preacher tink good" (Aunty's lip hangs seriously low the while). "Lef missus send some calico fum town, and dis old woman son fix 'um into shirt fo'h him," she says, with ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... both in the little bare room; the child sitting on the floor and cutting pieces of calico and cloth into strips, which her mother was sewing together with coarse thread. Both looked just as when Daisy had seen them before slim and poor and uncombed; but the room ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... again!" they shout: and the patereroes on the lawn thunder a salute; "welcome, honest neighbour;"—and up went, at bright noon, Tom Stableboy's dozen of rockets wrapped around with streamers of glazed calico—"welcome, welcome!" ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of the bunk, a curtained space beneath a high shelf very obviously did duty as a wardrobe. A leather motor coat hung there, one sleeve protruding beyond the curtain of flowered calico. Other garments bulged the cloth here and there. Nolan, smiling over his shoulder at Casey, nodded and pushed the clothing aside. A door behind opened inward, admitting the two into a small recess from which another door opened into a cellar ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... be at the pains of making a long journey to the region of the booksellers' shops, hawkers sprang into existence. Men bought books or got them on credit from the booksellers, and carried them in a bag over their shoulders to the houses of likely customers, just as a peddler now carries laces and calico, cheap silks and trumpory jewellery, round the country villages. Even poor women filled their aprons with a few books, took them across the bridges, and knocked at people's doors. This would have ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... college with gowns and caps, and one or two even of them, deliberately took off their outer clothing, and tied it up in bundles. These bundles they removed to various corners, so that each might again find his own clothes. One or two put on calico dressing-gowns, which appeared to have been placed ready for the purpose; and among these was the cadaverous man of the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... earlier by the county council from the Smollett family, who have been closely associated with the district since the time of Sir James Smollett, the novelist's grandfather. The industries of Bonhill centre in the calico printing, dyeing and bleaching which find their headquarters in the valley. Population (1891) 3843; (1901) 3333. JAMESTOWN, about 1 m. to the north-east of Alexandria, with a station on the Forth & Clyde railway from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... son, "Bevare o' the vidders," and wondered what the old gentleman would say could he see this unconscious "wictim" walking up to the altar "and thinkin' in his 'art that it was all wery capital." The bride wore a dress of that peculiar sort of calico known as "furniture prints," without trimming or ornaments of any kind. Whether it was cut "bias" or with "gores," I'm sorry to say I do not know, dress-making being as much of an occult science to me as divination. Her hair was tightly bound up in a scarlet ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... A new calico dress of a blue ground, with a bright yellow vine rambling up its lengths, adorned her round, plump figure; her glossy black hair was plaited, and surmounted with a huge red bow, the ends of which fluttered out bravely; as she stepped slowly into the room, busying ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... Rhodes to the strips of red and green and pink calico banding his arms, their fluttering ends very decorative ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... fastened on Susquesus, as soon as the Indians were mentioned. There he stood, straight as the trunk of a pine, light and agile in person, with nothing but his breech-cloth, moccasins, and a blue calico shirt belted to his loins with a scarlet band, through which was thrust the handle of his tomahawk, and to which were attached his shot-pouch and horn, while his rifle rested against his body, butt downward. Trackless was ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... at several shops was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them, or that they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a great many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise; and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she led him such a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to the utmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... tension of the sermon, a reaction to life, and hope, and healthy humanness after these shadows of death. It all seemed part of a dream to Helen: the two happy-faced girls standing in the choir, with bunches of apple-blossoms in the belts of their fresh calico dresses, and the three young farmers who held the green singing-books open, all ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... French manufacture, scissors and knives, antimony, tin, red silk, copper bracelets, glass beads, coral, amber, steel rings, silver ornaments, turban shawls, cotton cloths, calico, Moorish habiliments, and many other articles, are exposed for sale in large quantities in the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... a guide—will he let me say a friend?—an Aberdeenshire Scot, who hurried out fresh from his bath, his trusty cutlass on his hip, and in heavy shooting-boots and gaiters; for no clothing, be it remembered, is too strong for the bush; and those who enter it in the white calico garments in which West-India planters figure on the stage, are like to leave in it, not only their ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... feet of the wearers, would be confined in Paris to the elegantes who promenade the Bois de Boulogne or the Champs-Elysees in carriages. Here the wife and the daughter of the poorest shopkeeper disdain chintz and calico; nothing short of silk or velvet is considered decorous except within doors. But, having made this confession, I must add that the general effect is charming, and as for beauty, both of face and figure, especially the latter, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... dog and the calico cat Side by side on the table sat; 'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!) Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink! The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate Appeared to know as sure as fate There was going to be a terrible spat. (I wasn't there; I simply state What was told to ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... trains and saddle animals climbed up and down that road. Bright's Cove became quite a town. Old Man Bright made six millions; other men aggregated nearly four millions more; still others acquired deep holes and a deficit. It might be remarked in passing that the squaw acquired experience, a calico dress or so, and a final honourable discharge. Being an Indian she quite cheerfully went back to pounding acorns ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... our own looms. Where were now the brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see a gentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair of silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a few years before, extorted from Parliament the Act which required that the dead should be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Toffey imported, for Costuming, shawls, crepe at $1 per yard, silk, skein-silk, twist, ribbon, velvet at 90c. per yard, drab-cloth, flannel, braid, handkerchiefs, buttons and button-moulds, gloves, suspenders, calico, vest patterns, pins, chrome-yellow, "bearskin" at 82c. per yard, dress handkerchiefs, beads, buckles, silk ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the prime minister of China, dirt and dilapidation were evident on every hand. The anteroom into which we were ushered was in keeping with its exterior. The paper that covered the low walls and squatty ceiling, as well as the calico covering on the divans, was soiled and torn. The room itself was filled with mandarins from various parts of the country, waiting for an audience with his excellency. Each wore the official robe and dish-pan ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Jake was the removal of the securities to Quimby's breast pocket, and of the diamond-studded chain to Mrs. Quimby's neck. The former were too large for the pocket, the latter too brilliant for the dark calico background they blazed against. Jake, who was no fool, noted both facts, but had no words for the situation. He was absorbed, and he saw that Quimby was absorbed, in watching her broad hand creeping over those ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Meg at her heels, passed Ann Gossaway's cottage the next morning on her way to the post-office—her daily custom—the dressmaker, who was sitting in the window, one eye on her needle and the other on the street, craned her head clear of the calico curtain framing the sash and beckoned ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Bryda and Betty seating themselves on either side of their grandfather, while Dorothy Burrow stood before him, her stout red arms uncovered, her elbows stuck on either side of her thick waist, and the frills of her big calico cap blown back from her ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... coin was invented, barter was usually conducted between producer and consumer with metal implements, as it still is in Central Africa at the present day with Venetian glass beads and rolls of red calico. Payments were all made in kind, and bronze was the commonest form of specie. A gentleman desirous of effecting purchases in foreign parts went about the world with a number of bronze axes in his pocket (or its substitute), which he exchanged for other goods with the native traffickers in the country ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... singing, issued into view, limping slightly—a wizen woman, coal-black and old, with a white cloth bound about her head, turban fashion, and a man's battered straw hat resting jauntily upon the knotted kerchief. Her calico frock was voluminous, unshapely and starch-clean. Her under lip was shoved forward as though permanently twisted into a spout-shape by the task of holding something against the gums of her lower ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... wool on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico short-gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long low ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... just out of linsey-woolsey dresses and wore trousers buttoned to a calico waist, she began preparing him for college. The old lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. And the Harvard man she saw in her waking dreams, she created in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... one of bustle and activity on the part of the Agency people, who begin rapidly filling wagon after wagon with goods from the store-houses. Blankets of dark blue material, cotton cloth, calico of all colors and patterns, red flannel, gay woolen shawls, boots and shoes that make one's feet ache to look at them, coffee pots, water buckets, axes, and numerous other articles, are piled into each wagon in the proportion previously determined by ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... at the bazaar here. There is a barber, and on Tuesdays some beads, calico, and tobacco are sold. The only artizan is—a jeweller! We spin and weave our own brown woollen garments, and have no other wants, but gold necklaces and nose and earrings are indispensable. It is the safest way of hoarding, and happily combines ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... styled "bagman," to the concern. Somewhere about 1825 or 1826, we find him transplanted to Manchester, in partnership with two other persons of the same craft and trading position, where they enjoyed the patronage of the late Mr Richard Fort, an extensive calico-printer, at, and in his latter years member for, the borough of Clitheroe in the north of Lancashire. He leased to them one of his print-works near Chorley, and such, it is understood, was the success of the trio, that when, after a partnership of some thirteen or fourteen years, they separated, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... the curtain. A fragment of cracked mirror was nailed to the door. She faced it, rapidly undoing the glossy masses of her hair; then lifting her gown, she buckled the army belt underneath, slipped the revolver into it, smoothed out the calico, and crossed the floor to the bed again, at the foot of which a pair of woman's coarse, low shoes stood on the carpetless floor. Into these she slipped her ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... I mean. I've seen lots of the younger sons of them old families. I've run into them in Yokohoma and Buenos Ayres; I've met up with them along the Yukon and down on the Mexican border. They're scattered all around, out through the Panhandle, ridin' calico ponies, with jingly spurs and more than a bushel of doo-dads on the saddle. They all come from old families, and I suppose after all it was a blessing that they had that much in their favor. Because if most of them hadn't had a family tree to lean up against at ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... and throwing on her faded calico sunbonnet, she was soon at the "turn," a point in the road from which the village hotel was plainly discernible. The stage had just arrived, and 'Lena saw that one of the passengers evidently intended stopping, for he seemed to be giving directions ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... spell of one baby to the dark-blue calico creeping romper which he wore day in and day out because it "did not show" the soil. White ones are much to be preferred, not only for looks but chiefly ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... a plain, single-breasted coat, of the Quaker type, with a narrow, straight collar, and a waistcoat of thin, striped calico, all open to the weather, and trousers,—not small-clothes, nor breeches, never being able to look at himself in breeches without laughing, he says; thick woollen stockings rolled up over his knees, and shoes with ties instead of buckles,—in short, the every-day costume of our Revolutionary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... college, and the higher school for girls. At the other end of the town are the inn, the post and telegraph office, the Romanist church and schools, and up by the Angrogna the Baptist chapel and manse. On the rivers are cotton and flour mills, and dye and calico-printing works. These establishments have attracted many Piedmontese to the town, which, from this and other causes, have made the Romanist population more ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... blacksmith shop and shoe shop. Dere was wild turkeys on de place, deer in de cane brakes and shad in de Catawba River. De Indians fetch their pots and jars to sell, and peddlers come to big house wid their humps on their backs and bright yards of calico and sich things de missus lak to feel and s'lect from. I see money then, but I never see a nigger wid money in his paws in slavery ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... carriage, a short distance from the city, accompanied by a relative. The young man, her companion, looked across the road at a woman, whose attire was certainly not in any way very near approach to the fashion of the day. She had on a faded calico dress, short in the waist; stout leather shoes; the remains of what had once been a red merino long shawl, and a dingy old Leghorn bonnet of the style of eighteen ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... Olmer. His temper was mild, his frame of mind bad as could be. Angry evaporations had left a residuum of solid scorn for these "English," who rewarded soldierly services as though it were a question of damaged packages of calico. He threatened to take the first offer of a foreign State "not in insurrection." But clear sky was overhead. He was the Rowsley of the old boyish delight in field sports, reminiscences of prowlings and trappings in the woods, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... see no burn upon it," said the Hungarian; "but in the name of Gott, how could you set it on fire without burning it?" "I never set it on fire at all," said the jockey; "I set this on fire," showing us a piece of half-burnt calico. "I placed this calico above it, and lighted not the handkerchief, but the rag. Now I will show you something else. I have a magic shilling in my pocket, which I can make run up along my arm. But, first of all, I would gladly know whether either of you ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... connected them with what he called the nasty new fangled method of leaving cloth on the table, as though to warn people that they were not to sit long. In his eyes there was something democratic and parvenu in a round table. He imagined that dissenters and calico-printers chiefly used them, and perhaps a few literary lions more conspicuous for their wit than their gentility. He was a little flurried at the idea of such an article, being introduced into the diocese by a protege ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... sewing. Immediately the tea-things were cleared away, she fetched out the stuff, and his soul rose in rage. He hated beyond measure to hear the shriek of calico as she tore the web sharply, as if with pleasure. And the run of the sewing-machine gathered a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... women were all colored people and, like the race the world over, were most fantastically and gaily clothed. The women wore bright-hued calico dresses, and brighter bandana handkerchiefs on their heads. The men wore flaming neckties, gay shirts, and, in some cases, tall white or gray ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... alone outside; she compromised matters by sitting down on the deck. Then she placed the small bundle beside her, and hurriedly took the rag-doll from her pocket, into which it was stuffed head down, pulled its calico skirt from over its head, propped it up against the coaming of the door, and told it not to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... no one to care for it, to grow up at the poorhouse with the other wretched orphan children, who wore calico dresses all alike and had little ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... unfavourable; and the chica, contained in a gourd labelled "Chica d'Andiguez," was then tested as to its capabilities for dyeing and printing. Fine and durable reds were found to be produced by it upon woollen, equal to those of cochineal. To mordanted calico the shades imparted were dull and heavy, but very solid. Chica is described as a very strong colouring matter, a small quantity dyeing a large amount of cloth, and as more nearly resembling lac lake than ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... maids with cork- screw curls and pantalets, sturdy little girls in sailor suits, sweet little girls in ruffled muslins, tall little girls, all arms and ankles. There was even a Topsy, gay in yellow calico, and an almond-eyed Japanese whose long kimono and high-piled hair prevented her taking part in the active American games of her mates. The taller girls were necessarily absurd. Some of the smaller ones were surprisingly realistic. And all, big and little, danced and ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... arrive, however, was an uninvited guest, for just as Bab and Betty sat down on the porch steps, in their stiff pink calico frocks and white ruffled aprons, to repose a moment before the party came in, a rustling was heard among the lilacs and out stepped Alfred Tennyson Barlow, looking like a small Robin Hood, in a green blouse with a silver buckle on his broad belt, a feather in his little cap ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... lamentable band on the upper deck mixed popular airs with the rattle of winches. The Quay was alive with ferry-boats, blunt-nosed and squat like a flat-iron, churning the water with invisible screws. A string of lascars from the P. & O. boat caught his eye with a patch of colour, the white calico trousers, the gay embroidered vests, and the red or white turbans bringing a touch of the East to Sydney. Suddenly the piles of the jetty slipped to the rear, and the boat moved out past the huge mail-steamers from London, Marseilles, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... You have heard, I dare say, of those wonderful spinning-machines which take in at one end a mass of raw cotton, very like what you see in wadding, and give out at the other a roll of fine calico, all folded and packed up ready to be delivered to the tradespeople. Well, you have within you, a machine even more ingenious than that, which receives from you all the bread-and-butter and other sorts of food you choose to put into it, and returns it to you changed into the nails, hair, bones ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... ask papa if we mayn't buy some calico and other things, with some of our benevolence money, ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... rain; and as bushmen only pitch tent when a deluge is expected, our camp was very simple: just camp sleeping mosquito-nets, with calico tops and cheese net for curtains—hanging by cords between stout stakes driven into the ground. "Mosquito pegs," the bushmen ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... be called a profession. He lay at length, his paws stretched out before him, his head upon them; his big brown eyes were closed only at intervals; ever and again they opened watchfully at the movement of a small child, ten months old, perhaps, dressed in pink calico, who sat in the shadow formed by the protruding clay and stick chimney, and played by bouncing up and down and waving her fat hands, which seemed a perpetual joy and delight of possession to her. Take her altogether, she was a person of prepossessing appearance, despite her ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Sam soberly as they left Oak Hill and turned into a country road, "this kind of a horse is called a calico horse. I ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... were literally swarming with Indian canoes, and in a few days Cook's crews had received thousands of dollars' worth of sea-otter skins for such worthless baubles as tin mirrors and brass rings and bits of red calico. This was the beginning of the fur trade in sea otter with Americans and English. Some of the naked savages were observed wearing metal ornaments of European make. Cook did not think of the Russian fur traders to the north, but easily persuaded himself ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... about women. I never could understand why some men who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a bold of calico draped around what belongs to it. Inside of eight minutes me and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around as amiable as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of canned fruit I had eaten, and I ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... tablet to Robert Anderson, "the Cumberland Bard," 1770-1833. Born in Carlisle, he had but little schooling, and at ten years of age he was earning wages as assistant to a calico printer; later, he was bound apprentice to a pattern-drawer in his native city. He went to London to pursue his calling, and he seems to have been led to attempt to write poetry through hearing some imitation Scottish songs sung at Vauxhall. He published his ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... her stand by the half hour before the glass, giving an extra twist to her curl and an additional dash of white powder on her hair—now fretted because the powder was too thick, now fretted because it was too thin? She was as proud in cambric and calico and nankeen as Harriet is to-day in white tulle and organdy. I remember how careful she was when she ran me along the edges of the new dress. With me she clipped and notched and gored and trimmed, and day and night I ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Mere calico served her for satin; My broadcloth was made of blue jeans. Without crest or a motto in Latin, Meg's style was as grand as ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... "He bought the calico for the sail at Brannigan's," she said, "and made it himself. Peter Walsh told me that. I'm bound to say it doesn't sit badly; but of course you can't really tell about the sit of a sail when the boat's ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... would come round him and be reminded of their homes; in the afternoon, by the help of his interpreter, he prayed with and for the Kaffirs, and expounded the truths of the Gospel; and in the week, he kept school for such Kaffir children as he could collect, dressing them decently in printed calico. He began with very few, partly because many parents fancied he would steal and make slaves of them, and partly because he wished to train a few to be in advance and act as monitors to the rest. The English were on very good terms with ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... smooth hair, but was apparent as well in the long line of her carriage, from her foot to her waist and the single deep swell from her waist to her shoulder. Almost unconsciously she dressed in harmony with this note of simplicity, and on this occasion wore a skirt of plain dark blue calico and a white shirt waist ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... stated that "there are in Donegal about four thousand adults, of both sexes, who are obliged to go barefoot during the winter, in the ice and snow—pregnant women and aged people in habitual danger of death from the cold . . . . It is rare to find a man with a calico shirt; but the distress of the women is still greater, if that be possible. There are many hundreds of families in which five or six grown-up women have among them no more than a single dress to go out in . . . . There are about ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out on the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester calico-printers to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the enterprise that in 1831 the partners determined to print ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... a quiet little place, with its one hotel and two attached cottages, its old, disused saw-mill, its tiny schoolhouse beyond the fairy-like woods, its one general merchandise store, where cheese and calico, hats and hoes, ham and hominy, are forthcoming upon solicitation. It is by no means a fashionable resort; the Levices had searched for something as unlike the Del Monte and Coronado as milk is unlike champagne. They were looking for a pretty, healthful ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... private use. A superfluous caution—for Henry was the most generous little fellow that ever lived; and was far more likely to fall short himself than that others should suffer through him. Both Jane and Mammy kissed me repeatedly. I had on a new dress of light, spotted calico, and a straw hat, with a green ribbon, and a deep green silk cape—underneath the binding of my apron a small handkerchief had been carefully pinned—a small blue-covered book, and a slate with a long, sharp-pointed pencil tied on with a red cord, were placed in my hands; and from these ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... dilution, and most of the lines read themselves into my memory, where they linger yet. I supped on the horrors of Ugolino's fate with the strong gust of youth, which finds every, exercise of sympathy a pleasure. My good priest sat beside me in these rich moments, knotting in his lap the calico handkerchief of the snuff-taker, and entering with tremulous eagerness into my joy in things that he had often before enjoyed. No doubt he had an inexhaustible pleasure in them apart from mine, for I have found my pleasure ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the pale hair which escaped from the knot at her neck, and stuck out there and dangled about her face in spite of the attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb holding its main strands together. The lankness of her long figure showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment; and her large features were respectively lank in their way, nose and chin and high cheek bones; her eyes wabbled in their sockets with the sort of inquiring laughter that spread her wide, loose mouth. She was barefooted, like Reverdy, on whom her eyes rested ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... their suspense, and with a twinkle in his eye proceeded slowly, "I was sort of loafin' around town one day about two weeks ago when I come across a Seminole, who, I reckon, had been sent in by his squaw to trade for red calico and beads," he paused for a moment ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... child. Half the peasantry had come in from the outlying environs of Villette, and the decent burghers were all abroad and around, dressed in their best. My straw-hat passed amidst cap and jacket, short petticoat, and long calico mantle, without, perhaps, attracting a glance; I only took the precaution to bind down the broad leaf gipsy-wise, with a supplementary ribbon—and then I felt ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... rosy, bright-eyed school-girls, such as you are a-thinking of—are scarce as hen's teeth in this great city, and not to be found in profuseness anywhere. They went out with pink calico sun-bonnets, and ain't likely to come in again yet awhile, I tell you! Republican institutions can be carried to a great extent; and our young ones have found it out, and trample down all the good, wholesome old fashions ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... back of Peter's head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech's sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly's ghost, whenever I come upon him thus unobserved. To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown—unheard-of garment in these days—but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald men would have the cap black—but then most bald men have not ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and was a partner in a mercer's business with Mr. Edward Morris (who afterwards purchased and sold the Van Mine near Caersws), under the style of Messrs. Morris and Savin. Mr. Savin's mind, however, was not entirely concentrated on measuring cloth and calico. He took a keen interest in the life of the town, and was an energetic supporter of local institutions. Elected to the Town Council in 1856, he was mayor in 1863, and appointed alderman in 1871, an office he retained to the ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... in o add s; as, cameo, cameos. A number of nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant add es; as, volcano, volcanoes. The most important of the latter class are: buffalo, cargo, calico, echo, embargo, flamingo, hero, motto, mulatto, negro, potato, tomato, tornado, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... few squares of calico, and undertook to put them together in my usual independent way, without asking direction. I liked assorting those little figured bits of cotton cloth, for they were scraps of gowns I had seen worn, and they reminded me of the persons who wore them. One fragment, ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... imperative; but they also knew that to do it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without a break when once it was begun. A ten-hours' job; and where could THEY find ten leisure hours in a bunch? Sally was selling pins and sugar and calico all day and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes and sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for the daughters were being saved up for high society. The Fosters knew there was one way to get the ten ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... came back from the well, with a filled cask in the wagon, she had already put on a calico wrapper and both doors and windows were open wide, and I hardly recognized the dwelling when we had finished what Aline said was only the first stage of the proceedings. Then I lighted the stove, and, returning after stabling the horses, found ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... example; but as we were not qualified by years of arduously won sanctity to stand stark naked in the presence he conceded us a clout apiece torn from a filthy length of calico that some one had tossed in a corner. And he tore another piece of filthy red cotton cloth in halves, and divided it between us to twist around our heads. King ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... then washed and dried it acquires a hard, tough and translucent coating that makes it water-proof and grease-proof. This is the "parchment paper" that has largely replaced sheepskin. Strong alkali has a similar effect to strong acid. In 1844 John Mercer, a Lancashire calico printer, discovered that by passing cotton cloth or yarn through a cold 30 per cent. solution of caustic soda the fiber is shortened and strengthened. For over forty years little attention was paid to this discovery, but when ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... a rule, efficient helpers. The zeal which they manifested at the beginning of the work did not flag, but it must be confessed that toward the close of the excavations it became necessary to incite their enthusiasm by prizes, and, to them, extraordinary offers of overalls and calico. They at first objected to working in the cemeteries, regarding it as a desecration of the dead, but several of their number overcame their scruples, even handling skulls and other parts of skeletons. The Snake chief, Kopeli, however, never worked ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... trolley-run to the Lake grew irresistible, and they struggled out of the theatre. As they stood on the pavement, Harney pale with the heat, and even Charity a little confused by it, a young man drove by in an electric run-about with a calico band bearing the words: "Ten dollars to take you round the Lake." Before Charity knew what was happening, Harney had waved a hand, and they were climbing in. "Say, for twenny-five I'll run you out to see the ball-game and back," the driver proposed with an insinuating ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... just Emily Ruggles's. It was full of marbles, tops, 'scholars' companions,' air-guns, sheets of paper soldiers, valentines, fire-crackers before the Fourth, elastic for slingshots, spools, needles and yards of blue calico with white dots, which hung over strings above the counters. Emily was a dark, heavy-browed spinster with a booming bass voice and a stern manner, and when you crept, awed and timid, into the store she glared at you and boomed out, 'Which side, young man?' Yet her store was a kid's ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... to the nicest proportions of classic beauty; and never did foot of higher instep, and softer roundness, grace a feathered moccason. Though the person, from the neck to the knees, was hid by a tightly-fitting vest of calico and the short kirtle named, enough of the shape was visible to betray outlines that had never been injured, either by the mistaken devices of art or by the baneful effects of toil. The skin was only visible at the hands, face, and neck. Its lustre having been a little ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... and bare. All that it contained was a bookcase, some shelves with books on them, a writing-table and chair, an arm-chair, a couch, and another table of common deal, like a kitchen table, on which was a variety of things—bottles, books, and instruments apparently—all covered up with a calico sheet. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... was horrid! That is, Mrs. Worrett was just as kind as could be, but so fat; and oh, such a pig! I never imagined such a pig! And the calico on that horrid sofa was so slippery that I rolled off five times, and once I hurt myself real badly. And we had a feather-bed; and I was so homesick that ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... the snowy white turban wound about his brow. His eyes, by contrast, were singularly light. He wore over his white shirt a long green tunic of very light silk, woven along its edges with arabesques in gold; a pair of loose calico breeches reached to his knees; his brown muscular calves were naked, and his feet were shod in a pair of Moorish shoes of crimson leather, with up-curling and very pointed toes. He had no weapons other than the heavy-bladed knife with a jewelled hilt that was thrust ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Doctor's Wife. Cora's husband's mother was very cross and unfeeling to her like Aunt M. to me. I wish Hannah had come instead of me for it was Hannah that Aunt M. wanted and she is better than I am and does not answer back so quick. Are there any peaces of my buff calico. Aunt J. wants enough to make a new waste, button behind, so I wont look so outlandish. The stiles are quite pretty in Riverboro and those at Meeting quite ellergant, ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... postilions to go slowly through the narrow streets of the village to avoid the risk of running over the crowds of children. I never saw so many. Eight or ten at each door! They all seemed to be of the same age, and all were dressed in red calico, which made a very pretty note of color against the shabby houses. There are a great many manufactories about here, and I suppose ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... they assume in any degree the ideas and habits of civilization, it is only as their women sometimes put on calico gowns over their seal-skin trousers. The modification is not even skin-deep. It is a curious illustration of this immobility, that no persuasion, no authority, can make them fishermen. Inseparable from the sea-shore, the Esquimaux will not catch a fish, if he can catch a dinner otherwise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... or feather dipped in the chloride, and dip immediately into cold water, to prevent the texture of the article being injured. Fresh ink-spots are removed by a few drops of hot water being poured on immediately after applying the chloride of soda. By the same process, iron-mould in linen or calico may be removed, dipping immediately in cold water to prevent injury to the fabric. Wax dropped on a shawl, table-cover, or cloth dress, is easily discharged by applying spirits of wine; syrups or preserved fruits, by washing in lukewarm water with ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... had forgotten that it is man's right to rule. On that rainy morning he had lighted his pipe at the kitchen fire, and when breakfast was over stood in the front door watching the water rush down the road till the pipe died out in his mouth. Em saw she must do something for him, and found him a large calico duster. He had sometimes talked of putting the loft neat, and today she could find nothing else for him to do. So she had the ladder put to the trap-door that he need not go out in the wet, and Gregory ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico short gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long, low window under the eaves. There was another ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... time assiduously ransacking the deserted shops, and in addition to his huge bundle of bedding and his long string of straw hats he now possessed a miscellaneous assortment of plunder, in which were a bolt of calico, a pair of shoes, a collection of cooking-utensils, an umbrella, and—strangest of all—a large gilt-framed mirror. The safety of these articles seemed to concern him far more than his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Presently these might have been discovered to be a man and a woman; the former tall, thin, dark and stooped; his companion, tall as himself, quite as thin, and almost as bent. The garb of the man was nondescript, neutral, loose; his hat dark and flapping. The woman wore a shapeless calico gown, and on her head was a long, telescopic sunbonnet of faded pink, from which she must perforce peer forward, looking neither to the right nor ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... littherary wontherr of the wurrld," says he; "and sure your lordship must have seen it; the latther numbers ispicially—cheap as durrt, bound in gleezed calico, six shillings a vollum. The illusthrious neems of Walther Scott, Thomas Moore, Docther Southey, Sir James Mackintosh, Docther Donovan, and meself, are to be found in the list of conthributors. It's the Phaynix ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... squeaked like a frightened locomotive temperament! His "boughten" sack coat, fitting him all over, similar to a wet shirt on a broom-handle, was pouched out at the pockets with any quantity of numerous articles, in the way of books and boots, pamphlets and perfumery, knick-knacks and gim-cracks, calico, candy, &c. His vest was short, but that deficiency was made up in superfluity of dickey, and a profusion of sorrel whiskers. Having got into the store, he very leisurely walked around, viewing the hardware, separately and minutely, until one of the clerks ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... practical knowledge of a shipwright's task to-day. Do you mean that you only stayed a week? you ask. That is all. And my mother had kept, until within a few months ago, the little white smock-frock, which I wore in my work, as a reminder in calico of my ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... were very active, pottering about with hammers and nails and red calico, to put up curtains, make their house habitable and pretty; resolved to settle down comfortably to their new life. For them an impossible task. To grapple effectually with even purely material problems requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people generally imagine. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... not stir, lying very quiet and looking at the cash-box in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was "capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward into ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... know best. I've no objections. But if Tom's to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him, else he might as well have calico as linen. And then, when the box is goin' backwards and forwards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-pie, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... one tent, I questioned also as to sleeping accommodations. It contained a full-sized bed and one narrow cot, between which was suspended a thin calico curtain. The cooking, eating, etc., ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... canoe grounded on the stones below them. It contained in addition to all the worldly goods of the family, a swarthy French half-breed, his Cree wife and three coppery infants in pink calico sunbonnets. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... by flaring tallow-candles. The papering, a greasy, dirty gray paper, preserved the fingermarks of all the previous occupants of the room from the time it had first been hung. The furniture, also, was in keeping with the room,—a walnut bedstead with faded calico curtains, a chest of drawers, a table, two chairs, and a miserable ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Exhibition, Messrs. Butterworth & Dickinson, Burnley, showed Catlow's patent dobby, which is illustrated above, as applied to a strong calico loom. This dobby is a double lift one, thus obtaining a wide shed, and the use of two lattice barrels connected by gearing so that they both revolve in the same direction. The jack lever is attached to the vertical levers, the top ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... himself and his men seated at breakfast. As he was not perceived by them, he passed on, without interrupting them, to the dairy, where the good dame was busy with her white pails and bright pans. A calico bonnet with a very deep front concealed his approach from Mrs. Pye until he stood beside her; but there was one within the dairy who saw him, and whose coquettish movement in snatching from her glossy brown ringlets a bonnet of the same unbecoming shape with that of ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... found welcome among the waiting natives, while Titihuti of the tattooed legs took her seat beside me. She had combed her Titian tresses and anointed them with oil till they shone like the kelp beds of Monterey. Her tunic was of scarlet calico, and she carried in her hand a straw hat with a red ribbon, to put on when she entered the church. "Kaoha!" I said to her, and she smiled, displaying her even, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Mr. Brewster, the second mate. That is he devouring those huge slices of cold beef with so much gusto, while Langley mutters, "Will he never have done!" He with the blue jacket, bedizzened so plentifully with small pearl buttons, the calico shirt, and fancifully-knotted black silk ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... to take part in Bunny's and Sue's show were in the barn, waiting for the curtain to be pulled back. For grandmother and Mother Brown had made a calico curtain for the children. Bunker Blue and Ben said they would stand, one on either side, to pull the curtain back when the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... Short, little and straight and neat, with a basket on one arm and a bundle under the other, stood hesitating on the edge of the curb opposite my window. Her poor old face, framed in its calico kerchief, had a wrinkle of anxiety in it. The tumbled ice heap in the street looked to her like an impassable barrier. Tiny as she was, and loaded, she had reason to hesitate. Perhaps she had eggs in her basket,—I thought of that as I looked at her across the street; and I thought ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... were all called in to family worship, as usual; and when that had been attended to, Elsie uncovered a large basket which stood on a side-table, and with a face beaming with delight, distributed the Christmas gifts—a nice new calico dress, or a bright-colored hand-kerchief to each, accompanied ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... people of the poorer sort (white calico with red spots, costumes), but amongst them there was a girl in a black dress sewn over with gold half moons, very high in the neck and very short in the skirt. Most of the ordinary clients of the cafe didn't even look up from their games or papers. I, being ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Sarah, come into this old room with me, and help me pack my dried apple for market. Is'nt it nice? I took great pains with it, as I wished it to fetch the first price in the market. I am going to get me a new cheap calico dress. This old patched faded thing is ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... what Tom Hood loved to call "a hapless wight:" one who is poor and wretched and outcast and out of work, not through any fault of his own, through idleness or fecklessness, but through sheer ill-luck. There is a word to describe what we feel when we hear the tearing of silk or the ripping of calico, a word expressing that sense of angry irritation which gives a man a gnawing in the muscles of the arms, a word that tells what we really feel in our hair when we pretend that it "stands on end." It is a sturdy, manly dialect, moreover, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels |
