"Matting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... American brig, the patriarchal ark of the Dutchman, the stout-ribbed whaler, the smoky steamer, the gay Chinese junk, the light canoe of the Malay—all these had battled with winds and waves to furnish this vaulted room. A Hindoo woman had woven that matting; a Chinese had painted that chest; a Congo negro, in the service of a Virginian planter, had looped those canes over the cotton bales; that square block of zebra-wood had grown in the primeval forests of the Brazils, and monkeys and ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... passage, with every evidence of profound respect. Following this passage, and passing an inner door, from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music, we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor. In a niche burned a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... spot, I used my eyes the best I could, but I did not see the hawk till she sprang into the air not ten yards away from us. She went screaming upward, and was soon sailing in a circle far above us. There, on a coarse matting of twigs and weeds, lay five snow-white eggs, a little more than half as large as hens' eggs. My companion said the male hawk would probably soon appear and join the female, but he did not. She kept drifting away to the east, and was soon gone ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... together by a couple of strong spars, so that there was a space of about six or eight feet between them: A mast was hoisted in each of them, and the sail was spread between the masts: The sail, which I preserved, and which is now in my possession, is made of matting, and is as neat a piece of work as ever I saw: their paddles were very curious, and their cordage was as good and as well laid as any in England, though it appeared to be made of the outer covering of the cocoa-nut. When these vessels sail, several men sit ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the rich classes of Strasburg to 'strip off their shoes,' and send them to the Armies where as many as 'ten thousand pairs' are needed. Also, that within four and twenty hours, 'a thousand beds' are to be got ready; (Moniteur, du 27 Novembre 1793.) wrapt in matting, and sent under way. For the time presses!—Like swift bolts, issuing from the fuliginous Olympus of Salut Public rush these men, oftenest in pairs; scatter your thunder-orders over France; make France one ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... have only lattices, instead of glass windows, most of which have, however, handsome balconies, supported on columns. In the churches, there are neither pews, benches, nor chairs; the ground is covered with matting, on which every one kneels together, from the grandee to the beggar. In the suburbs there are many woods of evergreen oak, vineyards, olive plantations, and orchards of mulberry, plum, and almond trees; and the flocks of black ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... the group. I myself was dressed in light European clothes, and furnished with an umbrella for keeping off the sun. This latter was all my arms of offence and defence. The other camel carried a trunk and some small boxes, cooking utensils, and matting, and a very light tent for keeping off sun and heat. We had two gurbahs, or "skin-bags for water," and another we were to buy in the mountains, so each having a skin of water to himself. Said was to ride this camel, and now and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... were built of sun-dried clay, such as peons use in the far Southwest on the Brazos, square in shape, of but a single story, having dome-shaped roofs, heavily thatched with cane. They were windowless, with one narrow opening for a door, protected by a heavy matting of grass. Behind these, perhaps a hundred yards or more, and within a short distance of the steep cliffs bounding the upper extremity of the valley, there arose from the surface of the plain two immense rounded mounds of earth, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... five-and-twenty years ago—any way, the educational result is the same. The schools as I remember them were faultless in everything except the instruction dispensed there. There were noble staircases, the floors were covered with cocoa-nut matting, the rooms admirably heated with hot-water pipes, there were plaster casts and officials. In the first room the students practised drawing from the flat. Engraved outlines of elaborate ornamentation ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Al-Mu'in also went his ways at once, with his raiment dyed of three colours, black with mud, red with blood and ash coloured with brick-clay. When he saw himself in this state, he bound a bit of matting[FN35] round his neck and, taking in hand two bundles of coarse Halfah-grass,[FN36] went up to the palace and standing under the Sultan's windows cried aloud, "O King of the age, I am a wronged man! I am foully wronged!" So they brought him before the King who looked at him; and behold, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and small trees may be wrapped with straw, hay, burlaps, or pieces of matting or carpet. Even rather large trees, as bearing peach trees, are often baled up in this way, or sometimes with corn fodder, although the results in the protection of fruit-buds are not often very satisfactory. It is important ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... walls. One building contained the remains of a once beautiful fountain, painted and lacquered, now moldering and fallen into dust. At the four corners of the room the old gods, life-size, had been gathered into piles and covered with matting, and from beneath this dusty covering protruded dirty, battered heads and ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... Benevolent Society of the Fourth Congregational Church has been newly decorated, new lights installed, the matting donated by the Philathea class in place, and all in readiness for "Go to ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... from, or bears any relation to, the mat character. We notice further that in the figures of houses this supposed mat figure is not used to indicate the thatching, but is clearly distinguished from it. Again, if the upper characters of LXVI, 25, 26, are intended to signify the thatching, roof matting, or roof, and are simple ideograms drawn from the thing represented, then the lower characters in these symbols might well be supposed to represent the wall or framework of the house. But the widely different relations in which we find this lower character ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... corner into projections that were crowned with bell towers, this apartment had a circular oriel window, swung like a basket from the wall, and guarded by an iron balcony. Cool, quiet, restful as an oratory seemed the nest; with its floor covered by matting diapered in blue, its low, wide bedstead of curled maple, with snowy Marseilles quilt, and crisply fluted pillow cases; its book shelves hanging on the wall, surmounted by a copy in oil of Angelico's Elizabeth of Hungary, with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... is so like a woman as a pigeon; perhaps that's the reason Norton does not like them. Norton! I haven't seen him for ages—since that morning...." He turned into Pump Court. The doors were wide open; and there was luggage and some packing-cases on the landing. The floor-matting was rolled, and the screen which protected from draughts the high canonical chair in which Norton read and wrote was overthrown. John was packing his portmanteau, and on either side of him there was a Buddha and Indian warrior which he ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... last three years. He had grilled in the heat, sweated in the rains, and shivered with fever under the rude thatch roof; the lime-wash beside the door was covered with rough drawings and formulae, and the sentry-path trodden in the matting of the veranda showed where he had walked alone. There is no eight-hour limit to an engineer's work, and the evening meal with Hitchcock was eaten booted and spurred: over their cigars they listened to the hum of the village as the gangs came up from the river-bed and ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... walked. As I stood near one of the huts, I got an excellent view of the drift and its southern approach just over the bulge of the hill, and a clear view of the river further east and west. I thought at first I would demolish the few grass and matting huts which, with some empty kerosene tins and heaps of bones and debris, formed the Kaffir kraal, but on consideration I decided to play cunning, and that this same innocent-looking Kaffir kraal would materially ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... burning low upon the table. She had succeeded in making the room look habitable and homelike. There were some books on the table and a lounge near at hand. On the floor was a fresh matting, covered with a rug or two; and on the walls hung a few tasteful pictures. But the room was filled with flowers. These were a surprise to her. Arobin had sent them, and had had Celestine distribute them during Edna's absence. Her bedroom was ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... very beautifully knit or plaited sandals. The fiber used has probably been obtained from the inner bark of trees. The combination of threads is shown in Fig. 172. A small piece of matting from the same place is shown in ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... decussation[obs3], transversion[obs3]; convolution &c. 248; level crossing. reticulation, network; inosculation[obs3], anastomosis, intertexture[obs3], mortise. net, plexus, web, mesh, twill, skein, sleeve, felt, lace; wicker; mat, matting; plait, trellis, wattle, lattice, grating, grille, gridiron, tracery, fretwork, filigree, reticle; tissue, netting, mokes[obs3]; rivulation[obs3]. cross, chain, wreath, braid, cat's cradle, knot; entangle &c. (disorder) 59. [woven fabrics] cloth, linen, muslin, cambric ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Russian romance. We have instead been prating of drawing-rooms and mere interiors of houses, which to-day are the same all the world over. A Japanese fan is but a Japanese fan, whether it hang on the wall of a Canadian drawing-room or the matting of an Indian bungalow. An Afghan carpet is the same on any floor. It is the foot that treads the carpet which makes one to differ ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... any elevation one finds oneself at once involved at any and every point in a maze of narrow, crowded streets of high brick and stone houses, mostly from five to eight feet wide. These streets are covered in at the height of the house roofs by screens of canvas matting, or thin boards, which afford a pleasant shade, and at the same time let the sunbeams glance and trickle among the long, pendent signboards and banners which swing aloft, and upon the busy, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... putting final touches to their toilet in the broad light of day. The native officers alone aspired to a certain degree of privacy. Their huts were detached a little space from those that guarded the horses; and flimsy walls of grass matting, set around them, imparted a suggestion of dignity and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... surveyed, houses and warehouses to be built, lumber and brick to be provided. People were living in tents, in brush houses, even in shelter made by four upright green poles over which were spread matting and old bedding. Hundreds of ships lay helpless in the harbor waiting for crews, often for men to unload the cargoes. No longer could the papers complain of lack of business. The town was like a hive, but such a disorderly one as would have driven wild ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... seems; my little chamber here, with its delicate matting and snowy draperies, looks like the nest of a ring-dove, it is so white and quiet. The sweet visions which visit me here are melodious as the warbling of the young bird, when the early morning wakens it, as the dawn ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... it. Of our party, some betook them to the diligence, and were carried over asleep; others of us, leaving the vehicle to follow the road, which zig-zags up to the summit, addressed ourselves to the old route, which winds steeply upward, now through forests of stunted firs, now over a matting of thick, short grass, and now over the bare debris-strewn scalp of the mountain. The convent bells followed us with their sweet chimes up the hill, and formed a link between us and the living world below. The echoes of our voices were strangely loud. They rung out in the thin elastic ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... of bamboos plastered with clay and lined with matting,—also with the large leaves of the "traveller's tree," and thatched ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... four columns suggest the four essential posts of native hut construction; the broad roofs are tiled; the windows are not glass, but of thin shell, the common material used in the islands; the walls are finished in split bamboo matting. The same style of construction is used also in all the Philippine booths in the palaces. The materials are used with restrained taste, and this, with the magnificent cabinet woods employed throughout the construction, has resulted in a beautiful ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... in England considerable areas are devoted to lavender for the perfumery business. The flower stems are cut in August, covered at once with bast matting to protect them from the sun and taken to the stills to obtain the thin, pale yellow, fragrant oil. Four-year-old plants yield the greatest amount of oil, but the product is greater from a two-year plantation than from an older one, the plants then being most vigorous. Two grades of ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... learn that when the court fled to Aranjuez from Madrid before the advance of Murat, and the mob, civil and military, hunted Godoy's villa through for him, he jumped out of bed and hid himself under a roll of matting, while the king and the queen, to save him, decreed his dismissal from all ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... over the further reaches of the river, and the sky had a brassy look unlike the intense turquoise clarity of the Egyptian sky. The palm fronds seemed metallic. As far as the eye could see along the right bank lay a confused mass of low white buildings, tents, huts of yellow matting and piles of stores. Gangs of Arabs and Indian coolies were at work at the low wooden landing stage, and over the scene towered the gaunt masts of the wireless station. The left bank was chiefly palm grove, save for a gap ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... stairs and creep beneath it. This particular step of a short flight running from the landing into a garret is, upon closer inspection, indeed movable, and beneath gapes a dark cavity about five feet square, on the floor of which still remains the piece of sedge matting whereon a certain Father Wall rested his aching limbs a few days prior to his capture and execution in August, 1679. The unfortunate man was taken at Rushock Court, a few miles away where he was traced after leaving Harvington. There is a communication between the hiding-place and "the ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... be off to make a Troop Cook desperately unhappy. I won't have the wily Hussar fed on Government Bullock Train shinbones—(Hastily.) Surely black ants can't be good for The Brigadier. He's picking 'em off the matting and eating 'em. Here, Senor Commandante Don Grubbynose, come and talk to me. (Lifts G. JUNIOR in his arms.) 'Want my watch? You won't be able to put it into your mouth, but you can try. (G. JUNIOR drops watch, ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... tour. Danton Hall was no joke to go over. Upstairs and down stairs; along halls and passages; the drawing-room, where they had been last night; the winter drawing-room on the second floor, all gold and crimson; a summer morning-room, its four sides glass, straw matting on the floor, flower-pots everywhere, looking like a conservatory; the library, where, perpetuated in oils, many Dantons hung, and where book-shelves lined the walls; into what was once the nursery, where empty cribs stood as in olden times, and where, under a sunny window, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... had to. They thought you'd trust us because we look almost human. It was a trick that worked before." Tears streamed across his face, matting the golden fur. "You see, the radioactive planets your men reported, one of ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... dwelt for more than three months already. She came out as on other mornings. He had heard her light footsteps in the big room—the room where he had unpacked the cases from London; the room now lined with the backs of books halfway up on its three sides. Above the cases the fine matting met the ceiling of tightly stretched white calico. In the dusk and coolness nothing gleamed except the gilt frame of the portrait of Heyst's father, signed by a famous painter, lonely in the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... twenty minutes the band reached a plateau covered with a matting of heather. They went across it to the edge of a high precipice. It was as perpendicular as a wall. Below lay the valley, its forests of pines and cedars looking like a black ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... industry and the Katias have taken to weaving or ordinary manual labour for a subsistence. The Kanjars and Berias are the gipsy castes of India. They are accustomed to wander about carrying their grass-matting huts with them. Many of them live by petty thieving and cheating. Their women practise palmistry and retail charms for the cure of sickness and for exorcising evil spirits, and love-philtres. They do cupping and tattooing ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... so he was compelled to shut the window and leave the swinging blind at the mercy of the wind. He then improvised a screen from a high-backed chair and an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon—or should I say alarm the angel?—of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the slumber of the just, undisturbed by ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... closely-woven matting, a substance much lighter than canvas. It holds the wind better, and rarely splits, because it never shakes in the wind. So large and heavy was the mainsail of the King-Shing, that it required forty men with the aid of the capstan to ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... the green house, they saw the gardener matting up some myrtles on the outside; and Elizabeth stopped, to enquire at what time the coach was likely ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... to have been preferred to burial in a tomb. The funeral pile was constructed at some distance from the town, on a specially reserved area in the middle of the marshes. The body, wrapped up in coarse matting, was placed upon a heap of reeds and rushes saturated with bitumen: a brick wall, coated with moist clay, was built around this to circumscribe the action of the flames, and, the customary prayers having been recited, the pile was set on fire, masses of fresh material, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... siesta, she had descended to the hall via the stairs instead of the lift, and bumped into the ebony-hued slave as he bent to lay a sheaf of flowers upon the matting outside her mistress's door. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... store was screened from the street by dark blue cotton curtains behind which was a roofed platform carpeted with matting. Here sat a group of clerks, each with his soroban or adding machine at his side. Little Japanese boys, their shoulders loaded with bales of rich materials, staggered about, and through the open doors of the ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... was otherwise clear of patients (for they were all out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the matting on the floor, and picking out with his thumb and forefinger the course of its fibres. The afternoon sun was slanting in at the large end-window, and there were cross patches of light and shade all down the vista, made by the unseen windows and the open doors of the little ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... silent now, chilled himself by the presence of this crisis, looking unseeingly out upon the plain, little old-world parlour, its tall window, its strip of matting, conscious chiefly of the dreary hopelessness of this human brother of his who had eyes but did not see, ears and was deaf. He wished he would say good-bye, and go. There was no more to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... to the—you can't call 'em a nautical name. They've one big, square sail of crazy-quilt work—raw silk, pieces of rubber boots, rattan matting, and grass cloth, all colors, all shapes of patches. They point into the wind and then go sideways; and they don't steer with an oar that Charon discarded thousands of years ago, that's painted crimson and raw violet; and the only thing they'd be ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and ef; The Warp, or the thread that ran crossing the Riband, appear'd like a single Rope of an Inch Diameter; but the Woof, or the thread that ran the length of the Riband, appear'd not half so big. Each Inch of six-peny-broad Riband appearing no less then a piece of Matting Inch and half thick, and twelve foot square, a few yards of this, would be enough to floor the long Gallery of the Loure at Paris. But to return to our piece of Riband: It affords us a not unpleasant object, appearing like a bundle, or wreath, of very clear and transparent ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... and chilly, he went stiffly indoors, through the hot, bright halls, that smelled of varnish and matting, to his room. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... screen, were the galleries, erected for the spectators. These were all covered with crimson cloth fringed with gold. Underneath them were lines of foot-guards, very martial-looking, fellows. The old stone floor, worn with the tread of Kings' coronations and funeral processions, was covered with matting, and purple and crimson cloth. Immediately under the central tower of the Abbey, inside the choir, five steps from the floor, on a carpet of purple and gold, was a platform covered with cloth of gold, and on it was the golden "Chair of Homage." Within the chancel, near the altar, stood the stiff, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... standing there the matting of the window was pushed aside, and Fitz came softly into the dimly lighted room. He glanced at me, but attempted no sort of salutation. I saw him exchange a long silent look with Elsie, and then he took his station at the bedside next to Elsie, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... impression as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a monstrous lattice of iron bars, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... comfortable. Space was cramped, and I had barely room to stretch my legs. My cabin was 5 feet 6 inches square and 4 feet high, open behind, but with two little doors in front, out of which I could just manage to squeeze myself sideways round the mast. Coir matting was next the floor boards, then a thick Chinese quilt (a pukai), then a Scotch plaid made in Geelong. My pillow was Chinese, and the hardest part of the bed; my portmanteau was beside me and served as a desk; a Chinese ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... encampment was a confused assemblage of tall, cone-shaped lodges, built of slender poles supporting great sheets of bark or overlapping folds of fine matting so closely woven from rushes as to be thoroughly rain-proof. Scores of graceful birch canoes, such as the northern tribes excel in making, were drawn up on the river bank; paddles and spears leaned against the lodges, smoke-blackened kettles and other rude cooking-utensils were scattered ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... country houses is small, and not cheerfully furnished. The houses built recently are improved in this respect, however, and now we will imagine a large room that has a pretty outlook on the Hudson, carpeted with fragrant matting, or with a hard-wood floor, on which lie India rugs. The table should be oval, as that shape brings guests near to each other. The table-cloth should be of white damask, and as fresh as sweet clover, for dinner: colored cloths ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... neutral except as to its blue valance, and the carpet only cocoa-nut matting, which, however, harmonized fairly with the prevailing ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... much taller, and more agile than robust,—was lopping vigorously with his great pruning-knife, Amabel nursing a bundle of drooping rose branches, Charlotte, her bonnet in a garland of wild sweet-brier, holding the matting and continually getting entangled in the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this I slapped them with my pillow twice or thrice, but the objects being so small, the effect was out of proportion to the force with which the blows were administered. I adopted a different plan. In the manner of beating floor-mats with rolled matting at house-cleaning, I sat up in bed and began beating them with the pillow. Many of them flew up by the force of the pillow; some desperately clung on or shot against my nose or head. I could not very well hit those on my head with the pillow; I grabbed such, and ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... person is dressed in his best clothes, wrapped in a piece of abaca cloth, and placed in a coffin of bamboo poles, or one hewn from a solid log, if the person was one of means, and buried. If of the poorer class he is merely wrapped in a piece of matting-, and either buried or covered over with stones, sticks, and the like. If of high rank, the body is not buried, but after preparation is taken into the forest and placed in a small hut under a balete tree. Food, spears, bolos, hats, shields, and some articles of furniture are placed on ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... kitchen window interrupted his admiration, and William, turning quickly, said, "Mind you say the train was late; don't say I kept you, or you'll get me into the devil of a pickle. This way." The door let into a wide passage covered with coconut matting. They walked a few yards; the kitchen was the first door, and the handsome room she found herself in did not conform to anything that Esther had seen or heard of kitchens. The range almost filled one ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... against the inner wall, and a crucifix hung above it. A little further on was a small altar of St. Joseph with its pictures, its statuette, and its candles; and a poor lithograph of Pio Nono looked down from the mantelpiece. The floor was almost bare, save for a few pieces of old matting here and there. The worn Turkey carpet that had formerly covered it had been removed to make the drawing-room comfortable for Augustina; so had most of the chairs. Those left were of the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shoulders. "Sally Lunn," said she, soothingly, "give us credit for better taste than that, entirely from the standpoint of harmony. In a summer home on a farm people of sense don't use Persian rugs or teak wood. We'd put plain white straw matting on the floors, hang muslin curtains at the windows, and use the simplest willow furniture to be had. The windows should be open every minute, and there would be bowls of roses about—only I'd rather it would be sweet-williams or clove-pinks. Sally, don't ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... market-place, took up the hint at once; brutal things began to be shouted; and in a moment the air was thick with missiles of various sorts, derived from the refuse of the day's market—vegetable remains of all kinds, fragments of wood and cardboard boxes, scraps of filthy matting, and anything else ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... My child, startled from a deep sleep, was refractory, and would not trust himself out of my fond keeping. When finally I had struggled with him in my arms to the landing, I saw in the shadow a form coiled on a piece of striped matting. Was it a bear? No, a prince! For the clumsy mass of reddish- brown flesh unrolled and uplifted itself, and held out a human arm, with a fat hand at the end of it, when Captain B—— presented me ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... nineteen or twenty, pale as marble, but beautiful. Right through my alarm jarred a throb of mingled self-reproach and pity and admiration. I tossed a pile of bedclothes over her, kissed the long light-brown hair which rippled on the straw matting, daguerreotyped the face on my memory with a glance, blew out the light, opened a window, and slipped out of it. It is unpleasant to drop through darkness, not knowing how far you will fall, nor whether you will not alight on iron pickets. Fortunately, I came down in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... cool, dark room, where no uneasy lights and shadows fretted her weakened eyes, I could not help remembering the comfortless glare and the hot, pungent scents that Miss Darrell had left behind her. Most likely she had rustled over the matting in her silk gown, and her hard, metallic voice had rasped the invalid's nerves. Doubtless there was hope for her now in her brother's skilful treatment, and when I told Max so he went ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... artificial, and acquired gentleness peel off, and I stand revealed a savage. Everything around me sloughs off its usual habitude and becomes savage. Looking-glasses are shivered by the dozen. A bit is nicked out of the best China sugar-bowl. A pin gets under the matting that is wrapped around the centre-table and jags horrible hieroglyphics over the whole polished surface. The bookcase that we are trying to move tilts, and trembles, and goes over, and the old house through all her frame gives signs of woe. A crash detonate on the stairs brings me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 1847-1848, during the reign of Abd-ul-Mejid, the building was put into a state of thorough repair by the Italian architect Fossati. Happily the sultan allowed the mosaic figures, then exposed to view, to be covered with matting before being plastered over. They may reappear in the changes which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... vertebra, and several pieces of charred wood, the bones apparently belonging to the first-found skeleton. In both cases the bones rested on a fibrous stratum, suspected at the time to be a fragment of coarse matting. This lay upon a floor of soft but solid iron-ore, which retained the imprint of the fibers. ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... was a straw matting and over its dry surface Janice heard a certain rustling—a continual rhythmic movement. As she stared about the floor, hesitating to enter, ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... grinned and obeyed. The hall table was no bad asylum, after all, for a little boy who was always in the way everywhere else; besides, he could see everything that was going on. No. 8 crept under, and squatted himself on the cocoa-nut matting. He looked up, and looked round, and felt rather as if he was in a tent, only with a very ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... should scrutinise the bale more closely. I did so, both with my fingers and the blade of my knife, and was now agreeably surprised to find that it was not a bale at all, but a wooden box. It was covered all over with a soft thick substance—a piece of rush matting—and this it was that had led ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... barbaric instinct, and this barbaric instinct had been veneered by French civilisation and pierced by the criticism of one honest man. His look fell upon the long pathway whereon, for three hundred yards, matting had been spread. It was a field of the cloth of blood; for on this cloth dervishes returned from Mecca, mad with fanaticism and hashish, would lie packed like herrings, while the Sheikh of the Dosah rode his horse over their bodies, a pavement ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the spring to put down matting, have them well shaken, and if there are any spots on them, they should be washed off with a stiff brush and dried; if there is oil or grease spilt on them, mix up whiting or nice clay with water; spread it on both sides of the spot, and baste thick paper over it. ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... beyond—will sneer at Falconer's notion of making God's violin a ministering spirit in the process of conversion. There is a well-authenticated story of a convict's having been greatly reformed for a time, by going, in one of the colonies, into a church, where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone when a boy—with his mother, I suppose. It was not the matting that so far converted him: it was not to the music of his violin that Falconer looked for aid, but to the memories ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... had sold the house to a cousin of his, a Mr. Legrange, who had made a present of it to his wife; but I could have the slips all the same: and next day, to be sure, they came, all nicely packed in matting, and some other plants with them. Karl brought them out and set them in April; and they are growing beautifully, you see. Wasn't Mr. ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... and largely-made child, and the little woman found her somewhat difficult to carry. She would not let her down, however, but conducted her across the cool hall and into a room at the further end of the passage. This room was nearly empty, matting covered the floor and a round table stood in the center, while two or three high-backed chairs, with hard seats, were placed at intervals round the walls. It was a decidedly dreary room, and rendered all the more so because the morning sun was pouring in ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... Closing the door, he again carefully examined the box, his table, the papers upon it, the chair before it, and even the Chinese matting on the floor, for any further indication of the pollen. It hardly seemed possible that any one could have entered the room with the flower in their hand without scattering some of the tell-tale dust elsewhere; it was ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... with stubble, grass, and feathers. The horses were sometimes fed, sometimes neglected. The grooms were never to be found in the stables. The cornice of the house was broken in places, as were the sashes, the shutters, and the railings. The matting was soaked with rain; there was dust on the painted walls. Over the bookcases were the dwellings of insects; straws from the sparrows' nests on the glass of the chandeliers. In the house there was no mistress, and ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... piece of paper right on to my garden. I was just going to peep at it, and see what it was mother shouldn't have done. Then granny gets up, and goes peering all round to see where the paper's gone. She pulled all the cushions out of the chair, and turned up the matting, and looked over her letters ever so many times, and never noticed that it had blown out of the window. Presently I put my head through the window, and cried out, 'What's the matter, granny?' 'It's only ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the profusion of the fruit, or the colors of the flowers, were the severest tax on the imagination, though I always thought myself, that they were both surpassed by incredible swarms of impossible humming-birds, with very gold and silver wings. The floor was covered with bran new matting, and the bedstead of cedar-wood was also new, though the bullock-skin on which the mattress rested, had rather an antiquated air. Moreover, I had a pair of sheets which were not of a bad color, although slightly patched. In addition, there was a Madonna hanging on one wall, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... later the curtain of reed matting that hung in the doorway of the itunkulu was thrust aside, and a man came forth. He was slightly above medium stature, and a trifle lighter in colour than the average Basuto; he was much more simply attired than the officer of the ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... barley, toasted, pounded, and kneaded to a kind of porridge in leathern bags like Turkish tobacco-pouches. The object was to save the teeth, of which the Guanches were particularly careful.] or parched grain. The articles of dress were grass-cloth, thick as matting, and tamarcos, or smock-frocks, of poorly tanned goatskins. They had also rough cords of palm-fibre, and they seem to have preferred plaiting to weaving; yet New Zealand flax and aloes grow abundantly. Their mahones correspond ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like—sufficient in truth within awhile to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... ourselves back to the room with the lamp and the Other Thing in it, and began to take up the next piece of work. I am not going to write about this. It was too horrible. We burned the bedstead and dropped the ashes into the Canal; we took up the matting of the room and treated that in the same way. I went off to a village and borrowed two big hoes—I did not want the villagers to help—while the Major arranged—the other matters. It took us four hours' hard work to make the grave. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... with strange sights—unwieldy Chinese junks with matting sails, island trading schooners, slimmer craft containing natives, and even immense canoes which came from distant islands with fish and fruit to barter at sight of ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... granaries of some Sumatran groups are of similar design and construction. Such a store-house is raised high above the ground on four hard-wood poles; the framework is of bamboo, and the sides flare sharply from the floor to the grass roof. Within the framework is a closely woven matting of flattened bamboo, which is nearly water-tight; but to secure still further protection from moisture, and also to allow for free circulation of air, a rack is built in such a way that the rice is kept several ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... more points of interest in connection with commercial credit business than any other one operation. Commercial credit operations, however, are of great variety and scope. They may involve, for instance, the import of matting shipped from Japan on slow sailing ships and where the drafts drawn run for six months or more, or they may involve the import of dress goods from France, in which case the drafts are often at sight. Furthermore, all credits are by no means issued on London. In the Far East, where tea ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... the matter was compromised by putting on over our shoes large sandals made of straw. After paying 50 centimes each (equal to 10 cents in our currency), we entered a large room without furniture or other adornment, with stone floor, some matting, upon which a number of worshipers were kneeling and supplicating "Allah," their supreme being. There was an earnestness that bespoke sincerity, and an all-abiding faith. I could but think how few of us who would criticise are true to the creed ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... at the base of the structure remains, and on each terrace there is something left of the feudal fortress. Ivy, with gnarled and fantastic stocks, has so overspread the masonry in places that hardly a gray stone shows through the dense matting of sombre leaves and hoary, wrinkled stems. Multitudes of bats cling to the ruinous vaulting where the light is very dim, and lurk in the hollows of the rock. A stone thrown up will bring them fluttering down and whirling about the head of the intruder, noiselessly as if they were the ghosts ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... infested with mosquitoes and endless varieties of loathsome insects; and the fish that are found around the coasts are not fit for food. So much for the country—now for the natives:—They are tall, robust, and active; the men wear scarcely any covering, and the women only a petticoat of matting. Both sexes stain their teeth black, and many of them tattoo their bodies. The Ladrone Islands were originally discovered by Magellan, who called them 'las Islas de las Ladrones' or the islands of thieves; because the Indians stole everything ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... other workmen were strengthening gabions filled with earth, the lining of another battery. The latter had embrasures, and the overseer of the works called successively men who, with cords, tied the saucissons and cut the lozenges and right angles of turfs destined to retain the matting of the embrasures. By the activity displayed in these works, already so far advanced, they might be considered as finished: they were not yet furnished with their cannons, but the platforms had their gites and their madriers all prepared; the earth, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disposed of in various ways; first, by interment in their compartments of the communal dwelling, as already described; second, by being laid on a rude platform of drift-wood or stones in some convenient rock shelter. These lay on straw and moss, covered by matting, and rarely have either implements, weapons, or carvings associated with them. We found only three or four specimens in all in these places, of which we examined a great number. This was apparently the more ancient form of disposing of the dead, and one which ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... literally as well as mentally overcome. Jennie's weight carried her to the straw matting with a bump that shook the shack and brought Ruth, too, ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... time, my house had been constructed of the frail bamboos and matting which are exclusively used in the buildings of the Bassa country. I had added a cane verandah or piazza to mine, and protected it from the pilfering natives, by a high palisade, that effectually excluded all intruders. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... the big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, or Karachi, the amenities of civilisation are sadly lacking. The bungalows are lit only by oil-lamps, their floors are generally of pounded earth covered with poor matting harbouring fleas and other insect pests, their roofs are of thatch or tiles, and such luxuries as bells, electric or otherwise, are unknown. So the servants, who reside outside the bungalows in the compounds, or enclosures, are summoned by the simple ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... to-morrow, Joe suggested that they go to bed. And then there was a moment's pausing upon the threshold of a yawning black door beyond which things smelled mustily sweet, with dusty shadows that crept across the matting from a shielded lamp; and later a most delicious yielding of one's self to the cool envelope of soft white sheets, and a moment's wide-eyed staring at the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... outwards and backwards as an outrigger. These are further supported by stays and guys, and, together with another long pole forked at the end, serve as a frame to support the pressure of the sails, which are usually two in number, made of matting of pandanus leaves, and average four and a half feet in width and twelve in height. The sails have a slender pole on each side to which the matting is secured by small pegs; when set, they are put up on end ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... waited for upwards of an hour, in the hope of seeing those camels hoisted aboard; but in vain. While we were so waiting one of the deck passengers below us, a Somali in white clothes and a gorgeous cerise turban, decided to turn in. He spread a square of thin matting atop one of the hatches, and began to unwind yards and yards of the fine silk turban. He came to the end of it—whisk! he sank to the deck; the turban, spread open by the resistance of the air, fluttered ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... comfortably furnished in European fashion, and the tables, chairs, and sideboard had evidently been a portion of a ship's cabin fittings. From the sitting-room—the floor of which was covered by white China matting—he could see a bedroom opposite, a bed with snowy white mosquito curtains, and two mahogany chairs draped with old-fashioned antimacassars. The sight of these simple furnishings first made him smile, then sigh—he had not seen such things ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... evening of my first visit, and the interior of the house was at once like and unlike the exterior. The hall had a puzzling look of equal nobility and shabbiness. The floor was paved with beautiful white marble, which however, was partly covered with a strip of worn cocoa-nut matting; the ceiling was in one of its sections gracefully groined, and in each of the walls, which were lofty, there was an arched recess containing a piece of sculpture; an old inlaid rosewood clock filled a bulkhead on one side facing the door, and on the corresponding side stood ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... having been exchanged, Elsie was next carried off by Lucy to the room prepared for her special use during her stay at Ashlands. It also was large, airy, and cheerful, on the second floor—opening upon a veranda on one side, on the other into a similar apartment occupied by Lucy herself. Pine India matting, furniture of some kind of yellow grained wood, snowy counterpanes, curtains and toilet covers gave them both an air of coolness and simple elegance, while vases of fresh flowers upon the mantels shed around a slight ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... keep my plants healthy: have a bucket of soap and water in every house, and a syringe in it. Then you take it up as soon as you see the mischief and kill it at once. It's all handy for you, same as it is to have a bit of matting hanging up on a nail, ready to tie up the stem that wants it. Somebody said, Grant, 'A stitch in time saves nine,' it ought to have been, 'A washed leaf keeps off grief.' ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... is really upsetting—there are ten different ways of entering the room, doors and windows, and half of them I can't lock or bar or fasten up in any way. What I should do if a Mutiny occurred I can't think! My bed with its mosquito-curtains stands like a little island in a vast sea of matting, and there are two large wardrobes, what they call almirahs, a dressing-table, and two chairs. It is empty and airy, and that is all that is required ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... he set to work in earnest. He found it hard work stirring the stiff paste, and it seemed as if Teddy got the greater part of it over his clothes and face. He was literally smeared with it, great splashes of it disfiguring his face and matting his hair. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... broiling in the tropics when we ought to have been at San Francisco, but her fittings are so old. The mattresses bulge and burst, and cockroaches creep in and out, the deck is so leaky that the water squishes up under the saloon matting as we walk over it, the bread swarms with minute ants, and we have to pick every piece over because of weevils. Existence at night is an unequal fight with rats and cockroaches, and at meals with the stewards for time to eat. The stewards outnumber the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... remarkable patience and imitative skill of the Chinese enables them to produce very choice goods in these lines of art. The shops being all open in front, the entire contents can be seen by the passers-by. Many of these passages are covered over at the top by matting, which effectually excludes the sun, and, indeed, much other light, so that they often have a sombre and ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... laughter. The walls were of plain planks painted a dark red: the roof, on which I could almost rest my elbow, was neatly endued with a coating of tar. But, after all, the thing was very pretty. There was a matting of ivy all over the front of the hut, thriving as I had never known ivy to thrive upon a wooden surface: there was a tangle of creepers about all the windows. The place looked like a "side-scene" in a comic opera. But ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... symptom is the glairy, white discharge flowing constantly or intermittently (when the cow lies down), soiling the tail and matting its hairs and those of the vulva. When the lips of the vulva are drawn apart the mucous membrane is seen to be red, with minute elevations, or pale and smooth. The health may not suffer at first, but if the discharge continues ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... arranged as comfortably as possible, Inez Hawthorne being given a place in front, where a sort of compartment was made for her, by means of stretching awnings of cocoa-matting and a portion of the reserve fund of lateen on hand. The others disposed themselves so that she was left undisturbed whenever she chose to withdraw to her "state room," as Captain ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... course you do! And hate to get up in the morning, too— To pull the coverlet from your frost-bit nose, And touch the glary matting with your toes! Are you beginning yet to break the ice In your wash-pitchers? No? Well, that is nice. I always hate to do it—seems as if Summer was going; but when your hand is stiff With cold, it can be done. Still, I prefer To wash and dress beside my register, When ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... marching along on what appears to be a rough strip of solid ground, suddenly may feel the same give way and he is precipitated into a bath of ice cold muddy water. Great areas of these tundras are nothing more than a thickly woven matting of grasses and weeds overgrowing creeks or ponds and many a lonely traveler has been known to disappear in one of these marshes ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... in round slices about two inches thick, and tie it with matting, like sturgeon; season it with pepper, mace, and salt; then put it into a broad earthen pan, with an equal quantity of port wine and vinegar to cover it, and add three or four bay-leaves. The pickle also must be seasoned with the spices ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... an olive tint, they thought they embellished themselves by colouring their teeth black and red, while their bodies were anointed with cocoa-nut oil, no doubt in order to protect themselves from the heat of the sun. Their canoes of curious construction, carried a very large matting sail, which might have easily capsized the boat if the precaution had not been taken of giving a more stable trim by means of a long piece of wood kept at a certain distance by two poles; this is what is called the "balance." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... there are for sale thousands of acres of tillable land which have been left by the restless shiftings of the American population. In New England the abandoned farm has long been an institution. Throughout the East there are depleted and dying villages, their solidly built cottages hidden in the matting of trees and shrubs which neglect has woven about them. One can see paralysis creeping over them as the vines creep over their deserted thresholds and they surrender one by one the little industries that gave them life. These are the opportunities of the immigrant ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours; floors covered with coarse, bright matting; and iron beds ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Spaniards would have suffered terribly from the severe cold of the nights, but for the ingenuity of one of their number, who invented a soft, thick, warm matting or coverlet which he wove from some long grass that abounded in the vicinity. Every soldier was speedily engaged in the manufacture of these beds or blankets. They were made several inches in thickness and about six feet square. One half served as a mattress, and the other folded over, became ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... continue the diary. Got up at seven this morning and sent for a boat, one of the larger kind about thirty feet long, and six feet broad in the middle, the centre portion covered with an awning made of grass matting. The crew consisting of an entire family, from the elderly parents to quite young children—9 in all. I was towed up the still widening river by all of them in turns, one wee girl not three feet high being most energetic, ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... would run into a body of enemy cavalry and have a skirmish with them. Again we would come upon an infantry outpost and manoeuvre about in an effort to damage it. The enemy set traps for us, digging big holes in the road and covering them over with matting on which they scattered dirt to make the surface appear normal. The nearest town occupied by the Turks was Kara Tepe, distant from Mirjana eight or ten miles as the crow flies. In the debatable land ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... gossip, activity and intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr, Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority—and watched too the inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new parliamentary force which ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... nest or two up in a corner under the roof. They are for the domestic hens and are ungainly things, made ordinarily out of a piece of old matting. In these the hens lay their eggs, after meandering around the rafters and disturbing the inmates of the house with their cackling. After the eggs are laid, it is frequently necessary to drive the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been imported from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not a picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square of sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborate exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction—but I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hard mattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... the story, Caesar was unwilling to receive her. There came into his presence, as he sat in the palace, a group of slaves bearing a long roll of matting, bound carefully and seeming to contain some precious work of art. The slaves made signs that they were bearing a gift to Caesar. The master of Egypt bade them unwrap the gift that he might see it. They did so, and out of the wrapping came Cleopatra—a radiant vision, appealing, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... whose patient vigilance had, at length, been crowned by success—and his companion had hurried him at their greatest speed through the wood, to the spot where their temporary camp was pitched, and where several others of their tribe awaited their return. A few minutes sufficed to remove the matting that formed their tents, and to collect their arms and utensils; but Coubitant well knew that the child who had escaped his cruelty would soon alarm the settlers, and that an instant pursuit would follow. He therefore, devised plan to deceive, and, perhaps altogether to check the white ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... prehistoric period had been covered with a yellowish paper, stamped with a huge pattern of flowers that looked like the flora of a carboniferous strata, a pattern repeated to infinity wherever the eye turned. Newspapers were pasted upon the ceiling and a great square of very dirty matting covered the floor. There were a few pieces of furniture, very old-fashioned, made of pine, with a black walnut veneer, two chairs, a washstand and the bed. A great pile of old newspapers tied up with bale rope was kicked into one corner. Two gas brackets ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... careful scrutiny of the miniature temple which suggests so many interpretations of symbolic imagery, we return to the little presbytery to hear of the subsiding river, and the good priest, announcing that the raft can now be safely negotiated, accompanies us to the tottering structure, a straw matting laid over three crazy boats punted across the turbulent stream. A half-hour's stroll beneath the arching boughs of a kanari avenue, ends at a picturesque Rest House, facing the temple-crowned hill. Surely we have reached the peace and silence of Nirvana at last! ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... a brilliant light in the hall—warmth, matting, carpets, full-length portraits, Olympian statues, assiduous servants. Not many servants, however: only a few from Diplow in addition to those constantly in charge of the house; and Gwendolen's new ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of these beds is chiefly in consequence of the large proportion of charcoal with which they are mixed, some of it doubtless the fine particles of burned grass and reed matting with which the cabins appear ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... veranda which overlooked a lovely flower-garden, beyond which were fields and woods and hills. The view from the veranda was very beautiful, and the room itself looked most inviting, with its neat matting, its windows draped with snow-white muslin, its comfortable chairs, and pretty ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... coming round a point masked by a clump of cocoa palms, was a large canoe with outrigger, upon which three or four men were perched so as to help balance their vessel, which, crowded with blacks, was literally racing along a short distance from the reef, impelled by its wide-spreading matting sail. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... been taken from infidels and pirates. The tower above the church contains a chime of ten bells, and the clock on the tower has a triple face, one face showing the hour of the day, one showing the day of the week, and the third, the day of the month. The heavy doors were open, but a curtain of matting hung over the entrance. A ragged, barefoot boy ran before us, and, drawing aside the matting that we might enter, extended his hand for a penny. We walked over the beautiful inlaid mosaic marble floor, and beheld ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... the man dying. The little house built of bamboo and thatch, with an outer veranda, where the friends are sitting, and the inner room, behind a wall of bamboo matting, where the man is lying. A pot of flowers is standing on a shelf on one side, and a few cloths are hung here and there beneath the brown rafters. The sun comes in through little chinks in roof and wall, making curious lights in the semi-darkness ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... lacustris, a member of a different family (Cyperaceae), a common plant in wet places, with tall spongy, usually leafless stems, bearing a tuft of many-flowered spikelets. The stems are used for matting, &c. The bulrush of Scripture, associated with the hiding of Moses, was the Papyrus (q.v.), also a member of the order Cyperaceae, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... possible by a higher power, and all you got to do is to feel grateful, same as you would to me if I gave you a dollar, and there you are. You just be square, and do business on the golden rule plan, and you have got a heap more religion than some people who are Matting about all the time. I just thought I would paralyze you kids by showing you that I was all wool, and wanted the Lord to keep tab on us, and know that we appreciated good health, and all that. Now, you go to school, and don't say anything to that blue-eyed teacher of yours that ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... grotto; we had to stoop to pass into it. It resembled much the entrance of the bear's den, which we found in the remote part of our island. A mat of rushes covered the opening, yet permitted the light to penetrate it. Francis removed the matting, calling— ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... tribes or families are found on the River Uapes. The men wear their hair in a long tail hanging down the middle of the back, while the women wear it loose, and cut to a moderate length. The only dress worn by the men is a small piece of matting passed between the legs, and secured round the loins by a string. The women wear none whatever, but paint their bodies in regular patterns,—generally red, yellow, and black colours. The only ornament worn by the women is a bracelet on the wrist; while below the knee a garter is fastened ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... forest, growing on lands which had once been under the plough, but apparently very long ago. To our inexperienced eyes and European associations, it seemed as if a century at least must have elapsed from the time such a matting of wood first supplanted the labours of the husbandman; but our friend the collector soon explained to us, that, if any spot of ground in that rich district were neglected for a very few years, natural trees, as tall as those we now admired so much, would soon shoot up spontaneously, and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... of the suttling booths. The principal booth was the Robin Hood, behind Garlick-row, which was fitted up with a good sized kitchen, detached from a long room and parlour. Here were tables covered with baize, and settles of common boards covered with matting. The roof covering was of hair cloth, the same as the shops, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... the hotel, from one dirty room to another, with their loose and creaking floors, rotten and filthy, sagging as we walked, covered with matting that was rotting away. Damp and unventilated, the air was heavy and filled with foul odours of tobacco, perfumery, and cheap disinfectants. There seemed to have been no attempt to keep the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... with tatties, or blinds, made of reeds or strips of wood, to let down, and give shade and coolness to the rooms therein. In some of them the visitor walked from the compound, or garden, directly into the dining-room; large, airy, with neither curtains, nor carpeting, nor matting, but with polished boards as flooring. The furniture here was generally plain and almost scanty, for, except at meal- times, the rooms were ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... textile purposes, and the more closely different hairs approach this, the more suitable and valuable they become for those purposes, and vice versa. With regard to the curly structure of wool, which increases the matting tendency, though the true cause of this curl is not known, there appears to be a close relationship between the tendency to curl, the fineness of the fibre, and the number of scales per linear inch upon the surface. With regard to hair and ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... ordinary carpet, for it is much too thick, but of colored canvas, or chintz, or thin felt, or serge. A rug made of a plain colored material with a cross-stitch or embroidered pattern around it is very pretty. Fine matting can also be used, and oil-cloth is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... could be seen that they were bringing from the huts the rude household utensils in which they did their primitive cooking. The women had their babies, and some, not so encumbered, carried rolls of grass matting. The men ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... council room. Ponteac, who had collected all his native haughtiness into one proud expression of look and figure, strode in without taking the slightest notice even of the governor. The other chiefs imitated his example, and all took their seats upon the matting in the order prescribed by their rank among the tribes, and their experience in council. The Ottawa chief sat at the near extremity of the room, and immediately facing the governor. A profound silence was observed for some minutes after the Indians ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... canoe sent by the King lay at the water-side. It had been repainted for the occasion in the gayest of colours, while thoughtful hands had erected a little arch of matting to seclude her from the paddlers and afford protection from the dew, and had arranged some rice-bags as a couch. The pathos of the tribute touched her, and with a smile and a word of thanks she stepped into her place and settled the four house-children about the feet of the paddlers. More hours ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Tombs of the earliest dynasties were placed about a mile back on the great desert plain. The earliest is about 10X20ft. inside, a pit lined with brick walls, and originally roofed with timber and matting. Others also before Menes are 15X25 ft. The tomb probably of Menes is of the latter size. After this the tombs increase 111 size and complexity. The tomb-pit is surrounded by chambers to hold the offerings, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and when the door swung open in answer to the Doctor's call, there stood our big friend on the threshold, a smile upon his strong, bronzed face. Behind him appeared two porters carrying loads done up in Indian palm-matting. These, when the first salutations were over, Long Arrow ordered ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... now the music and the day's decline filled me with a sense of religious calm, and for a moment I envied Berkeley. After his practicing was over the organist locked the chapel door, and we paced up and down in the fir-grove on the matting of dark red needles, and watched the river, whose eastern half still shone in the evening light. After supper we sat out on the piazza, which commanded a view of the Hudson. Berkeley opened a bottle of Chablis and produced some very old and dry Manilla cheroots, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... a pencil, end for end, between his fingers a minute, reflectively studying a knot-hole in the floor that yawned through a corresponding breach in the matting. Then he flung the stump of a cigar into a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... top with heavy coronets of cones; there were balsamic firs, whose young buds breathe the scent of strawberries; there were cedars, black as midnight clouds, and white pines with their swaying plumage of needle-like leaves, strewing the ground beneath with a golden, fragrant matting; and there were the gigantic, wide-winged hemlocks, hundreds of years old, and with long, swaying, gray beards of moss, looking white and ghostly under the deep shadows of their boughs. And beneath, creeping round trunk and matting over stones, were many and many of those wild, beautiful ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... carriage stop the way. With powdered lacquey and with charming bay; She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair. Her arduous function solely "to be there." Like Sirius rising o'er the silent sea. She hides her heart ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... arrived at the place where the canoe was fastened to the bank; a rude craft, just large enough to carry two men. A paddle lay at the bottom; along with a piece of matting of plaited palm-leaf, which on occasions was called into requisition as a sail. But Costal threw out the matting, as there was no likelihood of its being required upon the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... fully master but himself, a silence as if the angel of retribution had been flaring in the face of all parties the scroll of their personal and political sins. A pen, which one of the Secretaries dropped upon the matting, was heard in the remotest part of the house; and the voting members, who often slept in the side-galleries during the debate, started up as though the final trump had been sounding them to give an account of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... in which they carry on their nefarious calling are large junk-like vessels termed "praus," with short, stumpy masts and huge square sails of woven matting stuff. But they place more dependence upon their broad paddle-bladed oars and skilled oarsmen, each prau having from thirty to forty rowers, and some very large ones a much greater number. These, seated in ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... under no obligation to put so much faith in the builder, who is said to be your God and Father, as to do the thing he tells you? Instead of working away at the palace, like men, will you go on tacking bits of matting and old carpet about the corners of the scaffold to keep the wind off, while that same wind keeps tearing them away and scattering them? You keep trying to live in a scaffold, which not all you could do to all eternity would make a ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... to the department of the Surveyor-General, who, having pitched his tent in a similar position, was disturbed during the night by feeling a movement of the earth below his bed, from which on the following day a crocodile emerged, making its appearance from beneath the matting.[2] ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... him a bare thirty seconds' start. Then, rising with strange energy for so dazed and broken an invalid, he left the room and followed him toward the head of the stairs. His light footfall was soundless on the matting as he went. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... I just wager this was all your idea, wasn't it?" she commented, as she noted the sides of the Nest covered with straw matting, and the cute wicker table ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... procure ready made at schools, and which can only be kept up at a very high cost, abounded and pervaded the place. Badly dressed people felt themselves out of place in that brilliant sanctuary; a muddy footprint upon the thick matting in the passages was looked at as a crime. Clean dry feet issuing out of carriage or cab kept the aisles unstained, even on the wettest day. We say cab, because many of the people who went to the Crescent Chapel objected ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the beams of the roof sloping slightly upward from west to east. The centre part of the wall at the back was covered with matting hung from the rough cornice supporting the beams. To the right of the matting was the door communicating with the shop, and to the left were bunks. Other bunks lined the southerly wall, except where, set in the thickness of the bare brick and plaster, a second strong door was partly hidden by a pile ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... "If the men go to work at once we can have the rugs sent to the cleaner's and put down old matting for a temporary covering—and I can go ahead taking ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley |
